Episode 88: Finding What’s Next with Jyotsna Ramachandran

Welcome to The Career Clarity Show, where we help you find a lucrative, soulful, and joyful career path for you!

What am I supposed to be doing? What’s a way that I can merge together things that I am good at and enjoy with things that will help me to make money? What’s next? These are a few of the questions that we are covering on today’s episode. 

Jyotsna Ramachandran, founder of Happy Self Publishing, is here to  talk through lots of considerations when it comes to questions like these in terms of what might be next. We’ll talk specifically about some other ideas that might really pique your interest or get you excited when you’re thinking about what’s next. 

Want to learn more about our strategic framework for successful career change? Download The Roadmap to Career Fulfillment ebook right here!

SHOW NOTES:

• Happy Self Publishing
• Author Success Scorecard
• Roadmap to a Fulfilling Career eBook

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Transcript:

Lisa Lewis Miller  0:04  

Welcome to the Career Clarity Show. If you want to create a career path you’ll love, you’re in the right place. I’m Lisa Lewis Miller, career change coach, published author and your host. And each week, we’ll bring you personal transformation stories, advice and insights from experts about how you can find a more fulfilling, soulful and joyful career.

Lisa Lewis Miller  0:31  

Welcome, welcome, clarity seekers. It’s Lisa Lewis Miller. And I’m delighted that you are with us here today on the Career Clarity Show. On today’s episode of the podcast, we are going to talk with an entrepreneur who was thinking through a lot of the same questions that I think most of the people listening to the Career Clarity Show thinks through what am I supposed to be doing? What’s a way that I can merge together things that I am good at and enjoy with things that will help me to make money. What’s next. And especially for any of you who are contemplating entrepreneurship, you’re a little entrepreneurial, curious, as we might say around here, it can be really easy to feel clarity on wanting to work for yourself, wanting to have that freedom, wanting to have that autonomy, that sense of control to be your own boss. And sometimes it can feel incredibly difficult to put your finger on what you want to do, what kind of business you want to build how you want to serve. Do you want to have a team? Do you want to work by yourself? 

Lisa Lewis Miller  1:28  

So in today’s episode of the podcast, we’re going to talk through lots of considerations when it comes to questions like these in terms of what might be next, to see if we can give you a little bit more information to help you make some decisions around if a more entrepreneurial route might be right for you. And we’ll talk specifically about some other ideas that might really pique your interest or get you excited when you’re thinking about what’s next. We’re going to do that today with my guest, Jyotsna Ramachandran, who is such an interesting person and one of the only international guests that we’ve had on the Career Clarity Show, so I’m excited for this today. Jyotsna is a best selling author, book publisher TEDx speaker, and an international author success coach who helps coaches trainers, speakers and experts to build a super profitable author funnel with the help of their book. She founded author Success Academy to help aspiring authors finally finish their book, get it professionally published, market it into a best seller and use that position to grow their business. So far, she’s helped 400 authors from 35 different countries through her global publishing agency, happy self publishing. While Jasmine isn’t working, this mom of two kids also loves to dance run and plan her next solo trip into the passionate advocate for Educational Rights. Jyotsna, welcome to the Career Clarity Show.

Jyotsna Ramachandran  2:49  

Hey, Lisa, thank you so much for having me on the show.

Lisa Lewis Miller  2:53  

It is a pleasure to have you. And I feel like there’s so many interesting elements to your story that we’ll be talking about today. But I’d love to have you give listeners a bit of background on who you are and how you got to the work that you do today. Let you start us from the beginning.

Jyotsna Ramachandran  3:10  

Oh, sure. So you want me to start from my school days? 

Lisa Lewis Miller  3:15  

Sure. 

Jyotsna Ramachandran  3:16  

Okay. So right now I feel like I see the education that my kids get. And I’m really happy that at a very young age, they are encouraged to work on things that they love doing, identify what they are good at. But when I was going through my school years, I don’t know if that’s the case in the United States, but other countries in the West. But in India, schooling is a very, very competitive place. And most parents feel happy if their kids either choose to be a doctor or an engineer. Those are the only two sensible carrier options that are presented in front of kids who who are good at studies and all the other kids end up choosing arts and commerce and other things. And that’s really looked down upon. So I was just trying to be a good daughter. And I also wanted to pursue engineering just to make my dad happy. But when after my schooling, when I wrote the entrance test, I Oh, I somehow felt that this is not what I really wanted to do. And coincidentally, I ended up going to a particular college, which was an arts and science College, where that was the Center for the examination. And I fell in love with that college because the students of that college look cooler than the other colleges and the canteen food was yummy. So based on that, I just went to that college website and looked out looked upon all the different courses that they had, and I picked up Nutrition and Dietetics as my subject for graduation. Such as you know, we are required to take up a particular line of study, but that’s how I did my graduation for three years and I thought I’ll become a dietitian in a hospital. That was my plan, because I really loved understanding that you know, a diet can change your health more than medicines and other thing. So that was really fascinating. But during my study, I also did an internship in a hospital and I did not like the atmosphere there. So I thought, and the worst part was dieticians, back then in India, were hardly getting paid anything. And I felt that I needed to be independent very soon in my career, and, you know, don’t depend on my parents for too long. So I thought, What can What else can I do? So maybe a master’s in business administration will help me get a better job. So only for the sake of, you know, finding a job, I just shifted my field.

Lisa Lewis Miller  5:33  

Well, let’s even talk about the decision making process that you went through to get to that point, because there are some interesting questions that you’re asking yourself and interesting answers that you came up with along the way. I think that a lot of people can choose a specific course of study, because there’s something about it that really resonates with them. And it sounds like you’re in the nutrition space, there was something about helping people improve their life, improve their health, that really spoke to you. But one of the things that you did is that not everybody else does. And that is a great thing to be thinking about for anybody listening is, you found a way to try it out before you committed fully to going into that, that field of work for the rest of your career, you know, by getting a chance to try it and see what it was like in a hospital and notice how it felt. And notice how happy the other people were, who are doing this work and how well they were paid, and what kind of work life balance they had. you’re gaining critically important information to help you with the discernment process, to help choose differently, or choose something that felt like it was more in alignment with what you were needing, but not to me about the decision making process to go from dietetics all the way to a master’s in Business Administration, because it’s a pretty big shift of direction or shift of focus.

Jyotsna Ramachandran  6:52  

Yes, true, I really am glad that I did those internships back then, which helped me made that decision, make that decision. But today, if I have to advise my younger self, I would probably tell her, Hey, you’re interested in dietetics. And you’d need not necessarily work in a hospital. To fulfill that dream, I could be an independent dietitian, I could be an assistant to somebody and learn the you know, learn the profession before getting started on my own today. So many people are using Instagram to launch their diet profession back then I did not have that wisdom to go solo and independence, right. My only option was to work in a hospital, which I didn’t like. So the next option was to see what else can I study that can get me a job. You know, that was my main criteria. And as I told you before, in India, the number of jobs that engineers get is the maximum in any industry as compared to people who do a Bachelor’s in commerce or Bachelors of Science. So as I was a Bachelors of Science graduate, I thought, what else can I do, and everybody else told me that, hey, if you do an MBA, you will be placed in your campus, because all these big corporates would come to your campus and recruit, you don’t have to go out finding a job. So that was the, you know, bait for me. And luckily, there was a an also my parents were not very happy about me going to another city and their only child. And they were very, very protective till the time I got married. Now they don’t care down. But back then they were very, very protective. So they said you do whatever you want, but you need to stay in the same city. So I had a bunch of like four or five colleges and on my list, and a new college had just opened up. And they were flashing these big ads in the newspaper. And when I when I met them, they had four career what I think three verticals, HR, marketing, communications, and retail management. And the Dean of the College said that, hey, in the next 10 years, India is going to be the biggest retail destination. Because all these foreign brands, foreign retailers are now setting up their stores in India. So this is going to be the next big thing. So you are really bright and smart. And you could be a great store manager, a merchandise manager or whatever you want to be in the retail industry. So that’s how I got sold into taking up MBA in retail management.

Lisa Lewis Miller  9:12  

And I think that for a lot of people listening, they’re going to absolutely resonate with having conversations with other people where other people have opinions about what might fit and what might feel good. And it can be a really difficult challenge to try to parse through the difference between the information that you’re getting from somebody about what they think would be good at and what they think you should do versus what feels good and true and authentic for you. And what feels like is in alignment with your values and your hopes and your dreams. And at that point in your career decision making process. Were you feeling like you were excited about the opportunity to work in retail, from a sort of emotional perspective or did it feel like it was making a lot of sense logically and rationally that that was likely where the trend lines were going. And so it was much more of a Sort of analytical decision.

Jyotsna Ramachandran  10:03  

I think it was a mix of both Lisa because analytically, I had a job offer, while I just as soon as I joined the college, so that was great, because you know, I had a job even before I completed that course. But emotionally, I was feeling very excited. Because back then, there were not even a shopping malls in India. And for me to work in these premium brands and all these luxurious malls. That was very exciting for 20, something you know, so but I think the glamorous side of the job, rather than working in a nine to five corporate job, like my other friends, I thought I’m going to be different. And that idea of being different from others and working in a retail store, which was not very common in India back then, that I think, really excited me about this career.

Lisa Lewis Miller  10:52  

Very nice. So you follow that excitement, follow that interest, you got your MBA with this focus in retail? Yeah, and what happened.

Jyotsna Ramachandran  11:03  

Then for the next five years, I worked in the retail industry. But as soon as I joined my first job, I realized, all the glamour is just from the outside. For the customers, it’s very, it’s a great experience to go to a mall and do all the shopping with these luxury brands. But for people working in that store, it’s a lot of hard work, setting up the store, counting the merchandise and making sure people don’t steal from your shop and achieving the monthly sales targets. None of that is easy. But it was interesting, because I was doing all of that for the first time. So the learning was great initially. So I was just going with the flow. And I was getting promoted every year. So that was a good thing. So from being a management trainee, in five years, I became an area manager managing a group of stores. So I was pretty happy till a point. And then if I realized that if I had to shift, I mean, if I had to grow in the same career, the my next promotion would demand me to move to another city. And by the time I was married, and my husband had a great job, and we both were in the same city. So we decided that I need to stay here and I cannot continue in the same job for long. So that’s when boredom started to set in because I did not see a future there. And to add fuel to the fire, I had a very tough boss. Till then all my bosses were great. But my the last boss that I had, was very, very demanding. And he was very rude and not very professional. So that’s when one day I had a terrible fight with my boss. And I decided I’m going to quit this job. So that was the time that I held my last job as an employee, and then I became an entrepreneur.

Lisa Lewis Miller  12:42  

Well, having the courage to walk away from something, even though it is very secure, very safe, is a big deal. And I know that there are so many people who listen to the podcast who feel a certain sense of they’ve hit a wall, they’ve hit a ceiling, there isn’t another opportunity for growth, they’re feeling or they’re feeling restless, they’re wondering what’s next. And being willing to walk away from a career is something that takes a lot of courage, and probably is something that many people listening to the podcast are not quite at the point of being ready to do themselves. So now, but the entrepreneurial piece of your story does sort of paint a picture for folks about what that can look like, what happened after you quit and said, Okay, this is not going to work for me, I’m not going to be tolerated like this, I’m not going to move to another city for advancement. Where did you go when you started thinking about what’s next?

Jyotsna Ramachandran  13:40  

Yes, so when I quit my job, I did not immediately decide to become an entrepreneur, I had three months notice period to serve. And during those three months, I had about six or seven different brands approaching me with alternate options. So it was very encouraging, because I realized that because of the five years of work that I put in my resume looks good. So I would somehow get a job. Even if I after this, you know notice period that I was serving, but I thought if I ended up going to another job, it’s going to be very similar to what I was doing. Maybe the team and the boss and the brand will be different, but the nature of work is going to be exactly the same. And I will again hit the ceiling a year later. And I didn’t want to keep on jumping from one job to another. That’s when I thought why not try doing something on my own. Because that way I’ll have more freedom. And for a long time, I’ve been reading books on startups and entrepreneurship. But I knew that someday I would start on my own but I didn’t know I will do it within five years of getting into the corporate work. So I thought this is a great opportunity because now I can take a break and actually think if I can start a business and if it works great. If not, I had those job offers and I could always go back to one of them. So I had that safety cushion and I was thinking, What can I do? And that’s when I reached out to about 10 of my friends. And I asked them, What do you think I’m good at. And a lot of them told me that I’m really good with people and with networking. So keep putting all those pieces together, I thought maybe I should start a staff recruitment agency for the retail industry, because I knew the right people, I knew the HR heads, the CEOs, and I also knew the staff working in the store level. So I thought I could be a good match between the job seekers and the, you know, the corporates. And that’s how I started my first business within a month of quitting my job.

Lisa Lewis Miller  15:34  

Wow, that’s a quick turnaround. And a couple things I want to highlight from your story are number one, you were willing to be courageous and vulnerable, and speaking to all these different people that knew you and who could talk to some of your gifts, some of your strengths, some of your capabilities. And that’s not easy to do. In our Career Clarity Show program. I think anybody who’s in it right now, you tell me if I’m getting the lesson number correct here, but I think it’s lesson number five, we really encourage people to do this exact same process this exact same out asking people, what do you see in me. And it’s to get a lot of validation and a lot of affirmation that some of the things you’re seeing in yourself, are as valuable externally as they feel like they might be based on your own sort of experience within a vacuum or within a silo. So I love that you were willing to be courageous and seek out this information from other people in your life. And the other thing I love about your story is that you notice where there was already natural momentum and natural opportunity. I’m great at networking, I have all these connections, it would be it of all the things that you could do of all the entrepreneurial endeavors that you could go about, yeah, there’s a lot of ease for you, in moving towards this, this offering in the job search job seeker space, because you have a lot of the the pieces of the puzzle in place already. That doesn’t have to be your forever job. It doesn’t have to be the business that you run for the next 30 years of your career or your life. But it’s a natural stepping point that uses your existing assets and your existing capabilities to add some ease into the transition.

Jyotsna Ramachandran  17:18  

Yeah, I’m so glad that you actually, you know, pick the, you know, takeaways from this because I felt at that point that I did need not to be an entrepreneur, I did not have a big office with 100 employees and a multimillion dollar client too. You know, none of that is really, I think, the definition of entrepreneurial success. For me, it was just about starting something, I did not think too much to the future, I just thought, let me just start with what I already have. And that was the most logical thing for me to begin. And I think my only investment was a website and a logo. And I just had a couple of brochures, designed, and that’s about it. I just sent out to the HR that I knew. And they just sent me their vendor onboarding form. And that’s it, they just started sending me their requirements, and I started spreading the word in my community that, hey, I can help you make that career transition. So just reach out to me. So that’s how I began. And that was running quite well, for two years, Lisa, and then the biggest shift happened in my life, and I became a mom. So that’s when everything went upside down. And all the plans I had of expansion and everything, I had to pause for a while. And I did not expect that my lifestyle would change so much after becoming a mom and my priorities would change. So what really happened was in this business, I was very busy on phone calls, I would make 100 phone calls, and I would receive 100 phone calls every day, I would go out in the malls traveled to nearby cities meet a lot of prospective candidates. That was how it was and I was liking it for a while. But after having a kid, it was becoming more and more difficult for me to be available on phone calls all the time. And that’s when I decided that maybe you know, this is not going to suit my current lifestyle. And I probably should look out for other opportunities.

Lisa Lewis Miller  19:11  

That discernment point and that realization that what worked for you when you didn’t have children doesn’t work for you when you do have children is really important. Because I think that sometimes people can fall into this belief that we just need to figure out what we want, and it will be the same. It’ll be set in stone forever, for decades to come. And I think that it’s very human and very understandable and very relatable to realize, I’ve built this business, it is successful, and the lifestyle that it requires of me or the activities that it requires me to do on a day to day basis no longer fit in the life that I have or the life that I want. And that requires me to make a strategic pivot. And I think the willingness to explore what might be next is also Though, another sign of courage in your story, because I can imagine someone looking at that same realization of oh my goodness, I can’t be traveling the way that I was, I can’t be available on the phone for eight hours a day, every day anymore. I would be the kind of realization that might make them think you know, what I, I just can’t do this entrepreneurship thing, this isn’t for me. I’ve tried it, I’ve failed, this isn’t going to work for my life anymore. And they would, they would quit. But really, it’s not quite where your story goes. So So tell listeners a little bit more about what comes next.

Jyotsna Ramachandran  20:38  

Yes, thanks for asking, Lisa. So as soon as I started my first business, the kind of freedom I enjoyed, I didn’t have to ask a boss for leave to go on a holiday. So that is when I decided that for the rest of my life, I’m not going back to a job come what me so that was one decision, I wanted to stand by, even even after I had a kid. So I had two options. One is to just be a stay at home mom for a few months or years, and then figure out or I can try and do something where I can do everything from home while my daughter is sleeping. So that was those were the two options I had. And I felt that I take a lot of pride in being an entrepreneur. So let me see if this doesn’t work, there should be some other business model that can work for me. So that’s when a few different opportunities came my way. One was a franchise model where there was this chocolate manufacturing company that does corporate gifting chocolates. And I am so excited about that business, not because it will fit my lifestyle, but because I love chocolates, that was one of the funniest decisions I’ve made. And I spent six months trying to be one of their franchisee partners, where I could just do corporate gifting kind of chocolates for corporates. So that is something I just tried my hand at. But very quickly, I realized that’s not going to work. The second thing I started another thing I started was I wanted to learn about online businesses because that way I could work from home. And one of the first things you learn online is to build websites. So I made a WordPress website for my dad on my own. And that gave me the confidence because I felt I had decent design skills. And I picked up how to use WordPress. So I started designing websites for other companies. And I did that for another six months. All this in parallel. Okay, so nothing happened one after the other, all this happens simultaneously. And then next thing so at that time, I did not shut my recruitment business that was running, this chocolate business was running in the side, this online, this website design was also happening. And finally, luckily, I also stumbled upon this option of self publishing ebooks on Amazon. Because a lot of people when I just Google, how do you might make money online, a lot of people in the US and Canada, we’re putting out books on Amazon, and we’re making money through royalties. So at that point of time, I was running these four different businesses, Lisa. So I was kind of going crazy, because I was also a mom at that a new mom. And I had these four businesses. And the worst part was none of these businesses were making me enough money.

Lisa Lewis Miller  23:13  

Yeah, I as a as an entrepreneur myself, I can let listeners know that at the beginning, when you start out a new venture, is sometimes it can take a while to become profitable. And having a financial runway that can enable you and empower you to have the time to take some risks and to let things take a little bit of time to become as profitable as they will be eventually can be a really important consideration when you’re trying to set yourself up for success in becoming a business owner or an entrepreneur. So knowing that you had started three brand new ventures, and we’re running four businesses, partially through this season, what were some of the things you started noticing and learning as you were trying for pretty wildly different business options?

Jyotsna Ramachandran  24:01  

Yeah, I at one point of time, I realized that I was doing all of this because of my own desperation. And I was so desperately wanting to be an entrepreneur that I did not know which one will work. So I was trying to do everything myself. Looking back at what I was doing, had I had a mentor like you or coach like you, I could have got more clarity and I would have not done all of this. But today I kind of thankful because I went through that journey of confusion. And I actually met a very well known entrepreneur in my city, he runs a chain of salons. And he told me that he has been running only this one business for the last 11 years for him to become the you know the for him to achieve the level of success that he has now. So the only thing he to actually I went to sell chocolates to his office, and he asked me what else do I do and I told all of these four businesses and he just smiled at me and he said, If you chase two rabbits you will catch none. And that was it. You know, that was like the aha moment for me. And I felt, here’s what he says makes sense, because I can’t devote my time to any of these four businesses, I cannot do justice to them, then how am I going to grow them. And that’s when that night I sat down with my husband and I took out a piece of paper. And I just put all these four businesses in different boxes. And I started to mark the pros and cons. And by the time, my self publishing thing that I was running for the last six months, had started to pick up well, because the royalties I was making through these books that I had put up on Amazon, were more than the money that I was making on the other businesses. But more importantly, it was a completely online business where I did not have to do any phone calls. So I think, no client meetings, no phone calls, and that I felt suited my current lifestyle at that time with this newborn baby very well. So that’s when I decided, let me just take that brave decision to shut down these other three things I was doing and only focus on my self publishing business.

Lisa Lewis Miller  26:01  

So let’s bring our listeners up to the present day. How long have you been running the self publishing business? How How do you support people? What do you do and how they’ve been going?

Jyotsna Ramachandran  26:15  

So it’s been six years now since I first got into self publishing. The first year was very different, Lisa, because that’s when I was not helping other authors, I was just picking hot topics that were in trend on Amazon. And I was finding ghostwriters to write these short little ebooks for me, and I was putting different pen names and publishing it. And the only source of revenue was the sale of these books. So that is what I was doing for about a year, it was good initially, but then it somewhere did not feel authentic. It did not feel fulfilling, because I was not able to connect with any of those books. I hadn’t even read most of those books myself. But back then I felt if I can get so many people to write books for me, why can’t I write one myself, that one decision was a game changer. For me, I wrote this book called job escape plan, where I just took my journey of quitting my job and starting a business. And I explained it through seven different steps as to how one should not make the mistakes I did and actually start a side business and then eventually quit their job. So after that, that book became popular. People then started to notice what I was doing from home. And then a lot of people from different walks of life, they could be coaches, speakers, entrepreneurs, they came up to me and said, Hey, I have a story. I have a message, I want to help others through my book, can you help me publish the book, that gave me the idea to start happy self publishing, and it’s been five years now. So now what we do is I don’t do any of those ghostwritten books anymore. But instead, when authors come to us, either with a manuscript or with just an idea, we help them through the whole process of writing, editing, cover, design, interior layout, putting it on Amazon, making it a best seller, doing audiobooks, and everything that an author needs to establish their personal brand and use that to grow their business. So that’s what we’ll be doing for the last five years. I initially it was just me and a virtual assistant. But now we have more than 15 people in my team, and I’m really proud of the journey that I’ve been through. Now.

Lisa Lewis Miller  28:15  

I love that. And you know, what’s interesting is that when a lot of people think about book publishing, and that kind of form of writing as a way towards creating your career, what you hear and you know, what I’ve seen to be true through my own book is that if you just write one book, you don’t often make a whole lot in royalties, and, and certainly not enough, especially off of just one book, to be able to sustain the kind of lifestyle that most of us would like to afford to have. So when you’re working with people who are wanting to be self published authors, but also to turn that into something that actually creates the kind of cash flow and the kind of revenue that can support more of their life, what are some of the considerations that you encourage authors to be thinking about, or some of the actions you encourage them to take to make it a more profitable and more sustainable venture for them?

Jyotsna Ramachandran  29:10  

Yeah, that’s a great question, Lisa. So I asked my clients, if they really love writing so much that they want to be a full time writer. And there’s a lot of difference between an author and a writer and author need not be that great a writer, but some people just love to write. And that’s the, that’s their natural way of putting out content. So for such people, I tell them, Hey, you, your first book has been great. So every three months, you know, come out with the next book and the next book, and that way, you have a catalog of books, and you really dominate that category in Amazon. And two years later, you know, you can just sustain with the money that you make from your books. But that’s a very, very small fraction of the clients who come to me who chose that option. Most others already do something related to the book, either coaching or they have an online course, or they’re building their community and they’re offering a membership site. So when I Tell these people is don’t treat the book as a separate entity and your business as something separate. Use the book as a lead magnet for your business. So I call this an author funnel, the book is the first step where a lot of people who don’t know, you may find you through the book that’s on Amazon. But give away something for free inside the book so that you can capture the name and email of the person who’s reading the book, and then offer them a lot of free value in terms of blogs, or podcasts or YouTube videos, just give them a lot of free content, which is in line with your book, and then offer them something that is, you know, that is big, but not too expensive. It could be a consultation call, or it could be a, it could be a micro online course, or something of that sort that people can be happy to pay money for. And then some of them would want you to coach them one on one. So such people then move up the ladder, and they become your premium clients, they will hire you as a consultant or a coach or as a speaker for their next event or something like that. So have multiple layers, and built everything around the book so that the royalty from the book is still there. But that’s a small fraction of the money you make from the book, the real money comes in the in the back end.

Lisa Lewis Miller  31:14  

I love that. And that makes a ton of sense and resonates with a lot of the authors that I’ve spoken with that, yes, the book is, is a great thing to have. But it acts more as a business card than as a driver of revenue. And if that kind of a business card, and that introduction to somebody is interesting, it can then empower you to build businesses on big keynote speeches, or coming in to do big consulting work or other things like that. So thinking about a book as a strategic tool, as part of a bigger business plan is oftentimes a really good way to be thinking but I love that you’re talking about the the way to make more of a living as a writer too, because from what I’ve seen in my research around my own mug, the strategy that you’re talking about it is spot on that if you can become the dominant voice in a space, and have multiple books available so that somebody can binge all of your books and buy all of them and read all of them, there becomes much more a possibility of having a sustainable career as a writer. And I think that especially you know, I wrote in the nonfiction space, but in the fiction space, you see people do this successfully all the time, because they have these series is, you know, they’ve got the seven books in this one series, or the three books in this other series. And it’s expected that if you read one, if they did a good job writing it, you’ll read all of them and purchase all of them and turn it into something that can sustain somebody financially. So I appreciate that the way that you approach this with your clients is from a very realistic perspective of here are the viable business models here to make it work. And you can make it work if you want to. But right, but it takes it’s not just writing one single book in a vacuum that will allow you to have the kind of financial success, that you’re probably wanting to be a product of having this book in the world.

Jyotsna Ramachandran  33:09  

Yeah, that’s right, because every author is different. Their purpose of writing the book is also different. So usually in the strategy call that I initially do with the authors, I tried to understand the why behind why are they doing the book? And Who is it for? And how is it going to be different from all the other books out there? And how much of their personal story and their business strategy they are sharing in the book, and all that all those factors really helping crafting that one book, which can not just change the readers lives, but also the author’s life. Absolutely. Well, and

Lisa Lewis Miller  33:45  

now I’m curious, when you’ve seen the author’s lives change as a product of writing their book, what are some of the things that you’ve seen happen?

Jyotsna Ramachandran  33:53  

Well, I got a lot of things. Actually, when I wrote my book, job escape plan, I didn’t have this auto funnel in place. I just wrote it because I wanted to help a few people quit their jobs successfully. So I did not have this back end of an online course, or coaching, none of that. It was just a one time project for me. But that really changed my life because it helped me start happy self publishing. So every now and then I keep thinking, I’m not really help people quit their jobs, as much as I would like to help people because now I’m totally focusing on publishing. But here’s the good part. Now, a lot of my author clients who are currently in their jobs can reach back to me six months later, and they tell me that hey, because of the book, I ended up starting this business, and that has helped me quit my job. So I think my book has helped me me now I look at it and I see it has come a full circle that now through helping people publish their books, and actually helping them quit their jobs. So to give you a specific example, I can think of one of my recent clients. I think I published his book two years back, so that was a while ago, but I connected with him recently. His book was about fitness. And he too did not have any business idea. He was a corporate employee in the IT industry. And he just wrote about fitness because he loved fitness. But in the course of while, while writing the book, he thought, How can I help my readers more. And right now he has four different business verticals, he has a fitness app, he has merchandise related to working out, and he has helped supplements and a whole lot of online courses. And now he has quit his job. And he’s super happy that his book helped him do all of that. So these kind of stories really make me feel so fulfilled. Because the book is not just a book, it’s if it’s used, well, it can do so much more.

Lisa Lewis Miller  35:40  

I love that way of thinking about the strategy of it’s not just about doing the thing, it’s about why you’re doing the thing, what that can open up how you can serve people better. So I love that the heart and the just the servant leadership element of thinking about creating a book or creating anything, frankly, in your career through that lens. So, Jyotsna, this has been such a wonderful, interesting, rich conversation. And I’ve been so grateful for you sharing so much of your story and your personal decision making points and how you arrive where you are. If somebody is listening to this, and they have been thinking, I need to learn more about this, this is fascinating. This could absolutely be part of my own potential entrepreneurship, long term plan, where can they find out more about you and your work?

Jyotsna Ramachandran  36:30  

Sure. So I think the best place to learn more about writing a book or getting it published, and all of those good things would be happyselfpublishing.com. That’s where I explain all the steps that we take our authors through. And I also have a free tool that’s called Author Success Scorecard. That’s like a self assessment tool to check what’s your author success score. And for me, that’s perfect for people who are thinking about writing a book, but are not taking the next step. So go check that out as well on my website.

Lisa Lewis Miller  37:00  

Wonderful, wonderful. Well, thank you again, for coming on the Career Clarity Show and sharing all of the brave, interesting, thoughtful steps that you’ve taken to be able to help people in the business and the work that you do now.

Jyotsna Ramachandran  37:15  

Thank you so much, Lisa, because in most interviews, I only talk about what I do right now. But you took me back to my childhood. And it was such a good experience to go through that journey once again with you.

Lisa Lewis Miller  37:28  

Well, one of the beautiful things about your story and about the story of so many people who come on the Career Clarity Show is that when we go all the way back, and we look at the beginning, so often we start to see the little data points and the little hints about things that will ultimately change the course of our decision making ultimately changed the course of our lives. So it can be beautiful to to unwind everything and start back when we didn’t know much about business, entrepreneurship life, we’re working on our own independence, our own values, the watch the process of those take form. Because I would guess for every single person listening to this, if they rewind themselves back to where they were, maybe even before college and university. If they look at who they used to be and what they used to care about and what they used to value, they can start to connect the dots and see how they got to where they are right now. And use some of the insights just like you were sharing, to then figure out what makes sense moving forward and how their life has evolved and how their values have changed. So thank you for being willing to start at the very beginning and walk through the entire process.

Jyotsna Ramachandran  38:43  

Thank you so much, Lisa, it was a pleasure talking to you.

Lisa Lewis Miller  38:53  

And that’s a wrap. Let us know what you thought about today’s episode. leave us a review on Apple podcasts. Because not only can your stars and words help us find great guests and topics to feature on future episodes. Your input also helps other people find the resources they need to discover the work that lights them up. And make sure to check out my book Career Clarity Show finally find the work that fits your values and lifestyle for the link to order it go to GetCareerClarity.com/book. And don’t forget to get your other tools resources and helpful goodies at GetCareerClarity.com/podcast. Thanks again for joining us for the Career Clarity Show today. And remember, if you don’t love your work, we should talk because life is too short to be doing work that doesn’t light you up. Talk to you next time.