Taking that first step

Now this is an author’s journey, so I'm going to skip the 'starting up a business' journey, it’s been done before.

Also I’ll skip the freelance roles that allowed me to earn some money whilst I discovered coaching and set up my business – one I keep up, loving every minute of the variety it offers me, and that’s being involved with The Championships at Wimbledon.

The coaching element had a significant part to play in the book for 2 reasons; firstly, coaching helps you realise the power of goal setting, it helps you break down challenges into small steps that then can lead to huge and positive long-term benefits.

Secondly, it made me disect the subject matter I wanted to write about (negotiation for the consumer) and express it in ways that the reader would understand, learn from it and then put their learnings into action.

In September 2006 I felt that I really did 'have a book inside me', and encouraged by Suzy Greaves, a fabulous coach, who specialises in helping individuals make their 'big leap', I sent off a book proposal.

My idea was simple. For years I had watched people in shops paying full-rate for everything - stereo systems, camcorders, cars - you name it. I was surprised to see that people rarely negotiated.

Then I realised why - it’s not very British; people find it embarrassing, they don't know where to start and feel they would not be good at it.

The fear of failure or embarrassment stopped them.

So if I could address these issues of inhibition, then perhaps I could change people’s perception. I knew that I could, because I did this in coaching. The difference was now, what I could previously articulate and extrapolate in a coaching conversation, needed to be put into print, and this was a whole different ball game. This had to be written as if I could predict what the reader would be thinking as they read the chapters – their objections, worries, inhibitions and ‘what if’s?’

But hey, I didn’t want to worry about that one until I had got a publisher to agree to print it!

The proposal needed to build a picture for the publisher that could allow them to think that readers would want to part with their heard-earned cash. Not one or two, but several thousand to make it a worthwhile proposition. The proposal had to be catchy, succinct, however enough detail to wet the appetite.

Choosing who to contact was a minefield – there are so many out there. Of course I had heard of the ‘biggies’, but strangely they seemed to distance themselves from ‘wannabe’ authors (or certainly the ones I looked up did) – stating that they did not accept book proposals directly from authors.

So I went to Google and typed in three words, ‘how to books’, and as if luck would have it, the first name to come up was – funnily enough – How To Books; a publisher that happily gave you their contact details and welcomed proposals. So I plumped for them as my first port of call.

The proposal for ‘Stand and Deliver’ (a reference to Dick Turpin) went off, early September 2006, putting my sales skills to the test in a 3 page offering.

The dizzy dream seemed a lot more focussed now, the reality of a book deal still a long way off, but the first step had finally been taken.

Now the title didn’t get passed the first hurdle, and on reflection now, I can completely see why. But for the moment, I was happy to have taken that first major step of sending my idea for someone to review. No-one likes failure, and thoughts of perhaps being laughed at for the idea – or worse still ignored – I had come to terms with. Nothing ventured – nothing gained.

As far as I was concerned, for now I had taken my 'big leap'……