Behind the Scenes of a Book Coaching Session
Jadah Sellner is the Co-Founder of Simple Green Smoothies. She has an incredible amount of success in growing her Instagram profile with almost 400,000 followers, building a six-figure into a seven-figure business – until she decided to leave. She went on to build her own brand. Today, she talks about some behind-the-scenes of her book writing process.
What We Discuss with Jadah Sellner:
- Setting priorities but also taking action
- Writing the book for self-transformation first
- Jadah’s visual mapping process
- Being in an ideation process while doing her own inner healing
- Taking imperfect action to get you through inner healing
- Understanding movement vs momentum
- How to look at chapters like individual blog titles
- Getting through the thinking phase of writing your book
- Writing the book for just that one person
- Other steps of the book writing process
[01:50] Setting Priorities and Taking Action
Jadah decided to make the book a priority and the only way to do that is to not just put the time in it, but also money and someone to hold her accountable.
It is important to set priorities but you also have to take action to make it happen.
Don’t think about the audience so much but let the book change you first.
[06:00] The Visual Mapping Process
Jadah started by drawing a heart in the middle along with two other hearts.
She wrote one keyword first and then drew other words as they came out. Different colors were used for each section.
Out of those words, Jadah dove into each branch and her first sessions ended up in tears because stories have been unpacked from those.
A book is like sharing yourself a 5- or 7-hour conversation with an audience about who you are, what you believe, or where you want them to grow into.
Underneath a great story is your life.
Jadah initially struggled with slowing down to reflect on the moments of her life to make decisions about who she wants to be. Using the visual map has helped her with this.
[16:00] Going Through Inner Healing
Jadah is still in the process of ideation, and at the same time, she’s doing her own inner healing so she can speak from a clean place.
Even the pain can benefit you if you realize it’s there to teach you something.
[21:20] Breaking Down the Book Into Smaller Sections
Research isn’t just the way our brain works, Instead, it moves around and makes connections.
Look at the big picture, but also look at outcome for the reader. Does each of these things get them there or do they have the right title?
Think of chapters as individual conversations so you can organize the titles as if they were blog post titles to bring the audience into the conversation.
Then each chapter is made up of multiple conversations on the topic. Books are meant to be consumed in small pieces so people can get to them. Just make sure you’re able to keep them together with the main conversation.
More people should wrestle with their thinking ideas before they write so they don’t try to wrestle with them when they’re putting the words to the page.
[33:28] Writing the Book as a Great Conversation
A good book is something that should be like a conversation.
Don’t even try to write for an audience – this is too much responsibility. Write for that one person who’s listening.
You can write a book for yourself. Just remember though it’s still real conversation.
[37:50] Other Steps in Writing a Book
After writing the outline, you have to deconstruct it again and put them into bite-size pieces. Take small parts and put them into their own folder which has its own subfolder.
Commit to a specific timeline. Try to build them in layers and just focus on one thing at a time versus doing all the things.
You can’t wait for a book to finish too long or it will change since you will change as a writer. You can’t rush it either or you’d be stuffing it with information otherwise.
Episode Resources:
Get to more about Jadah Sellner on JadahSellner.com or follow her on Instagram and Facebook. Listen on: 
