Kat Kuan

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Why I Hired A Business Coach

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I recently decided to make the big decision to hire a business coach.

I don’t want to disclose my coach’s name yet until I have lengthy experience working with them and can vouch for them. Before I came to this decision though, I had been following this person’s online presence and content for awhile. I discovered them because they were a coach for a successful female entrepreneur I admired. I listened to this coach’s interviews and tried to apply their advice in my daily life. I thought the advice and strategies were quite good. I also had a couple conversations with the coach to decide if working together was a good fit or not.

Hiring a business coach is a sizable financial investment, so my decision was not made lightly. It came down to 3 big reasons:

1. ADMITTING I NEED HELP

This was probably the hardest thing for me to admit. I was hoping to save my money to use towards my living expenses and extend the length of my runway. But at the same time, I had to look at the hard numbers of my business and realize that I was still a long way off from being able to make a sustainable living off it. It feels like I’m working constantly on my business, so working harder or longer hours isn’t really a viable solution. I also had to admit that I lack business experience and am not very good at marketing or sales. 😐

So to summarize, I had to admit that I didn’t know how to make a sustainable business on my own.

2. WANTING A SINGLE GUIDING VOICE

Since I don’t have co-workers, the conversations I have about my business arise when I’m talking to my boyfriend, friends, and family. Sometimes I’ll get an idea from a conversation and all of a sudden, I’ll be all gung-ho and excited about trying that idea out. So my focus suddenly shifts to something that randomly came up in my last conversation. On the flip side, relying on my own inner voice is tricky because the voice of fear inside myself sometimes holds me back from doing things.

What I believe I need is advice from a single person who has successfully built a business and has gone through the growing pains that I have. I need help with setting priorities and goals from the braindump of ideas that I have in my mind.

To summarize, there’s plenty of business advice out there, but I need a single voice telling me what to focus on next. And then my personal relationships can purely be personal time.

3. NEEDING ACCOUNTABILITY

It’s easy to have lots of grand ideas about where I could take my business, but executing them on a disciplined schedule is very hard. I find it challenging to make plans and stick with them. Often, it’s because I get discouraged by the lack of results when I’m part way through, so I scrap the whole idea as not worth doing. Or a better idea comes along that I’d rather try.

When it comes to the things that are hard and outside my comfort zone, I easily procrastinate on them, so the hardest milestones can get pushed back repeatedly because there are no set deadlines.

To summarize, I need accountability on the plans I develop – to make sure I’m pushing myself outside my comfort zone daily and making strategic use of my time.

LAST THOUGHTS

This article was not meant to convince anyone to get a business coach. I’m just sharing my experience. I know that hiring a business coach isn’t right for everyone. It especially depends on what point you are in your life and your business. Last year I wouldn’t have been ready for one.

Also, finding the right coach is a long vetting process that is going to be very different for each person. There’s a lot of business coaches out there on the internet that sell very expensive coaching packages with fancy email funnels and lots of social media advertising. It can be easy to fall prey to them when feeling emotional and frustrated about the state of your business. If you decide to look for one, please be careful and thoroughly vet them!

As always, I hope that sharing my thoughts was helpful to you. I try to be more open and vulnerable about the challenges of entrepreneurship.

I’m also doing this daily in short segments on my podcast.

Thanks for reading!

Latest Experiment: My Own Podcast

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In my podcast, I share daily snippets of life as I try to make it as an entrepreneur.

What Kat Found Out

I’ll keep the episodes short, and I’ll be doing this as an experiment for 30 days. Currently published:

  • Ep #1: Waiting in the Car
  • Ep #2: Meeting w/ Stife Studio & Creative Sparks Fly
  • Ep #3: Remembering What’s Important
  • Ep #4: Table for One

Listen Now

 

Camera Equipment for YouTube

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I recently uploaded a new video on my YouTube channel that was a vlog of my Napa trip with friends. This was all made possible by new vlogging camera!

Since this is a decent financial investment, I wanted to share my experience.

WHERE TO GO

First of all, if you’re in the Bay Area, I HIGHLY recommend going to Mike’s Camera in Menlo Park. The staff is friendly and very knowledgeable about camera stuff.

The woman who helped me asked about my intention for the camera and showed me different ones accordingly. My main purpose is to vlog, so I held out different cameras at arms length to see how heavy and comfortable they felt. I also wanted a screen to see myself when I talk to the camera, so that was my simple criteria. She showed me one option where you can attach a separate mic to get clearer audio, but that seemed like more hassle.

THE CAMERA I CHOSE

She told me a lot of bloggers use the Canon G7X Mark II. It’s light and the LCD screen flips up so you can see yourself, so ultimately, that’s what I went with.

canon g7x mark ii lcd screen

Mike’s Camera actually has the same prices as you would find online because and price match with any reputable retailer. Another plus was that they threw in some free extras with my camera purchase like a private tutorial, 100 4×6 photo prints, a big print, a metal print, custom photo gift, and a class. I haven’t redeemed them yet, and I think it may have expired. >.< Oops!

Anyhow, if you aren’t in the Bay Area and can’t stop by their store, here’s the online link to the camera I got.


I bought it earlier in the year in January and paid $679.99 for it (same price as Amazon at the time), but it looks like the price has dropped since then.

There’s tons of articles online where vloggers share which camera they use. I just saw this thread on Instagram the other day. I’m not incredibly picky about the specs of the camera, so I was able to decide within 30-45 mins and walk out of there with my new camera.

ACCESSORIES

I also want to add that while I was at the store, I got some other accessories that would be needed to get up and running.

In the future, I wonder if I’ll get a ring light or a taller tripod. I’ve been putting my laptop on an ironing board for my past videos. 😛 However, I want to be careful because it’s easy to get caught up in buying a bunch of high quality equipment that I may not need right away.

At one point, I was thinking about getting the same camera as my favorite YouTubers. But they’ve been doing it for 5+ years, and they slowly built up to that equipment. Since I’m starting off and figuring out whether vlogging is something I want to do long term, I’m happy with what I have now. The key will to keep creating content!

The total for all of this came out to be $840.22 – not bad for a starter kit.

Do you have a nice camera? What do you use and what kind of content do you capture?

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Regardless though, this is my true camera setup.

Upcoming Event on 6/9: Storytime at Books Inc in Mountain View

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Two omg’s I need to share with you all.

First OMG

My book is on the shelves now at Books Inc on Castro Street in downtown Mountain View!!! Can you tell how flippin’ excited I am? Haha! I took a million selfies with it and then asked a store employee to take more pictures of me with it. 😆

I’m so excited because this is one of my favorite stores in downtown Mountain View.

After working and living in this area for so many years, I would eat dinner in downtown and then take a stroll afterwards. And since Books Inc opens late, I’d usually stop by and look through the books and magazines, seeing what’s hot and new. There’s just a nice cozy feel to this local independent bookstore.

Okay, now for my second OMG

You may already have noticed from the pictures, but I’m going to be doing a Storytime at Books Inc on Saturday, June 9, 2018 at 11am! I’ll be co-hosting it with fellow author Ravin Singh, who wrote My Scientist Friends. The address is: 317 Castro Street, Mountain View, CA More details can be found here. They had signs advertising the event in the store, and even on the sidewalk!

I was extremely stoked that my face was on a sign on Castro Street. I would liken this feeling to seeing your face on a billboard. I excitedly asked an innocent bystander to take photos for me. Lol I’m totally cheesin’.

books inc use your voice kat kuan

The event was also announced in their Books Inc newsletter and posted on the Mountain View Voice local community calendar of events. Yay!!

                

    Newsletter                                   MV Voice Community Calendar

Anyhow, those are my big updates! If you’re in the area and have/know little kiddos, I hope to see you at storytime on June 9!! 😛

Answers to the 3 Most Important Questions in Life

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The Three Questions By Jon J. Muth

This book has so much wisdom.

The Three Questions is about a boy who wants to be a good person but doesn’t know how to do that. He has 3 questions:

  • “When is the best time to do things?”
  • “Who is the most important one?”
  • “What is the right thing to do?”

All very important questions that I also have…

He seeks advice from his animal friends, but feels like their answers are missing something. He goes to see a wise turtle for an answer and along the way, discovers some powerful answers to his questions.

He learns:

  • The best time to do things is now.
  • The most important person is the one you’re with at the moment.
  • And the right thing to do is to do good for the person in front of you.

Those are such beautiful answers. Love this book so much!! It’s inspired off a story from Leo Tolstoy and told with beautiful pictures and a simple storyline for kids to understand.

For more info, here’s the Amazon link for the book The Three Questions.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. And of course, I would recommend this book regardless.

Rejection and Disappointment as a New Author

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Learning to deal with rejection and disappointment as a new author is something that I’ve been facing lately. If you’ve been following me on social media, you’ll see that I’ve shared happy and exciting moments of my little “wins” as a new author – getting featured in the local newspaper, getting into a bookstore, creating my first eBook, etc… I’ve been keeping it positive because I want to stay optimistic!

STRUGGLES

However, what I haven’t really shared much about is the behind-the-scenes struggles that I face mentally. Am I on the right path? Am I crazy for continuing? Should I just go back to find “a real job”? Being more vocal about my struggles is something I feel God is calling me to do. All these mixed emotions inside my are yearning to be expressed, so here’s my first attempt at it.

PLANTING SEEDS

A lot of advice to entrepreneurs goes something like, “Plant lots of seeds and you never know which ones will sprout and turn into something amazing.” So I did that. Ok, so I didn’t plant a ton of seeds, but I timidly planted a few here and there. And a bunch of them didn’t work out. Here they are:

BOOK AWARDS

There are a bunch of awards for authors to submit their books to, and winning one of those awards can bring publicity and boost credibility for the book and for the author. I read that some of these organizations are for-profit, so it’s worth being strategic about which contests to apply to.

ippy award what do you do with an ideaExample of a book with an IPPY Gold award sticker on it

I submitted my book to several contests – i.e. IPPY awards and Next Generation Indie Book Awards. They each cost about $80 – $200 depending on how many categories you want to be considered for. Also you have to submit multiple copies of your book for the judges to read. It’s a decent financial investment and you have no idea how it’ll turn out.

So yeah, after waiting several months, they announced the winners, and I was pretty bummed that I didn’t win anything in the categories I applied for (kids books and gift books). On the one hand, they are tons of amazing authors that submit their book, so I guess I have to be realistic about my chances.

LOCAL WRITING CONTEST

Earlier this year, I was reading the local newspaper and came across an announcement for Palo Alto Weekly short story writing contest. I felt intrigued to write a piece just for fun – unrelated to a book and unrelated to my blog. I thought I may have better odds with a local contest because the above contests were nationwide or global.

Hence, I wrote up a piece, enjoyed the process, and felt proud to have submitted a piece of writing out into the world.

palo alto short story contestMy Application to the Short Story Contest 

About 5 weeks later, I got an email with this news.

Dear Short Story Contest Entrant:
I’m sorry to inform you that you were not among the top three stories selected by our judges for prizes in this year’s contest.
Thank you for entering and best of luck with your writing. We hope you’ll return next year with another story.
Now of course, when you look at the grand scheme of things, there are a lot of professional and talented and very experienced writers in the Palo Alto area who submitted. And they probably spent a lot more time on their piece than me, so it is what it is. It is disappointing, but alas, time to move on.

SPOTIFY PODCAST BOOTCAMP

Around that time, I also submitted an application to Spotify for their Sound Up Bootcamp which was a training program where they’d fly you out to New York to teach you about podcasting, introduce you to experts, and help you create your own podcast. It was intended to promote female podcasters of color so that there’d be more diversity in the industry. I wrote up a whole spiel about what I would say on a podcast and why I thought these issues were important.

spotify podcast bootcamp

When I shared this on Instagram, one of my Instagram friends, Fey, commented that if I started a podcast, she would definitely listen. ^_^ That made me super happy, thank you Fey!! I still remember that comment because it made me feel like oh hey, maybe what I have to say is worth listening to. 🙂

As I was waiting on a response, I thought more about the idea of doing a podcast, even if the Spotify thing didn’t pan out. I also blocked off those dates in my calendar because if you get it, then you go to NY for a week in June. And finally after a month and a half, I get this response.

Dear applicant,

Thank you so much for your application to the Sound Up Bootcamp! Unfortunately, we’re unable to offer you a spot in June’s bootcamp. 
We reviewed over 18,000 applications, and were so impressed and inspired by the ideas we received. We want to encourage you to make your podcast a reality, and join the community of women of color podcasters. You can find a list of resources on creating your podcast — and communities you can get involved with online — here. 
Thank you again, and best of luck in podcasting!

Of course, I felt disappointed again, but I was like wow, 18k people applied for 10 spots. I guess my chances were pretty slim. o.O Since this bootcamp isn’t the only way to start a podcast, I feel okay. There are still plenty of tools and resources out there.

I’m still debating on whether I will start a podcast or not. It’s just a matter of what format of blogging is most natural for me –  writing, doing YouTube, or recording audio. I still need to experiment.

REFLECTION

Looking back, I guess these scenarios were contests with thousands of applicants, so most of us weren’t going to be selected. But that doesn’t mean our work isn’t worthwhile. We can’t take it too personally – though it is in my nature to be highly sensitive >.< Sigh lol.

I know the advice of planting seeds really only works if you start planting hundreds, thousands of seeds. When you’re first starting off, it’s hard to stay motivated when the initial ones don’t pan out. But from my observation of the successful authors/entrepreneurs, it seems like they relentlessly continue to plant seeds and put themselves out there in vulnerable situations many times over. They keep going when other people would’ve given up a long time ago. So I think the lesson for me is that I’ve got to keep planting seeds, and not dwell on things that don’t pan out. Let’s do this!

I want to hear from you too! Was there a time when you really wanted something and it didn’t turn out. How did you deal with it?

10 Steps to Create an Awesome Amazon Kindle eBook

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I really didn’t know much about eBooks when I started this process about 2 weeks ago.

I have Kindle devices, but aside from clicking to buy and having them magically appear on the device, I didn’t know much else.

If you’re new to my blog, I wrote and illustrated a children’s book called Use Your Voice and initially released it as a hardcover. I wasn’t starting from scratch, but I thought the eBook conversion process was an interesting experience and worth sharing.

  • My book Use Your Voice
  • The eBook version of my book

ADVANTAGES OF AN E-BOOK

I wanted to do an eBook version so that my audience could have another option in accessing my book. The eBook would be at a lower price point and easier to carry around than a physical book. From a marketing perspective, it would also be easier to share my book with influencers digitally instead of mailing them a copy.

Actually these reasons came from fellow author Eevie Jones, so thank you Eevie!

STEP 1: CHOOSE LAYOUT TYPE

The first step is to decide on the format of the eBook:

  1. Reflowable eBook – mostly black and white text, where the amount of text on the screen can be adjusted according to the screen size / font size / other user preferences of the e-reader device
  2. Fixed-Layout eBook – often children’s books or art books that require a specific layout for each page, regardless of the device size

In my case, I have a children’s book and each page needs to stay exactly as-is, so I went with the fixed layout option.

STEP 2: CHOOSE A SERVICE PROVIDER

Initially, I was going to choose IngramSpark to self-publish my eBook because I had already used them for the hardcover version.

In the author dashboard, they offer a paid “Convert to Ebook” option, where they use your existing design PDF files. I didn’t want to go with this option because I wasn’t sure about the quality (it would be based off a format that wasn’t originally intended for eBooks). Since I already had to learn Adobe Illustrator and InDesign for the first book, I figured I could generate the eBook format on my own.

As I was digging through the IngramSpark documentation on how to do this, it appeared that if I created a fixed layout eBook with IngramSpark, it would only be for sale on Apple and Kobo – and not Amazon. Disclaimer: if this isn’t true, let me know.

Most of my hardcover sales from Amazon, and I didn’t want to leave them out, so I chose to go with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.

I also believe that the royalty rate would be higher with Amazon, and there would be no fee to upload the book or make revisions. To keep things simple, I focused solely on the Amazon Kindle platform, and didn’t worry yet about uploading to other ebookstores like Apple’s.

STEP 3: DOWNLOAD KINDLE TOOLS

Amazon has pretty good tools for helping authors publish their eBook. Check out this list for which ones would apply to your case.

I downloaded the Kindle Kids’ Book Creator for doing the eBook conversion. Then I downloaded the Kindle Previewer tool for previewing the eBook before publishing.

The Kindle Kids’ Book Creator takes a PDF file and will convert it into the proper format for the Kindle store. Hence, I went back to the design files to generate a proper PDF.

STEP 4: MODIFY THE ILLUSTRATION FILES

There were some changes needed to the illustration files because an eBook is viewed in digital format on a screen (RGB color mode), whereas a physical book is printed on a paper (requires margins / bleed regions for where the paper is cut and needs to be in CMYK color mode).

Let me clarify how my files were set up for my hardcover book:

I made a complete copy of all my design files mentioned above, and put them into an eBook folder on my computer. I didn’t want to mess up any of my previous files in case I ever need to make changes to the hardcover book.

From the new set of files, I went ahead and made these changes to all Adobe Illustrator files:

  • Remove the margin and bleed regions that were needed for the print version, so that the illustration on the page goes edge-to-edge (see screenshots below)
  • Switch to RGB color mode. This was a somewhat involved process because I had to unlock all the layers of my design and make sure I selected all of the layers for conversion to RGB. I still kept these illustrations as Adobe Illustrator (.ai) files. These articles were helpful: Adjust Colors and Converting Color Spaces.

Adobe Illustrator file for hardcover book (There’s a required white margin on the left, and a bleed region around the artboard marked in red)

Adobe Illustrator file for eBook (In this version, ideally, all the art should be within the artboard size, marked by the black border. However, the art still goes beyond the artboard size because I was too lazy to adjust the shapes to fit within the border, but that didn’t affect the final look of the image later on.)

STEP 5: GET NEW ISBN NUMBER

My understanding is that each format of a book should have a different bardcode. The eBook, hardcover, and paperback versions of the same book should all have different barcodes.

From the documentation, I wasn’t quite sure if this was required for Amazon Kindle books. To be safe though, I got another ISBN number and updated the copyright page to mention this new number.

Copyright page – edited within Adobe Illustrator

When I needed an ISBN for my first book, I already purchased a bulk pack of 10 ISBNs from Bowker. Hence, I used another barcode from my pack and assigned my eBook details to it within the Bowker database. The details were mostly the same metadata as for my hardcover book – except the publish date and price were different.

Note: The back cover of my book also contains the ISBN number, but for eBooks, there is no back cover file, so no need to update that.

STEP 6: MODIFY THE INDESIGN FILE

The Adobe InDesign file is what puts all the pages together. Adobe InDesign is used for layout design for things like magazines and newspapers.

I refer to this as the eBook Interior File. It starts off with the front cover of the book. Then I imported each of the 17 pages of my book (Adobe Illustrator files that I had updated in Step 4). I also modified the dimensions of the document to not have any bleed regions.

Next I did a pixel perfect check using the Adobe InDesign presentation mode to flip through the whole eBook. Sometimes there was white line on the edges of the pages because I hadn’t filled the content to the edge of the artboard, so I adjusted accordingly.

Adobe InDesign Presentation mode

When it looked exactly as I wanted, I exported the file as a PDF!

STEP 7: GENERATE EBOOK FILE

I imported the PDF file into the Kindle Kids’ Book Creator, downloaded from Step 3.

There’s some options in the setup process like whether the book is landscape or portrait, or showing 2 pages at a time or 1 page. I chose landscape, 1 page at a time. Then wala! It does its conversion magic. All the pages show up in the Creator like this.

Kindle Kids’ Book Creator

You can also add text pop-ups to magnify the text and make it easier for reading. I tried it out, but it made the experience feel ugly with big ol’ text boxes on top of the illustrations. I also felt like the font in my pages were already pretty big, so I decided to forgo this option.

STEP 8: TESTING

Within the Kindle Kids’ Book Creator, check out the Help > User Guide on how to test and export the eBook as a .mobi file. I also used the Kindle Previewer I downloaded earlier to test the eBook on various configurations like phone and tablet.

When it looks good, then you can do Save for Publishing for the final output .mobi file.

Note: When testing, I was actually able to view the eBook in black-and-white-grayscale on my Kindle Paperwhite (using this method). Later I realized it wasn’t a supported device for my final eBook version in the store though. Weird. Oh well. I think these children’s eBooks are only meant for devices that show color like Kindle Fire devices, Kindle Reader apps on phones, tablets, and on desktop. The available devices are listed on the product page for each eBook in the store.

STEP 9: UPLOAD TO KINDLE STORE

I created a Kindle Direct Publishing account, logged into the dashboard, and added a new book title. I entered in all the metadata (basically the same as what is already listed for my hardcover book, except a new ISBN).

Then I uploaded the .mobi file for the interior of the eBook and also a .jpg file for the cover of the book.

Note: For the cover of the book, I had to export the image in Adobe Illustrator as 300 ppi so that the resolution was high enough to be accepted. Amazon rejects lower quality images. They also have a cover generator if you need help with the cover art of your eBook, but it’ll probably be more attractive to create your own or have someone design it for you.

When uploading to book to the store, Amazon asks you to enter in your price and royalty option. Helpful resources: Amazon’s royalty rate (35% or 70% royalty options), their price requirements based on file size, and the pricing page.

To figure out my eBook price, I browsed through other kids books in my genre – social emotional learning books, Todd Parr books, Sandra Boynton books, etc… For those books, I also looked at how their Kindle book price compared with their hardcover and paperback prices. I decided on a happy medium and felt assured that I could always adjust it later.

STEP 10: PUBLISH

When everything’s entered, they give you one more opportunity to see everything with the Kindle previewer in the browser. Then you can publish! WOOHOO!!!! It said it would upload to the store in about 72 hours.

Once it went live, I tested it of course on my Kindle Fire device, phone, tablet, and browser. It didn’t work on the Kindle Paperwhite, and confirmed that the device was not listed as a supported device for my eBook. I also tested the “gift” option with another Amazon account and made sure that worked smoothly. Yay!

It was nice that the eBook automatically linked with my existing Amazon page for my hardcover book (which was created automatically through IngramSpark). It would’ve been awkward if they were separate product pages. If you have this problem though, check this link to resolve it manually.

Then I shared the happy news with friends and family!

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’ve got to say, it’s quite empowering to have finished my first eBook. *Flexes muscles* ;P And what’s even more amazing is that distribution is all done electronically. One of the lessons learned from being an author so far is that having physical books and inventory is hard! There’s the overhead of ordering books from my supplier, distributing them, needing to store and track this inventory, and sometimes books can be defective or get damaged.

No need to lift heavy boxes this time! I’m thrilled with my first eBook!

Thanks for reading! If you’d like to see the final product, here is my Kindle eBook: Use Your Voice!

For a behind-the-scenes look at how I created the whole book (including illustrating it), check out my YouTube series on Writing a Children’s Book on my channel Kat Kuan:

Playlist of videos on Writing a Children’s Book: http://bit.ly/2USrEEv

My eBook Launches

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After 4 months since my initial book release and lots of positive feedback, I’m excited to announce that the eBook version of my book Use Your Voice has launched!!! Starting today, it’s available on Amazon right here: bit.ly/useyourvoiceebook

It works on Kindle Fire devices, phones / tablets using the Kindle Reader app, and even on desktop! I know because the engineer in me tested those all devices 😛 haha! The full list of supported devices is on the book page.

If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, I’d love for you to check it out, maybe even share with a child in your life, and let me know your thoughts! Thank you and have a beautiful day, everyone! 

Use Your Voice (Kindle Edition): bit.ly/useyourvoiceebook

Use Your Voice

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My book is officially available now on Amazon and Barnes&Noble.com!

I hope that young kids everywhere 👧🏻👦🏽👶🏿 will be inspired to use their voice to express themselves for who they really are. And that they believe their voice truly matters.

After leaving my job to explore new opportunities and write this book, I went through lots of self doubt about whether I could actually step into a new chapter of life. But through the grace of God, so much love and support came into my life from people near and far. You all uplifted me, got me through the hard times, and I was finally able to self publish this book!!! I couldn’t feel more proud and thankful on this day. 🙏

There is more to share about my journey behind this book and my year of self-discovery, but I will save that for another time! Today is a time for celebration!!

If there is a young person in your life who you would like to encourage and love on, I invite you to check out this book! The target age is 2–5 years old. Let me know if you have any questions, thank you!!!! Much love to you!! And whatever age and life stage you are in, I hope you remember to #useyourvoice because it’s your beautiful gift to the world.

To learn more about what it was like to self-publish this book, check out my journey on my YouTube channel What Kat Found Out. https://www.youtube.com/c/WhatKatFoundOut