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You know, it's a journey. There's no straight lines . No, I think that's, that's common. A common theme for all of us. And while our stories, the components of each of our stories is different, it's not very often that you find someone that just has this straight line trajectory. Our growth comes from all of those detours and the painful bits. Um, would I wanna relive them? No. But I am grateful for all that they taught me and all that it helps me to bring to conversations and empathy and compassion and ways in which I'm able to, whether it's my clients or whether it's just the way I'm showing up in the world.
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Welcome to Shout Your Cause with Sally Hendrick, a digital magazine where you can get found, get heard, and get inspired with content that challenges us to be globally minded. Our focus is on raising awareness around social justice issues, cultural differences, and to bring you the people dedicating their lives to tackling challenging topics as their way of giving back. Let us be your advocate to make your voices heard around the world.
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Welcome everybody back to Shout Your Cause Today I've got a really great guest, Lanette Pottle. Yay Lanette. How are you?
(01:27):
I'm super excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me, Sally.
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We have known each other now for probably seven or eight years, which is amazing.
(01:36):
A long time, especially in the online world. But we did get to meet each other in person, which was a real treat as well.
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Yes. I took a vacation with my family back in 2019 and I said, where do you live? I'm in Maine. Um, come and find me. And, and we found each other. I guess it was in Bangor at a bagel place.
(01:59):
. Yeah. Good bagels. Good company. Good conversation. It was a great day.
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Yeah. So tell me, I've noticed lately a whole lot about she gets published because I'm seeing all of these people that I know, uh, getting their books out there and they are talking about, she gets published. What, what have you created?
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Well, something pretty special. It feels special. The whole brand of she gets published. The intention behind it is really supporting and empowering women to get their voices and messages out into the world in a bigger way. And there can be a lot of challenges that come up from even, you know, getting past the like, oh my gosh, I'm not a writer. I can't, like all the stories we tell ourselves about actually writing the book to the technical pieces of publishing and launching Well, so you have a successful book. And so I took my experience, my own personal experience of going through this and telling myself a story. It took me seven years and six days to publish my first book. Seven years of telling myself all the reasons why I could not do it. I live in this tiny, small town in Maine. I, at that time, I didn't know any authors or publishers.
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I didn't have the resources. It was all a big fat lie. I just didn't realize it in that moment. And as I shifted through that myself and created my own publishing imprint and got on bestseller lists and did all of these things, it was a skillset that, um, initially, quite honestly, I didn't think about using it as part of my business model. I was doing life and business strategy. So I worked with a lot of entrepreneurs and coaches, but my focus was in books. Somehow. A lot of conversations ended up there though, and gradually, you know, it's one of those suddenly and then gradually, then suddenly kind of moments where it's like, okay, I think I'm shifting my business model. I'm still working with the same types of women, but I'm helping them in a different way. And that life and business strategy, all that experience comes on board and helps in getting people to share their message. But, um, yeah, so anyways, it's been a fun adventure and a way to be able to, everything that I've done since I started my business back in 20, well, I started part-time in 2012, went full-time in 2016, but it's always been in some form or another of empowering women. And so I feel like that's the, the common thread in all of the work that I've done. And it's certainly present in the work that I'm doing today when she gets published.
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Well, and publishing your first book is so exciting. What was the name of your first book that you finally got out there?
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Small Steps. Big Impact. And the funny thing about that book was that it was, I had all of the content written because I had a weekly, just a little weekly column in my newspaper. And I knew at the time that it was good. I was getting such great feedback about it, but I couldn't figure out, like, all I ended up doing with it is making kind of a P D F I was going to use. I had a, um, an online community at that time called Positivity Nation and I was using it as a free download. It was just like, this content is really good. I don't know how to get it out into the world, so I want it to serve in some way. This is what I'll do. And then I just kind of stopped talking about it and shifted away from it.
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And when a mentor challenged me, um, on a mastermind call to say, you know, you can, you can write a book in 30 days. I'm like, ah, are you, you have no idea what's going on in my life. Like, are you on drugs or something? Like what, what what on earth would make you think? And now of course all this is internal dialogue. I'm very respectful in the conversation that we're having. But I went to bed that night arguing my limitations, hard, hard, hard and really a little upset with her that she would call me out. And this group of people, you know, that I knew, like trusted, respected, but it was like, oh, that didn't feel good. It was an ouch. But in the morning when I woke up, it's like, you know what? She's exactly right. I know I'm not gonna write this other big book idea that I had, but I had all this material at my fingertips once I figured out how to unlock an old laptop, that it was stored on , um, that I could use to create a book.
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And it took 56 days, very intense focus days. But I took that content. I worked with a world-class editor who happened to also live here in Maine that I had gotten to know. I worked with a designer who lived down the street from me. It was just like all the planets aligned when you open yourself up to possibility and that things can happen in a way other than you tell yourself there's only one way it can happen. But when you open yourself up, it's amazing the things that you will find. And that's exactly what happened in my case and in in getting that first book published.
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Well, you're very lucky that you did that because then that took away a lot of the doubts, the fears, everything that creeps up, the imposter syndrome, whatever else that may be. And you were able to move past it
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Well and move through it. What I wanna, I think an important message to share about imposter syndrome is it never really goes away because every time that you up, every time that you're doing something new, it seems to show back up. It's more about having the tools to be able to work through it and work alongside it, because I really don't think we ever get rid of it.
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I like that. I like saying that work through it. Cuz we do work through it and we figure out our ways around it and it's not always the same, the same things that that work every time that get us through it. But imagine that if we had never that if we never go through it, we'd never grow.
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Exactly. Exactly.
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So tell me a little bit more about positivity Lady Press. What does it mean that you have this press, this publishing company?
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Yeah. Well this is the cool thing in today's environment. You know, 20 years ago traditional publishing was about the only route that you had to go. It wasn't accessible for regular people to go publish books. You had to go through a really rigorous process and you could go through that process and never have your book picked up. And what a shame because there are so many great books and great powerful impactful stories to tell that, you know, there aren't enough publishing companies, traditional publishing companies to get all of those books out into the world. And so today we're able to have access to print on demand, we can do publishing, we can become publishers ourself, and for positivity Lady press, that was part of my process in publishing that first book is I knew that I would publish it myself, but I wanted to publish it professionally.
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So professionally, self-published is different than just self-publishing and not using a professional team and using the free I S B N number that say kind Direct Publishing would give you mm-hmm in starting the publishing imprint. You name your publishing company and you are the publisher of record. And so on my books and now on a few other books of o other authors, when you look at the spine, it says Positivity lady press. When you have a professionally self-published book, you should be able to hold that book up against a traditionally published book and you can't tell the difference and looking at them because you're following industry standards. Mm-hmm. and having a publishing imprint is part of that process. So it wasn't that difficult. And maybe it's easier for me to say that today because it's behind me, but the truth is everything is simple once you know how to do it.
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So was there a learning curve? Yes, but I had a mentor walking alongside of me that cut that learning curve way down. So I was very fortunate in that way. And that's one of the ways that I serve my clients today too, is helping them set up their publishing imprint and helping them to be able to professionally self-publish their work so that it gets recognized in the way that it should. Right. And that it's on bookstore shelves. Um, being available online is amazing and it's wonderful And there's more, you know, there are libraries, there are, you know, brick and mortar bookstores and there's international sales and there's no reason why your book can't be in that mix.
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Exactly. So you help people not only do like the Amazon publishing but also maybe Ingram Spark or whatever the other ones are. I don't even know all the options out there. . I'm sure there's tons and there's probably more that we can't even think about cuz we just can't cover every base.
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Yeah. And really what I do, the first thing that I'm doing is when I'm meeting with someone is talking about what are their goals? Because not every book is going to take the same path. If your goal for your book is, let's say that you wanna have it as a gift for your clients and or maybe you want to have it available as kind of a calling card, that when you're approaching new clients, you could give that as a way for them to get to know you. If that's really your focus. You probably don't need to be in a brick and mortar bookstore, you know, that just might not be part of your plan. But everyone's goals are different. So being really clear about what is it that you hope that this book will do? What's your intention behind it? Why are you writing it?
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What do you want it to do for your business? What do you want it to do for your reader? Then we develop a plan. So for some people it is strictly on Amazon and for others it's wide distribution and taking the few extra steps to, you know, have that wider distribution. When I remember , when I found out my book, like someone sent me a picture, they were holding my book and they bought it in New Zealand. I mean right to put this in, when I talk about small town Maine, there are 525 other people that live in my town. I've never been to New Zealand , and yet my book is there. And that potential was there because of the way I chose to publish my book.
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Interesting, interesting. Well, I mean, I guess we can get around all over the world if we wanted to, if we knew what to do. If we'd have to just call positivity lady press and find out Right
(14:08):
. Well, and I don't, you know, positivity lady press. The interesting part is, so I created the publishing imprint really just to publish my own work. I knew there was a possibility it opened a door that I could publish other people's work in the future, but that wasn't my immediate reason for doing that. Several years later, um, over this past couple of years, I have published some collaborative books. And in doing that, the reason that I'm using my imprint is to put the power behind that for those authors to get their message out in a bigger way. But also those books, the goal, those books is, it was an education process for each of the authors. It was part of an author program. And the proceeds from the book are going to fund micro loans, um, through Kiva. I'm, I'm not sure if you're familiar with kiva.org, but we're funding microloans for other women who want to start or grow businesses and aren't able to get traditional funding. And so that was really in alignment with my value system. And I don't have a grand desire to be a large publisher and dealing with royalties. My, what I wanna do is empower people. I wanna teach other women how to, yes, I'll walk alongside you the first time and then you've got it. Like go and do it. You don't have to share your royalties, you don't have to give up creative control. You don't have to wonder and worry if you're going to get dropped from someone's catalog. You can keep all of that control.
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You're telling me a lot about what you do and how you help people, but at the end of the day, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing if we didn't know why. Mm-hmm. , what's that deeper why for you of why you're helping women do this? Who are you helping also, and don't let me forget, I wanna come back and have you answer if you mostly work with non-fiction.
(16:38):
Yes. Um, the quick answer is yes and we can come back to that .
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Ok. Alright. So then co and then we don't have to come back to it. So the other question then, why are you doing what, what you're doing? Do you have any story behind what's happened
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In your, in your journey? So what is important to me, the lane that I'm in when it comes to book coaching and mentoring clients for publishing is in the world of self-help and personal development. And for me, that why all goes back to impact, right? It goes back to, I mean, if you go way back and there's some pretty deep roots here, but I grew up in a very, what you would consider a disadvantaged, um, household. I made really poor decisions when I was a teenager. I, uh, became pregnant when I was 17, still in high school, was a single mother. And I went through some really, really tough times. And even as I kind of muddled my way through that, through depression, through, um, just some real significant hardships when my life started getting back on track, I found myself ending up , like in a, in a bad marriage, , right?
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And continuing to make poor decisions. And what really started to make the shift for me of like, instead of like one step forward and five steps back, that was kind of the story of my evolution in my twenties and in my thirties. By the time I hit my forties, what made the impact for me was a self-help personal development book. It was Jack Canfield's book, the Success Principles. And to say that it changed the trajectory of my life is not exaggerating. And so I knew the power of books, of good books and I also know the power of story. And so many women that have the capability of making that kind of impact on others, on sharing their experiences in a bigger, you know, to a wider audience in a bigger way. But they just didn't have the tools or the knowledge or the belief that they could do it.
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And so for me, that's what I anchor into. It's how am I helping my knowledge base, you know, is, is a fraction of all of the impact that can be made in the world. But if I can help give a vehicle, provide knowledge and knowhow and give that boost of confidence to someone so they can reach the people they're meant to meet reach, then that's wildly fulfilling to me. That feels in purpose to me. And so I typically am working with female coaches and entrepreneurs, um, but not exclusively. I mean, that is typically the type of people that are drawn to me because they do wanna make a bigger impact. They're already working with clients and, um, it's just about taking that next step to share their brilliance more widely.
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I love that and I'm glad thanks for bringing up, you know, some of the choices and things that you had made in your younger days that really changed things for you. It made it a, a different type of story where you're coming, you know, rising out of those decisions and into becoming a very powerful, empowered woman.
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Hmm. Yeah. You know, it's a journey. There's no straight lines . No, I think that's, that's common. A common theme for all of us. And while our stories, the components of each of our stories is different, it's not very often that you find someone that just has this straight line trajectory. Our growth comes from all of those detours and the painful bits. Um, would I wanna relive them? No. But I am grateful for all that they taught me and all that it helps me to bring to conversations and empathy and compassion and ways in which I'm able to, whether it's my clients or whether it's just the way I'm showing up in the world and meeting with someone down the street, all of those things, I, I wouldn't have the depth of that had I not gone through some really, you know, those really tough patches.
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Well, and that brings us back to the what I wanna end up with, which is small steps, big shifts. Yes. Which is only one word different from your first title. What is small steps? Big shifts.
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So it's really an activity book that's based on the perma model of wellbeing. And this is a way it's based in positive psychology and it's not about denying that there are bad things. It's not like positive vibes only. It's not that kind of a book, but it is like, yes, there's the reality of tough stuff happens in our lives and bad things are happening in the world around us. Okay. We can acknowledge that and we also can acknowledge that there's ways in which that we can continue to rise through that, that we can make an impact that, um, finding purpose in our daily lives. And so this activity book of 52 different activities to help boost your happiness and wellbeing goes back to just the little things of, you know, I found in my own journey the toughest spots when I could take the focus off myself and I could support or help someone else, that's when I felt better, right?
(23:02):
Instead of staying stuck in myself and being caught in my own little world, seeing how I could be of service to other people was a game changer for me. And it's little things that really do create the big shifts of, you know, somebody you don't know. You never know what's going on in somebody else's life. They may have, you know, this plastered Instagram, smiley face, everything looks great in the world and their world could be falling apart and taking the time just to share, um, a kind comment or how their post, you know, impacted you or just the tiniest of things can really make a big difference. And one quick example that I'll share is, this was several years ago, back again in the days of positivity, um, nation. And I was working in a school and one of the things that we were doing as a classroom activity is I was guiding them through gratitude exercises and talking about writing thank you notes.
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And one of the eighth grade boys, his thank you note that he wrote was to the, um, woman that ran the lunchroom. And it was a really nice, thoughtful card about the food that she prepared and how great it was. I mean, the kids really did love her food. She was an excellent cook . Um, but he was the one, he was the only one that chose her to write that thank you note. And the next week when I went back to the school, she asked if she could talk to me. And I was kind of like one of those things where it caught my breath of like, oh no, what did I do wrong? You know, I was like, but she took me aside in private to share, and this was happening, to put it in context, this happened in November. She shared with me that receiving that note was the best thing that had happened to her all year.
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She was a caregiver, uh, in a caregiver situation for her mom who had passed away during that year. Her husband got very ill and she was the sole provider for their home. And it wasn't easy being at work every day. And that note made a tremendous impact. So you just never know. And this, this book is filled with those kinds of simple activities, but it's also tied back to this model of what are the things it, what is this spark in me? What is it a positive emotion? Does it give me a sense of purpose of fulfill fulfillment? What is it so that we can start to think about these activities in a different way? It is how are you're helping someone else, but then what is the benefit to you as well?
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I love that. Thank you so much for sharing.
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You're welcome.
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Well, that's all we're gonna do today, so thank you for coming in. I wanna make sure everybody can get in touch with you. What's the best way to find you?
(26:07):
The easiest way to find me, I'm most active on Instagram, so you can find me @shegetspublished, um, also on Facebook, or you can visit my website at shegetspublished.com.
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That's as easy as it can be, right?
(26:21):
? Yes.
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All right, thanks and thanks for tuning in.
(26:25):
Thank you Sally.
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Thank you for listening today. My name is Sally Hendrick. Be sure to visit our website for show notes and more information on how you can inspire others. If you would like to contribute content to our magazine, please apply on our website at shoutyourcause.com.
