Stress Can Be Beautiful, Or Not

The Consultant Supply Room has that name because it was designed to act as a source of materials that bookkeepers, accountants and other consulting professionals could use to kick-start their own “Rainmaker” style marketing program.

If someone wants to start giving speeches on business management topics, instead of writing their own, if they are a member or subscriber, they can download one here. If they want to kick-start their teaching and coaching, we have seminars and training courses, complete with teacher guides, handouts and lesson plans. They can download them here. We provide a bunch of ready made stuff the consultant can download and use as a starting point in their practice building.

We also provide PLR materials that will give them credit as the co-author of their own book. PLR stands for “Private Label Rights.” The subscriber gets to label the work as their own and receive credit as a co-author.

So finally I’m sending out samples of a fantastic new title to a group of subscribers who will each share in the authorship, and will get to label the book as their own, and use it in marketing their services. It has been a chore developing this title, and six weeks past its expected publication, it is scheduled to ship on Tuesday.

But, let me tell you, this weekend I have been stuck in the print shop from Hades. For six weeks it has been write, format, edit, rewrite and reformat. Over and over on something I thought was finished and my customers were chomping at the bit for.

So Wednesday, finally it’s ready …. yeah, right.

First, I have to print the document to PDF to make sure the formatting holds, and that the odd and even pages are aligned right for chapter breaks. Okay it looks good in Word, so let’s create the PDF.

You guessed it. My hard drive is full and there is no room to save this enormous PDF. Road Trip!

I live in the woods. I mean in the woods. It takes me fifteen to twenty minutes to get to the public road. It then takes me an hour and a half to get to a store where I can get a hard drive. (Big plug here for MicroCenter in Marietta, GA) I get one. A whole day used going to town and back.

Thursday, I go to town again to get the large format 11×17 book covers printed. Full color, glossy, one for each co-author to be. Thursday night I try to install the hard drive. Have to call tech support for help in formatting and partitioning (Old folks don’t do those things, you know.), but it’s after hours. Another day gone.

Friday, I get tech support and partition the hard drive, and now have enough space to save the file and send it to the printer. Printer jams and I can’t find the sliver of paper that is causing the problem. Off to Marietta on Saturday to buy a new printer. Getting the gist of the story here, are you?

Buy a new printer. Sunday I start installing it when my toner and printer guy returns my call from the day before. Walks me through finding the problem. Old high speed printer working again. Get books printed, eat supper and go to the bindery.

So I bind the books and they’re looking good. I get ready to trim them. Trimming takes three cuts, one on the outer edge and one at each of the top and bottom.

I start trimming with the outer edge. I get them all done but the last one, which gets caught in the paper cutter when the release wheel breaks off in my hand.

It’s bed time.