Monthly Blog (Feb '25): How I wrote the book ...

Once I had decided to write a book, the first thing was to get everything, including the kitchen sink, on paper - a brain dump ! This took about 3 months and ran into 50k words. This phase was easy, it just flowed effortlessly and in no particular order. My childhood, my concepts, my visuals, just one big brain dump.

Sometimes I would get up in the middle of the night 2, 3, 4am to write down my thoughts so that I would not forget them in the morning when I woke up. Sometimes, I would go out for a walk, go shopping, play golf and if a thought popped up I would rush home to get it on paper.

I was determined to hit 50k words, but this was a BIG mistake, you should never set yourself any artificial word count or time limit.

Nect step was to cut out the crap ! I asked the Mrs. who is a TEACHER, and a close cousin who is a PARA LEGAL to review my work and their feedback was: there was too much repetition, too much irrelevant stuff and in parts it was going off on a tangent.

I dropped the target word count and timeline and focussed on getting the content right. Having removed all the 'guff' I ended up with 35k words.

The next step was to develop my USP's. What would make my work stand out and different from all the other personal finance books out there? I had a lot of ORIGINAL ideas and wanted to convey them in plain English and use visuals. I adopted the KISS principle - Keep it Simple Stupid !

I created the FINANCIAL FREEDOM MATRIX and developed a 2x2 design with icons to represent each stage.

I created the CASHFLOW MODEL and developed a simple visual with the BANK in the middle surrounded by the P&L on the horizontal and BS on the vertical axis.

I wanted these concepts to be actionable/practical, so that's when I created:

• THE FINANCIAL FREEDOM ROADMAP which could be used to develop a personal plan

• THE FINANCIAL HEALTH CHECK which would tell us in a quick and easy way where we are in on our financial journey, and

• THE PROPERTY CYCLE INVESTMENT STRATEGY an investment strategy for each stage of the property cycle

The next step was to give the manuscript structure. There had to be a beginning, middle and end to each chapter. Each chapter needed to start with a BANG to capture the reader. Each chapter needed to end with a CONCLUSION. Then like a movie, I needed a trailer before the start and a teaser at the end.

Finally, I wanted to add a summary as the last chapter, this would act as an aide-memoire for anyone who wanted a refresher.

The next step was to engage the professional services of a company who could do the things I couldn't. In particular, I needed help with cover design, proof-reading and formatting. So I hired a publishing company to 'polish' up my manuscript and turn it into a book. NO AI !!!

The next step was to get someone who fell into my target market profile to provide feedback. As fortune would have it, a close friend's son who was a HARVARD GRAD, offered to read the 'polished' manuscript and gave great and timely feedback.

The feedback from the Mrs. was constant throughout the process, she was invaluable and incredibly patient with me ! The feeback from the PARA-LEGAL and HARVARD GRAD was indepth, incisive, holistic and confirmed that the message I wanted to convey was getting across.

All the people who reviewed the manuscript, had something different to offer and I kept my circle tight as I did not want too many cooks.

The next step was the hardest part, I needed a TITLE. I still didn't have a title I was completely happy with. It needed to be short (<5 words), unique and something that would be bold and stand-out. I had about 30 options none of which had the WOW factor, until my son came up with - RAT RACE TO RICHES. It was a bold choice, as I could easily have gone with plain vanilla 'Financial Freedom' or some derivation of this. But it would have been too safe and would have got lost in the crowd.

I trusted my gut and went with RAT RACE TO RICHES and it's been amazing! If I had chosen FINANCIAL FREEDOM as a title, I think I would have only sold a couple of copies to friends and family and they would have wanted them for free !!! Instead the bold title makes the book stand-out and sell!!!

Lastly, I hit the 'GO' button and disappeared to South Goa !!!

There is no such thing as perfect and you can always keep tweaking things and come up with new ideas, but in the end you have to draw and line and go with it.

So I hit the go-button on 5th December 2024, two years after I started the project, and it has been fantastic. I'm so happy (and quietly proud) of what I have created.

The secret is to BELIEVE IN YOURSELF and never give up!

In the end, I ended up with 40k words, which falls nicely into that sweet-spot of 180-200 pages :)

Publishing the book has been great fun but is only 50% of the work, the other 50% is marketing which I had parked for now ...