A few weeks ago, I tripped over a stool and hurt my hip, my knee, and my ankle so I wasn’t able to make Thanksgiving the way I usually do.  But as I did, I realized that there were some good lessons for authorpreneurs in how I made it work and I share them in this week’s podcast.

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Making Thanksgiving dinner under less-than-ideal circumstances made Ellen realize that there were some important lessons in how she was able to make Thanksgiving a success and how you can use these same lessons to be more successful as an authorpreneur.

Summary: In this week’s podcast, Ellen Violette shares the lessons she learned making Thanksgiving dinner when it was a difficult task due to an injured leg and the lessons authorpreneurs can take away from her experience.

Since my podcast team is on vacation, I am posting the transcript.

(To get started) I want to explain that earlier this month, I tripped and fell over a stool and I’ve been in a lot of pain. So I haven’t been able to do things the way I normally do them. Things have gone a lot slower, and I hope you’ll bear with me because sometimes as like this week, I did not get the podcast up yesterday, but I am doing the best I can under some not great circumstances. So I wanted to make Thanksgiving dinner. I did not make Thanksgiving dinner last year and I missed it. And so I wanted to do that, and I underestimated how difficult it would be for me to do, but I knew that if I was going to get through it, there were certain things I was going to have to do. And there are actually things that I’ve learned from being an entrepreneur.

So the first thing I made was cranberry sauce, and then I made whipped cream and then I made a pie and then we made the stuffing, put it in the turkey and whipped up some mashed potatoes. But the thing is, given how I was feeling, it was completely overwhelming. And so what I realized was I needed to break it down. So the first thing I did was I decided, “Okay, what am I going to make and in what order?” And I just told you what that was. So the cranberry sauce is very easy to make. So I did that first because it was just a win that I could get and get out of the way.

But then I did that through the entire process. It was just, “Okay, what’s the next thing I need to do? What’s the next thing I need to do?” And then just doing that, just focusing on that and honestly, not knowing if I was going to get the whole meal done or not, but breaking it down and doing it one step at a time, I was able to get the meal done on the day we wanted to have it, which was not Thanksgiving actually. It was Friday. It was the next day. But anyway, so that was the first lesson. And the second lesson was, oh this is so funny. It seems like every time we go to make a turkey, we can’t find our laser. What are they called? I can’t think of what they’re called. But anyway, they help you thread the turkey without using a needle and thread. So they’re stainless steel and they’re really easy to use.

So I went online, and I couldn’t believe I had to order them again because it seems like every year I end up ordering them. But I ordered them from Amazon. They said they weren’t going to come until the day after Thanksgiving. So I said, “Okay, fine. So we’ll have Thanksgiving on Friday.” And then all of a sudden I just started obsessing like, oh my God, what if they don’t get here on time? What if they don’t get here until late in the day? What if it’s too late?” And I started looking for other ways that I could do this. So we found some thread, but we couldn’t find the needles. So then I said to my husband, “Well, we should order needles anyway because you should always have a needle and thread in the house.”

So we did that. But anyway, then Friday came and I didn’t see my order anywhere, and I’m like, “What the hell happened?” I know I ordered this, but anyway, it wasn’t showing up. And so then my husband and I had the same idea at the same time, which was, “Okay, maybe we should just try it without it. Let’s just do it without it.” Because it’s the idea of making a decision to make it right, which I learned from my mentor, Suzanne Evans. So I said, “Okay, well we made the decision we’re going to have this turkey, and so we better make this right.” So as it turned out, this particular turkey was super easy. The skin was all in the right place, and we were able to just put the stuffing in and kind of pull back the skin and just have it stay in place.

It just worked like a charm. And so the idea though is that we could have just scrapped the whole thing. We could have said, “Oh, we’re not having Thanksgiving.” I mean, there were a lot of things we could have done, but we just said, okay, how do we make this decision and make it right? So that is what we did. So when you get an idea in your head, sometimes you get locked into a box. And I’ve had this happen before where I remember saying to a coach something I was going to do and she goes, “Well, you don’t have to do that. You can do whatever you want. You’re the entrepreneur. It’s your show.” And so I want to encourage you to do the same thing. So if something’s not working out, just find another way and do it another way. So those are my two lessons for entrepreneurs from Thanksgiving. To get the summary, go to booksopendoors.com/thanksgiving-lessons, booksopendoors.com/thanksgiving-lessons.

And if you’re interested in writing your own book, this is a great time to get started. There are two ways that you can work with me. One is individually, and right now is the best time to get in there because I’m launching my new group program in January. And so the investment to work with me one on one is going to be going up. The second way to work with me is in the group program. It’s called the Bestseller Book Mastery Program. And that’s a three-month program and you get nine Q&As. You get at least three masterminds. You get handouts, templates, all kinds of goodies. So either way, let’s talk and see what’s best for you. You can book a time at bookwithellen.com. That’s bookwithellen.com. Normally, I’ll tell you what I’m doing the next week, but right now with the holidays and everything I’ve been going through, I’m kind of just playing it by ear. So I hope you’ll be a little flexible and enjoy the holidays, listen to the podcast, and I’ll see you back here when I see you back here, hopefully next Tuesday. Okay, that’s it for now. Bye bye.

Speaker 2:

You’ve been listening to the Books Open Doors podcast with your host, Ellen Violette. If you’d like to connect with other mission-driven speakers, coaches, consultants, thought leaders, founders, creative entrepreneurs and authors who are changing the world one book at a time, join us in the Books Open Doors community at facebook.com/groups/booksopendoors, and let’s rock your business with books.

About Ellen

Ellen is a multiple #1 bestselling author, 3X award-winning book and business coach, including being named one of the Top 20 Book Coaches of 2022 by Coach Foundation, host of The Books Open Doors® Podcast, CEO of Create a Splash/Books Open Doors® Author Services and Grammy-nominated songwriter.

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