Erica Cerulo & Claire Mazur, WORK WIFE
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[0:48]and subscribe yourself. Erica Cerullo and Claire Maiser are the co-authors of Work Life,
[0:53]the power of female friendship to drive successful businesses. They met at the University of Chicago
[0:58]in 2002 and founded of a kind in 2010. They have become known for discovering the next big things,
[1:05]and launched a wildly popular weekly newsletter, 10 Things, and a few things, the podcast.
[1:10]They've been called the most influential people in New York fashion right now by fashionista,
[1:14]in styles best of the web and Forbes 30 under 30. Okay, so welcome to Erica and Claire to
[1:21]a mom's time to read books. Thank you so much. We're so excited to be here. It's thrilled.
[1:25]So nice. I have like a Work Life team. Yeah. I like the third wheel in this little marriage.
[1:29]We're happy to have you. Yeah. Yeah. Bring it in. So Work Life, your book,
[1:33]tell listeners what it's about and what inspired you to write it. Yeah. So the book is about the
[1:39]power of female friendship to build successful businesses, to drive successful businesses.
[1:43]And we wrote it because this is something this is like what we've experienced in working together.
[1:48]So over the years, we've been working together almost nine years now. And over the years, our
[1:53]proudest career accomplishment has been the partnership we've built and the way that it's survived
[1:57]all of the highs and lows. And there've been so many highs and so many lows of building a business
[2:01]together, an e-commerce site called Ava kind. And when we started looking around, we're like, oh,
[2:05]there's so many other people who have also taken this path both in, you know, starting their own
[2:10]companies or organizations or working within larger organizations. And we wanted to shed light on that
[2:15]because I think you don't really hear the story of women partnering that much. You often hear,
[2:19]you know, the like classic tale is like, oh, women are caddy. They don't work well together.
[2:23]And that's not what we have had experienced or what we were seeing in the world around us.
[2:26]We were really interested in exploring what about our own partnership had made the business
[2:32]that we built stronger. Like how had our partnership and our friendship informed the way we
[2:37]worked together in the business we had built as a result. But we didn't want to write a book that
[2:40]was just about the two of us. We didn't think that that there was really enough there. And so
[2:44]we set about interviewing other workwives. And with the intention of exploring like how to
[2:50]other people do this because we knew for sure that there wasn't just one way. What are the
[2:54]commonalities? What are the differences? And also really wanting to just celebrate this thing that
[2:58]we saw happening around us, which was all of these really strong female partnerships that we're
[3:02]leading to really successful impactful profitable businesses. I love how you started off with pictures
[3:08]of all the workwives. That's so nice because I feel like nobody does that in books anymore.
[3:12]I really like the idea of putting a face with the name of the person. People and you want to see them
[3:16]sitting together on a couch or something, even just to have that little amount of context makes
[3:20]a difference. It's a face. It's a person. Erica comes from an editorial background. So our
[3:25]business is a retail business with a really strong editorial angle. And I think she has always been
[3:30]able to sort of help me and everybody in our business understand that when you can put a face
[3:36]with a story, it makes such a big difference. And I think that that was an important part of the
[3:40]book for us. Yeah, for sure. That's awesome. And how did you pick all those people? How did you find
[3:45]the workwives teams and the right balance and everything? Yeah. I mean, it was hard. It was like
[3:49]definitely a puzzle. We wanted to represent a broad range of women across industries, across
[3:54]geographics, across demographics, in different parts of the country, people who had a big age gap
[4:00]between them, people who had different life experiences. We wanted to make sure that this wasn't just
[4:04]women in their 20s and 30s in New York and LA because there are plenty of those examples. And that's
[4:08]exciting. And that's part of the world that we certainly came up in for sure, starting a business
[4:13]in our mid 20s in New York. But it's been going on so much longer than that. And it just speaks to
[4:18]so many more people than that. And it would be sort of selling it short if we weren't representing
[4:22]more broadly. You should have like, maybe you already do this. We should have like a workwives
[4:26]Facebook group for all the partners, like all the teams. Yeah. Yeah. And then everybody could be like,
[4:32]you know, you could get tips for collaboration. I mean, you have so many great tips in your book.
[4:36]But you know, well, and we learned so much from the women that we interviewed for the book. There
[4:41]were so many examples of times we were interviewing a duo and they would explain how they did
[4:46]something. And we were like, why, why, why aren't we doing it that way? And I think the most
[4:50]impactful one that we talk about a lot was we interviewed the founders of Food 52, Amanda Hester
[4:56]and Merrill Stubbs. And in starting the business, Merrill had had two children over the course of
[5:02]the years. And they had had to figure out how to navigate her maternity leave during that. And
[5:06]when we were interviewing them, neither of us had kids. But I got pregnant, I guess shortly thereafter.
[5:11]And we sort of took the way that they handled Merrill's maternity leave and made it our own. And
[5:17]I don't think we would have done that otherwise. So basically the crux of it is that Amanda had
[5:22]written Merrill an email every week telling her everything she needed to know about what was going
[5:27]on at the office and nothing she didn't. And it sounds really simple and like not that big of a
[5:31]deal. But when you think about the way most women are sort of left to their own devices on
[5:36]maternity leave and left to come back to the office sort of totally blind to what's been going on
[5:40]the last however many weeks. It makes a huge difference to be kept in the loop. And so many women
[5:45]talk about struggles sort of coming back to the office after after being out and getting trouble
[5:49]getting up to speed and going on. Yeah, we were so sort of excited about this idea of like,
[5:55]right, why wouldn't you do something to keep your work wife in the loop while she's gone? So
[5:59]Erica, when I was gone, actually came to my house once a week, no twice a week for getting
[6:05]already. She came to my house twice a week. We would sort of run through everything we needed
[6:09]to talk about. And if it was just a rough day, she would, you know, just help hold the baby or
[6:13]whatever it was. And it made a huge difference for me. She knew how anxious I was about the idea of
[6:18]being out of the office for so long because I, you know, it's our baby too. And I was nervous about
[6:24]that. And it made a huge difference. And we were so grateful to Amanda and Merrill for being so
[6:28]open with us about what that had looked like for them. Didn't Amanda have like a major breakdown
[6:33]or something? She did. Yeah. So that she did like it was really hard on Amanda when Merrill was out.
[6:38]And I think that context was really helpful for me. I don't want to have kids. And I knew that
[6:42]this was an experience that I would be at the office alone for the first time, you know, and having
[6:47]run this business together like we have. And just being able to go and see Claire and have context
[6:53]around what her life was like, that was even just huge for me to see, okay, this is, it didn't feel
[6:57]like we were diverging. It didn't feel like she was like doing this other thing that I didn't have
[7:01]visibility into, you know? And so I think that even just like having that was core. And so many of
[7:07]of these sessions that we had, these interview sessions with the work wise we interviewed,
[7:11]felt at the end of them, people would be like, that felt like a therapy session. Because I do think
[7:16]that a lot of the women that we talked to and ourselves as well, we hadn't taken the time to
[7:20]necessarily sit down and talk about the processes that were so core to making this relationship work.
[7:25]Or even what the relationship means in your life because it's not something people like,
[7:30]you know, business partner is not really enough. Friend is definitely not enough. But it's like owning
[7:35]how important it is to you feels like kind of a leap in a way. Well, it's funny because I think,
[7:40]you know, in a lot of our other relationships, including marriages, you come up with these systems,
[7:46]right? Like here's how we're going to approach this thing together. Here's how we're going to handle
[7:49]finances. Here's how we're going to do this. And I think in some ways a lot that gets dropped when
[7:53]you're starting a business with a friend because you're like, well, we're friends. We know how to do
[7:56]this thing. We can, we'll make it up as we go along. And I think one of the things the book really
[8:00]highlighted for us was that all of these things benefit from you getting together and deciding
[8:05]here's how we're going to approach this. Here's how we're going to approach co-managing. Here's how
[8:08]we're going to approach finances. Here's how we're going to approach fundraising. Here's how we're
[8:12]going to approach maternity leave and taking the time to like agree on and come up with it. I think
[8:17]that's systematic. Yeah, systematize his is huge. And I think that was something we learned for
[8:22]ourselves through through the bookwriting process. So how much of a successful work-life relationship
[8:27]do you think is attributable to choosing the right partner to begin with versus making it work with
[8:32]someone based on how great you are at systematizing everything comes after? Or is it just both?
[8:37]I mean, I think like not to draw out the marriage comparison too strongly, but it's like you have
[8:42]to have the right partner, right? You have to have someone that you know you can like build this world
[8:46]with. But then you also have to work at it. And you also have to find the time to talk about
[8:51]the hard things, the stuff that you just really don't want to deal with the logistics, the like
[8:55]nonsense that will undermine the foundation of the relationship as you don't. And you have to make
[8:59]time to not talk about those things and to just bond and be together. And you know, I think
[9:04]when the business is booming and things are going really well and we're both really busy,
[9:08]it's harder actually to find the time for the latter to just be friends and to like shoot the
[9:12]shit and to talk to each other. And that's when we know we have to really like spend the time
[9:16]checking in so that we're not just two separate trains, you know, going in our own directions.
[9:20]And do you find dividing responsibilities to be like, do you ever like I would feel like the
[9:26]biggest area of conflict would be control and who's doing what and delegating and all of that.
[9:31]And if you're both in charge, like how do you manage this? It's funny that you
[9:37]identified that so easily because I think a lot of people assume that in a partnership that the
[9:42]conflict comes from someone not doing enough. But you're right that at least in our relationship
[9:46]and I think in a lot of other work-life relationships, it tends to be the opposite where it's like
[9:50]everybody wants to do everything. And I think, you know, that can be a bit of like a female
[9:54]characteristic when it comes to work environments. And one of the things we talk about right up
[9:59]front in the book is
[10:00]that one of the most important things we've done in our work
[10:03]by a relationship was sit down with a spreadsheet
[10:06]and put each of our names at the top of column
[10:08]and then on the rows right down all of the responsibilities
[10:11]involved in the business and each of us own one.
[10:13]You know, it was sort of put an X by who owns
[10:16]what responsibility.
[10:17]And we've returned to that over the years so many times
[10:20]and of course now there's employees who have also taken
[10:22]over some of those responsibilities.
[10:24]But we also like come back to it all of the time
[10:26]and still step on each other's toes
[10:28]and getting little arguments.
[10:31]Yeah, it's challenging, especially because we're also
[10:37]both creative people.
[10:38]So it's not like, I'm the technical co-founder
[10:40]and I just do all of the website stuff.
[10:43]And Erica does all of the creative stuff.
[10:45]We both, there's overlap in our proficiencies
[10:47]and so that can make it challenging.
[10:49]There's the new book out by a woman named Eve Rodski
[10:52]and I don't know if you've already come fair play.
[10:53]We are really excited to read this book.
[10:55]We had the various company article
[10:57]about it a couple of years ago.
[10:58]Yeah.
[10:59]So it's funny because it's very similar.
[11:00]She devices a whole system based on management theory,
[11:04]management systems.
[11:05]Well, anyway, that would be very valuable for people
[11:08]who are not just varied, but they even have like cards
[11:10]like you pick as opposed to just this spreadsheet.
[11:12]Yeah.
[11:13]It would be an interesting.
[11:14]I mean, it's funny because we say all the time
[11:16]that we have taken so many of our learnings
[11:19]from our own relationships and applied them to our marriages.
[11:21]And I can see how that would work
[11:24]and we're really excited about that book.
[11:25]And I think that there are my, you know,
[11:28]if dishes is on a card or whatever,
[11:31]I think there's a similarity to a lot of the things
[11:32]that we've had to do all out over the years.
[11:34]It's not that either of us is particularly
[11:38]predisposed to being good at this thing
[11:39]or has a special competency that lends them to this realm.
[11:42]It's just that these things need to be done
[11:44]and there are two of us and so we have to divide things
[11:46]into two piles.
[11:47]And so I do think that, you know,
[11:49]Claire manages customer service
[11:51]because that's who manages customer service.
[11:54]And I think just having to like file those things
[11:57]and know that that's how it works is effective
[11:59]and productive for us.
[12:00]I don't think about it.
[12:01]It seems like communication and clear lines
[12:03]of responsibility and authority are just like so key
[12:06]to anything working.
[12:07]Yes.
[12:08]Yes.
[12:09]And yet like in my home, I don't do that at all.
[12:11]No, exactly.
[12:12]That's why I'm like, why do I know to you that?
[12:14]I don't have that system in place here.
[12:15]You're like, yeah, absolutely.
[12:17]And I think, you know, in the early days
[12:19]of our working relationship, we didn't do it
[12:21]because it was that same idea of like,
[12:23]well, we're just friends.
[12:24]We don't need to.
[12:25]Same as you're like, well, this is just my house.
[12:26]I don't need to like put in these systems,
[12:28]but you know, everybody about that.
[12:29]It's just to cumbersome.
[12:30]It feels too like heavy or right exactly.
[12:33]Like, but ultimately, like all these things
[12:35]if you put in the time that it pays off.
[12:37]Right.
[12:38]100%.
[12:39]So tell me about of a kind
[12:40]and how you founded it.
[12:41]And now I'm like obsessed with the emails
[12:43]and like as if I needed another thing to welcome.
[12:47]Another inbox.
[12:48]No, no, I mean like the merchants
[12:51]and things to buy and not that you know.
[12:53]Tell me about starting it.
[12:54]Sure.
[12:55]So we started of a kind almost 10 years ago.
[12:56]We came up with the idea in January of 2010.
[12:59]I was working in the art world and Erica was working
[13:01]in magazines and I was really excited
[13:03]about the changes that we're taking place online
[13:07]in the art world.
[13:07]So all of these avenues were opening up
[13:10]for young artists to sell their work online
[13:12]and also for people who wouldn't necessarily be able
[13:15]to purchase artwork to buy it online.
[13:18]And I was interested in how that could potentially
[13:22]translate into something like fashion
[13:24]and Eric and I got to talking about that.
[13:27]It was a sort of roundabout way
[13:28]which is that I was actually applying to a job
[13:31]at a company called 20 by 200 that sells art prints
[13:34]from a merging artist's online.
[13:35]And Erica was helping me with my cover letter.
[13:38]And it was like this sort of relationship we had
[13:40]and we would like go to each other
[13:42]with these like work challenges or questions for advice.
[13:45]And in thinking about what 20 by 200 was doing,
[13:49]I was like, is there this opportunity to do this
[13:52]in the realm of fashion?
[13:53]And Erica who was working in magazines at the time said,
[13:56]yes, and I think it's really important
[13:58]to incorporate storytelling in some way
[14:00]because if we're gonna be selling the pieces
[14:02]of these young fashion designers who no one's ever heard of,
[14:04]we have to give them a reason to care.
[14:06]And I think also at that point having worked in magazines
[14:09]for you had been there like five years,
[14:12]you really saw the future of editorial and e-commerce
[14:15]and you understood the power of storytelling to sell products.
[14:18]And so we started in 2010 with just selling limited edition
[14:23]pieces from fashion designers online.
[14:25]So some apparel mostly accessories
[14:27]and over the years that's grown to include home products,
[14:31]kids products, beauty products, and we've gone,
[14:34]and now it's no longer just limited edition.
[14:36]So we buy from the regular collections of designers
[14:38]and makers and still do the limited edition pieces.
[14:41]And the storytelling that we do has expanded
[14:43]to be not just about the designers whose pieces we sell,
[14:45]but we do a ton of just lifestyle content.
[14:47]We have our own podcast called A Few Things
[14:50]where we talk about all of our favorite discoveries.
[14:52]We have a newsletter called 10 Things That Goes Out
[14:54]Every Monday that has a very sort of cultish following.
[14:56]And it's really just 10 things that we've discovered
[14:59]that week whether it's a recipe, a book, a beauty product.
[15:02]And yeah, so we're coming up shortly
[15:05]on the nine year anniversary of the business
[15:07]and it's exciting.
[15:08]Oh my gosh.
[15:09]So what next, like you have all of these things going,
[15:12]like I feel like you have, you know,
[15:14]it's like a popcorn machine.
[15:15]And they're like, yeah, everything is popping.
[15:17]You got someone to go again.
[15:18]Do you have any vision or goals that you haven't achieved
[15:21]or you're dreaming of or?
[15:23]There are always things that pop up
[15:24]and I think we don't know exactly what the next
[15:26]like things are gonna be.
[15:27]I mean, I think one of the things we've learned
[15:28]about ourselves over the years is that we have to have
[15:30]new creative pursuits to keep us both engaged.
[15:33]And I think that the book is a strong representation
[15:36]of that plays out.
[15:38]The book was optioned, which is really exciting.
[15:40]So who knows what will happen with that?
[15:42]But that was one of our dreams in writing the book
[15:44]because we think that being able to see this on a screen
[15:47]and being able to see a female, professional
[15:49]and friendship relationship play out in that way
[15:52]would be new and something we have
[15:53]just like having as a culture seen that much of.
[15:55]I would love to watch them.
[15:56]Yeah, sounds good.
[15:57]Yeah, I'm gonna be following that anyway, guys.
[16:00]Anything you learned that you think can help other people
[16:03]about having good relationships,
[16:05]let's pretend it's not even just at work.
[16:07]Yeah, between friends or that not systematized,
[16:11]just any great overall.
[16:13]One of the more interesting things in the book
[16:15]was realizing that so many of the workwives we talk to
[16:18]either don't fight or like we're not willing to own up
[16:20]to the fact that they fought.
[16:21]And that hit home with us because for a really long time
[16:24]we never had disagreements.
[16:26]And we didn't talk about the fact
[16:27]that we didn't have disagreements.
[16:28]We just like didn't do it.
[16:30]And we started seeing a management coach
[16:32]about five years into the business
[16:34]and he immediately zeroed in on it
[16:36]as a major issue for us.
[16:37]He said, you need to learn how to have disagreements.
[16:40]You gotta do this.
[16:40]You need to have fight.
[16:42]And he was right because obviously it wasn't as if
[16:45]we never got on each other's nerves or never disagreed.
[16:47]It's just that we spend more time together
[16:49]than we do with anyone else in our lives.
[16:50]Of course we drive each other crazy sometimes.
[16:52]And of course we disagree about things
[16:54]and we just were bottling it up
[16:55]and just sort of figuring like,
[16:56]okay, we don't have the time in the day for a fight
[16:58]or like God forbid we have a fight and it turns
[17:00]into something big.
[17:01]Like what we have to keep running the business.
[17:03]So we can't go into that.
[17:04]We're going to keep it into them, right?
[17:06]We're most just really scared of what it would look like.
[17:08]And so we started just practicing
[17:11]with pretty low stakes things.
[17:12]And it has been I think sort of like the single biggest
[17:16]thing that has improved our relationship
[17:18]is this ability and comfort level
[17:20]with having disagreements.
[17:22]And we talked about it a lot in the book
[17:24]because what we found is there are various findings
[17:26]via research that say that women just don't fight,
[17:29]women are judged more harshly
[17:30]when they fight with each other.
[17:32]And if it's a man and a woman fighting
[17:34]or a man and a man fighting,
[17:35]so that's one reason women don't do it.
[17:37]The other reason is that women tend to bond over seamless.
[17:40]So if you say like, I like this band
[17:41]and I say, oh my gosh, me too, that's the basis
[17:44]that can be the basis of us as a woman.
[17:45]As a friend, right?
[17:46]Right?
[17:47]Yeah.
[17:48]So then the inverse means that if you say like,
[17:50]I like this man and I say, I don't like this band
[17:52]and that somehow seen as me saying like,
[17:54]I don't like you, right?
[17:55]And so we all want to like agree
[17:57]and we all want to just like keep things moving along smoothly
[18:01]and but as we know, you know,
[18:02]fighting is part of a healthy relationship.
[18:04]And so I think our sort of tips for that
[18:06]are starting with low stakes things, right?
[18:09]Asking somebody, you know, can you want to go for walk?
[18:11]Do you want to go for a drive
[18:12]because bringing up challenging conversations
[18:14]is so much easier if you don't have to let people in the eye.
[18:16]Another thing is just, you know,
[18:18]ending meetings or conversations with the line.
[18:20]How are you feeling about everything?
[18:22]It's such an open ended question
[18:23]that gives somebody the opportunity
[18:25]if they aren't feeling great to say that.
[18:27]And maybe, you know, they'll send it back to you
[18:29]and that'll give you the opportunity
[18:31]to bring up the thing you've been wanting to say.
[18:33]So I would say that was one of the more impactful things
[18:35]for us in the book.
[18:36]And I think related to those tips,
[18:39]for me at least owning up to the fact
[18:41]that if I'm feeling something strongly enough,
[18:44]that's reason enough to surface it.
[18:46]Because I think I had this natural inclination to say,
[18:49]like, well, it's not a real problem.
[18:50]This is just like a thing I'm feeling
[18:51]or it's like something that's bothering me
[18:53]and like I'm making too big of a deal about it
[18:55]or I'm like over, you know, overdramatizing it
[18:57]and recognizing that if it's upsetting me that much,
[19:00]then it is probably affecting our relationship
[19:03]or the facting the way that we operate in a day-to-day way.
[19:06]So it's worth surfing it and just saying,
[19:08]like this is a feeling I've been having
[19:10]and just so that you're aware
[19:11]that this is affecting me in that way.
[19:12]Even if that's not the intention,
[19:14]even if there's nothing you can do about it,
[19:16]but here's where we are.
[19:17]And did you have to use some of these tools
[19:19]when writing this book?
[19:20]Yeah, yeah, totally, totally.
[19:22]Yeah, totally.
[19:23]It's funny because the thing we always say about the book
[19:26]is we went into it having been working together
[19:30]for like seven or eight years at that point
[19:32]and we knew really well how to work together
[19:34]and despite the fact that we had all of these sort of ideas
[19:38]for how one does a successful working relationship
[19:40]and no point did we sit down and say,
[19:42]how should we write this book together?
[19:44]We just dove right in and in retrospect,
[19:46]we looked back and we were like,
[19:47]why don't we sit down and say, here's how this is gonna go
[19:50]and like let's make sure we're both okay with this.
[19:52]And I think that again, you know,
[19:54]we got another lesson that you know,
[19:56]when we're starting new things that we've never done before,
[19:58]let's actually take the time to sit down and say,
[20:00]How are we going to approach this?
[20:01]Because spoiler, writing a book is nothing
[20:03]like starting a business.
[20:04]Like they're both really hard.
[20:05]And they both have that in common.
[20:07]Yeah, they both require, you know,
[20:09]you sacrifice a lot of sleep.
[20:11]But beyond that, they're totally different processes.
[20:13]And what we should have done is sat down and said,
[20:16]like, here's how we're doing it.
[20:17]Sometimes they have to experiment a little.
[20:19]Oh, for me.
[20:19]Yeah.
[20:20]Yeah.
[20:20]So how did you end up doing it?
[20:22]So we spent a lot of, we did all the interviews together.
[20:25]We put together outlines together.
[20:26]And then I would write the first draft of chapters.
[20:30]And I would kick that to Claire and Claire would edit them.
[20:32]And then send them back to me.
[20:33]And we would sort of go back and forth,
[20:35]editing them until we were happy with the ways that they were.
[20:38]And then a lot of time in Google Drive.
[20:40]Yes.
[20:40]And yeah, and didn't spend a ton of time together
[20:43]in the actual writing process, which I think
[20:45]was probably helpful and nice, too, just because it
[20:47]requires so many long hours and being
[20:49]able to do that on your own schedule and, like, you know,
[20:52]in your world.
[20:52]We were also marathon training.
[20:53]I was training time here, which was like a little other thing.
[20:56]Yeah.
[20:57]So it wasn't, I don't even know where our time would have been.
[21:00]Yeah, at that moment.
[21:01]Yeah.
[21:01]Yeah.
[21:02]Well, is there anything you feel like you
[21:03]don't have time to do, given all the stuff you're doing?
[21:06]Like, is there anything you miss?
[21:07]Anything you've had to cut out of your lives?
[21:08]I'm just wondering.
[21:09]I miss being creative.
[21:11]Because I think, and I would say probably do that, too.
[21:14]I think, you know, we both got into this business
[21:16]because we like being creative and we were excited about writing
[21:19]stories and running photo shoots and picking out
[21:22]clothes and thinking creatively about problems.
[21:24]And, you know, when you start a business,
[21:25]that ends up being a really small percentage of your time.
[21:29]And I, yeah, I'm like desperate to go take an art class
[21:34]or something like that, just to sort of like reinvigorate
[21:37]that part of me.
[21:38]Yeah, same.
[21:39]And I think for me, I've struggled to even figure out
[21:41]what those creative outlets are at this point,
[21:44]like what I'm even interested in, because it
[21:46]feels like a long time since I've done any of those things,
[21:49]like where would I even go?
[21:50]Maybe you guys need to hire, like, a new CEO in you.
[21:53]Yes, just throw in the sounds.
[21:55]That's good.
[21:56]It's not the, yeah.
[21:57]I mean, just at the point where you can be like,
[21:59]chief creative about it.
[22:00]Yes, I think so.
[22:01]Just saying.
[22:02]Yeah.
[22:03]Anyway, having survived the book writing process,
[22:05]do you have any advice to someone about to undertake it
[22:07]or who wants to write a book or who wants to write a book
[22:10]with someone else?
[22:11]Well, you really loved that outline.
[22:13]Yeah, I should find it.
[22:16]I can't think of it off the top of my head.
[22:17]There is an outline.
[22:18]I'll send you the link for it.
[22:19]But basically, it helps you think about just like structure
[22:23]and tracking things, because honestly, there was just
[22:25]like with all of these, you know,
[22:27]we had each chapter in different Google Docs.
[22:28]There were different versions of different chapters
[22:30]as things get edited and just being able to keep tabs
[22:33]on where each of these things were at this documents
[22:35]with Claire.
[22:36]This is with our editor.
[22:37]This is, you know, where like everything lives
[22:39]and what the word count as of each of those components
[22:42]was super helpful just to feel like if I look at this,
[22:45]I can kind of see a status report.
[22:47]Perfect.
[22:48]Yeah.
[22:48]All right.
[22:49]Yeah.
[22:50]Well, thank you.
[22:51]Thank you so much.
[22:52]You show and sharing all your advice.
[22:54]And now I feel like I've got to get myself a work life.
[22:57]You sing a little.
[22:57]You want to do an OK on your own?
[22:58]No, but you're having a lot of fun.
[23:02]It is fun.
[23:03]It is fun.
[23:04]Thank you.
[23:05]Thank you.
[23:07]This episode has been sponsored by Book of the Month Club.
[23:10]Book of the Month.com and your code, Zibi,
[23:12]to get your first book for $5.
[23:14]Thanks for listening to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[23:17]You can follow me on Instagram at Moms Don't Have Time
[23:20]to Read Books.
[23:21]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[23:23]for the Sound Editing.
[23:24]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[23:26]for providing this fantastic intro and now
[23:28]trim music.
[23:29]Thanks for listening.
[23:30]You could always email me at Zibi at Zibi Owens.com.