The Hiring Phase

Kate Erickson Dumas
4 min readAug 28, 2017

Next step in going from idea to launch is the hiring phase.

This is where you continuing putting one foot in front of the other, and taking your massively awesome (and literally massive) project ONE step at a time.

By continuing to take one step at a time, you will be revealing the steps that, right now, might seem like “unknowns”, or that you’re not super clear on.

This was certainly the case for us with The Freedom Journal: we didn’t know we’d need an editor, an illustrator, a book launch manager… we discovered these needs through taking one step forward every single day.

Our hiring journey is detailed out in the audio version of this post, but to share a few images and a video with you of the process we were going through at this point in our journey from idea to launch, I’ve included our timeline and other visual evidence that proves we were everything BUT all-knowing when it came to our next step…

Just a reminder that our Hiring Phase really spanned May… to about September.

The Freedom Journal Project Timeline

The Freedom Journal Editing process

This was Whitney’s “first pass” at The Freedom Journal digital file, and keep in mind, this is just 4 pages of hundreds…

Our design brief for The Freedom Journal

My email to Brandy detailing out our design and illustrations request for The Freedom Journal wasn’t short.

Little did I know at the time that it would only be the tip of the iceberg in terms of how much work Brandy would end up doing for The Freedom Journal launch.

A behind-the-scenes of our Kickstarter video creation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyldkU_dNSA

Caleb Wojcik and his team helped us not only take incredible lifestyle photos with The Freedom Journal, which would end up being our main collateral for our marketing, but also create the Kickstarter video.

The video on your Kickstarter page is arguably the most important piece. It’s the first thing people see when they land on your Kickstarter page, and if it doesn’t grab their attention or engage them to the point they’re willing to scroll the page, you’ve just lost a potential backer.

Here’s the video that Caleb created of a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of our Kickstarter video for The Freedom Journal…

Richie Norton on the ground in China for The Freedom Journal

Richie provided us so many incredible touch points with China. Each time he visited he would send us pictures of the entire process that was going on — in real time — and that was really special for us to be a part of.

He even caught us on FaceTime during one of his visits, and he walked us around the factory as The Freedom Journal was being printed and collated. Check it out!

https://player.vimeo.com/external/159394675.hd.mp4?s=1bf928fad93b33227abe1592917fa8c777474996&profile_id=119

Here’s a shot of Richie on the ground in China with The Freedom Journal as it was being printed. Now THAT is a lot of pages!

The Hiring Phase of going from Idea to Launch

The Hiring Phase is all about trusting that if you continue taking one step towards accomplishing your BIG goal every single day, that subsequent steps WILL reveal themselves.

Oftentimes that in the form of a task or step you may not be familiar with, in which case you have 3 options:

1. Hire an expert to manage that task or step

2. Research — Google and ask others who have already been there before to help guide you

3. Barter with someone who can help you accomplish that task or step

You’ve got this!

Originally published at www.eofire.com on August 28, 2017.

--

--

Kate Erickson Dumas

Heartbeat at EOFire, an award winning podcast w/ John Lee Dumas. Host of Kate's Take & co-host of Nicole & Kate Can Relate. Goal: lifestyle freedom!