WMW# 14: Jyotsna Ramachandran, mum of 2, author & owner of online publishing company

"I think it's just the freedom that my business has given me, I would never ever go back to my corporate job"

This week’s issue comes to you from Bel Ombre in Mauritius. It’s beautiful here, sunny and windy; a perfect escape from the heat in Dubai.

View from our room

I’m particularly excited to bring you today’s issue as it is full of gold. From a mum of 2 in India who became a creator by self-publishing her own book and then helping others self-publish their legacies.

7 years into the business, she now employs 6 mums and has full freedom of her own schedule.

Read how motherhood got her started on this journey and how with her husband she is on the path to financial freedom.

Meet Jyotsna Ramachandran, mum of 2, owner of online publishing company and author

Jyotsna with her family in India

Q. Tell us a little bit about yourself

I'm the founder and CEO of Happy Self-Publishing where I help people publish their books; I’ve been running it for 7 years now. I'm also the author of a book called Job Escape Plan and two times TedX speaker.

I have two kids, they are 8 and 6 now. I love dancing and travel planning; more than the traveling, I love the planning part :)

Q. Tell us a little bit about how you started your journey in the creator economy. Where did the idea come from? Why did you decide to do it online?

About 10 years ago, I quit my job thinking I’m going to try entrepreneurship. My first business was in staff recruitment and I did that pretty well for two years. And right at the stage when I wanted to expand it, I had my first kid. That completely changed my lifestyle because my priorities changed. I could no longer go out and meet my clients and work the way I used to work before my kids.

I decided to try to start an online business which would give me the freedom and flexibility to work from home.

I looked online and I came across many articles and videos about the success from self-publishing via Kindle Publishing.

I would find good writers online, pay them for ghost-writing about trending topics and publish them as e-books. The royalties I made from them were far higher than what I was making in my recruitment business so I shut that down and focussed on publishing books.

After publishing some 50 different titles on Kindle, I wrote my own - the Job Escape Plan. The satisfaction of writing your own book is so different, because it's your own story.

When I shared that, it went on to be featured in inc.com and some other places; that's when people started noticing that I'm doing something unique from home. As a result, a lot of people in my network asked me if I can help them publish their books.

This gave me the idea to start Happy Self Publishing. I found that there are so many authors with authentic stories to share, but they did not know how to publish them - which is what I could help them with. And, luckily from the ghost-writing I had been doing, I already had cover designers and editors and formatters in my network; I just had to put them together as a team and start my company. So that's how it all happened.

Q. What are the challenges you faced?

Initially, working from home was a challenge. In my initial days, I would get distracted very fast. There were no boundaries. I had small kids. There were no fixed work timings or even a fixed workspace - things were all over the place!

There would be one month when I'm really productive and the next month I’d be attending my cousin's wedding. Then I realized that I need a steady inflow of cash, especially once I started expanding my team because I was responsible for their growth. It was no longer just about me and my side hustle.

So once I started becoming more serious about my business, I had to create a lot of discipline and also structure in my business. It took me about about six months to start having a steady stream of clients.

Q.How do you manage your time as a business owner, individual, mum and wife?

I am pretty shameless when it comes to asking for help. So the first thing I did was move to an apartment right next to my parents house in Chennai.

The other thing is, I started hiring people for things that can give me time- like cooking, cleaning and even sometimes babysitting. Initially, I thought it’s a big expense but I quickly realized that those few hours give me so much of productive time.

The other thing I do is put everything in my calendar, team meetings and also my personal tasks. Even stuff like going on a date with my husband, or attending my Zumba class, everything is on the calendar so that my clients cannot pick those timings and that I don't have to feel bad that I have to miss one thing to be able to be present in for another.

And then the third important thing was hiring a core team. After working with freelancers for a while, I realized that I needed to have a core team who were as interested in my business as I am. My core team now comprises 6 project managers who are all now full time employees. So I think these are some systems that have helped me.

All the 6 people in my team are mums. And I didn't do that consciously. But today when I look back, it's such an amazing thing.

How has having an online business in the creator economy changed your life?

I think it's just the freedom that it has given me, I would never ever go back to my corporate job. I think you need to understand whether your personality suits you to be an employee or an entrepreneur. If you value your security and stability, being an employee is a comfortable type of life. But for me, I felt very limiting.

When I realized the first month of leaving my job, that I can actually go on a holiday without having to ask anybody, I realized, wow, this is priceless. So I think that freedom that entrepreneurship has given me has been the biggest life changing things.

Q.How do you see the future potential of the creator economy, especially for mums?

So throughout my life, until a few years ago, I thought that I'm not at all creative. But the truth is, all of us have creativity in us. If you're packing your kids lunch, and you make that boring bread look great, I think that is creativity.

I think the biggest change that I see in the future is that people will figure out that based on their personality type, they can show their creativity in an infinite number of ways. And I think the web has facilitated this.

Because of the internet, you don't need anybody’s stamp of approval to do anything, right? I think that has opened so many doors.

Initially, we were only catering to authors who would come to us with a written manuscript. But I realized that there are many more people who have a book in their head, especially mums, and have not written it yet. So now we have a programme that coaches people to write, we have angel writers who will interview them and write.

Q.So as a working mum, what is your ultimate goal?

My ultimate goal would be to become financially free in the next five years. What I mean by that is eventually, our savings and investments will take care of our current lifestyle. We spend a lot of time with our kids and do all the things but then, at the back of our mind, we know that we need to save up for their college and other such things. So we want to free ourselves from those kinds of external pressures.

Q.What is your biggest productivity hack?

My biggest productivity hack is to use a journal it's called the Daily Connection Journal. I made this with my husband for us and our clients.

Via this journal, we start the day with gratitude that puts you in a positive state of mind. And we also write down our tasks for the day in the morning and we read them out to each other so we both know what we are doing that day. So if I need some extra time, my husband knows that he has to be with the kids; this makes it easy for us to plan out the day.

And, at the end of the day, we write down the one positive thing that happened, one powerful action we took and what was the learning from the day. The days we do this I feel very productive.

Q.Where do you get your inspiration?

Everyday when I see my kids, they inspire me to keep getting better and better. Till then, I never thought that I could be anybody's role model. But after becoming a mum, I feel a lot more responsible not just towards my kids, but towards the next generation.

Q.What do you do in your me time? How does it help you?

Well, this is something that I discovered only five years ago. I put my daughter in a dance class when she was three; she hated it and ran away. But I joined the class and ever since I've been dancing regularly, and it just makes me feel amazing.

Q.What is your advice to mums that are looking to get into the Creator Economy to do something like you've done?

I think they just need to ask themselves, what are their divine gifts, because each of us are so unique.

I think as a mum, all of us start questioning things, right? Like, before I became a mum, I never questioned my life; I just thought this is how it's supposed to be. But now that you are you have a family, you want to be the best for them.

This is a good time for you to reevaluate your life and ask yourself if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, or if there is more.

I think when you ask these questions to yourself, it'll help you discover so many things about yourself. And use that as an inspiration to create something whether it's a company, whether it's a product or a book, or anything else.

Use your motherhood as an opportunity to take your life to the next level rather than looking at it as a break or a pause in your life.

Q.Any other tool that really makes your life and business easier apart from your journal, and your calendar?

I think because of the online nature of my business, Slack is one tool that we love as a company. Since we'll have like 25 clients to handle it becomes crazy to have everything on email. We use email only for client client communication, but all internal communication is on Slack, which is very efficient.

Q.What's the best thing you've read or watched lately?

Well, one book that I've been talking about everywhere is this book called The Gap and the Gain. It talks about how we measure the distance between where we are and where we want to be, which is the gap; rather than looking at where we were and where we have reached, which is the game.

So the more we think about our game, we'll be in a much better a mind space, which will help us achieve our goals faster.

Q.Do you have a favorite quote that you'd like to share that you often go back to?

I don't know where I read this, but it's keeps keeps coming back to me.

You're yet to create the best version of yourself.

I feel that and it inspires me to keep getting better and better.

—

If you enjoyed this and feel someone else can benefit from this conversation or this community, please share!

If you have any questions or comments for Jyotsna, do leave a comment here or hit reply and I will make sure she gets your message.

Have a great week!

Love,

Abha