Working on Other Projects - Temporary Music Hiatus

Hello everyone,

Sorry for the short absence between posts. Recently, I have not been very active in my music production and composition training, but I have instead been working on THREE of my other projects: 1. Publishing my diet book. 2. Starting an Amazon FBA Private Label shipping business.

3. Pitching Open Innovation product ideas to companies who will accept them. This is the first post in a three part series. These three things take priority over my music somewhat because if I am able to start some of these revenue streams, I will be able to put some of that money toward my music career; These are all passive income streams which can build over time, so I would like to start the ball rolling with them first before progressing with music. With that said, I would like to explain my 3 steps.

1. As some of you may know, I have been working on a diet book for a while since I lost about 45 lbs. after moving to Japan. I was inspired by my mother to have an interest in health and fitness from when I was younger, but after trying a few different weight loss methods I didn't have such good results, so I decided to make my own diet after getting some advice from people such as nutritionists and pharmacists in Japan.

Initially, the book was kind of easy for me to write because I enjoyed researching a lot about weight loss and reading through a lot of the scientific articles and journals that are out there. I would wake up at about 6AM at the latest every day for over a month and just research and write for about as long as I could throughout the day. When all was said and done, I finished my book in about 1.5 to 2 months.

After that, I had a rough draft of the book which was only a Microsoft Word file, so I had to polish everything up, add illustrations, and get it into a format I could readily hand to a printer. My first step was to get all of the inside content done. I finished a lot of graphs in Microsoft Excel and researched a lot of nutritional data about several foods. I also designed some other graphs and infographics. I also took some pictures of food and images for the cover of the book. I originally wanted to pay someone to illustrate some of the content, but I was inspired by my father to complete the illustrations myself. My dad has always been a big DIY guy and I remember him saying it's better to try DIY because you can save money and learn new skills at the same time. So I decided to try it and I learned how to work with Photoshop-type software and Vector illustration software and Desktop Publishing software. I learned a lot and was able to get some nice (or so I say :) ) illustrations done.

After some more work such as indexing and source referencing everything, I finally had a finished, print-ready copy of the book. I noticed that many of the top-selling diet books out there had some quotes from notable figures on the front and/or back covers, so I decided to send my book out to some dietitians and doctors for review and comment. To do this, I had to get an NDA so that someone could not take my ideas and publish my diet before me. It was because of this that it took some time. However, I was able to get a few quotes from some dietitians and doctors and was able to take some of my favorites and add them to the cover of my book. I was praised and my work was validated by the experts! Not only that, but the dietitians and doctors who read my book were surprised by how well everything was researched and written. Besides the moment from when I started to lose weight, this was the moment I could really feel that I have a winner on my hands which could be a big hit but more importantly than that, teach people about weight loss and show them new ways they can lose weight. This all brings us to now where I am making a marketing and advertising plan and deciding the publishing method of the book. After all, what good is it if the book is too expensive to produce or I can't get the word out on the book?

Project 2... project 3? I have to stop writing now so that I can go work on them! I'll be posting more about these efforts in the days to come. Please stay tuned!

To read a few pages of my book to get a gist of what it's about, please click here.

Till next time,

SCOPS