A couple of years ago, Penguin Random House, or more specifically, zeitgeist, which is an imprint of Penguin, approached me to create self love affirmation cards, and I immediately said yes, because that's what I always do, even if I don't know whether I can do it. 

Well, there's a whole behind the scenes of this process I've never shared publicly. It's got some imposter syndrome, the tug of war with my editor, and a lot of weird mixed feelings I had after it came out. Today is the day I'm spilling the tea.

You're listening to This is How You Think, the show that helps you remodel your mindset. I'm your host, Jule Kim. Let's dive in. 

So here's what happened. Penguin wanted to try making affirmation cards for their self help category, and they wanted to partner with a creator to make it happen. 

I was lucky, because I knew someone at Penguin who suggested me for the project. We had some history from a while back, because they used to work at HarperCollins and had pulled me into the Harper influencer program, I think back in COVID. So when this project came up, they thought of me. 

The team checked out my socials, thought I'd probably be a good fit and reached out to me. 

So this didn't happen from me going to them with a pitch. They had the idea, they went looking for someone to collab with, and that someone ended up being me. 

I said yes, because that's what I do. I'm the person who's always going to grab opportunity with both hands, like, gimme, gimme, gimme, and then I freak out later. 

And in this case, I freaked out pretty quick because they asked me to submit a writing sample. 

I remember almost crying while I was working on it, because the whole time, I kept saying, Oh my God, but I'm not Brene Brown. Brene Brown is warm. She talks about vulnerability. She looks like she could be your next door neighbor slash best friend. And that's not me. 

Everybody knows that I'm the person you come to when you need someone to slap you across the face, like that's my vibe. And I've literally had people comment on my socials that reading my posts made them feel like a giant hand just slapped them. 

So I went into this feeling like I was just the wrong person for the whole thing, even though I had said yes. I don't know if you've ever done that where you asked for an opportunity, but then your brain starts telling you all the reasons you're the wrong person for it, even though you volunteered yourself for this thing. 

Yeah.

But somehow I submit the writing sample anyway. I immediately feel like I’m going to throw up after I hit send. I spot 2 things I should have written differently and I’m like omg how could I not see that.

It took them less than a day to get back to me, and they said yes.

I feel so silly for being cray, cray. 

Later on, they tell me they wouldn't have even reached out if they didn't already think I could do it. And I feel like this is a really key thing for all of us to remember, okay.

But in the moment, I was like, cool, cool, but still gonna stay in my imposter syndrome, which lasted over the next six months, because that's how long it took to finish the content for these cards. 

And oh my god, it was not easy. There was some more crying, definitely some screaming, because I was so frustrated. 

Honestly, I think writing a single book would have been easier. I probably went into this with some delusions. I think I felt like this was going to be a breeze, because these are 52 cards and they're short. I could probably bang that out in a week. 

I didn't realize that when you have 52 cards, you're covering 52 different angles, and each one has to be a complete concept, but also feel like part of something bigger, with this unifying theme of self love. 

And then with a card, you have a physical limit on how much you can say on any one card. It's a balance, especially when you're like me, and you don't want to write just some fluffy inspiration. 

And that was my whole problem with affirmation cards in the first place. I think a big part of the reason why I had such a meltdown over the writing sample and kept saying the thing of, but I'm not Brene Brown, is because I used to think affirmations were stupid. 

See, most affirmations just give you these pretty words, these lofty ideals with no bridge to help you actually get there. And you're supposed to repeat these phrases and magically believe them, but since you don't actually understand what the things mean, it ends up feeling like you're just telling yourself pretty little lies.

So I wanted mine to be different, and I wanted them to actually make you think. 

Well, the writing to do that was hard, and so was the editing. I would turn in my copy, and then my editor would send me her edits, and then I would edit her edits.

Which I know sounds weird, but I used to be an editor, so I'm sure I was the worst kind of client. Like, you know how they say doctors make terrible patients. Yeah, former editors probably make other editors want to scream. 

And I was aware of that, but even trying to be mindful, like whenever she changed something and it didn't sound like me anymore, or it changed the meaning of what I was trying to say, oh, my God, I was not okay with that. I couldn't let it go. Maybe it was the autistic side of me, I don't know. 

But like, here's an example. One of my cards says "love is my birthright." She didn't like the word "birthright" because she felt like it was too religious. We obviously did not agree on this one. 

And at one point she said to me, "I'm not used to having my edits edited." 

That was fair, I get it, but also I wasn't going to let the final product sound like someone else wrote it when it was going to have my name on it. 

And to her credit, I do want to say this, she really did try to accommodate me, and I got my way most of the time. We navigated this process together, but it wasn't easy, because it was a tug of war so much of the time, which, from what I hear, is pretty common for most authors. The editing process is just not fun. 

But the thing that made this even harder, and really hard for me to speak up is because I was afraid of somehow losing the deal. And this is kind of embarrassing, but I remember I even called a meeting with my editor just to ask her how much I was allowed to push back with her, because it felt like I was walking on thin ice.

 She was really great about it. She said that my voice took priority and that she would do her best to support me with that, and she did. She was incredibly kind through the whole process, even if we didn't always agree. In my book, that's really the best you can hope for. 

And I'm guessing some of you have been here too, where you're so grateful to even have the opportunity that you don't speak up for yourself the way you should, like with job offers. 

Incidentally, I found out way later, just last year actually, that I probably could have gotten three times more money if I'd had a book agent negotiate for me. I showed this woman my contract. She's married to a pretty big author in the Sci Fi fantasy space, and she handles all of his negotiations and stuff, so she knows how this goes. And she was like, Yeah, you could have gotten a lot more money. 

So fun times! Moral of the story, if you ever get offered a book deal, you should go and get yourself an agent and let them handle this for you, because apparently they'll automatically get you at least 20% more just because they're a book agent and the publisher won't try to low ball them as much as you, because agent knows what's up, versus a rando like me. 

So after working on the copy and then going through all of the rounds of editing for six months, it was time to design the artwork for the box and the cards. And the thing that most people don't know is that I had nothing to do with the design, because that was handled by the publisher. Well, the cards came out looking very floral..and feminine..very not me. 

If it were up to me, these cards would be plain black with maybe silver or gold foil edging, and they will be very simple looking. I would probably go for more elegance instead of super girly. 

And I don't hate this design, but when people see them, and if they also know me, like they've actually told me that the cards don't really look like my vibe. It's okay, though, because the cards are selling to way more people who don't know me than people who do, and the target market was for women 20 to 40. So I get it.

 The cards eventually get manufactured, and the publisher sends me my advanced copies. I do an unboxing video on Tiktok, but I don't tell my parents about the cards for the longest time. I think it took me maybe two months to actually tell them, because my parents, they shit on everything. 

That's just how they are. Very typical Korean parents. For example, when I got married, they criticized the hell out of my wedding invitations. It was all like, this design is ugly, and how dare you put your name before your fiance's name. This color is fugly, so I kind of already knew what was coming. 

When I showed them the affirmation cards over FaceTime, it was pretty much what I expected. They said the design was horrible, looked very childish, and it was weird, because even though I didn't love the design, it still kind of hurt. This was the first time I'd ever published something. You know, I'm seeing my name in print, and they weren't just happy for me. 

Maybe I sound bitter, but I'm not. It would have been nice if their reaction had been different, but I don't hold it against them. They are who they are. Like what are you going to do? 

But side note here, if you're not crusty curmudgeon old Asian parents, if someone you know has achieved something, and even if it's not something you understand or support, the least you could do is not be a bag of dicks about it, okay? 

If you care about the relationship, don't be a drag, because I promise they remember who supported them and who didn't.

Anyway, the funny thing is, my mom has started giving boxes of my cards to people because now it's a pride thing. Her daughter is a published author, but she's also confused because it's not a real book. 

She's not the only one. I've gotten comments like that from other people too. "Well, it's not like you're really an author, though, right? It's not like this is a real book." Not gonna lie, those comments, they kind of suck, especially with the kind of contract I had. 

See, when you're someone like Jefferson Fisher or Your Rich BFF with millions of followers, you get a huge advance. The publisher rolls out the red carpet for you. They set up a book tour. You go on the TV morning shows. You're speaking on really big podcasts, like the Mel Robbins show. Like that's a book deal. 

I didn't get that. I was paid a pretty small amount. My contract spelled out exactly how many newsletters I was supposed to send, how many social posts I would make, how many ways I'd promote the cards. The marketing was a partnership, and a lot of it fell on me. 

So when people made comments that I wasn't a real author, part of me felt pretty exposed, because I kind of agreed with him.

But okay, whatever. I didn't feel good about a lot of this, but I was trying to remember to be grateful. 

Launch day creeps up. It's Halloween 2023 I'm trying to get as many pre orders as I can, and then the cards come out. I'm talking about them, I promote them like I'm supposed to, and that's when people start coming out of the woodwork to pick my brain on how this happened. 

I tell them the truth. Well, they approached me, and I think it's because I had a following. I can't really give you an inside look into the process, if that's what you're looking for, because I didn't have to submit a book proposal. 

Every single time I said that, I felt like I was admitting something shady like this wasn't legit, like because I didn't pitch them 100 times and didn't have some scrappy underdog story, like this somehow counted for less.

If you're thinking I had imposter syndrome, yes, indeedily, but not just about the opportunity itself, like, who am I to make affirmation cards, but it was even on a more meta level, where I felt who am I to even talk about how I got this? 

And maybe you can relate, because it feels like this unspoken rule that achievements only count if you suffered for them, if you can point to the grind and the years of trying. 

But what if the opportunity just showed up? Well, then it feels like you got lucky, and that's a really terrible place to be in. I honestly felt like people were gonna think, Oh, she's just another privileged girl like, shut up and stop talking. 

So I never talked about this. I just kept going. I promoted the cards. I booked myself on podcasts. I think I went on something like 12 podcasts in q4 that year. It was crazy, but I was putting in my reps! 

And I figured maybe I would feel better after everything settled down, after a while, like I was going to feel different, proud or like I finally arrived. I thought something in my life would shift, but the cards came out and nothing really changed. Life just kept going. Surprise! I was the same person with the same problems. 

I don't think I'm the only one here. I know a lot of us do this. We somehow expect that finishing some big goal will finally make us feel the way we want to feel. 

Like if I do this, then I get to feel happy and good about myself, but we know that that's not how it works, right? Like you get to the finish line, you don't feel that way, and then you wonder, What's wrong with you? Except nothing is wrong with you. That's just how it is. 

The finish line doesn't transform you because you're still you on the other side. And until you put in some work around that, like you actually deal with being you, everything is gonna look the same. 

The other thing that made this really weird was feeling pressured by other people to feel happier about this, to be more excited, and I just didn't. For the entire first year after the cards released, I had really mixed feelings about the whole thing. I've already told you why. 

And I think a lot of us have experienced some version of this. You achieve something, but it came in a way that didn't feel good or it doesn't match your expectations, so you shrink, you add disclaimers, and you don't let yourself just fully have it. 

It took me a long time to see that I was waiting to feel proud. I was waiting to feel like I had earned it, and that feeling never came because I didn't think I deserved it. 

And not because the cards weren't doing well. I found out way later that most books actually don't sell much at all, like half of all books don't even sell a dozen copies. But here I was, my cards were selling okay. It's not like I was Harry Potter or anything, but my editor did tell me that the sales surpassed all of their expectations, so that's pretty cool. 

It was a good reminder that they wouldn't have chosen to work with me if I hadn't already built something, that this wasn't an accident. 

Plus, I think about how a lot of men would handle this, you know what I mean. They wouldn't be questioning whether they deserve it. They would be owning the shizzles out of this, tooting their own horn left and right. 

I'm not saying we need to become that, but maybe we can borrow a little bit of that, sprinkle it on, you know, just take the win.

What do you have to lose? 

So, yeah, there's the story. 

That's it for today. 

By the way, if you ever want me to cover something specific on the show text the link in the show notes, it's kind of like getting free coaching. If I were you, I would do it - just saying. 

Anywho, thank you so much for listening, and remember, I believe in you. See you next time.