Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kelly Lydick. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Kelly, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I had wanted to be self-employed for quite some time. I started working in the Publishing industry during graduate school, and began gaining knowledge in that field. I knew it would be a somewhat long road to realize the vision that I had.

After I published my first book, Mastering the Dream, I started to experience some health issues that helped me to look at what was really important in my life. I entered the professional certificate program for Gateway Dreaming Coaching, a modality that is used to help people engage with their dreams as a tool for waking life. I used that modality to help rebalance my health and reconnect with my biggest vision for my career and my life.

Soon after, I started my first business, Waking the Dream, in order to be able to market my services to potential clients. But I didn’t want to let the publishing services completely go–I had always loved books since I was a child. I also didn’t know enough to differentiate the available services I was offering. In a sort of naive way, I lumped together the publishing consulting work and the Gateway Dreaming Coaching work even though they were very different. The result was that my potential clients didn’t know what I was really offering.

So I picked up Pia Silva’s book, Badass Your Brand. With the insights from her book, I began to see the two service offerings very differently–that of the dream coaching and that of the publishing consulting. Meanwhile, I will still in my full-time job as an editor. I was laid off when my newborn son was only three months old, and when that company closed, it was then that I decided to take the leap to becoming fully self-employed.

I decided to rebrand the publishing consulting work as a separate entity, and I called it The Story Laboratory. I was happy to learn that that particular business name wasn’t taken, so I registered the business name with with my state’s corporate business division.

From there I started to market each business according to their service offerings, and that went well. So well that I began to scale the publishing consulting work. I went from offering editorial work to potential authors and publishing houses, to offering full-service publishing consulting from book concept to book distribution. I put into place several strategic partners with book printing and binding vendors, a distributor, and a marketing and publicity strategic partnership with the Blue Cottage Agency in Minnesota.

Then I realized I was shepherding authors from start to finish and then sending them off into the world once their book was done. Why couldn’t I publish and manage the content, too?

Back in college I had published a poetry chapbook, We Once Were, as part of my undergraduate practicum learning the steps involved in publishing a book. As a part of that, I came up with the name, Pure Carbon Publishing since a business name was the proper way to begin registering books for distribution and sale. After giving it some concerted thought, I decided to revive the Pure Carbon Publishing name, and start publishing books. We now have three titles. The Physics and Poetry of Eastern Herbal Medicine, by Dr. Judyth Shamosh, recently won the silver Nautilus award in health and wellness. It also placed in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and the National Indie Excellence Awards.

The One Inside: 30 Days to Your Authentic Self, by Tammy Sollenberger, also launched in 2022. Tammy is a highly successful licensed therapist out of New Hampshire, and host of the podcast The One Inside, which boasts more than 350k downloads. And finally, my own Dream Incubation for Greater Self Awareness: A Handbook, which is really a beginners guide to working with dreams and the dream incubation technique. We’re actively acquiring titles at this time.

And I continue my work with Waking the Dream as well as the team with The Story Laboratory.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

At Waking the Dream I offer Gateway Dreaming Coaching, Life Coaching, and work in consciousness expansion. I have additional certifications in Meditation, Optimal Health & Healing; Mindfulness; ThetaHealing, and many others. I combine these modalities to bring about desired change for clients, which could include increasing confidence and personal empowerment, breaking free from co-dependent patterns, better aligning to a spiritual practice, honing intuitive skills and insight, helping shatter limiting beliefs, and helping clear stuck emotions—really in any area of life in which these are affected. The results of these personalized sessions are fast, efficient, and effective to bring about long-term change and empowerment.

And my coaching skills come from a life-long study of spiritualism and the modalities in which I’m certified. In this capacity, I’ve studied with some of the best spiritual teachers on the planet (and a couple who have since passed on). This includes Eckhart Tolle, Ram Dass, Mary Bell, Rabbi Michael Shapiro, Denise Linn, Carolyn Myss, and others, and I compliment that learning with my own hard-won insights about life.

I’d really love people to know that personal change is truly possible with focus and commitment. I believe that the clearer and more authentic we are with our own self, the more attentive we each can become to our goals. So many people suffer as a result of faulty beliefs and thinking that run like computer programs behind the veil of consciousness. And this can inhibit personal progress and career success. The modalities I use foster permanent change for the long-term, not short-term apparent success that doesn’t stick.

At The Story Laboratory, I offer full-service consulting for aspiring and established authors and publishing houses. 2023 officially marks my 19th year in publishing, and I’ve partnered with some of the best people in design, editing, and distribution to bring clients the highest quality book design and the widest distribution reach possible for self-publishing authors.

I take a personalized approach to the projects that come in for work. I’m involved in every single project at some level to help guide the team to making the best books possible for our authors. Many self-publishing authors are mislead to believe that Amazon is the only way to self-publish, but I offer a wider range of distribution options for which I facilitate the set up. This equates to higher sales numbers for individual titles—and greater success for our authors.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When I decided that I wanted to publish books under the Pure Carbon name, I was determined to secure a distributor where we could warehouse books. Some small presses don’t have this available to authors; they manufacture in small runs and store stock in a home office, or they print “on-demand.” But I knew from being in the business that the type of operation I wanted included this element. It was important to me to delegate the task of fulfillment to another party so that I could also free up time for other tasks to run the business.

I began researching the potential distributors and chose a select list that met our criteria for beginning sales volume and services offered. Each one required that I put together a sales pitch, including projected sales figures, target market, areas of focus for our content, and several other factors. I pitched multiple companies, and was turned down for different reasons: the sales figures couldn’t be verified, our proposed catalog didn’t quite fit with the existing catalog, our required deadlines couldn’t be met.

It was disappointing to be turned down. How could I verify sales figures on a new venture that hadn’t launched yet? I also felt pressured since we already had three titles that had started moving through the production process and with public launch dates, but still needed a warehouse that was going to fulfill our orders.

After being turned down multiple times, I persisted, and found the perfect distributor for our needs, Cardinal Publishers Group. They were able to meet our criteria for fulfillment, and we were able to meet their minimums for a new venture. It’s been working ever since.

What I learned from this is that if you stay true to the vision and the outcome you’re seeking, it’s possible. So many things simply have to do with timing, so when failures occur or when it seems like elements aren’t quite lining up, it’s more a matter of finding the way that will work instead of giving up. When you’re persistent and determined solutions can be found.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I had wanted to be a self-employed business owner for several years. I wanted to enjoy the freedom of making my own schedule, being able to offer the services I believed would be valuable to others, and I wanted the potential for greater financial freedom. I had been building my business alongside a full-time job at a university. I was also pregnant with my son.

But three months after my son was born, I was laid off from my job when the university closed. I could have gone back to another secure full-time job, but I knew that if I did that, it would only prolong my transition to full-time self-employment. A part of me was really scared! I had a newborn to take care of, I was a single parent. But it was a leap of faith into an unknown journey. I decided to make it work and I never looked back. I put business plans and systems in place, and I’ve been fully self-employed since.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kellylydick.com, www.WriteEditDesignLab.com, www.purecarbonpublishing.com
• Instagram: @kelly.lydick, @purecarbonpublishing
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Kelly-Lydick/100063633907936/
• Other: Pure Carbon Publishing Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/purecarbonpublishing/

Image Credits
IMG_7881,jpg = Brooklyn and Madeline Smith Piper House = Remi Koebel 8-20-22 Judyth Green Goddess = Kelly Lydick Tammy’s photos = Tammy Sollenberger