The Nitty-Gritty:

* How Kaye Publicity founder Dana Kaye plans and manages multi-layer book publicity projects* The tools she uses to track progress, run reports, and organize the information that goes into every project* How her team members take ownership of different areas of each project* Why she’s learning to take a more top-level role in each project they manage

One of my most important personal commitments from last year was to “work the system.”

In other words, I wanted to stop constantly reinventing the wheel, breaking things that weren’t broken, and looking for new novel things to add to my plate.

I wanted to take the systems that we had as a company and work them. No more pretending that I didn’t have to follow the procedure or document my work just because I was the boss. No more excuses for why my tasks weren’t getting checked off or the process wasn’t getting completed.

Just working the systems we had, making them better, and following through until every last item was crossed off the list.

By and large, I was pretty successful! I confirmed this with my team to make sure I wasn’t blowing smoke up my own butt.

What I’ve discovered as I’ve embraced working the system is that—against all odds—I actually love it. In fact, now that I’ve been working the systems for a year, I see systems everywhere. I see how they make things better, how they make me better.

And I relish getting those set up and figuring out how they can become more effective.

Since I’ve decided to finally embrace not only having systems in my business but actually using them myself, I thought it would be fun to kick off the new year at What Works by focusing on project management.

In other words, what does it take to make sure that the projects we start are projects we can finish?

And how do different kinds of projects take on different forms as we use tools to track and complete them? And… how do different kinds of business owners approach managing projects differently?

This month, we’re going to take a look at how a book coach manages the creative process for her clients. We’ll examine why communication and expectation is so important in complex projects with an on-demand CFO and cashflow analyst. And we’ll find out how a conference planner sees his events from vision to final invoice paid.

Plus, we’ve also asked a panel of small business owners to share the tools they use to manage their projects and why they love them. You’ll hear about software like ClickUp, Asana, Trello, and Notion so you can make a more informed decision about what will work for you.

But today, we’re starting with a look at managing massive multi-layer projects.

Dana Kaye is the founder of Kaye Publicity, a publicity agency specializing in helping authors get media coverage for their books. As you’ll hear, publicity projects aren’t exactly linear. It’s not just a list of tasks that need to be completed step by step.

There’s traditional media to go after. There are influencers to reach out to. There is content the team needs from authors and there are conversations that need to be had with the publisher.

Each type of media is another layer in the project. Each layer is owned by a different member of the team.

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