If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you know that I occasionally choose to talk about what one of my clients is creating. This is such a post. Rachel Z. Cornell has, in addition to being a client, become one of my dearest friends. She recently launched a Patreon page to help fund her book “Focus & Finish; A Late Bloomer’s Guide to Meaningful Success“.

About Rachel

Rachel is a Professional Nag and the creator of ProNagger, a service that has helped show hundreds of frustrated, stuck and overwhelmed people how to accomplish their dreams no matter the obstacle. She’s been running ProNagger for 6 years, showing smart people how to focus and finish dissertations, publish, launch careers, snag tenure, enjoy a healthy body weight and live a satisfying life with clarity, peace of mind, and confidence.

She has a challenge most of us female entrepreneurs don’t have; she’s been visually impaired her entire life. She has optic nerve palsy, and because of this has a very narrow field of vision, which she describes like an upside down pyramid. She also has weak eye muscles, poor convergence, and delayed tracking. Her eyes have had a profound effect on her life. One of those were that she didn’t learn to read until she was 30 years old.

Rachel has turned this challenge into success. She’s not letting it stop her, but she isn’t ignoring it either. She’s making the best of living with her challenge. One example is that she, in her late 30’s, she became the first legally blind, Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan.

Now it’s time for her to write and publish her first book, and she’s choosing to crowdfund the process through Patreon. She says “When you don’t see well and spell as poorly as I do, you need the support of a village (or a crowd) to help you make big things happen”.

About the book

FOCUS & FINISH: A Late Bloomers Guide to Meaningful Success is a guidebook to help scholars, artists, literati, geeks, thinkers, sages, troublemakers and anyone feeling stuck and alone learn how to create a rewarding and satisfying life, free of self-sabotage and self-inflicted pain.

It’s for everyone who is struggling to find support, or who feels overwhelmed, tortured or alone. It’s for the millions of people out there who—like her—want to contribute to the world in a meaningful way, and be more than that person sitting on the sideline of life. It’s for everyone who really wants to be able to consistently make things happen in their lives…without allowing the obsessing, procrastination, emotional upheaval and sleepless nights take them over.

It’s also for people who love Late Bloomers: their sweeties, friends and other members of their “village” or team of supporters. It provides a valuable perspective for them on what it’s like inside heads and hearts. What goes on as they attempt to strive while being bogged down with achievement anxiety. Even if you’re not a late bloomer, this book could be a great resource for you or someone else you love who lives with perfectionism, procrastination, all or nothing thinking and other yucky behaviors that make the late bloomer and everyone around them not so happy.

The crowdfunding campaign is to help her have the time, support and tools to finish her book, and create a multimedia resource library filled with audio & video tutorials on how to focus and finish.

About Patreon

If you’re familiar with crowdfunding, Patreon’s unique among the available platforms. On Patreon, she gets your ongoing support at a few dollars a month. She receives about 80% of the total dollars pledged each month for her work. When you contribute on Patreon, you truly are a patron of the arts. It’s very cool (I even have my own page). You can support your chosen recipient at the level you’re comfortable with and you can change or suspend your contribution at any time. Each level of contribution has a reward, and each recipient has set their own rewards.

Rachel is a lovely lady, very creative, and great at helping people to focus and finish what they start, so I’m sure her book will be a huge success. I’m going to do my best to help her, as a guide and a friend. If you want to have a look at her Patreon page, you can find it here: https://www.patreon.com/rachelcornell