Wake Up Your Life- A Woman's Guide to Real Personal Power

Today we welcome Doris Roper to our writing blog. She is discussing her inspiring self-help book WAKE UP Your Life! A Woman’s Guide to Real Personal Power.

The growth and insights gained as a result of her experiences, put Doris where she is today—with a fabulous marriage, a challenging and fulfilling profession, and a story that inspires and motivates other women to follow her example.

Doris focuses on working with women dealing with a transition to build a solid financial foundation. Her experiences of going through a difficult divorce, rebuilding and running a business as a single mother with young children, her mother becoming a widow at 41 and transitioning to a new continent and successful career, give her an understanding and compassion for women dealing with transitions of their own. Doris found a large percentage of women don't feel competent when it comes to managing finances and investments, because women undervalue themselves and lack confidence.

Doris is the founder of The W.I.T. Institute, an educational and support organization for women to master their financial lives. Doris helps women to change their belief systems about life, money and success as she knows that it’s their limiting beliefs that keep so many women from being successful.

WAKE UP Your Life! combines Doris ’s story with sage insights about how to turn on your life’s alarm clock and get going in the direction of aliveness and fulfillment. In these pages, Doris tells her “one of a kind” story about the day her life crashed down around her and what she did about it.

Consider this book a ticket for your journey to an amazing life. Along the way, you will have the opportunity to:

· Consider how you can wake up your own life.
· Change the way you perceive the pain you encounter in your life and relationships.
· Turn rejection into redirection.
· Experience the enormous power of forgiveness in making the life you want.

Distinguish between your limiting beliefs and that positive inner voice that propels you forward.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

YVONNE: Tell me something about yourself and your writing background.
DORIS: Firstly, I do not have a writing background and this is my first book. I started and ran a very successful jewelry business in South Africa where I lived for 35 years. I am Austrian, born in Vienna.

I am now a financial planner and certified divorce financial planner specializing in working with women in transition.

YVONNE: Give us the basic story line so we’ll know what WAKE UP Your Life! A Woman’s Guide to Real Personal Power is about.
DORIS: I had been married less than two years when my husband and I moved to a town near the coast in South Africa. We were social tennis players and joined the local and only tennis club in town. We became friends with another couple and spent our weekends playing games and socializing with them. During this time my husband, *Tom, fell in love with the woman, *Candy and in the midst of trying to decide what to do about it, I became pregnant with my first child and the decision was made to continue with the marriage.

More than five years later, the marriage ended in a very difficult divorce and I entered my next major relationship with *Dick. Two years into this relationship, I discovered that he was cheating on me with Candy. I was shocked and devastated, but this became the starting point of an inner journey that woke up my life.

Some years later, I entered my third major relationship with *Harry which lasted almost three years. My personal growth brought me to the point where I realized that I did not “need” a man to be happy and I broke up with Harry. He was shocked and hurt and on the rebound – wait for it, you guessed it – he married Candy!

The growth and insights gained as a result of my experiences, put me where I am today—with a fabulous marriage, a challenging and fulfilling profession, and a story that inspires and motivates other women.

YVONNE: What inspired you to write this book?
DORIS: Tom, Dick, Harry, and especially Candy, who caused me the greatest emotional pain, inspired this book. This pain however, turned out to be the greatest gift in my life.

YVONNE: How long did it take to write this book? Any interesting tidbits about your writing method or how the book developed?
DORIS: It took me the whole summer of 2008 from June – August. I have known for years that I was going to write my book. I just did not know how to start and the thought of typing for hours at a time stopped me from getting started since I have a financial planning practice to run.

One day, while I was researching something else, I read something about transcription services and thought, “Hey, I could record my book and have it transcribed!” Well, that is exactly what I did with the help of a more experienced writer.

YVONNE: How did you publish your book? Tell me about your publishing experience and what you learned from it.
DORIS: I self-published but did a fair amount of research to see what my options were. I happened to play tennis with some ladies one day and discovered at the end of the game that one of the players was an editor at Hay House Publishers. I picked her brain and she herself had self-published her own book through Author House just to see what the experience would be like. She hadn’t used her own name.

She gave me tips about the title, use of color for the cover and content. I used many of her suggestions. I stumbled upon an article about self-publishing and cutting out the middleman by going directly to Lightning Source. This worked for me as I have always been an entrepreneur and business person, but if you are not like that, it will probably be better to use one of the many POD services.

YVONNE: Did you work with an agent? If so, how did you find the agent? Was it beneficial to you?
DORIS: No agent

YVONNE: Where is your book available? Do you have a Web site or blog where we can learn more about you or your book?
DORIS: My book is available at http://www.witinstitute.com/wake_up.html and http://www.amazon.com/

YVONNE: As far as marketing, do you do more online publicity or print/radio/TV promotion? Tell me some ways you have promoted your book. Give examples and links to any sites you feel might help other authors.
DORIS: I am just starting to market my book

YVONNE: Have you hired a publicist to help promote this book? If so, what was your experience like?
DORIS: I will be doing that next year

YVONNE: Thank you for giving us the opportunity to get to know you and learn about your book. I wish you well in your journey as an author.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


See Doris' full tour schedule if you would like to follow her on her tour. Anyone who leaves a comment at any stop on Doris' tour has the chance to win one of five prizes – each a 6-month Gold membership to The Smart Woman’s Success Connection. Doris' membership site offers a number of useful tools and resources to help women become smart about money. It provides access to the Gold forum where members support and share everything money management tips including information about having a financial plan and starting a business.