Select Page

Feb 16, 2024

Three Creatives

The God Layer: Faith Lessons in Real Estate

I started writing this book in November 2021, one early-morning hour at a time. God gave me a clear outline – 60 chapters of encouragement to my fellow real estate professionals on career milestones, scheduling and budgeting, relationships with clients, and transactions with industry peers. Real estate was slower during 2022 – God gave me more time to write!

In March 2023 I printed copies of the finished draft for a dozen first readers including several experienced brokers and real estate coaches, a loan officer, a pastor, and close friends and family. They blessed me with their time and valuable feedback; they helped make the book more applicable and relevant.

The rest of 2023 was spent reworking, revising, and then getting on a steep learning curve about self-publishing. There’s a lot more to creating a book than just the writing!

Major milestone this week: the files for the book and the cover are now with the offset printer in Michigan! Soon they will create metal plates for all 240 pages and print 5,000 copies. I’ve also sent the book file to the Copyright office. This thing is getting real!

The final product was only possible with the expertise of many collaborators. For this update, I’d like to give three of my creative partners a shout-out for their expert help:

My first time using Upwork was a success because God connected me with a professional editor, Mary Sayed. She cleaned up and clarified my sentences for a smoother reading experience. I highly recommend her book, Good Grief—about grieving her mother’s passing. I devoured it when I first downloaded it, and have returned to it many times since, to savor her thoughtful writing. Since my mother passed suddenly in 2020, Mary’s book was very healing.

God had a perfect partner for me in Erika Molyneux for the cover art. Erika did dozens of iterations over two months; she was so accommodating of a vision God gave me, and also let herself be guided by The Holy Spirit. Erika is on the prophetic art ministry team at our church, Bluewater Mission, and teaches printmaking and new media arts at Leeward Community College. She has perfectly translated the concept of “The God Layer” into a stunning visual. Here is a portfolio of her prophetic art and what inspired each work.

My brother, Donjiro Ban, has been by my side supporting me my entire life. He was wowing our family with his art from the day he could hold a paintbrush, and his professional graphic design portfolio contains global brand names, please take a look! I am proud that the book has his caliber of design expertise! I am also thankful to Don and his wife Esther for sharing the responsibility of caring for our dad; this gave me time to write.

I am blessed and grateful to have these talented collaborators. Please click on their links to learn more about them. Stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to the book launch! –Ali

P.S. – I had to create an LLC for this and future books. More about my publishing company and imprint, “For the Good Publishing” in a future update!

More Faith Lessons in Real Estate

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This