Today, I’m pleased to announce that my first book, The Principles of MESLO: The Art & Science of an Estimate, is now available in paperback, and digital editions.

Writing, editing, and publishing are three vastly different skill sets, each carrying its own demands on time, resources, and patience. What began almost three years ago as an effort to explain a practical business framework became a much larger undertaking than I initially imagined.

The book is organized into three parts.

Part I — Mentorship and Experience. Part I explores mentorship and the experiences that shape how we approach business, leadership, and entrepreneurship.

Part II — The Art & Science of an Estimate. Part II follows an office tenant improvement project, demonstrating how the MESLO formula accounts for direct and indirect project costs, overhead, general and administrative expenses, profit, and taxes. The objective is to establish profitable pricing—whether the final bid is calculated by square foot, cubic yard, unit price, or another measurable quantity.

Part III — Building Better Organizations. Part III explores business strategy, operational improvements, and the practical application of technology to build more efficient organizations. The book concludes with discussions of safety, lessons learned, and best practices.

From My Mother’s Kitchen Table to Publication

Writing: 33,000 Words in Three Weeks

I started writing the book almost three years ago at my mother’s kitchen table. In three weeks, I had written approximately 33,000 words. My original objective was simple: find an easier way to explain the principles I had been teaching women-, minority-, and veteran-owned contractors through consulting and one-on-one conversations. Too many business owners confided that some of these concepts felt like learning Chinese. Others told me they wanted to learn more about estimating, pricing, and business operations, but their boss or the prime contractor wasn’t willing to teach them. I encountered a recurring attitude: people want you to succeed, but not necessarily to become more successful than they are. It’s an age-old problem, and one of the reasons I wanted to make these lessons accessible to anyone willing to learn.

Writing the manuscript was only the beginning. Finding a way to turn it into a published book would be an entirely different challenge.

Organizational Editing: Making the Manuscript Readable

Between 2023 and 2024, I spent countless late nights attempting to self-publish. I researched the process, made inquiries, and struggled with the mechanics of turning a manuscript into a finished book. After more than half a dozen calls and inquiries, I discovered Patricia Marshall at Luminare Press, a small publishing company based in Eugene, Oregon. I signed with Luminare Press in early summer 2024. The publishing team led by Kim Harper-Kennedy Project Manager, and Managing Editor Sallie Vandagrift helped me recognize that while I had plenty to say, the manuscript needed a clearer structure. They introduced me to organizational editor Erick Mertz, whose job was to help transform approximately 33,000 words into a business book that readers could follow and apply. Erick returned more than 240 editorial comments. At first, the volume of feedback was overwhelming.

At the time, I was working as a business operator for a large multifamily real estate organization while also managing commercial real estate listings and navigating personal housing changes. I had automated service labor agreements, standardized job costing, and streamlined the maintenance work-order process. Much of my professional energy was going into improving the systems of the organization I worked for. Unfortunately, I didn’t begin addressing the editorial comments until mid-June 2025, after my employment with that company ended.

I rented a small office and began the painstaking task of responding to each comment. Some required a simple clarification. Others led to additional questions, rewritten passages, and further revisions. By fall 2025, I had returned the reorganized manuscript to the publisher, shortly before traveling to Jalisco and Nayarit, Mexico, to attend to a family estate matter.

Copyediting: The Details Matter

Luminare Press began copyediting during Thanksgiving week of 2025. From that point forward, the process accelerated. During Christmas break, I received an email explaining that the manuscript was missing a glossary and a formal references section. For the next sixty days, we exchanged revisions, clarified terminology, and added the missing material.

Then, about a week after my birthday in February, another email arrived: the book needed an index. Rather than manually working through hundreds of pages, I wrote a Python script to help automate the indexing process. That saved several days of work and became another example of applying technology to solve an operational problem. Between March and August 2026, virtually every editorial change required a precise written response.

A typical instruction looked something like this:

Page 24, para 3, 16th line: change “provideclarity” to “provide clarity”.

Multiply that process across hundreds of pages, numerous revisions, and months of correspondence.

On August 20, 2026, I received a printed paperback proof. I spent the weekend reviewing it line by line and returned my corrections approximately a week later. By September 11, 2026, we had completed the final round of revisions and approved the manuscript for publication.

Publishing: A New Learning Curve

With the manuscript complete, the next challenge was distribution. I worked with publication assistant Caitlin McCrum to coordinate the book’s availability through Amazon, Kindle Direct Publishing, and IngramSpark. Each format—paperback, hardcover, and eBook—came with its own requirements, distribution considerations, and publishing workflow. Even after the manuscript was approved, the process of making the book available to readers required additional work. As of today, The Principles of MESLO available through Amazon in paperback and eBook/ Kindle, and soon in hardcover avail for order at Barnes & Noble.

Why I Wrote The Principles of MESLO

The book grew out of years spent working with business owners and contractors who wanted to estimate government contracts, build out their back office, and better understand the true cost of their work. Too often, business owners know how to perform the work but lack the systems needed to price it profitably, manage their operations, and build sustainable organizations.

I wanted to take the lessons from those one-on-one conversations and make them available to anyone, anywhere. MESLO begins with Materials, Equipment, Subcontractors, Labor, and Other Costs. But understanding these costs is only the beginning. The broader objective is to help entrepreneurs understand their numbers, make informed decisions, improve operations, and ultimately build businesses that create opportunity and freedom.

A Word of Thanks

Writing, editing, and publishing are vastly different disciplines. This experience gave me a much greater appreciation for the professionals who help authors bring their ideas to life. I’m grateful to Patricia Marshall, Sallie Vandagrift, Kim Harper-Kennedy, Nina Leis, Caitlin McCrum, and the entire Luminare Press team for their guidance, patience, and work throughout this process. A special thanks to Erick Mertz for helping reorganize my thoughts and concepts into something readable and easy to follow.

Thank you as well to everyone who encouraged the project, shared their experiences, offered feedback, or helped make publication possible. What started as 33,000 words at my mother’s kitchen table is now a published book.

And in many ways, this is only the beginning.

The Principles of MESLO: The Art & Science of an Estimate is now available in paperback, and Kindle editions.

Know your number. Build something that lasts.