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Speech Transcript (very little editing so not exact)

Time to shine today podcast varsity squad. This is Scott Ferguson, and I have my awesome sauce friend, the book professor here. Nancy Erickson that’s coming on. And I actually like, she filled out our application. I’m saying that in air quotes to come on, and I’m blessed to have a waiting list. But I just wanted to definitely get Nancy on first because there’s so many people that reach out to me about writing a book, and I have the no clue. I’m actually guided by other people to write the book. And I just want to introduce Nancy to the squad. She is again the book professor. She coaches business professionals to become authors of high impact nonfiction books. She owns two book related businesses, the Book Professor and Stonebrook Publishing, an award winning nonfiction publishing house. In 2022, she was named a top ten Book coach in the US. By the Coach Federation, which I know that is pretty freaking awesome. And at the end, make sure you listen to the end, because she does offer a pretty cool consultation at the end. But, Nancy, if you could please introduce yourself to the time to Shine today Podcast varsity squad. But first, what’s your favorite color and why? That’s so easy to answer, and it’s all over you and your wall. It’s mine, too. I kind of have this Atlantic Ocean thing kind of going on here in South Florida. It’s kind of blue. And also, Scott, if you’re watching on Vimeo or YouTube or whatnot, you can see her accolades in the back. And those aren’t actually books. They’re like actually kind of metal pictures that are framed up. And that’s some of her accolades. And I can’t wait to dig into some of those. Nancy, they’re book covers. They’re awesome. That’s fantastic. What an idea. So let’s get into maybe the roots of Nancy, of kind of where she got started and how you help people level up to get their voice out there through pages on a book. Well, I started my career, Scott, in high tech. I was a systems engineer for IBM, and I worked for Oracle Corporation. And in about, I guess it was 2006, my dad was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. And so we knew he only had a few months to live. So I quit everything, and I went to spend that time with my parents in Florida. They lived in PU de Borda and was there until my dad passed away and to help my mom through that a little bit. And when I came home to St. Louis, I was like, now what am I going to do? I quit my job. And I was like, well, this is awesome, because now I can do whatever I really want to do. And I had always loved writing. I loved to write, and I thought, Well, I want to learn more about that. So I went back to school and got a master’s degree, and master’s of Fine Arts and Writing. And when I graduated, I was asked to join the faculty at the university where I got my degree and I started the nonfiction publishing house, Stonebrook Publishing. And so I wanted to concentrate on material that would either save lives, change lives, or transform society and. So we were getting a lot of manuscripts from people who had that seed of that transformational work in the manuscript, but they were so poorly written, we couldn’t do anything about that. But I thought, you know what? This really bothers me. I mean, here we are rejecting these manuscripts, and we have so many problems, problems in our world that we don’t even know how to name them anymore, much less solve them. But I completely believe that the answers are trapped inside people like you. And that when you simply tell your story and what you’ve been through and in business, what you’ve discovered, what methodologies and processes that you’ve put together, that you become the source of two things that people can’t live without. And those two things are hope and help. And so what I did, and I thought, well, okay, these people have answers. They’ve got solutions. And so I don’t want to disqualify them from writing a book. So what do I do? So I took a step back, and for a year, I didn’t publish anything else. And I wrote a step by step by step by step process to help people become people who aren’t writers, become authors of these high impact nonfiction books. And certainly for business people, a book should do three things for you. It should establish you as an expert in your field, it should increase your credibility, and it should attract a following. And so we write it in a way that and you’re actually writing it. You’re following a process that I hand hold you through, and you’ll really surprise yourself at how good it is when your messages is crafted and organized in a logical manner. I love that. And have you written a book before, or were you somebody that just kind of published maybe blogs or what was your background with that as well? That sounds like a really easy question, Scott. I had written things my whole life. That’s what I’m thinking. High tech. And I had had things published. But I think what you’re really asking me is, what made you think you could start a publishing house? And the answer is, I don’t know. I just wanted to I just wanted to do that. Here’s the thing. And you talk a lot about leveling up, and I think that means stepping into your gifts and talents. Love it. And what I discovered, what really rung my bells at first, was going back to school and learning more about writing. I was so fulfilled by that it and then I had the next desire, which is I want to teach writing, and I want to do. This publishing house, and we had some really early successes. The first book we published was written by a Holocaust survivor who’d gone to school with Anne Frank. I know. Really? And we did the book release at their school in Amsterdam. And then the second book we released, we got back cover endorsements from Sir Paul McCartney and Cindy Crawford. Wow. And that’s when I was thinking, oh, this is awesome. But we were getting these horribly written manuscripts at the same time. And so kind of right around that time, after we’d only published two books, I’m like, okay, I’m going to hold right here. Sure. And I’m going to help people who don’t have a writing background because you don’t really need to know how to write. When you start this, all you need to have is an idea, and we help you to develop that. And we kind of teased it out of you because your book is already inside of you. It just needs to have a gentle release, if you will, so that you can actually communicate your message to your audience. Wow, that’s beautiful. Basically, you have somebody that’s kind of flying blind. They don’t really have a clue, but they have an idea. They can establish them as an expert. They have the credibility, and they want to track the following. And then they go to the book professor, and you guys can help them, like you said, metaphorically hold their hand through the process to get them leveled up and get them on that wall behind you. Right. Absolutely. And it’s just little steps. Scott. It’s like we start off with a series of foundational questions that are intended to help you crystallize your message. Because when you’re thinking about writing a book now, I know people listening to this right now have already thought about doing this, but maybe you don’t know what to do. This is what you do after you start working with us, is we start off with a series of these foundational questions. And they’re questions like, why are you even doing this? What’s your motivation? Yeah, that’s wonderful. Who specifically is your audience and how will that audience be changed as a result of reading your material? So there’s twelve of those questions, and we end up taking all the answers and distilling them down into a purpose statement for your book that says, the purpose of this book is to do this particular thing for this specific audience. That’s all, period. Yeah. So now you know what you’re going to do and for whom, who you’re writing for and where you’re going to lead them. And that’s the basic way that we get started. Such a real deal. Even just I’m calling it your trifecta with the established expert, the credibility and attracting the following. That’s something that I’ve worked with other people. That say that they help writing a book and nothing against them, but that just really laid it out. Another word you use, crystallized, which is fantastic. I have to ask something maybe deep to your heart here, because you’re working at IBM and Oracle and you went to put the Gordetta to be with your father in his last days. Was there ever any discussions with your father or family members down there that really sparked that maybe come up and start this publishing company? If it’s too personal, please skip it. You know what? Not really. But I do have to tell you that my dad was he was a tough guy. And I felt it was hard to get close to him until at the end, when he was dying and I realized and he was pouring out all these things to me, he goes told me, he says, you have so much inside of you, you have to start spreading it around more. And so it wasn’t specifically geared toward publishing. Right. But all my life, I always felt like he was pushing me too much, be this or do that. Now I realize he was just expressing his confidence in me, what I could do. And when you actually step in to the thing that you’re meant to do, it is just thrilling. It is, right. It is thrilling. If I may, his protocol of what he was kind of telling you to step into your genius right. Was what your trifecta would I call is right with the credibility expert and the following and then the crystallization with it. So, again, I had to ask it because it came up, and my mom passed in 2019, and there was something that she kind of shared with me that really took my speaking and coaching just to another level. I was very, quote, unquote successful, but there was a conversation that was very similar to yours with the father. So thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I’m kind of a no, let me ask you something. If you’re working one on one with somebody and what kind of secret sauce do you have over there at the Book Professor that make them help them find their initial blind spot when it comes to want to be a writer? Well, a lot of people just have that in them. But what I would say to you is that because I developed the process we go through, I’m very familiar with it, and I know how to kind of dig in there because we do so many business oriented books. I have a deep background in business. I was working with selling multimillion dollar software solutions in the C suites of Fortune 100 companies. Right. I understand business and I understand what the client might be trying to accomplish, but more than that, I can often see the way. The finished product, which to me isn’t necessarily the book, but the way that the book is going to impact their audience. And because of the way that we develop the actual story when we Bookmap it, I’ll develop bookmaps where they’re mind maps for each chapter and in order to build a structure sure, that the writer can follow and achieve their goal to get the audience to the purpose and so that the audience can logically follow the author. As we build your chapters in problem solution sets where you name a problem that your audience is likely to have and then very story driven. Story, story, story, stories. Love it. You present your solutions. These kind of things just kind of fell out of the whole process. But what happened to Scott is that we know everybody’s not going to write a book. Sorry, we know everybody’s not going to read your book. Sure. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not still in your target audience. So when your book is finished, because we’ve developed them in these chapters and what’s a chapter? It’s a container for information and every chapter is solving a problem. You can repurpose every chapter of your book into other revenue producing products, like if you’re going to do keynotes or seminars or workshops or love that podcasting, or just developing online courses or video training. Right. Just because your audience member isn’t necessarily going to read your book doesn’t mean that you can’t meet the market where they’re already engaged. And that’s one of the things that differentiates us from others who kind of coach you through books. And plus the fact that we have the publishing house, but you’re coaching them by you’re almost branding themselves they are brand. I love that you’re actually taking that approach because it’s each one of my chapters in my business parable, which is fiction, but it’s kind of nonfiction as well because it’s actually a personal experience, right? What’s that? It’s an allegory. Allegory. That’s a story that teaches a lesson, same as a parable. But I have five people that my hero meets in the story that I speak on those five topics. If you look at my one sheeter, it’s taken from that. It’s nice that I just can’t wait to show up. And my mentors and coaches like Fergie, I cannot believe you don’t have anything out there. And with all due respect, I’m losing out on a lot of money at my speaking engagements because it helps a whole lot. Well, they also give, okay, like tonight I’m getting paid $4,500 to go to Connecticut to speak. Okay? But if I had a book, they have a product budget of another 1500. I mean, so all you, you know. Coaches or people out there that are writing books and stuff, you’re losing money by not having a book, and you’re talking to someone that’s currently losing that. It’s probably $30,000 a year right now. And so, you know what we tell our speakers who are professional speakers? We say, don’t sell your book at the back of the room. You want to be in there getting them as clients and stuff. Yes. Up your speaking engagement. Say, hey, I’ll throw in a book for everybody. And that’ll just cost you this much extra. Right, exactly. Because they have the product budget. They don’t have the speaker budget. A lot of times they have the product budget. I love it. Nancy so when you maybe meet with somebody or your team is meeting with somebody, is there any good question that you wish they would ask you but never do? I usually would really like them to ask me what some of our differentiators are, because they’re a lot and I am really deep in the publishing industry after 17 years of this. And one of the things that we do that others don’t do is we take you from your idea all the way to a professional product. And so let’s talk about what makes a professional product. With the advent of self publishing, a lot of people are publishing books that aren’t professional. And people give me their books all the time, and I think that’s nice. And I’m also just really impressed that they wrote a book, because it’s hard to do. It’s a long term project, but nine times out of ten, I can look at that book and think, please don’t give this to anybody else, because when you intended to increase your credibility, you have just ruined it, because this is not well done. And it starts with the writing. And in our publishing house, we have strict protocols and different teams of staff members who are involved in each stage. And one of the first stages is proofreading and editing. Just because you’re a writer or you majored in English or you need a professional editor, not like my wife majored in English in college. She’s doing it. That’s not going to cut it. You need professional proofreaders. In fact, all of our books go through three proofreaders before they’re released. That’s beautiful. And designers and publishing is a really old industry. Really old. One of the oldest. It’s funny. It’s one of the oldest modern industries. Right, exactly. And there’s a lot of conventions and protocols that if you don’t know what they are, you’re not producing a professional book. So we’re really proud of our books. A lot of our books win awards, and that’s because of the professional team that we have behind you that are with you. And. Said, holding your hand. I really mean that not only through the writing part, but then when you get into the publishing house, you have your own project manager walking through everything with you. One thing I love that I’m hearing here is that you don’t take away their voice. You put that microphone in front of them so they’re heard. Because some people like me, like, if I write something you’re like, I might fight back. If you came to me the wrong way with no empathy or anything like that, I would might fight back and be like, this is my voice. But it sounds like to me, you really dig in to each and every one of your clients to make sure that they’re getting their voice out there without changing their identity. That’s so key. You’ve really hit on that. Scott we don’t want to change your voice. We want to amplify your voice. We want to get your voice out there. And so by working with you, we work in a couple of different ways. One is one on one, and then we also have small group masterminds of about five writers that we work with for a year. And we know your voice by the end of this either approach. And so we don’t want to sanitize it or anything. But there’s also a truth that good reading isn’t reading the way someone speaks, right? Because the way we speak is not the same as good writing. So there’s a very delicate talent in the editing that makes it sound, like, so funny you say this, because with my hero, it’s like I’m speaking in my parable. I’m speaking from me. But, man, I sound stupid sometimes. And I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. To me, it’s like, wait minute, A, you really don’t sound like that. And it’s like you’re finding that true voice as you’re going through that’s hard for me to believe. Nancy, let me ask you something. Have you seen the movie Back to the Future? Oh, yeah. Okay, let’s get that DeLorean with Marty McFly. Let’s go back to the double deuce, the 22 year old Nancy. Okay, I don’t know if it’s let’s go back to the old Nancy. What kind of knowledge nuggets might you drop on her? Not to change anything, because your life is pretty darn extraordinary, Nancy, but maybe to help her level up, blast through or shorten the learning curve a little bit, what might you drop on her? I might say, don’t marry that guy. Okay. I have my first one as well. Yeah. I feel you. Right. And the other thing I would say is do what you love, not what you think you should do. Because I went in when I graduated. I was 21 when I graduated from high school. From college, not high school. And that’s where I went to work for IBM. And that wasn’t really suited I was not suited for that. I was suited to be a creative writer. And I stifled that for a lot of years until what I told you happened. Right. Because I think I could have loved my life a lot more. For a lot longer. That’s beautiful. Loved it. I hear no regret in it, but just something that you would tell your younger self to really do it. Because one of the coaches that I really respect is he told me, do what you love in the service of people that love what you do. Right. So when people know that you love what you do, you’re going to succeed. And that’s what I see in spades with you. It’s just awesome. Do scott when I was starting this book professor thing about helping people write, and I said I wanted to be working with people who wanted to change people’s lives and transform things. And I got so much pushback from others who said, who wants that? Is there a market for that? And I’m like, I don’t know, but that’s what I want to do. I had to kind of get my teflon shield on when those arrows came in just to let them bounce off, because I don’t know if there’s a market for it, but this is what I want to do. That’s beautiful. There is a market for it, right? But you’re coming from a place of passion. Your genius is where you’re coming from with that. And then people know that you care. And with that, how do you want your dash remembered? Nancy, that little line in between your incarnation date and your expiration date, your life date and death, hopefully it’s way down the road. But how does Nancy wanner dash remember just that I helped unleash in others what I found for myself? My gosh. Wow. How about what do you think people misunderstand the most about you? That’s a really good question. People usually think I have it all together. I tell you what, I can only do one thing really very well and this is it. Other areas of my life I’m like, oh, I’m not good at that. Don’t give me numbers. Right. You have a solid morning routine? I do. Okay. Can you go into it? What do you do? Yeah, sure. I get up every morning, I get up at six, I immediately drink my athletic greens and a cup of coffee and I do a little quiet time with my prayer and Bible study, nice and motivational things and then I work out. Beautiful. Yeah, every day. That’s awesome. You sound a lot here’s. The thing about it is that I think most of life is about 90% of it is just showing up. And when you just establish a routine simple like I just said, and just go, do you think I feel like doing that all the time? Of course not. But if you just go that in itself, you start off your day with an accomplishment which fuels further you win your day, you win your morning. I’ve competed in combat sports my whole life, including time in the military and whatnot. It’s like I’m 51 years old now, but and it takes me a second, like I’m a 04:00. A.m. Dude. Like that’s how I roll, because I have a whole solid protocol. I’m on the jujitsu mats by six. We have the snobial fluid in our body that has to kind of settle into different areas because I’m not springing out of bed like I used to. But to me, it’s just such a blessing to be able to recognize that and then get into my daily you and I have a very similar routine in the mornings. What is Nancy’s definition of a life well lived? Doing what I want when I want to do it with the people I want to do it with. What you’re passionate about. That’s just beautiful. And Squad, we are going to take my good friend Nancy Erickson, the Book Professor, through our loving up lightning round just as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors and affiliates. Time to shine. Today podcast. Rusty, squad, we are back in nancy, we’re going to meet up sometime, maybe when I speak in Missouri. Take me out for some barbecue. You and your hubby take me out for some barbecue. I think my Susan might travel with me to St. Louis as well. We can go out for some good barbecue and we might talk about a few of these questions and spend 1520 minutes on them, but you got 5 seconds today with no explanations, and they can all be answered that way, I promise you. All right. Level up. Yes. Let’s do this. All right, Nancy, what is the best leveling up advice Nancy’s ever received? Just do it. Yes. Love it. Such a neutral statement. I absolutely love that. Share. What are your personal habits that contributes to your success? Clean, diet, exercise, and a positive attitude? Love it. Love it. Since we’re on the topic of books, here a little bit. Not the book that you read, but that you wrote, but if you see me kind of walking somewhere, you’re like, man, Fergie looks like he’s in his dolgems a little bit. What book might you hand me to level me up? The go giver. Bob Berg. Hey, you hear that? Bob screaming. He’s my neighbor down the love it. What’s your most commonly used emoji when you text? Smiley face. Beautiful. Or a heart. Okay. Love it. Nicknames? Growing up, I didn’t have any nicknames. No? Okay. Love it. What’s a hidden talent or superpower that you have but no one knows about? I can blow the biggest bubble you’ve ever seen. Really? I love it. So billboard for your life. Headline for your life. What is it? That is really hard. A billboard headline for my life. Just she evolved. Love it. Love it. Just checkers of Monopoly. Checkers. Love it. There’s a sandwich called the Bubble blowing Book professor, build that sandwich for me. What’s in it? Yeah. Okay. So you have the first layer is faith, then family and happiness, and then a little mozzarella. Of cheese and a little maybe salami. Okay. Got to put some man candy on there. A little bacon, too. Yeah, little bacon. I love it. You got a favorite charity and organization you like to give your time or money to? I do. I am a proud member of Alcoholics Anonymous for decades, and that’s where I like to give my money. That’s beautiful. Thank you for doing that. Last question. We can elaborate on this one a little bit. What’s the best decade of music? Sixty s. Seventy s. Eighty s or ninety s. A lot of it in the 60s because I really love the early Beatles. Oh, very cool. Very cool. Sometimes I ask Beatles or Stones. Sometimes I’ll throw in a question like, Beatles are the Stones? But I’m a Beatles. Young for the stones. But the Beatles are more timeless anyway. Yeah, absolutely. People are like, which one? I actually liked the Four Seasons. Did you know the Broadway? Oh, my gosh, I’ve seen it, like seven times. I actually saw Frankie Valley encounter last month. 86, 87 years old. He doesn’t sing the whole time. He impersonators out there most of the time, but he’ll come out and do a few of his songs, which is really fun. So, Nancy, how can we find you, my friend? You can find me at my website, and I mentioned that I would love to do a 30 minutes consultation with your listeners so they can go to thebookprofessor.com and across the top navigation, there is a link that says, schedule a call with Nancy. We’ll jump on zoom. We’ll see each other face to face. I just love to talk to you about your book ideas and you know you have them. So this is free. Just get to your phone. And thebookprofessor.com beautiful. And Squad, if you do that, go to thebookprofessor.com that’ll be in the show notes. And I’m actually going to have two links, one to thebookprofessor.com and another link that says, schedule a free 30 minutes with Nancy. And I’ll make sure that that URL is in there. Just make sure when you tell her, say, hey, time to shine. Today sent you there. And Nancy, how about your book that you wrote? I believe it was in 2019? Stop stalling and start writing. Kick the excuses and jump start off. Jump start your nonfiction book. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, I wanted to write I used my own method for writing my book, which is Problem Solution Sets, where I talk about all the excuses that people have for not writing their book. And then the second half of the book, I explain the process that I take you through that step by step process that I mentioned here so that you know what you’re in store for when you work with me. I love it. And Squad, we’re going to call it an eight book giveaway. I’m going to give away four kindle versions and four paperback versions. First one that puts in any of our social or even text me at 561-40-3830. Put in the bubble blowing book professor, and I’ll know that you did that. Or just say bubble professor. Anything with bubble in it, I’m going to buy the book, okay? And if more people do it, I’m just going to buy the book. Whoever puts it in there, I’ll make sure that we’ll DM you and then get your mailing address. Or if you have Kindle, like, I like to read most of my stuff. I’ll be happy to send you a gift shift kit for Amazon for the Kindle version. And Nancy, if you could leave us with one last knowledge nugget we can take with us internalize and take action on, it’s never too late to do something you’ve always wanted to do. All you really need to do is take the first step. And for people who write in books, usually the thing that stands in their way is just making a decision to do it. So true. Squad we just had like a fun conversation, but also kind of a mastermind with my good friend Nancy Erickson. She says, just do it. Like I teach and I coach from a place of neutrality and just do it is a very neutral statement. It’s not going back. It’s not really going forward. It’s preparing yourself to actually get after it. She’s someone that low, always loved writing, but then she worked for Big Blue and then the Oracle Company and whatnot, and she always had a passion to save lives and transform the society. She said that there’s so many problems out there, some of them aren’t even named, but people have their stories trapped inside them. And she’ll help you out with the discovery, the method, the processes to become a good source of hope and help for others. And that’s what happens in these nonfiction books, okay? She has a step by step protocol to become the authors of a high impact nonfiction book which is established. Become an established you are an established expert. You able to have credibility in your field. And she’ll also help you with attracting the following. She really wants you to step into your gifts and talents. You don’t need to be a background. You just have a background where you just have to be really passionate. And Nancy will help you crystallize that message. She also said, amplify your voice. Like, get it out there. Let people know. She has her foundational questions and she walks every author, an author to be out there and find that purpose statement for the book. She really digs deep. She’s just not throwing clay at the wall and hoping that it sticks. She takes your idea and turns it into a fantastic professional product. Okay? When you have like syrup Paul McCartney kind of writing stuff for you, you know that she’s doing some stuff right. She does what she loves in the service of people that love what she does. And that’s the kind of people that I vibe with. She wants to unleash in others what she found for herself. And she says 90% of life is just showing up. And then lastly, it’s never too late to do something you’ve always wanted to do. Get out there, get after it and level up. And that’s what my good friend Nancy does. She levels up her health, she levels up her wealth. She’s hungry yet she’s humble in life. She’s earned a varsity squad letter here at Time To Shine today. Thank you so much for coming in, Nancy. Absolutely. Love your gods. Yeah. Thanks, Scott. You bet. Chat soon.

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