Quantum Success with Christy Whitman and Writing With A Purpose with Kristen Moeller

Whether someone’s looking for a job, want a promotion, they have their own business, or want greater success, when you apply the universal laws to your career and to money, you get quantum success because they are universal. Christy Whitman is a transformational leader, celebrity coach, and the New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Having It All. Through her life-changing message, Christy has helped thousands of people worldwide to achieve their goals through her empowerment seminars, speeches, and coaching sessions and products. The anticipation of our worries can often be a lot worse than the thing itself. However, going through something like a loss are very difficult things, but Kristen Moeller says we do find that we keep walking, and that’s the thing. Kristen is an author and speaker who focuses on writing and publishing empowerment and women’s issues. She says if you want to be a writer and want to be published, you have to have a dream and you’ve got to have enough grit to write it.

We have Christy Whitman and Kristen Moeller here. Christy Whitman is New York Times bestselling author. She’s a celebrity coach and Founder of Quantum Success Coaching Academy. She’s also got a new book coming out. Kristen Moeller is a literary agent, multiple TEDx speaker, author, and coach. She’s got some great suggestions for anybody considering publishing.

Listen to the podcast here

Quantum Success with Christy Whitman

I am here with Christy Whitman, who is a transformational leader, celebrity coach, and the New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Having It All: A Woman’s Guide to Unlimited Abundance. She’s appeared on the Today Show and the Morning Show. She’s been featured in People Magazine, Seventeen Woman’s Day, Hollywood Life, and Teen Vogue. It’s so nice to have you here, Christy.

Thank you so much.

I’m looking at this list going, “You have been on alongside all these great people, Dr. Wayne Dwyer and Louise Hayes and Marianne Williamson.” The list goes on and on. You live in Arizona and we’re neighbors and we didn’t even know it. I was familiar with your work, but I did not know you lived in Arizona, so that’s great. You’ve got another book coming up. You want to tell me the name of your book?

It’s called Quantum Success: 7 Essential Laws for a Thriving, Joyful, and Prosperous Relationship with Work and Money.

That covers it all. That will be a very interesting. I’m looking forward to that. I’ve worked in lending and different areas where finance was a focus and I’ve written books on reinventing myself and different things. You write about a lot of things that I’m interested in. Since my focus right now is writing my book on curiosity, I’m curious about all of what you’ve got in this new book because you talk about a lot of things that play a role in creating success. That’s what I’m interested in too, is helping people be successful. Can you give me a little background on this book? What made you want to write about this? You’ve had so many different areas that you’ve researched. What drew you to this?

Ever since I became an author, all my books download through me. This was literally a download that came to me at 3:00 AM while I was on a cruise ship with my family. I know this download all too well because like I said, all my books come this way. I can’t just sit down and go, “Today I’m going to write a book about this,” or “This is an interesting subject for me, so let me write it.” It either comes or it doesn’t. I don’t have a direct control when it comes or not. Certainly at 3:00 AM while I’m sleeping on a cruise ship is not the best time, but I’ve also been very, very open and obedient, and I’ve already told source that if ever it needs to come through, I will then do what I need to do.

At 3:00 AM, I went into the bathroom of the cruise ship. I’m down there on the cold linoleum and writing and writing and writing. It was just a download about all this stuff. For twenty years, I’ve been teaching about the universal laws and I have a coach training company on the universal laws and how to become a coach, applying the seven essential laws and all this information just came through. When I went to go put the proposal together, obviously Simon and Schuster said, “Yes, we want it,” and so that’s how the book came to be, but it is a very specific way.

It’s not about relationships, it’s not about weight or it’s not about other aspects of our lives. It’s like, “How did I take this information? What do I teach my clients and what have I coached people on in the areas of massive quantum success in their careers and their money?” It doesn’t matter if someone’s looking for a job, if they have a job, they want a promotion. If they have their own business, if they want greater success. When you apply the universal laws to your career and to money, what happens is amazing because they are universal. They’ve worked for every single person every single time as long as you understand them and apply them well.

Now I’m curious what they are. Can you share any?

I list them and then I’ll tell you the secret sauce, if you will. Most of us have heard, and I want to include everybody, but a lot of people have read The Secret or watch the movie The Secret or heard about Law of Attraction. Oprah Winfrey had talked about it. The Law of Attraction to me is like a boomerang. What you send out, you get back. What do I mean by send out? Everything is energy and we are like energy towers sending out a signal all day, every day. We do that by the thoughts that we think, the perspectives that we hold, and the feelings that we have, what we say and what we do. We’re always emitting a signal from our self, and that’s the vibration of that signal because we live in a vibrational universe. The vibration, the signal that goes out is either coming back to us and it’s giving us more of the same.

[Tweet “The Law of Attraction to me is like a boomerang. What you send out, you get back.”]

For example, if someone is thinking thoughts of, “I’m not enough,” or “I don’t have what it takes,” or “There’s no way I could have this level of success,” that vibration and that evidence that will lead to believing that will then come true. The opposite is also true if you find yourself stopping yourself saying, “I do have what it takes, I can succeed. I was looking for all the evidence in ways of why you can’t succeed.” That sounds out a very different vibration. What happens is circumstances, situations, people, all of it is different of what we attract based on what we sent out. That’s Law of Attraction. The Law of Deliberate Creation is where we get to recognize that we’re not victim to anything that happens outside of us. We actually can choose our reactions to things that do happen to us.

We choose our thoughts, we choose our emotions. It’s not just an issue for most people that don’t have this awareness. It’s just an automatic, “I feel bad because this happened,” or “I feel good because this happened,” and we get to decide how we want to feel, and we take the time to choose. We take the time to deliberately decide what it is that we want in our lives and make sure that the frequencies and the energy that we’re giving out is in vibrational match with that. Then there’s the Law of Allowing which whenever we feel bad, whenever we feel in a constricted energy that doesn’t feel good, like fear and worry and doubt and anger and resentment, all those energies, we’re not in allowing space. It’s a very constricted space but allowing is what brings everything to us in the universe.

The Law of Allowing is how we feel about ourselves. Do we accept and love ourselves the way we are? Do we accept and love the people in our lives the way they are? Do we feel like if you would change then I would be happy? That’s not allowing and it also affects the way we connect with the universe and where we want things to be versus the way we think they should be. The fourth law, which I feel is the key to it all, if we’re going to talk about The Secret, I feel like this is the secret. It’s the Law of Sufficiency and abundance and basically that most of us have been trained.

We’ve been programmed, our media does it all the time. Advertising does it all time. It shows us what’s wrong and bad about ourselves. Unless we have this special car or this face cream or this guy or, our bodies look a certain way, then we will be happy. We’re trained in thinking in limits and in lack. That’s where it’s important because we’re the ones that have our focus either on lack and limitation or on abundance and possibilities and potential. The Law of Sufficiency and abundance, it’s not the Law of Abundance, the law of sufficiency and abundance is that when we’re coming from a place of appreciating and looking for the positive aspects of what’s going on in our current reality and also getting excited for what’s happening, what’s possible, that’s the doorway into abundance.

We have the Law of Detachment, which in the most part is you want to be attached to the things that you like. For me, I can use a great example that when I was single, I wanted to have a certain type of man in my life. I didn’t want just any man. I was very attached to some qualities, some qualities are deal breakers, but the when and the how and the who and all of that I had to be attached or detached from. Thinking about when he’s coming, he’s not here yet, that caused me to feel constricted and not allowing. There’s a certain sense of detachment that we also have to play into and then there are a lot of potentiality, pure potentiality. That’s an exciting law because if we have an idea, there’s only one place that that idea came from. It came from pure potentiality, and the fact that we had the idea to start a business, to look for a new job, to create a different situation with money, whatever it is to create a business, it doesn’t matter what it is. That idea was a seed that came planted from something bigger than ourselves. That seed also has the potential to flourish into something big if we align with it.

The last law is the Law of Polarity. Here on planet earth in these physical human bodies, nonphysical doesn’t have polarity. It’s just pure positive energy, but here in these life experiences, human life experience, we have polarity. There is evidence of lack and there’s also evidence of abundance. I like to look at polarity as like it’s a one subject, but there’s a spectrum of emotions or vibrations on that subject. For example, if we think of temperature, temperature is the thing, but you can have extreme as you well living in Arizona you can have extreme heat on one end, and then you can have extreme cold on the other end, and there’s a spectrum in between. When we have any subjects such as money, for example, money is the subject, but how we are and how we feel about any given subject is our indication of where we are. What I mean by that is where our thoughts are, where our beliefs are aligned or misaligned.

Those have quite a powerhouse of information there. I have been trying to think which one I want to talk about first. Fear caught my attention first because I’m writing a book on curiosity. The big thing that holds people back is fear in a lot of situations and you say you’re not in allowing space. What advice do you give to get into an allowing space so that you don’t let fear hold you back?

For me, there’s a course in miracles that talks about there are only two primary relationships, with either love or fear. For me, fear goes deeper than that. I feel like there is always something under the lack that creates some fear. We’re either projecting into our future something that we’re afraid of, that we don’t have enough money, we’re not going to have enough opportunities, someone’s going to abandon us. There’s always a lack of something happening under fear. Everything is energy and when you can look at, “Where is the fear coming from? What is causing the fear? What thought am I having? What belief am I holding?” A belief is just a thought that’s been thought over and over again. We saw evidence of it and now it becomes our belief.

If you go back and start finding the source of that, going gardening and taking the weed out by the root instead of just snipping it at the top of where the work comes out of the ground, you can change the thoughts. A thought can be easily changed. When you change a thought, you change the energy of that thought. When you start to change the energy of that thought, other things get created. Then there was a new belief that gets manifested. It’s a new belief that we get evidence of instead of thinking that all people that are wealthy are greedy, we can see evidence and see, “There are a lot of generous people that are wealthy. There are a lot of good people that are wealthy.”

That’s interesting because I’m looking at ways to help people get over their fear. I like your analogy of the weed. It’s also interesting to me are the people who need the help in all these areas are going to maybe not be the ones who recognize that they have this thought process that needs to be readjusted. How do you get somebody to get over that? You had a distinction you made between motivated action and inspired action and that tied into my interest and curiosity. How do you motivate somebody to dig out the weed if they don’t know they have a weed?

If someone doesn’t feel they have an issue or a problem or that there’s something that they want to change in their life, then it’s hard to show someone. I’m trying to coach someone that just doesn’t believe that there’s an opportunity or reason for coaching. They’re just not the person. If we’re talking specifically, say it’s your kid or your husband or maybe a coworker or boss or someone like that and they’re just not open to understanding that stuff, we’re bringing up different things. If there’s thinking one way, “That’s just not possible,” then you could say things to them to show them the possibility.

“Actually we could do this or this or this,” showing them what the different options are. My son is nine and teaching kids are easier, but he was bored and no nothing to do. I said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to do exercise. We’re going to write down and brainstorm all the things that we love to do.” My husband, my two boys and I started writing down all the fun things that we could do and as we were talking about it, I could see them starting to shift. His mood shifted and he was in a better mood. It’s bringing in a different energy and bringing in a different positive aspect of life.

You mentioned energy quite a bit and so is fascinating to me because I like to listen to the book at night, an audio book that calms me down. It’s a strange thing to do, but I listen to Death By Black Hole, which is by Neil deGrasse Tyson, which is all astrophysics and all that, which is so out of my realm of what I deal with on a day to day thing at work. It’s very interesting to look at the scientific background and the energies and the things that you’re talking about. What’s your background?

I am a certified master coach and had an organizational communication degree at Arizona State University. Just my own personal growth, being a seeker of this knowledge, and I’m feeling like I’d reached a point in my life or I pretty much got everything that I was told would make me happy. I had a great career, a healthy, cute little body, I had great clothes, I had a good guy. So many things that are going on and yet I felt so empty inside and it was like, this isn’t the key. These things aren’t the key to my happiness because I’m not happy and I have all these things. That quest let me start looking for how are people that maybe don’t even have anything or people that have it all that seemed happy. What are they doing that’s different and what is their mindset versus how I’m thinking and feeling? That led me on a quest to just attract the right information as I needed it.

How long did it take you to feel like you were more happy and over that sense of emptiness?

I don’t know the exact moment, but I do remember about five years into studying and applying the information, I literally took a step in my life and almost took an inventory and went, “I’m happy and I have this and this and this and this and this.” It was more of like instead of the outside in like thinking, “If I just had success, then I’ll feel happier. If I have more money, then I’ll be happy,” it was a feeling of being satisfied with where I was and feeling excited about the fact that there are more that I’m going to create more than I’m going to experience. It was a shift. It was a deliberate shift from thinking of thoughts of lack and limitation.

For example, when one area of my life is I felt like with women for example, I always felt like I was in competition. I always feel like I was comparing myself to other women. She’s prettier or thinner or this or that, or she’s got a bigger diamond ring. I would always end up feeling badly about myself because I was doing this comparative thing that a lot of women do. I started feeling that I am enough and started because the whole competition thing and comparison thing is coming from a place of lack and not feeling secure enough, we need to look at other people to go, “She’s not doing as well as I am, so I must be enough,” or “I must be better than her.” It’s a very low-level thinking and it, and it creates animosity and it doesn’t facilitate good girlfriend relationships.

It also doesn’t attract us the things that we want because if we’re in lack and we’re hoping that others won’t succeed because then that means they’re better than us, it’s a very difficult way of living? The biggest changes that I made were stopping the self-sabotaging and stopping the constant judgment of myself and others and the criticism of myself and others and beating myself up for every little thing. I had to start going into a boxing room with God and myself and put down the boxing gloves and allow myself to start. There’s where the Law of Allowing comes in, allowing myself to be who I am, accepting who I am and unconditionally loving myself.

This sense of competition, mental competition that we hear more about women holding each other back more than men. Why do you think that is?

You can see it in our fairy tales like Cinderella. There’s only one perfect friends. You could even see it in modern times with The Bachelor, you got all these women trying to go for one prize. It’s a perception that there’s only one, there’s only one friend. There’s only one bachelor. There’s only one job opportunity. There’s only one person that can get this position. We think in terms of lack and limitation and that’s where we have to try to one up. I find that it happens either one of two ways with, especially with women where we feel like, “I got it. I’m driven, I got to take more, I got to make sure that I have mine,” or we’re like, “It takes too much effort and plus I don’t want to take more than my share.”

[Tweet “Whatever someone else is doing, it could either inspire us or we can compare ourselves and feel bad about ourselves.”]

There’s almost like this apathy. Instead of trying to do our own best and go for our own dreams and desires, we have this feeling of “I don’t want to take more, and I don’t want to outshine her and I don’t want to get more attention than I need to. Just pull back a little bit.” Both ways are coming from lack because each one of us has the opportunity to do our best and be our best selves and to create the things that we want to create despite other people. We all create our own experience and what someone else is doing, it could either inspire us or we can compare ourselves and feel bad about ourselves.

You’re the CEO and Founder of Quantum Success Learning Academy and Quantum Success Coaching Academy. That’s twelve month of Law of Attraction coaching and certification program you do. What percentage of women do you get in that versus men?

It’s usually about 80% to 85%. I find that it takes a very special man to slow down enough to want to learn about himself and change, to learn about universal laws. When they do it and they obviously see evidence of it too. It’s not just for women, it’s men too. Their lives change, their relationships change. It seems that more women are attracted to doing this work because it means taking more personal responsibility and understanding that we can affect change and, and the whole conversation about energy and, and it could be what a lot of people call woo woo, to me is just the natural way of the universe. I’ve seen evidence of it over and over and over again. It is more women that are open, but thank God more and more men are becoming open to it.

I could see more men. This book would be more focused on both then your passbook, don’t you think? Quantum success is for everybody and you’re not just focusing on women issues here. You’re focusing on issues for everybody, right?

Absolutely. I wrote a book, The Art Of Having It All: Woman’s Guide To Unlimited Abundance. I would have men email me and say, “Can I read it?” I’m like, “Absolutely, they’re universal principles, so it’s not just for women.” It’s just that these are issues that I see the conversation about having it all. There’s no conversation about men having it all. There’s no debate going on if men can have a family and have a career. There’s a conversation that women limit themselves because we’ve been told that women can’t have it all or there’s this argument or they try to have it all and they’re over overworked, over exhausted, they’re just not happy. They’re spreading their lives too thin and there’s a different easier way. There’s a different way of being that you can have it all and be happy in your life.

It was an important conversation geared towards women with quantum success. We all, most of us that work or that have a way of earning an income, we’re spending most of our time, most of our waking life while we’re at a job or while we’re building our own business or while we’re in our own career. For me, I have this formula. I have these universal laws that work for men and women and it’s like I want to just be able to help other people to not have to work so hard and feel like they’re struggling and like working more and not getting to where they want to go.

There are so many people like that too. I could see that this is something that could help a lot of people. Are there any links you’d like to share? Is that the main one for everybody?

Yes, the QuantumSuccessBook.com and that’s where they can go and get the book for free.

I am so glad to know we’re neighbors without even knowing it, but you’re a smart girl to get out of here in the summertime. I just want to thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me as your guest.

Writing With A Purpose with Kristen Moeller

I am here with Kristen Moeller, who is an author and speaker who focuses on writing, publishing, empowerment, and women’s issues. She’s an expert in why people wait in life. She founded a nonprofit to provide for transformational education. She’s the bestselling author of Waiting for Jack and What Are You Waiting For? and Phoenix Rising. She also hosts the What Are YOU Waiting For? Internet radio show and she’s a three-time TEDx speaker. You probably seen her on so many things. She’s been on NPR, ABC, NBC, Fox, New York Times, and Huffington. I’m excited to have you here. Kristen, welcome.

Thank you so much.

I’m watching one of your TEDx talks about the smoke heading towards your house and what you went through. You’ve been through some pretty tough stuff and you got on stage to share some pretty hard experiences, but you like to talk about living your life. How do you put it? Fire and life?

I put it at different ways at different times. Maybe I put it at one point a living life on fire as fires are blossoming, popping up all over Colorado. Fire metaphors are stinging a little bit right now. The walking through fire metaphor is the best one. We could go with that one today. How about that?

I love your honesty about how you get your whole house taken by the fire and people died and all these horrible things happen. People were not thinking when they said, “Isn’t it freeing not to have any stuff?” It’s an awful experience, but you said you still learn something. You would not choose to have that happen to you and it’s not like, “It wasn’t that great that it happened to me” experience. Do you think that you could go through these things, you find extra strength from going through what you went through?

Yes. You find resources that you don’t know you have and definitely access parts of you that you hope are there. The anticipation of our worries, our worries can often be a lot worse than the thing itself. However, going through something like a loss through fire, obviously losing a loved one. Those are the difficult things, but we do find that we keep walking and that’s the thing. Sometimes I’ve looked over my shoulder, I’m like, “I’m still working,” I’m still moving forward even when every part of me wants to stop and not during some of those times.

Your books and everything that you’ve done, you can tell that you’re somebody that’s very strong. I wanted to ask you, did you find your husband’s ring ever?

No. It was one of those fantasies and we had heard stories about people finding these miraculously finding things intact like that. I actually heard a story of someone finding a wedding band. That’s what had us decide to sift through the ashes. We didn’t find anything actually intact. Interestingly we found a lot of things that look like artifacts. Just look like you’re doing an archeological dig and finding these things that have this beauty to them, which is one of the metaphors I found after the fire of like the scar of beauty. I also found some pages of books which were singed around the edges. Just thinking of them, our fire was in 2012, but I was just at a Buddhist meditation retreat at this beautiful place called Tara Mandala in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. I was camping for the retreat and one of the things they ask and of course one of the things and ways I like to live my life is leave a place better than I found it. It was a very neat campsite and there wasn’t a lot I could do to try to make it even better.

I was looking around and I saw this thing and the trees. I had noticed it when I was setting up my tent, but I thought it was a piece of wood. I walked up to it and it was a burned piece of a book page. It flashed me back to finding these pages of books. The house is gone, metal has melted, glass has melted, and I’m finding some pages of books. From our fire, I found pages of Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I thought, “If I want to look for messages there’s one,” but I wasn’t necessarily in the mood at the time for a message, but it was a message nonetheless. I was wondering when I found this, I was trying to remember where those pages are because I actually found quite a few. I had them in a plastic bag and they’re tucked away in storage somewhere. I found two pages and they’re from a definitely a Buddhist text and it’s on but on impermanence and grasping. The message comes, it continues to come.

What it reminds me of is that movie with Tom Cruise, Oblivion. You might want to watch that if you haven’t seen it. This movie is interesting because of the books that he finds and the glasses and the pieces of his past. I think you would find it interesting based on what you’ve gone through. I was looking at all this stuff you do and all the things you do now. You’ve gotten into publishing and I’m interested in some of what you’re doing as far as that goes.

I have a lot of people who listen to this show who either have published with traditional publishers or hybrid publishers are self-published or they’re trying to decide if they need a literary agent or if they don’t. The thing I keep hearing is that it’s just tough to get a traditional publisher now unless they don’t pay the huge amounts that they used to pay. If you go with a hybrid, they charge a certain amount of money so that you don’t have to do certain things if you go, but they give you more access to things. Tell me your perspective on the whole choice.

It is a jungle out there. I just met someone actually at this retreat and she was telling me her dreams. I actually had my heart broken in the book world with my first book and my hopes of being the next Elizabeth Gilbert and being on Oprah’s couch and literally had people say to me, “I see it, I see you on Oprah’s couch. I just feel like it’s going to happen for you.” I’m like, “Really?” If you want to be a writer and to want to be published, you have to have a dream, you have to have enough of that innocent sweet dream and then you’ve got to have enough grit of course to write the thing.

There’s the hope aspect, and I did educate myself as I went, because I had Michael Larsen’s How To Write A Book Proposal as my Bible when I had my idea for my first book. All I did was read that book and write my proposal and read that book and write my proposal. It did land me an agent, Bill Gladstone, Eckert Tolle’s agent, is my agent and is now who I work with. I work for Bill as a literary agent. I’ve come a long way. This woman had the dream and she was talking about, “I’d love to, I just don’t have time to write.” I started talking to her about, “In today’s world, here’s how it goes. It’s hard to get a traditional deal.” She said, “I just had that dream of getting paid in advance and then I could find the time to write and take the time.” I said, “Sadly, that is so unlikely. As a first-time author and unless you have the dreaded word platform, our reach right now, who is our audience? It’s lining up to buy our books right now. I want to say a caveat because platform is like a four-letter word that I heard.

They were talking about platform and they were talking about if you could view it as connection. I thought, “That’s such a nice reframe because you have to know that it is a business plan, you’re doing a business plan.” If you view platform as who are you connecting to, who you’re connecting with because if you wanted to just write, then just write. If you want to write and get published, then obviously the next part of that is, “Will you want people to read it?” You don’t just get published. Sure you could say, “I’m published,” but readers are the key. You got to be thinking about your readers and so you can use, know, understand platform, but look at it as how do I connect?

It’s putting on a hat that most artists don’t naturally like to put on or want to put on, which is the marketing hat and thinking about all of that. New authors, if you have the dream of getting a traditional publishing deal, knowing that today’s traditional publishing deal is very different from what it was fifteen, twenty years ago, those days are pretty much over, then you’ve got to roll up your sleeves. You want to do the book proposal first. Because you want to be mapping your way through your project and be doing the critical analytical thinking of, which is no fun. I don’t want to do that. I’m writing a memoir. I’m not following my advice.

I’m writing my memoir, but I’m aware that even though I’m a literary agent, I’m not going to necessarily just get a book deal just because I wrote a memoir. I’m a little backed up at some point, but right now I’m writing to write for the art of writing, for the expression of writing, for the exploration of writing. If you’re serious about getting published, you need to do a book proposal in nonfiction and a memoir as well, not just a self-help books. Even if you’re writing a novel, you need to be thinking along those lines and not necessarily a full proposal. Knowing what’s out there, doing a market analysis, knowing what’s selling, knowing what’s working, knowing who your competition is, all of that is part of a book proposal, knowing how you’re going to reach your readers, knowing who your readers are not.

Don’t write a book saying it’s for everyone. It’s not for everyone, you got to be specific on who your audience is and then know how to find them. If you want to get a traditional publishing deal, then you got to do your homework. I meet because I go to writer’s conferences now and get to speak or lead workshops or take pitches and all of that, which is amazing, and I love it. Then I have all these people coming up to me and I fall in love with the people, but sometimes they’re just not quite there yet. I can mean definitely tell of my experience and give my hard earned wisdom about this and what it’s going to take.

[Tweet “Don’t write a book saying it’s for everyone. It’s not for everyone. Be specific on who your audience is and know how to find them.”]

Try to look them in the eyes and like, “Are you up for it?” Because you will have your heart broken. It will feel like it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and you will probably need to rewrite your book multiple times. There’s the whole craft of writing. That’s one thing. Then there’s a whole piece of being a marketer. It’s one of those things like maybe if you don’t want to have to do all that, but see the thing is you’re still going to want readers. You still should do a business proposal, a book proposal, so self-publishing is easier. You can self-publish and still get it out to your sphere and still have it done well and have it be your legacy and put your heart and soul and all of that into it and be proud of that.

You got to look at the overall goals. If it’s not a burning desire, “I need to be traditionally published. This has been my dream forever,” it might not be worth it. Because if you don’t have that level of wanting of it and then coupled with the willingness to do what it takes, it just might not be worth it. You can write a beautiful book and have it self-published and still find readers and do grassroots marketing. Who knows, if you do a good job, then you could get picked up. I published hybrid for my first book. I published with Morgan James for my first book and my third book. I’m a big fan of the hybrid model. That’s one thing I do with people though is I do a consult with people. Sometimes it’s an email consult depending on referrals and all that, depending on my space. I try to get people to just try to answer for themselves. Everybody wants to write a book. Of course most of those people want like, “I want to get an agent now. I want to get picked up,” but in order to do what it takes to follow that path is a whole another ballgame.

It is. I talked to Bill Gladstone the other day about this. I didn’t realize that you guys had the hybrid type of situation with what he was doing. You’re still with him, right? You’re in that group. You have an option if you want to have access to certain tools that you guys have. Is that how it works?

That’s a different department from where I am. It is a self-publishing option, but you can technically be agented. If it does pick, if it does take off, it’s a good offering. He’s addressing a need in the marketplace because of this issue. I had the frustration when I first was published. I had a lot of people coming to me and asking me to write chapters for their books. I was so honored to do that, I love to write. Give me an assignment and tell me when it’s due and tell me, give me a topic and I’ll write about it and I love that. I did that a lot and then I had some people so proudly send me the books after the fact and they were self-published and so many of them were just so poorly done. It wasn’t the author’s fault. It was that there’s just the options out there because you don’t have the guidance, you don’t know the thickness of the paper you’re supposed to use and the color of the paper and the type of font and the margins.

If you don’t have all of that stuff nailed and you’re self-publishing, someone will open it and it will scream self-publishing. Otherwise, people don’t actually care. As long as it looks right, like it said. But our brains recognize that something’s off and it becomes something that becomes a turnoff already when you pick it up, if margins are off, if something’s weird with the cover. There’s such a need for quality self-publishing. Bill and Waterside has answered that call to service authors who aren’t quite ready for primetime. I can refer people to that program and I work as a literary agent to where I’m actually attempting to get my clients deals with traditional publishers.

As far as bookstores and different things, it was pretty tough to do if you’re doing it self-publishing, if you don’t know where to contact and that type of things. They buy certain times of the year when people are a publisher, they have to be aware of that when the book should come together.

Look at the sales cycles. Most bookstores, at least big chains, are not going to take self-published books. Barnes and Noble, unless you might have a special relationship, someone could feel free to prove me wrong on anything. In self-publishing, what we tell authors is to you have to grow yourself and try to negotiate. If you have a little local bookstore, you go yourself and try to negotiate. You can do it on consignment or something like that. It’s possible. That’s the difference. Self-publishing, you’ll get online distribution through all the online retailers in both e-book depending on which type of self-publishers, but that’s the one that’s what to look for is online distribution and through both e-book and paperback. Getting into brick and mortar bookstores is not likely for self-published books.

Do you think they should come out with a paperback initially or is that bad to start off with a paperback?

A lot of books are starting going paperback first, especially. I’d rather wait for the paperback and I prefer paperbacks personally.

I do too, but some people dislike that. It’s fascinating because I was hanging out this group that was here, with Marshall Goldsmith recently and Price Pritchett was there and he sold so many million books I don’t even know. It’s fascinating to hear what works for every person. Get it onto the New York Times bestseller list. I didn’t think you could do that. I thought that was impossible, but I guess you can, right?

The New York Times bestseller list is a mystery. There’s no exact formula. I’m not actually not sure how self-published books could get on there.

The whole publishing arena is very challenging. You were talking about platform and I liked how you said right now because I’ve heard so many people that I’m like, “That guy had a huge television show in his day. Nope, you can’t get a publisher.” I’m thinking if that guy can’t get it. People that just went off and started the publishing self-publishing thing by themselves. Do you think that that just changed the whole landscape of it?

It’s hard to say what comes first, the chicken or the egg. With our economy, with the access of information and data at our fingertips, who knows what came first. There are pioneers that are leading the way into all these different ways of getting the message out there. Many of my authors of course wanted a New York publisher, but I am very interested in what the independents are doing, what the midsize houses are doing because there can be a smaller house, more attention, so it is looking at the overall look. There are so many resources out there.

Honestly, for an author not to be educated now is ridiculous. You got to take your time. You got to take the time to know what’s going on out there in the world. It may not all make sense that they’re just so many resources and all these people, like you’re saying Seth Godin and all sorts of different people who are teaching marketing and teaching how to do this. When you are looking at making a choice, because you can have a conversation with me and I can tell you all how I view it, but it’s best if you already know something versus just coming in completely cold and just with, “I want to write a book.”

It’s important that whether you go with a publisher or are you self-publishing, you realize that’s when the work starts.

I don’t remember who said it, but it’s one of the Seth Godin type of people who said the best time to start marketing a book is three years before you write it. I am an author; I am a writer. I am writing. I am not following all the rules. I understand it’s challenging. It’s challenging, it challenges those of us that don’t like to promote ourselves and as I am so much better at promoting my authors and other people than I am myself. I did a pretty decent job of self-promotion. I appeared so busy, but honestly, I also burned out. After my house burned down, I burned down in a lot of ways.

I thought earlier on you were going to ask me about my one lesson from the fire, which I resisted for so long as looking at the one lesson. A new client just said something to me and he had a medical issue that happened that altered his life. It was a total wakeup call of mortality and what matters and all of that. He got that lesson, but what happened was he then went back to business as usual. He attempted to go back to the way things were and put his life back together and operate at the same level. When he was saying this, I thought, “I did that.” I honored my grief. I took the time to grieve. I wrote about it. I was very gentle but I then tried to go back to the same level of performance that I was at before and it burned me out so much. It’s this fine line because after all isn’t that life like this fine line between those of us that want to write and want to be out there and want to speak and all of that.

It’s all great but if something traumatic takes us out, even just life, even if you haven’t had the traumatic events, look at balance. Because we can be striving and go in and it’s looking great and we’re achieving things and then actually up so fried. Even if you love it, even if you’re on purpose and love it. I actually had to slow it way, way down even more after that. I took the whole summer last summer off. I didn’t travel. I’ve been slowing things down a notch once in a while. As you rise like the phoenix from the ashes, the phoenix rises dramatically, but rise with self-love. I’m 52, and it’s like they’re looking at, “I’m middle aged.” It’s time to be gentle. It’s time to not just take all these things that we actually know intellectually and start to put them into practice.

That’s good advice. You do so many interesting things. I was so glad to finally connect it. We’ve been trying to get you on the show for a while and I’m so glad you were on today. I know a lot of people are going to want to find out because I said you’re losing so many things, they’re not going to know how to find you.

My central location, my central hub for a lot of me is KristenMoeller.com. I still do book coaching and write retreats and my literary agent piece. I keep everything separate so there are different ways you can find out about different offerings that I have as well as finding my books there.

Thank you.

 

Thank you so much to Christy and to Kristen. If you’ve missed any past episodes, please go to DrDianeHamiltonRadio.com. You could sign up there to get to hear about more episodes. You can also find us on iTunes and just about everywhere else. I hope you join us for the next episode of Take the Lead Radio.

About Christy Whitman

Christy Whitman is a Transformational Leader, Celebrity Coach and the New York Times Bestselling Author of The Art of Having It All. She has appeared on The Today Show and The Morning Show and her work has been featured in People Magazine, Seventeen, Woman’s Day, Hollywood Life, and Teen Vogue, among others. Christy is the CEO and founder of the Quantum Success Learning Academy & Quantum Success Coaching Academy, a 12-month Law of Attraction coaching certification program. Christy has helped thousands of people worldwide to achieve their goals through her empowerment seminars, speeches, and coaching sessions and products. Christy’s life-changing message reaches over 200,000 people a month and her work has been promoted by and featured with esteemed authors and luminaries such as Marianne Williamson, Dr. Wayne Dyer, Marci Shimoff, Brian Tracy, Neale Donald Walsch, Abraham-Hicks, and Louise Hay. She currently lives in Montreal with her husband, Frederic, and their two boys, Alexander and Maxim.

About Kristen Moeller

Kristen Moeller is an author and speaker who focuses on writing, publishing, empowerment, and women’s issues. She is an expert in why people wait in life. She founded a non-profit to provide scholarships for transformational education. She is the best-selling author of “Waiting for Jack” and “What are you Waiting For?” and “Phoenix Rising”. She also hosts the “What are You Waiting For” Internet radio show. A three-time TEDx speaker, Kristen has been featured on NPR, ABC, NBC, Fox News, the New York Times, Huffington Post – and had a stint on TLC’s Tiny House Nation. Kristen has shared the stage with luminaries such as Jack Canfield, Hauschka, Freddy Ravel, Brian Tracy, Barbara DeAngelis, and Brendon Burchard.

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