#060 Writing a Business Book with Dr Ricki

Sarah:
You’re very welcome to the podcast today. I have a very special treat for you. I am interviewing a woman in business who has segued her business in the last couple of years, someone who worked with me a few years ago. Our paths crossed recently, and I thought I need to get this woman on the podcast. Ricky, you’re very welcome.

Ricki:
Oh, thank you. I’m so delighted to be here and great to see you again.

Sarah:
Yes, you too. I’m going to let you introduce yourself because I know the way that you started off your career is very different to what you’re doing now, but you’ve been on quite an interesting journey as well. So, you really started as a teacher. Was it an English teacher?

Ricki:
Yeah, I was a college professor here in the Toronto area. I taught English for 25 years. But the thing is, while I was teaching, I always had sort of something else on the side. I’ve always wanted to be a writer and I’ve always considered myself a writer. I did freelance writing on the side. So even while I was teaching, I was publishing articles and magazines and newspapers and things, really just for fun because another interest of mine has always been food and recipes and cooking. I started a food blog in 2008 and it was kind of, again, just a hobby on the side and it started gaining a bit of an audience. And then I was diagnosed with candida overgrowth, which I know you’re familiar with, it’s overgrowth of yeast in the body. And that was very debilitating, but what happened because of that, I altered the recipes I was writing about. I was telling stories around recipes, but then it became more focused on candida recipes, which at the time were very difficult for people to find, you know, the, the diagnosis just wasn’t as known as it is today. So, my blog suddenly exploded at that time. That kind of led to all these other things where I started working as a health coach. I took a sabbatical from my English teaching job to study holistic nutrition, because I wanted to find out more about why my naturopath was telling me to eat certain things. So, I ended up working in that area for about close to 15 years as a health coach, helping mostly women who had candida overgrowth to clear their candida. I ended up publishing three books during that time. The last one was called living candida free. So, it related to that topic and then things were going really well. I was coaching one on one. I was really enjoying it. Then when the pandemic hit, there was something about the more introspective nature of being home all the time or something? I realized that I had kind of abandoned my own writing and I really missed it. I missed having that as a creative outlet. I had done fiction writing. I had written a novel when I was younger. So, I just determined that I had to get back to that. And so I decided I was going to write a novel, but at the same time I had kind of been helping colleagues, people that I’d met online who also had their own online businesses, I’d been helping a lot of my colleagues with the content of their web pages or sometimes emails. They would send them to me and say, can you help me fix this up? And after a while, one of my colleagues said to me, you should be charging for this. You’re really helping me. And so, the pieces kind of fit together and I realized I could do my own writing as part of this, as my own creative outlet, but also help other entrepreneurs with their writing. And I just kind of announced on my Facebook page that I was now taking book clients and one thing led to another and I ended up working with five authors last year and helping them with their books.

Sarah:
That’s really amazing. I often call these interviews, reinvention sessions. I used to do them years ago and I’m doing them again now. But for you, it doesn’t sound like so much of a reinvention, more like a journey home to your writing.

Ricki:
Yes, I really think it is. I know career counsellors will always tell you to think about what you loved as a child and really I’ve been writing since I could hold a pencil, since I knew how to write. It was something that I had put aside, and this was another sort of revelation for me when I was just going through my computer in 2020, I found something like I think close to 30 drafts of short stories and just things that I had started writing when I was on that sabbatical for my teaching job. Also I realized this is something that’s inside of me that I just have to allow out.

Sarah:
Yeah, totally. What I find really interesting is if someone sort of nearly had to tell you to start charging for this because very often things that are our real magic, our genius zone as Gay Hendricks would call it. We often think that it comes so easily to us that we don’t even think of charging for it or charging more for it than we would for other kinds of work. So how was that for you to actually have it pointed out to you that you needed to charge for this?

Ricki:
Well, it was a situation almost exactly like what you just said. So, I had been working with one colleague and just doing this work for her. And every time she had something that she wanted to write for her audience or website, she would run it by me first and I would make notes and make changes, basically doing the kind of editing work that I do with the book manuscripts now. And at one point I was thinking, how come she doesn’t see that? It seems so obvious to me, but she actually had to say to me, not everyone can see those kinds of patterns and see those kinds of things that need to be changed or just the turn of phrase that I would come up with that she would never have thought of that would allow her to really get that message across in five words instead of a paragraph or whatever. You really don’t realize that. I mean, again, because I’ve been writing for my whole life, I think that’s part of it. And just having taught English and having studied all the structures of the language, it all kind of works together. And you don’t realize how it develops over time. It’s like the 10,000 hours. Right?

Sarah:
Absolutely. I’ve kind of felt like that when I first started coaching actually in 2008, you mentioned when you said 2008, I thought, oh, that’s when I first started coaching. And even when I started charging for it, I wasn’t charging as much as I did. That I was charging for my health consultations in my health practice. And I was asking myself, no, this is too easy. This is too enjoyable. I’ve always been doing this. Even though I had upskilled and done my training and certification and everything, I still thought like, oh, I can’t charge as much this because it doesn’t feel so effortful. It feels really easy.

Ricki:
And isn’t that kind of the way you know it is the right thing for you?

Sarah:
Oh, absolutely. I can really see that now, but when you’re in it yourself, it’s easy to see it for somebody else. Yeah. But when you’re in it yourself, you know, it could be that you’re in flow or that you are just in the zone or whatever. And you think like, doesn’t everybody experience this? And it’s just like, well, no, actually, like I’m actually having testing next week for ADHD. And it’s really hilarious because the more I’ve been reading up on it I’m like, isn’t that how everybody’s brains works? I had no idea that this set of symptoms is a neurodiversity and not a normal thing, not neurotypical. I thought, oh, that’s really interesting. I thought everybody’s brains was like that. We could just make these crazy assumptions because it’s our reality.

Ricki:
And isn’t it funny too, how, if it is something that comes so naturally to you and so easily to you, you assume it can’t be valuable, right? I think part of me assumed everybody knew how to do this, but also, well, if it’s so easy, then where’s the value, right? It it’s too easy.

Sarah:
Yeah. It’s too easy. Whereas like English was my least favourite subject at school. I hated writing essays. Now I quite enjoy writing now because what I realized was at school was, we were told, we must review this book and write an essay on it. I was such a rebel and was like, don’t tell me what to do. don’t pick my sentences apart and stuff. Whereas now I can write in a way that is enjoyable. And I had to let go of that belief that I’m not a good writer. I mean, I bet that’s something that you come up against a lot.

Ricki:
Oh, so much, people really feel that. And I think it holds them back. That’s one of the things when I talk to people who dream of writing a book, but just feel they can’t do it. One of the main reasons they tell me is I’m not a good writer. And I have lots to say about that. I mean, there are many ways to approach that, but I think everyone is capable of writing and there’s so much help out there too. Right. So, it’s something to really consider that you don’t have to think of yourself as a professional writer or even a necessarily a good writer. You have to focus on the content that you have, the information that you have and then somebody like a book coach or an editor can help you shape it. It’s a craft that you can get better at as you go.

Sarah:
So when you work as a book coach, you are not just coaching someone to write, you actually do the editing work as well. Is that correct?

Ricki:
Yeah. So, I can work with someone just from even the concept, having the concept right to the end of the manuscript at any stage of that. I can tell you the different stages that I work with people, the first thing would be someone who just maybe dreams of writing a book or like the idea of writing a book but doesn’t even have a concept of what to write about. So, one of the sessions I do with people, the book builder is where we will look at what could your topic be and then flushing it out to the point of the outline or the plan, if you prefer that word, because some people cringe at the word outline, but it’s basically just a roadmap for you to write. And so, you get to the point where you have the main topic and then you break it down into the points that you’re going to include in the book. So, that’s for someone who has no idea what they’re doing, if somebody has that they’re at that stage and they’re starting to write, then there’s the sort of middle stage where you’re doing the actual seat, you know, but in the seat at the computer or at the tablet or paper with the pen and you have to actually write the darn thing. And that I find is the stage that requires the most discipline motivation, perseverance. And that’s where a lot of people drop off. So, a book coach can help there with accountability. So, some of my clients will choose to, even though they know what they’re writing about, they want someone to be accountable to so that they’ll keep writing and they’ll do it consistently and they’ll meet their deadlines. And so, a book coach can do that where you might meet every two weeks and talk about. You might have a specific number of pages that you’ve promised to hand in and then you discuss them and whatnot. But as a developmental editor, which is the final stage, that’s when someone already has a completed manuscript, and as a developmental editor, that’s where I would go through the manuscript and look at it structurally and help them to make sure it’s well organized and that there are no parts missing, but there are also no extraneous parts that aren’t necessary. Does it have a consistent tone of voice to it from beginning to end, all of those kind of big picture issues for the book.

Sarah:
Fabulous. And is it, I should have asked you at the beginning, is it mostly non-fiction books you’re writing.

Ricki:
Yeah, it’s only nonfiction

Sarah:
Only nonfiction. Yeah. And would it be mostly business owners?

Ricki:
Yes. So far, they’ve all been business owners and usually it’s around their particular business or somehow related to their business. So, the book can be an adjunct to their business or a tool that helps them with their business. But I tend to work primarily with women in the health and wellness field. That’s been my experience so far because that’s where I come from and what I know. As I told you earlier, I did work with someone who was in the sort of the spiritual realm. That was more of a memoir actually moving from one career to another. But other than that I’ve worked with, in terms of business writing, more for shorter form things where I’ve helped somebody with like a proposal or whatnot, but not a whole book.

Sarah:
Yeah. Because I really saw the benefit of having a book in my former business, in my health business. And it was a book around natural fertility and I had it included, there was the first half, it was sort of the how-to kind of thing. And the second half was client stories with their testimonials and stuff and photos and things. And it wasn’t a particularly substantial book. It was put on Amazon Kindle; I think was the only place that I uploaded it. But that book got me so much press and on national television and booked out for like two years and VIP clients and stuff. And I just really saw the benefit of having a book in your business. Yeah. I see some people spending a lot of time and energy writing a book and then it not really leading anywhere that they’ve maybe changed niches, or they are not established in business or that they maybe just have no clue on creating the right book. They’ve just done it themselves and uploaded it and just waited for this rush of clients and things to come. And it hasn’t happened. In your experience, does making sure that the book is well structured, make a difference to, you know its longevity and its success.

Ricki:
Yeah. I was going to say, I think that’s the sort of upfront thing that you have to look at. If the book itself isn’t clear to the readers and the message isn’t coherent, if they’re not sure what they’re getting from you in that book, then it’s not going to sell well. And even just on the most basic level, if it’s not well written, if there’s a lot of repetition or if there are even grammar errors and spelling errors, people won’t slog through a book that’s hard to read. So, it has to have the right tone and the right message. But also, the contents have to be helpful to your audience. It has to be something they can use, right. That they can a practical application and also something that touches them personally. So, I think that’s where an editor can really help you with the contents and the tone, but then like what you were saying in terms of using it as a tool in your business, there’s so many ways you can leverage that book to get media appearances or more clients to work with you, you know? So, my first book that was self-published, I don’t know if you know the story, but it was recommended by Ellen DeGeneres. So, it was on her website, and I was like, oh my God, I can’t believe Ellen recommend my book but I was able to use that to then acquire an agent that led to the other two books and even the kind of self-marketing I did with that book here in this area. I ended up speaking to a lot of mom’s groups. So, my first book was about desserts that were healthy without eggs, dairy, refined sugar. I ended up talking to a lot of mothers groups with young kids who had food allergies and not only was the book useful as sort of a topic of discussion, but then if you’re speaking to a group like that, you can either include a copy of the book as part of your fee for speaking, so that everybody gets a copy or sell the book at the end of your speech to people. And what that does is not only get it in the hands of that group, but people are going to share it with friends and they’re going to tell their family about this book. And so, your name is being exposed to this much larger audience than it could have been otherwise, or as you were saying on Amazon, right. Anybody in the world can find you on Amazon. So, there are people you couldn’t possibly have contacted personally, or even in your immediate circle or where you live, who can find out about you once you have a book on Amazon.

Sarah:
Yeah. I found it a fabulous kind of lead magnet nearly like it was, even though when it was a few dollars or whatever, it was an amazing way of people finding me that wouldn’t have found me before it still does people still find me from it. Wow. Even though it’s years later and I’ve never done anything with it just kind of sits there. But I think that’s important to have those pieces that you’ve mentioned because I know I’ve bought books from people that are very well known. I’ve got a great reputation but it’s full of typos. My Virgo brain can’t cope with that. Even though I make plenty of typos myself, you know, it’s so easy to spot other peoples. It’s so easy to overlook them in them yourself, and then to spot them from other people. So, I think having somebody else whose eyes are on your book is a great idea.

Ricki:
And I was just going to say, people think that they can edit their own work, but it’s amazing how you just don’t see, partly because you are in it for so long when you’re writing it, but it’s virtually impossible for you to see all the errors yourself. Even in the old days, in publishing houses, if you published with a traditional publisher, they used to have more than one person do the proofread and the editing because even the editor, you know, when they’re doing that work, they can’t catch every single error. It’s almost impossible for one person. Apparently a really good rate is to have anything below 20% of the errors left on the page is a really good rate for a proof-reader. So, even a proof-reader is expected to miss up to 20% of the errors. As the author yourself, you’re really going to miss an awful lot more than that. But I found also in doing the developmental editing, people often don’t even realize, like one of the authors I was working with, she repeated the same anecdote in three different chapters, because it was an appropriate illustration for those three different points, but you don’t want to be repeating the same story three times to make three different points. Right. You want to come up with two other ones.

Sarah:
Different stories for each one.

Ricki:
Yeah. So, things like that that people don’t realize they’ve done, even though it could even be well written. They don’t realize those kinds of issues exist in the book. I always think in terms of movies where they have, I forget what the term is for the editor who looks at consistency. You know, sometimes there’s a scene where two people are in a cafe and someone takes a sip of coffee and puts it down and the mug is almost full. And then the, the next time you see that person talking it’s empty. Right. And that’s bad editing, they miss that. Right. And so that’s the kind of thing that a developmental editor will do with your book as well, to ensure that there aren’t any of those kinds of gaps or incongruency where something doesn’t match up with something that you said earlier.

Sarah:
Yeah. Because I suppose a book is just one step in the marketing for somebody that like, if there are a lot of errors, a lot of glaring errors in a book, well then that could compromise somebody wanting to do further work with you or by another one of your books or your course or something else.

Ricki:
I think it reflects on the writer. It’s part of the image you’re projecting to your audience. It’s a reflection of you. And so it really should be the best possible reflection of you and your ideas and your message to your audience.

Sarah:
Yeah. Because I mean, I saw first-hand the incredible power of a book. And what about, like very often I hear people talking about books these days and saying they don’t have to be particularly long, that even that people’s attention spans are so much less that actually a shorter book is better. Have you any thoughts on that?

Ricki:
Yeah. I’ve seen that as a trend for sure. I think also with non-fiction that tends to be more the case than with fiction. I mean, there are basically no limits. You can write a really long book, but it used to be non-fiction was in the realm of like 50,000 words enough. And now they’re saying even 25,000 words enough for an actual book would be considered a book. Lower than that, I mean, I’ve seen eBooks that are 10,000 words and that’s fine for something that’s that exists only as an eBook, but it might be too few pages for a printed book. So, I think it also depends on when you’re thinking about the book you want to write, what do you want to use it for? Is it going to be simply a tool that you’re going to give to your clients maybe when they coach with you, and this is going to be an additional piece of information, something that supports or maybe expands on what you talk about in your sessions. Then it could be a shorter book, but if it’s something that you want to standalone, like a lot of entrepreneurs would have a book that presents their sort of entire philosophy of what they do to their audience. And it’s maybe a replacement to some extent for people who can’t work directly with them or aren’t in the same country or whatever and can’t meet them. So, you have to decide what you want your book to do. And obviously the latter purpose is going to be a longer book if it’s really just a representation of maybe your course or your program.

Sarah:
Yeah. So, sort of a how, to step by step kind of thing. Yeah. I think it is very powerful in business. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s amazing, like you can buy an incredible book like that. I mean, I think somebody like, Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula, like the book really does outline the whole formula and the book can get for $15 or the course you can buy for like $2,000. And there is nearly as much information, but I mean we’ve all got bookshelves full of books that have got so much information in them. Yep. I’m just looking at mine over there too. But they then need the course or the one-on-one coaching or something to actually implement and take them through it. So, I think some people might be afraid that there’d be too much information, like they’re giving away too much in a book, but do you think that the purpose is different than a course or something like that?

Ricki:
I do think it’s right. I think people have to make the distinction between information and coaching or information and counselling. So, information is literally just that. And for many of these programs that, like I’ve taken so many programs online. If you dug enough on internet, you could get all that information for free. So, you’re not always paying for the information in the program. The purpose of the program is to have access. I feel often to the coach or coaches or the one on ones that you get the hot seats or whatever it is. So, coaching is very different from information. For instance, what I used to do with the candida coaching, my book, Living Candida Free, outlined for them, the exact diet that they had to eat, it even talked about how to deal with family and friends and social situations and so on. But it couldn’t tell you what to do this week in your situation. It couldn’t help guide you through what’s going on in your life right now. And that’s what the coaching was for: how to change your mindset around eating so that you can stick with this diet for life. Think about diets in general. Most of us know what to eat. We have the information, it’s the application of the information. How do we do that? That’s what we need help with. So, I think they’re two different things. And that’s why I say the book can be a really good adjunct to what you’re doing in your coaching or your program, because it isn’t replacing what you can do one on one with somebody else.

Sarah:
Yeah. And I think it’s a great thing to have if you’re doing a networking talk or you’re doing a speaking at a conference or speaking, like I was at a menopause summit a couple of weeks ago. And there were a couple of people, there was one in particular that had her book there on about brain fog and everything. I went and had a look at it and picked it up, but she wasn’t there. She wasn’t at the table when I was there, but I came home and ordered it and I had it in a couple of days and I spoke about it on my podcast. And I’m going to see if she’ll come on the podcast, so if she didn’t have the book well then, I wouldn’t be talking on the podcast to two thousand people telling them about this book. The book is, I think is an amazing thing. Are there any tips that you could give that would be useful for people? If they’re thinking about, oh, I should write a book or I’ve started, but I don’t know what to do next. What would you like to share there?

Ricki:
Sure. I think the first thing I would say is getting back to the initial point of, you know, are you qualified to write a book? Because I think a lot of people feel that if they don’t have a writing degree or whatever, they’re not, and that is so absolutely not true because the most important part of the book is the information or the content. And that comes from you and your unique experience. And no one else has the specific knowledge and experience that you have. And that’s what makes your book interesting to people. So, just remember that it’s really the contents that you have that you’re creating. And then also, I think a lot of people feel that they need to do all kinds of extensive research or take courses on whatever the topic is. And I would actually advocate for almost the opposite to say that the topic that’s best for you to write is the one that comes most naturally to you that you feel most comfortable with, that you already know a lot about. When I was coaching people on candida and I have been through it, so to come up with a topic that relates to maybe what you do in business every day, and that you feel comfortable talking about, you might need a little bit of research to expand the topic. Once you determine your plan, your outline, but really to start with something that you’re interested in already, you feel comfortable talking about already, what is the thing that you talk about a lot with people or with your clients. And so, it doesn’t even necessarily have to be related to the very specific niche. 

So, as an example, I’ll talk again about someone in the health field. If there’s someone who deals with clients who all have celiac disease and they feel like they have to talk about what is celiac and explain it, and you know, the difference between gluten flours and knowing gluten flours, that isn’t necessarily the best topic for a book for you. You might just think a little bit broader. What are some of the things that you talk about with your clients every single day and maybe the book for you would be talking about how do I build a gluten free home for someone? What are the things that I need to get rid of in my home? What are the things I need to bring in? I remember when I, and I’m not a gluten free expert, but when I first started talking about this and looking into it a little bit, being shocked that some of the everyday household items actually contain gluten, like shampoo can have gluten in it or whatever, right? So, these are things that not everybody knows about, and it might not be the first thing they think of, but really helpful to anybody who’s going to go gluten free. The first thing that they always learn about is the food and which foods have gluten, which don’t, but we don’t hear so much about all the other stuff. So, to maybe think a little bit broader than your one specific niche, when you’re coming up with a topic that can be really helpful too. Then the other thing I would say again, that’s a really good way to determine what you might write about is to think about what are the things that people come to you, what are the problems people come to you to solve, and it can be in your business, but it can even be in your personal life, something where you’re asked for advice on something. So, as an example, my very first book at the time I was doing, I had an organic bakery and I was doing catering for people. So, most of the stuff I was baking were like cookies, brown muffins, that kind of thing. But then I started getting requests from moms for birthday cakes, for their kids. And I heard from a lot of these mothers that their kids have food allergies. And they would say things like, oh, my daughter can’t even eat her own birthday cake. Or my son can’t enjoy the birthday cake with his friends. And so, I would be doing these birthday cakes. I loved doing it, but it was kind of a side-line. It was really time consuming and it was very expensive for the customers, but it suddenly hit me one day. Like I’m getting asked about this all the time. So my first book, “Sweet Freedom” really was my way of providing that information to the moms so they could do it themselves. I put all of my secrets and my recipes, my cakes, my frostings, whatever that you could make without sugar, eggs, dairy, blah, blah, blah. And that was the source of the first book. And then through that book, I ended up being on the national morning show here on television, talking about allergy free treats and so on. So, it really did lead to a lot of other opportunities as well, but that was answering a problem that I was able to solve for people in real life. And then just writing about it in the book. So there’s so many ways to get into a topic for a book, I think not to restrict yourself just to the one specific thing that you think of when you think of what your business might offer.

Sarah:
Yeah. I love that. That gives it another perspective, because I think people will very often think, I just have to follow this formula. You have to get the right title and tagline and get the chapters out and then that’s it. And then I have to go publish it. But I think getting those foundation bits sorted sounds like it’s really important to the actual, as you keep saying, the tone of the book, the overall message from the book is incredibly important.

Ricki:
Yeah, and don’t forget that again, this was a statistic that was so shocking to me, but up to 90% of nonfiction books are ghost written. So almost every celebrity book you ever read was actually not written by the celebrity alone. So, even if you don’t think of yourself necessarily as a writer or even if you, if you don’t like writing, if you’re not, if you don’t enjoy sitting down and writing on a computer or on paper, the way I love writing, you can still write a book based on, like I said, the content and the ideas. So, for example, one of my clients who had a podcast and she wanted to convert that information into a book, but she absolutely had no interest in sitting down and doing the writing. So she simply converted those podcasts into transcripts. And then I turned the transcripts into a book. We talked about all the content and the order, and everything of course was approved by her. And even the final content had to be approved by her but made sure it was her voice because she had spoken those words. So, I had her voice right there on the page, but it was putting it into the order it needed to be in for the book and knowing which parts to include and which parts not to include. And so, I was able to rework all of that in a coherent way. So, even if you’re not in love with the idea of doing the actual writing, you can still produce a book and be the author of a book. And it’s your content, it’ your material. You are the author of that book.

Sarah:
I’m so pleased you said that. I think that that fear of not being a good writer, I think it goes beyond that, of it not being a natural good skill for somebody that like, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. Denise Duffel Thomas talks about that. She wrote her first couple of books and after that, she just handed over all a blog post and everything to a ghost writer who wrote her, I think it was her third book. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but I didn’t realize the numbers were that high in the amount of people that do it. And that’s really refreshing. I think so many of our listeners are just got to go, oh yeah. Because I think there’s a romantic view of writing a book of, you know, hiring the log cabin for a month and getting away from it all and sitting there with pots of tea and looking out the window with a cosy fire, having arrived with a typewriter or a pen and paper. And you know, the reality is probably quite different for those people.

Ricki:
Yeah. It’s a slog to write a book. Part of being able to get through it is finding ways, like I said, having the accountability or whatever, if you really do want to do the writing, staying motivated, that’s one of the keys that you have to work on to make sure that you can keep that momentum going. I think a lot of people will start writing a book and they’ll very quickly lose steam when they realize that it actually is quite a bit of work to write 50,000 words or 35,000 words or whatever it is. And maybe for you it comes more easily for you to just speak it into your phone and record it and then hand that off someone else.

Sarah:
Oh, totally. And I know the only way that I could get it done is because so many people that are a great starter, terrible finisher and just love the ideas and love getting going. But then it’s just like, I’m bored now. But it means just don’t get that done. When I was doing mine, I just basically paid somebody for a date for it all to be formatted and uploaded to Kindle. So, I had to have it ready for that date, if not, I lost my slot and lost my money. I was there at two o’clock in the morning, the night before finishing it up and rearranging things. And again, I’d got a friend who was a, who I think she was an English teacher, something, but she’d been through it with a fine-tooth comb. And she’d looked at all sorts of things for me. Like there so much work at the end. But if I hadn’t had that, it would’ve been another few months. I love the idea of having somebody like you that can just really oversee all that and just say, this needs to be done on this date.

Ricki:
I think you were really wise to do that as you’re giving yourself not only the accountability, but there’s a consequence and that’s one of the other tips, the tricks that you can use to keep yourself motivated is create a consequence if you don’t meet your deadline. So, you knew you were going to lose your slot. That kept you writing and so that you wouldn’t lose your slot. So I think that was brilliant that you did that.

Sarah:
Yeah, it was the only way to work my brain. And like our human brains will misbehave as much as they can get away with. Now when I’m creating content for my programs, like in wholehearted marketing, I’m recording this module live on this day, come along if you want to ask any questions or whatever. If I wasn’t doing that, at the time, I’d be like, oh, I’m not quite ready for this yet. I need to do a bit more research or I need to prepare things a bit more and I’ll do it next week. And it would never get done. I just have to be onto myself. Some people are great at just sitting down and doing that. I hear lots of different things around the best way to write, whether you should give yourself whole days or whether you should have like two hours each morning or managing the time? Is that an individual thing or is there a good way to do it?

Ricki:
Yeah, I really think it’s an individual thing because I know people, so I’m the kind of person I write the same time every day, I try to create a habit and that works beautifully for me and for some people also, but then I also, I know others who have toddlers. And so they write in the 10 minutes while they’re in the bathroom and the kid isn’t with them, or they write only when they can. Now keep in mind, we probably all know this about how, um, every time you break your concentration, it takes what, 23 extra seconds or something.

Sarah:
20 minutes at least.

Ricki:
Oh, 20 minutes to get back into it. So, you know, it may take you a little longer if you’re doing it stopping and starting that way, but it’s better to write than not write. So, whether you’re talking it out or whether you’re writing it out, the fact that you are doing something consistently, no matter how little that’s enough to keep you going. So, I would just say write whenever you can, and as much as you can, and that’s the way to get it done, it might take you longer. Might be shorter depending on your timeline, depending on how much spare time you have, but they all work in the end, as long as they do that.

Sarah:
Yeah. I love that. And can I ask you, because you are a woman of a certain age at a certain stage in your life, how has your business sort of supported this particular stage of your life? Like me you’re in the post-menopausal stage of life.

Ricki:
You know, it’s fascinating. I haven’t thought about this till we were talking about this, but it really feels like I’ve sort of come home to myself with this work. Partly of course, because this is something that I love to do as a kid and it’s not like I ever totally abandoned it, but I really feel so immersed in that the creativity of it. It just feels like this is who I am. So, I think one of the things that happens as we get older too, at least I have less tolerance for things that don’t feel like they’re really me. I’m not willing to pretend, you know, that I won’t agree with something just to be polite anymore kind of thing, which I definitely did in my twenties and thirties. So, it feels more like I am being my authentic self by doing this and it’s just more grounded, more comfortable. So, it really does support that kind of natural evolution that I think women have as they get older, where they tend to be more comfortable in their own skin. This really supports that because this is what I feel I should be doing. But not for the first time in my life because when I was younger, I had that sort of natural instinct to do this, but then it sort of got lost along the way as you get older and into society and started following all the societal rules and whatnot, you forget sometimes.

Sarah:
Yeah. And I think like you were a professor, so like there’s a lot of academic rules, aren’t there, when you work in that environment, so now you get to work by your own rules.

Ricki:
Right? Exactly.

Sarah:
Yeah. Which is a lot more liberating. And I think particularly postmenopausal would be rapidly dwindling, oestrogen supplies. So, oestrogen is the caring nurturing hormone where we’re meant to be focusing on other creatures. I think you’re the same as me, but like it’s far more fun with sort of having pets and things, I know you’re a dog lover like me and it’s just like, you can love them and spend a lot of time with them, but you can also leave them for a little while, every once in a while, as well and not have to get too upset about it. But I think it really is a stage of life where you can absolutely give yourself a permission slip to do only the work that you love. And I love that you do that. Even within this work, you are only doing the work that you love. You’re not doing the bits that don’t light you up.

Ricki:
Right, right. Because there’s so many things you could be doing as an editor. But I I’m really focusing on it. To my mind, it’s the most creative aspect of the writing of the book. We’re looking at the content and not the grammar, spelling, punctuation. That’s a copy editor of proof-reader’s job. And that happens after the manuscript is completed. So, I take the writer up to the point where the manuscript is completed and I’m happy to help people find those other kinds of copy editor or proofread, but I don’t do that work

Sarah:
Yeah, I know. And I love that you’re doing the work that you love, because I think when we’re younger, when we can very often say, well, I have to do everything that somebody wants from me.

Ricki:
You just accept any job because it’s part you feel you’re building a business that way. For sure. Yeah.

Sarah:
Yeah. And maybe the beginning stages in a business that can be necessary sometimes and you need to do things, often to just figure out what you do like and what you don’t. Yeah. But I think the more we stay in our sort of genius zone, the better it is for everybody.

Ricki:
Exactly, because you’re doing the best job you can too.

Sarah:
Absolutely. Ricki, this has been amazing. Where can we find you?

Ricki:
The best place to find me is on Instagram. I’m just @rickiheller. And of course my site is the same, it’s rickyheller.com.

Sarah:
Ricky you’re in Canada. Aren’t you? In Ottawa?

Ricki:
I am, yes. I’m just north of Toronto,

Sarah:
Just north of Toronto. And I normally start these interviews by asking where you are in the world and what is the weather’s like, but I completely forgot so, what’s the weather like in Canada today,

Ricki:
Today it’s glorious. It’s going to be mid to high 20 Celsius, which I guess is 80 something Fahrenheit. I know some of your listeners are in the States. But yeah, and sunny, not humid. It’s just a gorgeous day out today.

Sarah:
Thank goodness. So, it’s not always snowing there. No

Ricki:
No, no, no. We actually have incredibly hot summers people don’t realize that.

Sarah:
Yeah you have real cold winters and really hot summers.

Ricki:
Yeah. Even the winters haven’t been that cold where I am, not this most recent one, but the winter before I think we only had snow for a couple weeks or something. It was hardly any snow. It was a great winter. My idea of a good winter is no snow,

Sarah:
I know I’m the same here. It only snows here every few years really. And it’s just like, I’m quite happy for it, it’s really restricting. Yeah. Really, really restricting, especially you’re not used to it and it looks beautiful. So it’s nice for a day, but that’s about it not for months and lastly, do you have something to share with our audience?

Ricki:
Oh I do. Yes. I have a guide for people, if they are thinking about what they should write about, I have a guide for how to choose your book’s topic and you can grab that at rickiheller.com/guide

Sarah:
Fabulous. We’ll pop that in the show notes, that’s really, really useful. I think that, you know, the title is so important and it’s something that people can procrastinate on. So that guide will be very welcome. Ricky, it’s been such a pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you so much for joining us,

Ricki:
Thank you. It’s been great.