The WAY to WOW Shows
Making Money from Your Passion
May 18, 2022
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[0:11] good afternoon and welcome to the way to wow show uh we're getting a bit of a late start this afternoon um some technical difficulties uh but we we overcame them and uh here we are so welcome to the show thank you all for joining us out there in uh you know social media land um um i'm kevin bemel i'm the host of the way to wow show people making money and uh you know just a little aside um i was talking to uh someone who's gonna be a guest in a few weeks earlier today and and she and she said you know

[0:46] um i don't make huge amounts of money in what i do i said yes exactly this show is not necessarily about making huge amounts of money um i i look uh there's lots of things to admire about you know the elon musks of the world uh he's i think still the richest guy in the world right um most of us aren't going to be him for a whole variety of reasons i certainly am not i would never be able to make the sacrifices that that he's made in in order to have the kind of wealth that he has and i think that's

[1:21] true for for most of us um we're what we're here to do is help all of us take those next steps in our professional life and in most importantly find work that we like to do maybe love to do maybe even have a passion for so that uh you know somebody once said um if you find if you can work at something you'll like you'll never really work another day in your life in your life and i think that there's a lot of uh merit in in that old saying and that's that's really our goal here um

[1:57] of course all of our guests are supporting themselves and oftentimes their families as well in what they're doing and that's that's a laudable goal as well um so i i thought it was worth just mentioning that i think i probably mentioned it uh you know when i when i first launched season three but it's always a good thing to repeat so before i introduce uh today's guest suzanne fisher i do want to mention my guest from last week richie gonzalez i'm sorry not richie ricky gonzalez uh he's a marine corps veteran and an entrepreneur and it was very very

[2:33] interesting to to speak to ricky because this is someone who at a very early part of his professional life has already found work that he really loves to do he's found a passion for starting businesses and had a good deal of success uh al already ricky could be an elon musk perhaps in in the future um so i invite you to go to our channel the way to wow show on youtube and check out uh last week's episode with ricky gonzalez and uh if you find something interesting

[3:08] there that he's working on get in touch with him um ricky and i met through you know our our networking efforts um notwithstanding that we're both uh you know uh uh we both have been in the military um and and we military people like to help each other out um but we also recognize that without our fellow citizens um the the time we spend in the military doesn't have uh anywhere near the kind of meaning that it would otherwise have so now i want to turn to today's guest uh suzanne woodfisher and i um met suzanne i'm going to put that in you know air

[3:44] quotes here uh through an absolutely wonderful book of hers that i got when i was on deployment um back a number of years ago now um on on a you know nuclear aircraft carrier wow we used to get shipments of books in uh periodically and um interestingly enough um chaplains also run the libraries on board ships and um and at the time um i was involved in a i was taking a masters of library and information science uh degree and so

[4:19] the task came to me to kind of sort through the books and keep the library going and i came upon this book i'm going to hold it up here amish values for your family now those of you who know that i'm a rabbi are probably thinking why would you read about amish values for your family and and the reason is because i think that it's it's a very very positive thing for us to know about a lot of traditions um a lot of religious traditions as well as other kinds of traditions in in our society and to understand them and

[4:56] i i've always i think had a somewhat carey captured um idea of who the amish are and and so i thought this would be a good uh opportunity to perhaps look beyond that and really learn something about these sort of storied people um who you know the way they're portrayed in movies probably not you know so accurate as is often the case um and it is just an amazing book um i one a book i really couldn't put down until i finished reading it and so um i subsequently reached out to suzanne and also look

[5:32] she's written numerous numerous books um and she has a new book that came out i think just last month just this month right just this month um uh and it has to do with one of my great culinary passions ice cream you know it was just uh kismet that uh those two things kind of came together so um having said that you know um suzanne is a best-selling as well as an award-winning author and i suspect like me you may have a kind of a hidden desire to to write a book maybe even a

[6:08] best-selling book and so um it was a really a wonderful opportunity that that susan agreed to come on the show and talk to us about uh her professional arc as we do each week so suzanne thank you so much for coming on the way to wow show well thank you for having me and interesting that you were on a nuclear ship and getting um you know getting exposed to the amish which sounds a little oxymoronish but my brother-in-law's a chaplain in the navy so i'm going to have to tell him this story oh my gosh okay offline we may have to play a little uh you know chaplain geography um so um because it

[6:45] you know i i got out of the chaplain court just a few years ago so we may have crossed assets sometimes at some point wonderful a wonderful service and i thank you for what you have given so many people so i appreciate that i'm not sure people understand that the different armed services have chaplains and they really serve such an important role well thank you you know interestingly enough i had no idea that there were chaplains in the military before um someone told me i was trying to join the navy this is post 911 and i was too old to to get in and then someone told me oh you

[7:20] know the navy is desperate for jewish chaplains they'll let you in even though the navy already told you you're too old to join so that's kind of a nutshell that's that's how i got in and and i was uh very fortunate to to work with a lot of wonderful people and and to be in the military at a time when you know our my fellow our fellow citizens are very very supportive of service members when i was a boy that unfortunately wasn't really the case so you know i've encouraged throughout my career for uh we in the in the service to refer to our fellow citizens as our

[7:56] fellow citizens that's indeed who who they are they're not those civilians over there we are you know kind of one team if you will um for that so but but but interest another interesting connection so suzanne um let's start as far back in your professional life as you would care to um and and tell us you know how is it that or how did you get started professionally what were you know if you want to go back this far maybe you know all the way back to when you were perhaps a child or a teenager what were your you know did you dream of being you know a firefighter

[8:33] or what were your you know what were your dreams about what you would do professionally and and how did how did that all kind of start out well interesting that you would ask that because you could also probably ask what is a woman in california doing writing about the old order amish because obviously i'm not amish and they actually the answer to both those questions is one and the same my grandfather was raised plain and i have a number of cousins and second cousins and third cousins who who live the plain life they're actually

[9:08] german baptist which is a sort of a branch off the anabaptist tree and we can talk about that later if you like but they're cousins to the amish essentially and when i was probably a young teenager i think we were actually living close to stanford hospital over in palo alto california and one of my mother's cousins so like a second cousin for me her little boy was having who was a german baptist so you know dress plane where the garb lives a very plain life though they do have electricity and they do drive cars and

[9:44] they will drive right in an airplane which is unlike the older amish but they had a little boy who had a a physical need to be over at stanford quite a lot and they stayed at our home and so i had this exposure at probably 13 or 14 years of age of watching a family in crisis weather something so tragically because he didn't end up passing away this little one but their calm and their their presence their sense of of accepting what they they were doing all they could but they were also accepting

[10:19] what they believe was the lord's will that this little boy's life was complete and it was very touching and very real so put that aside and come back to it later i love to write i don't think i was ever identified as a really remarkable writer ever not by my parents not by my college not by but i just loved it and so when i was in college i started writing for the college newspaper afterwards i got connected to do some freelance writing i have four kids and a corporate husband and we were transferred all over the country and i was able to freelance with these

[10:55] different magazines which really magazines are kind of starting to make a comeback but at the time they were big and now then they kind of have disappeared a lot um and i really learned how to be a non-fiction article writer a magazine writer learned so many skills again i'm a craftsman more than a i think a talented person um hard worker but i am a craft it's more of a craft and you know how to interview how to cold call how to bring something together how to find the resources to make it

[11:31] credible how to be you know just put together 1500 words that's worth reading over and over and over and over and as the years went by i really thought this is where i need to be is in the non-fiction world well we actually even got transferred to hong kong we were there for four years oh wow internet was young i was continuing to write we and then do the freelancing came back to the bay area san francisco bay area and um at that point there was a lot of just life change like kids leaving for college my dad's starting to have the alzheimer's like starting to show signs

[12:08] of it and writing just kind of took a little different feel for me i wasn't sure where i wanted to go and things felt very personal with you know just a change of life a stage of life i guess and i ended up i think my niece had loaned me a book written in 1936 or 1938 by brenda yuland called if you want to write and it it's just a classic and if any aspiring art writers out there get it it's just a very encouraging motivating book and there was this quote like something like

[12:43] essentially saying everybody has something important to say and i felt at that point that i was only stopping myself i was not in the idea of writing a novel i was only kind of i was the one who was holding the door and saw for for just probably four months i decided to take this idea i had do the research right and right and right and that first draft is a really drafty draft it's bad but at the end of four months i didn't tell my husband i didn't tell my kids i didn't tell my sister it was just sort of a private journey and at the end of that i had a novel and

[13:19] i we were sitting at the dinner table and i announced to my family i've written a book and you know how sons are so deeply sensitive my youngest son said that's why there's no food in this house but with that i just started the pitching process again so hard to do it's just you are not no one is looking for you and they're really looking to see why you shouldn't be published it's really really hard i don't mean that to stop anybody from it

[13:55] but just don't take it personally it is a it is a business and trying to figure that out takes a long time i ended up being rejected by virtually everybody and everything but for some small press royalty presses i ended up going with one that just sort of opened the door for me and it's easier in a little pond i won some awards at that point as well as later but that was just a nice little start of kind of an affirmation that i could write and then i learned so much about the marketing and promotion side of writing because that is 50 of this whole process

[14:31] creative side is such a fun experience but boy you still got to sell your book and then um that opened the door to an agent because i had a little bit of attraction going and the agent then in a conversation remembered that i had a plain grandfather you know who's ray's plane and she knew of an editor who was looking for a writer who could write nonfiction about the plain people and this editor wanted someone who had a credible connection wasn't just trying to jump in the door

[15:06] because the amish fiction genre was it was in like 2007 2008 it was starting to just explode which not many people know about but it it is a huge genre very loyal readers kind of hit at the point of that recession when you know people and technology is moving so fast and life felt out of control and i think it just spoke to people the rural settings the simpler way of life sort of that calm that i felt as a 13 year old is in those books and

[15:42] the door opened for me i've written many books about the old order amish both fiction and non-fiction since and i've also written historical fiction i've written contemporary women's fiction so i'm not just an amish fiction author but that's a very long answer to my writing background um so a lot lots to unpack there um so and and correct me if i'm wrong because i'm i'm hoping to help interpret this um it sounds like you you

[16:17] loved to write um and and it was really despite maybe not having any particular you know inborn talent we might call it for it it but that it was just you you landed on something you really liked to do and that's that was really the driver of of of your success is is that oh kevin so exactly that in fact we were living in houston and i had a newborn baby and i actually even volunteered to write

[16:52] a diaper newsletter that was in the days when you know you would get diaper service before paper or paper was so expensive at the time so i just loved to write i did and you mentioned passion at the beginning as you were making your introduction and i feel for me that is i so agree with you as far as not thinking about the rewards or even self-glory as much as just what you're really meant to do and and what gives you just great joy making this world a better place and hopefully things will come yeah the other thing i think this is so

[17:27] interesting is you stressed the craft side of writing um and this is i don't you've read um um the book that uh oh the fella who writes all those sort of horror novels uh the stephen stephen king book i can't remember the name of the book but interestingly enough i think he he talks about really the craft of writing as well it's would you expand i know you mentioned a few things about it but would you expand on it how did you discover what the craft of writing was and how did you learn it

[18:02] well i think everybody knows it when you read good writing so even now when i am struck by someone's writing you you know when you love an author and you just read more and more because you just have to to know how that author thinks and how they describe even the weather and a scene change and how do they end a chapter i think all of us have a sense of the craftsmanship of writing now i will back up a little bit i don't think i'm not trying to make it sound like writing is easy for everybody because i know it's not um i know that i

[18:39] think most everybody needs to learn to communicate clearly even business writing business you know it is so important to be able to express yourself in a clear manner but writing is hard i know that my husband struggles with putting a paragraph together in a way that but he's incredible with numbers and so i'm not trying to make it sound like there isn't some natural ability that goes with a love of of it but there is a part of just beyond just writing clearly it's writing well it's writing beautifully with an

[19:14] economy of words which is so much harder than writing and writing and writing and writing trying to just capture things and then even learning how to put something in such a way that for example i i just got back proofs for a book and i used this one one expression that i thought of because i was actually at an aquarium and it's someone was so surprised by some information that i said he fish-mouthed which instead of saying he opened and shut his mouth like a fish you know like

[19:49] gasping for air you know take 15 words it's it's really and it's almost there's a french word for it when you actually create two different um two different things into one word that's what i mean by craftsmanship you're actually like learning skills that are taking you a little higher a little higher a little higher all the time and it's usually with less words so i mean it's almost like you're a carpenter with wood but really fine carpentry and you're putting those joints together so they just fit you know just just perfectly yeah as you were talking about this i was

[20:24] thinking i've started re-reading um i i'm a big detective novel reader uh it's besides literature it's the only uh fiction i read and i started rereading dick francis's books um he was a queen's jockey steeplechase jockey and he got injured in a way he couldn't continue riding horses and he turned to writing books so he knows you know the background and he writes the detective novels in the horse racing uh you know industry basically and he knows the the you know that so well because he was

[20:59] a part of it but what's so interesting is the word usage that he has um it's just it's so wonderful to sort of it's almost like falling into a pool filled you know with things that were shaken out of a dictionary just luxuriating in how he crafts his sentences his paragraphs etc um how did you learn to do that then well i think it's really through reading i think the reading reading reading is where and you're and probably i'm i'm

[21:36] reading critically i'm reading carefully and i think you just start absorbing some of the better writing the larger vocabulary the different way of describing even something simple uh the sense of just too much narration too too much of the narrative descriptiveness and needing more dialogue i mean it just starts it's like a tea bag in hot water you just start and you start getting infused with with good writing so i really that's i think the best way to become a better writer is is through reading and what what kind

[22:13] i mean are there particular authors that you would recommend as as you know producing good writing are we talking you know dickens are we talk i mean no see that's what's interesting and here we go to the business of writing because if you're studying not that you can't learn so much from classics but you read a book steinbeck you read a book 100 years ago and it is filled with descriptive narration it is so much detailing work people don't have that kind of attention span right now it is dialogue driven going fast popping back and forth

[22:49] so i in some ways no i don't necessarily think it the classics expand your mind but when you're writing professionally and you have deadlines to me it's probably reading more of the contemporary authors that are big i think as i'm writing for my um the books about the amish i will go into a lot of non-fiction books about farming about i'm even magazines and things you would not expect but i want to be able to really sound like i know what i'm talking about and i have a big garden in myself but

[23:25] there's still when you're you know when you're farming for a profession it's a different way of farming i have a book coming out that is actually about a farmer's market getting started and so even that studying farmers markets so some of it is what am i working on and go in that world and capture like you were mentioning with dick francis this steeple chasing sense you know what vocabulary is relevant to the world i need to be writing in historical fiction is a whole nother thing and it's really fun to get the edits back and to see where you veer

[24:00] into 20 23 20 you know 20 22 23 writing it when it releases next year but you you know when that wouldn't have been said 100 years ago you it's it's such a challenge i love it i think it's so fun to try to capture the current reader and yet with a book that was written supposedly long long ago or trying to describe a word long ago yeah so that that's a great segue into my next question i mean when i read 19th century literature you're i mean first of all these books are enormously long yeah right now i'm making my way through um

[24:36] uh les miserables right it's oh hugo 1200 pages long or something like that and it's you know for the last you know two or three weeks i've been reading about you know the napoleonic wars right in the middle of this you know and i'm sort of like i wonder why he's telling me this you know because i want to hear more about the you know the the protagonist and the antagonist etc right but i i i'm sort of trusting that there must be a reason why i'm getting all this what i guess is background right um and yet when i contrast that with a contemporary

[25:12] novel i mean you know i think it's rare these days that they're more than about 250 pages maybe 300 pages so how does one uh keep up with these changing um i don't know it's a consumer demand these these trends how does how do you do that because it's not just writers right that have to do this we all have to do it because as you mentioned technology changes so fast culture is changing very fast so how do we how do we keep up with these things how do you keep up with these things i

[25:48] mean that's an interesting question i was even i mentioned i'm going through proofs and i was realizing that they have actually i think made the font a little smaller to get more lines in a page probably because paper is more expensive and they're having to shorten the book shorten the novel shorten the weight you know lighten the weight up so when you think of a book written like victor hugo's les miserables you're looking at a time without television without radio with a highly illiterate society as a whole you know and

[26:23] it's it's a prize it's such a different you know so few books were even got to that point and people i think were able to uh they needed that kind of large description to understand the scene i mean we probably do too but we have television we have so many things coming at us to create that scene so that's one of the trends of just you know the short narration short heavy dialogue driven i think the best to answer your question how do you stay on top of it i just think writer's conferences if you're an aspiring writer are is just

[26:59] one of the best ways to kind of take a shortcut through a lot of the hard work of trying to figure out what the market is asking for and getting to a good writer's conference they're all over the country there's even ones that are just for mystery there's all kinds of really specific ones there's even police you know writers conferences and you can make incredible contacts and friends and you're going to learn so much about what our agents and editors looking for right now so let's let's kind of turn to more of

[27:35] this side of of the writing business um you mentioned conferences um you know with with with covid and and and all the turnover in the way uh business and commerce is happening now how has that changed the way um writers interact with other writers how they interact with publishers agents what have been what have been the changes that you've experienced over the last few years and and perhaps you know where do you where do you see this going um in the future well probably the biggest change i have experienced and what i see is the lack

[28:13] of bookstores you know bookstores have really disappeared and that i think is such a tragedy but it's such a change too when you think you know i used to go on book tours and of course then we had a pandemic on top of that so there has just been radical societal change not even we're not even talking supply chain we're talking just habits of people and the way business models are changing and retail shopping isn't what it was and the availability of online and so probably the biggest thing that's that's

[28:49] shifting is there's so much going on online you can books that are you know just kindle nook all the ebooks so the accessibility is great i think also it opens up the door to a lot of self-publishing a lot which is not a bad thing because there's a lot of people who have wonderful books to write and the market is it's harder and harder to find the traditional path but it's great that someone could have a place to write a story for their family for a smaller market

[29:24] sometimes i think there's so much available it's a little overwhelming because everybody needs editors and so if anybody is listening to this and thinking about self-publishing please spend the money and get a good editor just put it put out your best stuff you know and every even editors need editors so you know i i think that part of self-publishing is a little concerning because you can you can buy it but it's just not necessarily hasn't been gone through the rigor but i think that's probably where things are going to be heading more and more in the future as a whole generation is getting really accustomed to ebooks too

[29:59] being able to just get it fast and read it quickly and audio books and audibles and on and on like that it's changing so um you mentioned the the iterative process of getting your first book published so um i if you can see over my shoulder this is the um cover i i mocked up for the book that i wrote a few years ago um and and i went through that iterative process although in my case it was to get an agent rather than a publisher um and if i remember correctly i queried

[30:36] 80 or something like that or 100 you know and and interestingly enough um all of a sudden came up with two you know who were interested in representing me and i had to decide you know which i was going to go with um talk about if you would what kept you motivated through that that iterative process because it is it you know you a lot of times they know at least in my experience they don't even bother sending you a rejection letter like once i i always thought it was it was a good sign when i got a rejection letter that meant they felt at least it

[31:11] was good enough for them to acknowledge this rejection that's kind of how i got through so but how do you see that i think you have to be so determined to have this drive and to get there and for the door to open but in the meantime i think preparing yourself is so critically important so when i always feel like when opportunity meets preparation it is a wonderful thing and for you to have two agents to choose from how awesome is

[31:46] that it's just that's better than me it's 100 better than i have and i'm thankful for the agent i had she changed my life but um it is it is a tough business i think as you mentioned i mean you had two out of 80 or more and that that's it is you're you're even fortunate because it's just so so grim but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be trying it's just that i think you can't take it personally i think the more you can also be understanding that every single publisher has to make money and they have to find them their audience so

[32:22] it doesn't necessarily mean your work isn't wonderful it's just that it may not have an audience that's large enough to provide a book but um you know it i want to encourage people i also feel there's a time in life when things are meant to happen and there are times i worry when i see a lot of young young women in particular who are raising little ones who have this hunger to be published like a real hunger and i just think gosh you are never going to get this time back with your babies and you will

[32:58] have the time to write so and i say that having had a passion to write but i'm so thankful it didn't happen for me until my late 40s i'm because it's quite consuming and overwhelming and you you do say no to a lot of things you're not as available you are working a lot and you have to you are it's an isolating career you know you're you're not generally with a community and it is um it's something i think that's i'm grateful it came at a later time and i wasn't conflicted with

[33:34] this almost sense of you know it's it's them or it's me right now all right yeah again i remember when i wrote my book i blocked out it was three or four hours each morning and i just wrote turned the phone off i mean and and and it it was an amazing experience i will say that i enjoyed it immensely um but it required an enormous amount of discipline because it's so tempting to you know fiddle this or fill that i said no sit down i gotta you know generate my pages and even if it completes schlock you know

[34:10] do it each morning and and then you know then i could move on with my day so um talk to us oh i'm sorry go ahead look if i could just talk about that because what you just brought up you you brought up a great point as well which is the discipline of writing and i really think that there's something called the 20 mile march have you heard of this you probably it's probably familiar to you in some way but it's a story about the drive to reach the center of antarctica and there were two different a norwegian and an englishman and they both were

[34:46] setting out at the same time of year everything the same but their method was different and the norwegian had a philosophy of like 15 to 20 miles a day regardless of the weather even if it was great weather he was stopping and they but the englishman allowed for example the weather to drive them if they had a beautiful day they went further and further and further and if they didn't they hunkered down and just used the data to kind of prepare and redo and all that okay so let's put a writer in that story you're you're talking about sort of muse

[35:22] like when the muse is working go for it and you know write and write in writer wait for the muse wait for the weather to clear and make that progress versus this discipline well as you can imagine guess who reached their first assume the norwegian yes with this you know constant discipline he didn't over tax his people and this englishman it was such a tragic story they made it after the norwegian and they came back and they all died and they were like 11 miles from a food

[35:58] cache they were it was a really sad story but it's a great picture of just what what happens with that daily discipline even if it's not the greatest work it is still advancing the plot you're still keeping your mind fresh you're training yourself you're you know really working and that's another great tip for aspiring writers i think to really see it as a discipline it's it's a job that that story i i've never heard that story before it's a great story but it does remind me of i think a story that we were all told as kids about you know that the tortoise and the hair right and

[36:33] then the slow and steady you know wins the race and i'm you know to have that instilled still certainly in me since i was whatever four or five years old um but these lessons have uh you know but they resonate through our lives there's a reason so talk if you would about how um the marketing of a book has changed because you mentioned at one point i guess going on book tours which as i understand it is is very rare anymore um and of course with the internet all the

[37:09] all the online stuff so how how has that changed how have you adapted uh you know to that that part of the writing business i think the pandemic really took that to a whole other level at least for me one of the things i like to do in fact i'm gonna i'm gonna bring up here's one example this is a book called the moonlight school and it is a historical novel that i wrote um during the pandemic and it's based on a true story of a woman named coral wilson stewart in appalachia who was in 1911 she was the first female superintendent for her

[37:44] county one in a landslide during a time when women didn't vote she had been divorced three times which i find quite interesting twice to this again appalachia and she was beloved and she had this idea of she was responsible for 51 rural one-room schoolhouses up in the hills and the hollows as well as one town school and she had this idea of opening up these schoolhouses on moonlit nights to the illiterate adults in her county which was

[38:19] probably a third of the population incredibly high at the time the population of the literacy in the united states was about 7.7 percent but in in this county it was rowan county was about 35 so really high and she hoped and hoped that maybe a hundred would come to these 51 little school houses 1200 people came out of the hills and hollows oh my gosh that first night september 5th 1911 filled the schoolhouses in two years she

[38:55] wiped out adult illiteracy in her county it spread moonlight schools all through the state all through the south into indian reservations into it's what we know of as night school and she did it it's a great story okay that was a little commercial but now back to the pandemic trying to launch this book in the middle of a pandemic and it's such a great story i just love it simply because of what the story is and i so i actually connected to libraries and i did zooms i had an incredible presentation of

[39:31] cora's life about illiteracy in the united states then and now because shockingly we are you think we would be we're at 7.7 percent at the 1910 us census which was where my figures came from we are at 21 illiteracy in our country we are the seventh ranked seventh in the in the world for illiteracy it's the exact opposite of what you'd expect it's it is and there's a lot of reasons for that which aren't what you've asked me at all but what is interesting is

[40:06] it's a great book to connect to libraries and so i had probably i might have had 25 to 30 library zoom events during the pandemic all on zoom with my powerpoint presentation and that was like a marketing tool taking non-fiction to a fiction book though it's based on untrue story and finding the finding my market i think that's what people have to do they have to work really hard to find i like to find even all the non-fiction aspects okay brings up this book the ice cream book

[40:42] this just released a couple weeks ago called the sweet life contemporary women's fiction fun story and it's all about ice cream my husband's actually a professional ice cream maker went to penn state ice cream school oh wow and there again okay the history of ice cream i'm doing all these presentations now on the history of ice cream i found the nonfiction way to enhance the book and that's my best advice so so so if if i make sure i want to i i understand so it's really look look for the the groups of people who will be interested

[41:18] in the story and then somehow connect with them is it would that be right or i think it's more look for any anything you can pull out of your book that you could then kind of spin out into an interest to groups of people it doesn't have to be one group just i mean the amish for example i actually met with some town community halls and did some presentations there because the amish do community so well they are masters of community and to go to you know a town meeting and to just

[41:55] suggest and teach and show them some ideas that come out of the amish there again non-fiction things pulling it into something that was applicable and useful so i have to i have to digress for just a minute the the the pen unit was it university of pennsylvania ice cream school or penn state penn state's ice cream school pennsy has an ice cream school yes they do no and it's 122 years old and it's held in january and all the greats have gone i mean

[42:30] baskin and robin's ben and jerry's you name them they've all gone and it's held it's just sort of like short courses and you get certificates and my husband i actually gave him my daughter a a weekend like a long weekend for their short course and because my daughters actually got a nutritional degree and they both came back as scientific ice cream makers they are phenomenal ice cream makers so it's interesting because i've been watching this on your instagram feed yeah and you've you've mentioned and i've seen you know pictures of them in session i'm kind of was kind of a little bit curious what is this all about that

[43:05] is that is amazing a professional a professional ice cream program at a university level oh my god i know and there are no a number of ones at penn state is like the you know gold standard cornell of uh yeah wow wow yeah so we we've got about another um 10 minutes or so where do you see your career heading um what what is what is the future for you know suzanne as a writer as as a woman who um

[43:40] wants to connect with other people and help them where do you where are you where are you going from here i think that's a fabulous question that is hard to answer partly because i also feel i'm aware of my age and i have a huge drive to write high energy level that hasn't changed at all and i'm a believer in really appreciating the different ages and stages of people's lives i think

[44:15] the world is focused on young people like crazy focused to the point where i mean even my church i think almost it's like they're marketing to the young person and there's a couple of generations it's funny because my i'm just about on that 60 point and i had a my older sister and brother were really more part of the um you know sort of the baby boomers more heartily and so proud of it and then my generation seemed to kind of get wait wait wait we just been

[44:51] completely eclipsed you know absolutely i feel a little aware of like i almost just i i'm not crazy about all the way the noise of some of the influencers young people mid and i'm talking middle age and everything who are really trying to suggest to everybody how how to live how to how to they should do everything i just don't know how to work on that a little bit as i go forward because i really believe in kind of honoring this decade i'm in

[45:26] where you actually have something worth saying but but i'm not sure i want to be a loud influencer like i look at instagram and i love instagram i really enjoy it more than facebook and i just think why are people not understanding it's instant and they're putting like 16 inches of text you know like i don't get that it's like it's it just isn't making sense so i just really would like to um keep writing you know and have something to say but not necessarily be part of the noise

[46:01] i'm laughing so hard because when i was going through my instagram feed this morning i there's a few people that i follow and they and they write these treatises you know and it's and i because i i like to read just a little bit about what the picture is about especially in certain things and i clicked to you know it's like no i'm not going to read that you know i just scroll through it because it's not i can't take that kind of time you know it's so funny that just the way you put that you know in fact there's so um malcolm gladwell had a an essay or something in one of his books because he's such an interesting writer and thinker and he

[46:37] mentioned that we have a capacity i think for about 140 people that's about as many people as you can pay attention to and i think of that like a christmas card list or instagram or facebook and i actually have what i find interesting about it is that's about the size of an amish church about 150 people and then they split when it gets bigger than that and when you think of the people in your life i'm actually have tried to keep my instagram those i follow under that number because i can't i just can't pay attention to that many people i'm

[47:13] you know it's hard and instagram you could just keep going and going going yeah absolutely and that's that that's fascinating you brought up that number so um one of the women i had a privilege of of interviewing this is back when i was blogging before i was doing the show um is named judy robinette and she wrote a book be called be a power connector and her premise is that we have the ability to have real relationships with about 150 155 people and she actually does it in sort of three tranches of of closeness of relationships if you will

[47:48] and you know ever since i read her book which is going back now probably close to 10 years ago i followed her system and and at times i've tried to sort of expand beyond it and it really it just doesn't it doesn't work i can't have meaningful discussions and and retain you know the conversations i've had with with you know 200 or 250 people it just it just doesn't work so we have limitations which is okay that is not a bad thing yeah i i you know i i'm it's i mean i it's it's really been fun to be able to do this so um

[48:24] uh barry dr barry schwartz wrote a book called the the uh uh the something of choice the paradox of choice and and he's an advocate for scaling down the number of choices we have because otherwise we get overwhelmed and we just sort of sit there and don't choose and so we don't move forward right all of these there's so many of these ideas out there that seem to be this is kind of in line with what you were saying before i think they seem to be counter with where our society is going and yet if we look back at the amish to take that example

[49:00] there's obviously something healthy going on there and i think we overlook it perhaps at uh you know to to our detriment so um and i just lost the question i was gonna ask oh i know what it was so you know you mentioned going to your church um you know you're talking to a rabbi so um i and this is a question uh i i i don't get to ask as often i guess as i'd like to um what if any part did your faith play

[49:38] in the development of your career whether it's religious faith or spiritual faith or however you might describe it did it did it play a part in in your career and if so what was that part i think definitely a sense of calling a sense of i write inspirational fiction so it has a happy endings it has i try not to have people feel like i'm whacking them on the head of the bible i really try to have my goal is to encourage people to invite god into the conversation just invite

[50:13] him in and i know for me faith has been a very defining ex foundation for me it's the it's the pie crust that's holding it together it's not just a slice and so i i think you know life has hard knocks there are some a lot of things in life that can really take you down and probably the last five years our family has experienced quite a lot of loss and it's it is hard and everybody's going to have those turns of the wheels those calls and the nights the

[50:48] unexpected news and i feel like faith having faith in a loving god is just all the difference in in kind of moving forward with hope and joy and looking forward to the future and feeling that you're here in this world for a reason and it's and then everybody is you know that each person is made in the image of god even if they're annoying and you know and to to really i mean it really defines just about everything but it's not easy it's counterintuitive it's opposite of i mean

[51:26] there's nothing in this world that is calling you to faith that is trying to get you to your synagogue on saturday or your church on sunday or anywhere else it is pulling you away and i think it's almost like gravity and i think but leaning in and leaning toward it and inviting god into the conversation just think it makes all the difference it has for me i think it's given me the timing of the door's opening i think when i feel really discouraged it kind of helps me stay on track and and not just let it go and and as you were asking like what's ahead for my future that's really a lot of

[52:01] prayer lately i've been thinking just like you know what genres what ideas i have a couple more book contracts and then what and trusting that that if writing will come to an end for some day for me and and that's okay too if there's life beyond that that's a big trust because i sort of feel like it's always been a part of my life but right now ident identity shift at that point yeah getting older grandchildren i'll always be older than you so if that gives you comfort i can live with it i don't remember that

[52:38] um so i i haven't asked this question of a guest in quite a while but because because you're a writer i i think you're you know an ideal person to to ask this what is a question that you've wanted to be asked in an interview that that either you haven't been asked or you rarely get asked but that that really is something you would like to speak to well that's interesting that probably if if i couldn't write what would i do i'm not sure i have an

[53:15] answer but that's probably i think that would be a great question to ask almost every writer i'm in a writer's loop right now and they were talking about will what if writing comes to an end and it was interesting how many of them felt like they didn't that wouldn't be a problem for them they're not true writers they just happen to be very successful which is amazing but um i i think it would be for a lot of people quite quite a heavy hard thing to not be able to have they do struggle i know that because they're they talk about it you know when because the market is really changing and it is

[53:50] harder and harder to find traditional pathways but to your audience um but i think that when you have someone like let's you mentioned a carpenter if you took away the carpenter's tools or or a couple of fingers you know what would he do how could he cope how could he adjust and i think we yes this could make a great novel i think we you know we whatever we're meant to do it's i think our purpose in life is bigger than even that but finding it that's the trick well so so i i want to see if i can

[54:25] recap at least a few of the um things that we've talked about um you know we sort of started talking about really um learning the craft of of what you you did and i think i think again that applies to really you're a doctor or a writer or you know an auto mechanic knowing that craft is is is the foundation for you know for all professional success so i think that's that's an important thing we can learn from you i think the next is is to stay tuned into how the profession

[55:02] is is um changing over time and um and don't be afraid i guess to adapt to those changes um as you go um and and i think let's see you also mentioned you know can't be afraid of hard work right in the end um it's it's that that that hard work and the perseverance um that and i think again that that's true not just of writers i think it's true of of any anybody who has any kind of success um you know we look at i i i look at you and go wow you know this is you know a

[55:38] woman who is really a successful writer but i i suspect if you know if i had been a fly on the wall over the last you know period of time that you've been building your career there were a lot of struggles that you just right had to push through um and it was actually those right that that were probably um more meaningful in many ways than you know opening up that box and and pulling that book out and going wow this is you know this is what i wrote so um suzanne it has been just a delight i wish i could talk to you for another

[56:14] hour but then i'd be late picking up my daughter from school but thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story with us and and your ideas um this is i think this is going to be one of those episodes that i'm going to be able to recommend to people who are you know really struggling with with their professional direction and this so this will give them i think some inspiration so thank you so much for that i get thou in there that's my words well before we end the show i i want to

[56:50] mention my guest next week is robin robinson um if you are a long time fan of the show you will remember robin uh from season two where we talked about whiskey whiskey and whiskey he is one of the top uh people in the world on that subject one of the top educators um and and again yeah i mentioned instagram i i follow robin on instagram and he's been on a tour of uh scotland uh for uh up until i think just this this past week um doing all kinds of interesting things learning more and

[57:25] more about whiskey and we're gonna you know i i robin and i communicated uh it was just yesterday um he he wants to kind of shift what he's talking about a little bit and really dig into this whole idea of how do you find enjoyment in your professional life i mean if you can imagine probably you know the worst day working in whiskey is better than you know the best days and a lot of other things right so um i think robin has some some excellent insights that he'll be able to share with us very very eclectic uh professional life um

[58:00] as uh those of you who may have watched the the the previous episode with robin got a little bit of a taste up so um please do join us again uh next wednesday at 12 30 p.m 3 30 eastern time and for the way to wow show people making money and again suzanne i want to i want to thank you for coming on the show it has been an absolute delight um we'll include in the show notes links where you can find suzanne's books um they are delightful um and you can tell from suzanne they are

[58:36] filled with passion they are filled with a desire to to help us learn and grow and and you won't find anything around better than than her books to help you do that so uh we'll suzanne we'll we'll communicate uh later this week and we'll we'll make sure we get those links in there so that people can find you and then that just leaves for me to say two things one please join us tomorrow with uh oh i take that back uh leia's show is is on hiatus tomorrow so don't join us tomorrow because we will not be there so join us but do join us here next week

[59:11] on the way to wow show people making money and so let me do my regular sign off which is to remind her up in heaven that marie darling you are still my bell thank you suzanne thank you all out there for watching and have a wonderful afternoon