Former Chrysler Chairman, Lee Iacocca, once told me (in a book) that,
“You can have the greatest ideas in the world, but if you can’t communicate
them to other people, what’s the value?”
(I’m paraphrasing Lee, ‘cuz “The Elder” forgets a lot, but that’s the gist of it)
I was very smart at the time (or so I thought) and very shy as a youth.
But I really wanted to be able to get my ideas across. To be listen too.
(especially by members of the
I was young remember.
Career thoughts were top of mind too.
So I thought the best thing I could do back then was to enroll in the Dale Carnegie Program for Public Speaking.
Our mouth is the most widely used communication tool for we humans and it was my weakest link (I’d get sick rather than speak in front of the class in high school!)
Dale Carnegie promised to make me a confident public speaker. An orator extraordinaire.
It worked a bit. I actually won awards for my talks in that class.
But it didn’t make speaking much more comfortable.
(when The Elder came on board in my 50’s he joined
I’ll do it. Speak to a group. But I would never choose to do it if I could avoid it.
Instead, I love to write.
That’s how I communicate best. The Elder too.
When we turned 50, the kids were mostly grown and I had more free time. So I began to write.
First for websites because it was free and easy.
Then, when self publishing became a thing, I was really excited!
“Let’s write a book!” Elder exclaimed.
“What about?” I said.
“We love to do Photoshop, others in our group have questions, let’s do a How to Do Photoshop Easily book.” We would title it, “Photoshop TIp Cards” and put it up for sale on Amazon.com. You can still find it there, we recently revised it.
So I whipped up this book I knew would be very useful, cleared space in my bank account for all the money I was about to make selling it, and I waited. And waited. And waited. (cue crickets chirping)
Turns out writing a book and earning money from it are two very different things.
(Elder’s wise, but he doesn’t know everything. He gets these great ideas then leaves it up to me to make it happen, argh!)
Never the quitters, we tried again.
We wrote and published more than 20 books on Amazon.com and Kindle. These websites were (and still are) all the rage for self-published authors.
(cue crickets)
To be fair, Amazon.com now sends me money each month for the books I wrote and they sell, but you’d be hard pressed to live off the income.
Fortunately, my mentor, copywriter Bob Bly, author of more than 80 books, set me straight on the real business of writing and selling books.
His advice shattered all the myths I had gleaned from a host of online fakes about writing for wealth.
Bob Bly is a guy who has been doing it for real, successfully, for more than 20 years.
If you too would like the real scoop on how to start earning a nice extra income from writing, before or after you retire, then you should check out his book, “Write and Grow Rich”.
Writer Joseph Epstein wrote, “81 percent of Americans feel that they have a book in them — and should write it.” That’s approximately 200 million people who would like to be writers.
Guess how many will bother to figure out how and do it?
Maybe Bob Bly can help you earn extra income doing something you love to do too.
“bene
P.S. “The Elder” and I created a simple book to help authors get started if they really and truly are serious about writing that first book. It’s called, “Book Writing Magic” which can also be found on Amazon.com
P.P.S. Lest you think I’m knocking the great value and growth both Dale Carnegie and Toastmasters provide, I’m not. Their training was instrumental in kicking the shy out of me as a kid and led directly to many successes in my later life. I’m simply saying the comfort of speaking to a group never became greater than my comfort in writing. That’s all. (Elder thought I should make that clear – he’s right a lot of the time)
[It’s tedious to write this, we all get it I think, but the bureaucrats at the FCC insist. The outgoing links above may take you to a website owned by another, and you may purchase something there from this other for which they would pay me a commission as a courtesy for referring you. This in no way increases your cost, or devalues the information you would receive there…just so we’re all clear. Good stuff is good stuff, and that’s the only stuff I recommend.]
