A recorded panel hosted by Julie Broad (Book Launchers) featuring four authors—Brent Pullman (Leaders Look Within), Sean Hayes (The Gray Choice), Dr. Virgie Bright Ellington (Crush Medical Debt), and Dr. Monique Nugent (Prescription for Admission)—who describe their experiences publishing with Julie Broad's Book Launchers team. Each author gives a brief bio, explains the motivation and audience for their book, praises the Book Launchers process (design, marketing, editorial support), and shares concrete tips: trust the process, be persistent and honest with yourself, play to your marketing strengths, and keep promoting the book after publication. The transcript repeatedly emphasizes professional support (covers, marketing, brainstorming titles) and positive outcomes (financial returns, personal redemption, patient education).
Chapters
It has just been really a godsend to me to write this book.
You cannot self publish a nonfiction book without Julie's team.
The financial side of this is a hundredfold of where I thought it would be. It's been that good. It's all because of your team. It's just been a fun journey.
So I love my cover.
Speaking of the COVID look at this cover. Julie's team will definitely make it happen for you.
We've got something very special for you. We have four fabulous authors that are, that have worked with the Book Launchers team. We have Brent Pullman here, and he's done exactly the best thing you could do as an author. He's put the title of his book in his name so you can see it. Leaders look Within. And then we've got Sean Hayes, author of the gray choice, and Dr. Virgie Bright Ellington, author of Crush Medical Debt. And Monique has joined us now. So I'm actually going to go straight to you. Let everybody know, just a short little bio about who you are and what your book is about.
So my name is Dr. Monique Nugent. I'm a Hollywood hospitalist. And that's really where my book came in. I take care of patients who are in the hospital. And for years I've wanted to be able to share the knowledge I had on how to navigate being in the hospital for patients. I finally decided, you know, I wanted to put it in a book. And I had started and stopped and started and stopped. And I came across Julie on the Internet and I thought, oh, let me try this. Let me reach out. And I can't see say enough about the process and the support. I went through a lot writing the book, even had a baby. And they, they stuck with me throughout the entire thing. And so Prescription for Admission is, is a book that's, it's written by a doctor, but it's not doctor facing. It's a patient facing book.
I am the CEO of Midwest Laboratories. I have about 280 employees and I just recently took over from my father. It's been a family business since 1975. I came back in 2005. From 2016 to 2020, my dad and I worked together. And then from 2020 during COVID he retired at the age of 80 and I took over. And we've been growing all through the pandemic. And it's a really good story. The purpose of writing this book was through that whole transformation process. I don't know about you, but if you look at behind me, I have all kinds of books, a lot of managerial and leadership books, but I could never find the right one from myself. And so what I did was as I was writing my book, I was learning all the time. And I really came to the real understanding that leadership is personal. It's super personal. And you have to really find what's locked in inside of yourself in order to unlock that and be the most effective leader that you can. I simply wrote from what I found, again by looking inside my heart and leading from the heart. And that's really the premise of the book. And it has just been really a godsend to me to write this book not only for myself, but for my family and for my, for the employees.
For those of you who don't know me, I was entrepreneurial as a college student and as actually as a high school student. And at 29, I bought my first bank at 35, I took it public at 44, we sold it for half a billion dollars. And then five years later, unrelated, I committed a federal crime and spent 37 months in a federal prison system. And the book is a memoir of my life. I had redemption. And you may remember this the first time we talked, what are you after? And I said, I'm after redemption. And that was something. I didn't know what it looked like. And after the book came out, two men both said the same thing. Don't you feel like you've cleansed yourself and given yourself a new start? And that's what that redemption was for me. I got to be Sean Hayes again. And all the truth was out. The story was out. So it gave me a start. The second thing, I only did this because a woman who runs Speech Speakers Bureau said, write a book and we'll book you to speak. I said, my life's not that exciting. And with the help of the Book Launchers team, we wrote a wonderful book. The financial side of this is a hundredfold of where I thought it would be. It's been that good. I can't tell your audience enough, One, how much fun this has been. Two, how, as I tell anybody I grew up with, I'm the last person who ever would have done a book. And three, it's all because of your team. It's been an unbelievable journey to get to do this.
So I'm Virgie Bright Ellington. I am the principal of Crush Medical Debt, which is a multimedia company that helps individuals, employees and military veterans who are struggling with medical bills. My background is I'm a board certified internal medicine physician for many years and a former health Insurance executive for a decade, which gave me a full 360 degree view of the entire US health care system. Or so I thought. Until I became a patient and discovered my hospital roommate had been deliberately tricked into signing her and her family's financial future away for life forever, essentially. And true story.
The curtain dropped.
I just saw red because I was so enraged because I knew that she had been deliberately tricked and taken advantage of for not having just basic medical financial literacy, which most of us in the United States don't have. And that's how Crush Medical Debt was born. So the book is what your doctor wants you to know to crush medical debt. Big, huge thanks to Julie and her team.
If I could give one tip is really trust the process. I think the process that people that Julie has on the Picacho team is phenomenal. And you don't have to worry about the marketing piece. The team tells you exactly what they need from you at what time. It's just very well laid out and there's deadlines and there's things that they need from you and you need from them. If you need to take a pause. I needed to take a pause a couple times. There's chances to take a pause. But I think I would say really trust the process.
My best tip would be to be persistent and honest with yourself. And the reason why I say that is because when I originally started, I did not sign up to work with a writer or with a ghostwriter. I was like, I can do this by myself. And I like took a weekend, I booked a hotel away from my family. I took nothing but like a laptop and a bathing suit. And I was like, I am going to start writing my book. And I got nowhere.
What?
I mean, nowhere. I got like, nowhere. I wrote myself into corners. I was getting stuck, stuck on words that I was saying. I came back maybe with four to five pages after this weekend where I was like, I'm gonna do it all. And I wasn't being honest with myself that I needed the help and that I needed someone to keep me in line and somebody to really push it.
Through the group brainstorming titles. And when you came back, it was just obvious. And that's why I said trust the process. Because I thought of all the things we would do, the title would be next to impossible. And yet with the professionals that you have and with their brainstorming, it just. It just jumped right out there. And I love the title. It is something for those of us who are amateurs, you have to use professionals. And I've read A lot of books through this journey before I wrote mine. And there's an obvious difference now that I've been down the path.
My tip is, when you're done with your book, when you put your heart out there, once it's out there, always, always be bragging, always be marketing. Because this is a labor of love. Get it out there and support it and Julie's team will definitely make it happen for you. Trust the process to the professionals.
I've been doing some podcasts, which I really enjoy. You know, the marketing team saw that. That was a strength of mine. But it's also where I shine. Playing to my strengths in marketing really makes a difference. Working with people who have circled back to the plan over and over, that's been to me so beneficial because I don't have the bandwidth to do this on my own, like, at all. And so to have people who are thoughtful and capable and persistent and really nice to me, doing these things with me has made a really, really big difference.
The thing that I want folks to come away with, it's like birthing a baby. You think the hard part is the labor of getting it out. You think writing it is the hard part. And it is really hard. And it's super hard to do it right. It's super, super hard. You think birthing the baby was hard? It's really hard to market it other than your family and friends. No one's going to know about it if you don't market it. You got to market it, market it, market it, market it. And that is what Book Launchers and Julie's team really, really did. You cannot self publish a non fiction book without Julie's team.
