CB LIVE! Courage to Leap and Lead with Dianna Booher, Episode 107

Hello everybody, this is CB Bowman with you today on our Courage to Leap and Lead show. And we have, as always, a spectacular guest. You know what I just realized? A lot of my guests are female. What's up with that? Well, I guess we display incredible courage. Not to say the men don't. But that's my jam, is talking about courage. And most of us are— a lot of us are females. So today we have Diana with us, and I can't wait to talk to her about her courage. So let's jump right in. It's so good to see you as always. Let me introduce Diana, who I met through MG100. Of course. Yeah. We're a power-packed group of women. So we all support each other. It's such a wonderful thing. So Diana, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

You are welcome. I'm loving it. Just excited about the opportunity to talk with you.

Well, great. So we're very casual here. We like to feel like we're sitting in the living room just having a cup of coffee or tea or water. wine with our guests and just chatting it up. So there's nothing to be nervous about or anything. But the first thing we want to do is find out about you. Tell us about you, how you started, when you started, what you do. Give us the whole 411.

I don't know that it's that glamorous. But basically, I, I just needed a job when I had 2 toddlers at home and didn't want to take them out to a babysitter or whatever. So, uh, my husband was struggling, uh, with mental illness and was hospitalized. And I thought, how am I gonna make a living? I haven't even been in the workforce. I'd finished my master's, but I hadn't been in the workforce. And, um, so I went to a friend of mine and told him the situation. He said, well, what do you like to do? And I said, I don't know. I, I used to like to write English compositions in school, but how can you make a living doing that? And he, he said to me, I didn't ask you how you can make a living. I asked you what you like to do. I, you should go figure out how to make a living at it. So basically I went to—

What was his name? Marshall Goldsmith, by the way.

I mean, I went to the library, I just filled up my backseat, checked out like 50 or 60 different volumes, you know, how to write greeting card verses, how to write articles, how to write books, how to write mysteries, et cetera. And I just pretty much read around the clock for about 3 weeks and sent off a query. And I didn't know how, how unusual this was, but I got an acceptance on the first one. And, ah, you know, the bug bit. And so that's—

Wait, wait, sent a query to whom? For what?

I sent it to a small magazine and they took it and paid me for it. And I thought, hey, you can really get paid for this and stay home. And so I did that, uh, sort of sort of part-time and decided I needed to substitute teach for a while. So I did teach for a couple years and that's when I finished my master's. And when, then I just said, I'm gonna have to make a living by next September to get back on the, you know, on the school calendar if I haven't sold a book. And so I set that timeline and that goal for myself. And sure enough, I sold a book to Simon and Schuster and I'd said, no more school, not teaching anymore. And, um, You know, the thing is, I wound up teaching only adults and 2-day workshops and training programs and speeches, just not kids, just not seniors who already think they know everything.

Tell me, but let's go back because I heard some really great stories of courage in there. First of all, if you don't mind, tell us about your husband.

He is now deceased, but We, we were married for 20 years, and then we divorced. I just needed to protect my sanity and the kids. My, you know, I had teenagers at that point. But I've remarried since, and my husband now has— we've been married 30, 33 years, and he's helped me in the business. And so that's, that's been good.

And how did you discover he had mental illness?

Well, he was curled up in a ball most of the day, and I was traveling a lot and with, with my job, and he just was severely, severely depressed. He went through all kinds of testing and nothing helped, and they just said, you know, he was abused as a child and we, we can't— they couldn't do anything. And so, like I said, it just went downhill from there.

So you had the courage to say to yourself, I need to survive and the children need to survive. And you— I mean, that's, that's powerful in itself.

And well, I've never thought about it like that. It's just, you know, you do what you have to do. You have to feed kids. You have somebody depending on you. So I don't, I don't usually talk about that. In fact, I don't remember ever talking about that, CB. So Yeah, you've got that story.

Well, you know, it's a, it's a funny thing about that. People come on this show and they go back in their memory and they talk about things that were part of their life. And you know what? It's, it's a good thing because so many people suffer in silence.

They do. And they need to, they need to get help.

They need to, they need help.

They need, you know, if you have a great friend who can do a listening ear thing and, and give you good advice, that's great too. But if you don't, Or you don't want to go that route, then a therapist can do wonders. But, but most of the time, not always, not— it's not always a success story, or we wouldn't hear about suicides and things like that. But most of the time, they are very helpful and very successful.

Yes. And what I'm getting at is for people who've gone through these types of things, and who have not just survived, And I hate to say it in this way, flourished. But the fact is, sharing it so that there are people outside who are caregivers or what have you know that they're not the only ones and that there is a way out. So I so appreciate you telling us that story because it's about what I'm talking about. It's about microcourage. And microcourage I define as an opportunity to have everyday smaller or larger actions that get you to goal. And the fact that you said you went to a friend and said, I will— I need to do something in terms of making a living, and then you took the courageous step to go to the library And get all these books. And then you took the courageous step to send out letters and information about yourself and what you wanted to do. And then you took the courageous step to accept it and then fly from there. People don't take the time to sort of say, job well done. And you did a great, great job.

Well, thank you. I don't think of it like that. I, you know, you, when you're talking about little steps, um, and, and having friends help and offer suggestions, one thing that really helped me to start the business, and I wasn't thinking about a business around the book, I had published several books for young, young adults. And then I wrote a business book with a— but the real reason I wrote that business book I was teaching extra at night at a college nearby. And I had— it was a business writing, excuse me, creative writing program. And I had doctors and lawyers and engineers, you know, every persuasion in the class. And so the first night I asked, you know, what are you working on? You working on this mystery, romance, memoir, whatever? And the vast majority said, oh, I'm not here to do that kind of writing. I just need help to write a legal brief, or I need help to write my engineering reports or whatever. And I went, oh, that, that's a need that I could solve. And so I went to this friend of mine who happened to be pretty high up in an organization of a major oil company's head of engineering. And I said, we were having lunch one day as couples. And I said, what, you know, what are your needs? And he says, oh, people can't write. I'm an engineer. I can't write. Nobody can write. It's been all— he was complaining. I was spending all my time editing and He said, you know, we pay a, a lady to fly in from Atlanta, big bucks, to teach, try to teach our, our team how to write. And I thought, that's a second confirmation I can do this. And so basically I wrote, that's when I moved over from, uh, novel writing. I had published a few novels in novel writing and young adult books over to business books. And so it's that friendship, you know, that sparks an idea. that you can bounce off, and then they give you the courage to actually carry out what, what you need to do to get there.

In addition to that, so here's another courage that I just heard. It's not only asking for help, and it's funny because you're actually using the roadmap that's in my book called Courage to Leap and Lead. It's the courage to listen, listen to the universe, because it will tell you where your success is going to be.

And yes, many times the opportunity, if you're, if you're looking for the opportunity, jumps up.

Yeah. And you always have to be looking for the opportunity. Doesn't mean you have to take everything, but always looking makes you feel so good because the ones that you turn down, you feel like, oh, I had the power to turn that down.

Yes, the power to pick and choose projects. Yes, I've learned that in my, in my several decades in running a consulting and training company is to know everybody that calls and says, can we do a contract or can we do this partnership? It's not a good deal.

It's not. It's, it's so true. And I remember when I started the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches, a friend of mine called me at the exact same time. and said, let's write a book together. And 2 other friends of mine had gotten me to the point of opening the association, and one of the things they said to me very wisely was, opportunities are going to come your way. You need to decide which is going to be important for you— opening this association or other things. And then the universe opened and this other thing came, and It killed me to say no, but thank goodness I did.

Yes. I spent a whole, pretty much a year after my first, well, it was probably my third or fourth business book came out. It was highly successful. People were calling and wanting to, it's when online thing became a big thing in the mid-'90s. And people were saying, let us partner with you to do this online. Let us partner with you to do this tip, these tips. Let us partner with you. And I was just looking at contracts, talking to people, you know, call after call after call, go through the contract, negotiate, and then they wouldn't do anything. You know, they were, they were a startup and they didn't know what they were doing. And it took me about a year to realize, hey, this is not getting you anywhere. You gotta turn down all these small players because they don't know, they're not, they don't have enough experience yet to, to help you along. So yes, I wasted a year. Basically, I called it my year of negotiating contracts.

Or a year of learning about contracts.

Maybe so.

So tell us, what was your first book about?

The very first book— well, actually, I had 2 to come out within a couple of months of each other. One was a young adult book on helping teenagers adjust to a move across, you know, when parents get promoted and they're uprooted from their school and they have to readjust to everything in those years when it's so important. So it was helping the psychological aspects of the teen move and helping the parents know how to navigate that. The business book that came out at the same time was Would You Put That in Writing? And that really launched my whole consulting firm and training company that I hadn't thought about. That book has had 3 or 4 iterations. When we did it updated, it became eWriting, and that came out in 2001. And then about 4 years ago, another version— of writing, business writing came out called Faster, Fewer, Better Emails. But they're all based on a couple of concepts that I had trademarked about structuring a document. And basically, I'm looking at my shelf over here, I have about 8 books on business writing. So I stayed in that lane for, for quite some time before I branched out into the larger communication picture.

So tell me, Which came first, your rejecting contracts or writing a book called Would You Put That in Writing?

The book, the book came first. And then because of that, a lot of other people wanted the subrights. They wanted to sell in this country and that country and whatever. And of course, I turned most of them over to the, to my agent to do. But there are a lot of startups, if you remember, right in the dot-com, I was going to say bust, but I mean, in the big bubble, everybody was wanting to buy your subrights for electronic courses, for tips, for things on their website. I had a major oil company wanting me to— wanted to excerpt certain letters out of a letterbook that I had done to put it on their website for everybody to download. I had a big hospital system saying, uh, I know you're doing meetings, can you tell us how to do meeting minutes? And I mean, you can't imagine how many different types of businesses came because of that book. It did really well. But like I said, it's been a year of my time saying, no, that's not going to work. And no, that's not going to work. Before I found, you know, the real, the real players in the industry who made it successful on the subrights that they did buy.

Well, I'm hoping you're going to write a book on how to write if you're dyslexic.

That is a challenge. I have just Worked with a CEO, uh, to help him with his book, a very large, uh, multi-billion dollar company. And I, we were probably 6 months into the relationship before he told me he was dyslexic. I knew he got acronyms off, but I just thought it was a typo. But yes, that is a challenge. I understand that.

Yep. Yep. I'm highly dyslexic. So it is. When I submitted my draft of my book, my publisher came to me and said, CB, I think your chapter numbers are off.

Oh, wow.

You go from 1, 2, 3 to 5, and then you go 4, and then you go back to 2. And I'm like, oh, did I tell you that I'm highly dyslexic? He goes, say no more.

Oh, funny story.

So now, okay, so from book writing, what next?

Basically, once that book came out, I got a lot of publicity. I was on this CBS business show in Dallas and then in Houston, and the Houston Chronicle did a huge— in their business section, a huge, like 3/4 of a page feature story on that book. And I, back then, I didn't even have an assistant. I was using If you remember the day before you had cell phone, and I had just an answering service and I was used to getting, you know, 3, 5, 6 calls a week. Just into the business like about 3 months. And that morning I called in, I was working for an oil company doing a 2-day workshop. And when I called in at lunch to pick up my messages, the answering service says, I don't know what you did, but you have had 32 calls this morning. I can't handle anybody else but you. And that was all from the media. And so once that media hit on that book, people started calling to say, come out and help them. I remember the first call from somebody actually sitting in the library. He was Vice President of Engineering for Shell Oil. And he called me up and he said, you're here in Houston? I'm looking at the jacket flap on your book and it says you're here. And I said, yeah. At that time I was. Now I'm in Dallas. He said, it looks like you're right here. And I said, yes, sir, I am. And he said, can you come out and teach us everything you have in this book? So he was literally reading it in the library. And I said, I would be happy to come talk to you about that. And I worked for them for, for a long time, probably till I sold my training company, basically 20 or 30 years.

Now, did you have an agent that Got you all of this exposure?

Well, the agent— let me think about that first book. Yes, I had an agent on that very first book. Had to stop and think about it. And I'm still working with that agent 35 years, 37 years later, as well. I work with 2 agents. And that's very unusual. Most people just have one agent. But I write in so many different markets. I mean, from novels to business books to pop psychology, that not all agents do equally well handling different genres. So I have 2 agents. But yes, that now that I'm thinking about it, she had sold my first novel, and she sold my first business book as well. But they don't get you the media. Your publisher has the huge marketing clout. And they get you in the stores, they sell, you know, 20,000 copies to Amazon and, you know, 5,000 to Barnes Noble, whatever they, they do that. And they have the clout to get you on the shelf, to get your book there. And they have key contacts with key interviewers. But then you as an author have to do a lot as well. I remember when Communicate with Confidence came out, my publisher there was McGraw-Hill, and they sent me on an author tour, 3 weeks with an escort to take me to the radio and TV shows and newspapers. So that was great. But They don't do that nearly as much anymore because so much is done online and the author really can shoulder a lot of those easier, I would call it easier activities.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So now, okay. So you sold your training business. What are you up to now?

I sold that in 2017. Yes. And basically I'm just writing now and coaching other authors. So that's, that's what I've been doing since 2017.

Fantastic. Now, you know, I'm just terrible. I ask all these personal questions. You know, so you mentioned—

Wait, can I say that's too nosy?

No. Okay. That was a small prick. And the reason why you can't is because that's where the real learning takes place. Right? Okay.

Well, if you want some real learning, you'll have to ask me about my first Failure in getting an agent. That was something.

Okay, well, let's go back to that. First, I want to know, you mentioned that your husband helps you. How did that come about?

Well, I had been divorced for a couple of years, about 3 years, and I was looking to add another trainer. I had 4 or 5 people at that point, but I was looking to add another trainer and an office manager because I was traveling so much all over the world. And so we met at a conference, actually. I was speaking in Oklahoma at a— some kind of conference. I don't remember what it was. And we all had big name badges in the shape of our state. So I was wearing the Texas badge and I was going down an escalator. He was coming up the escalator and he happened to be a military officer. And so he had this commanding voice and he said, hey, Texas, wait for me at the bottom.

Yeah.

You know, I'm like, what, what is this? And, you know, who is he? And so anyway, he went up to the top, came back down, and he introduced himself, said he was from Houston looking for to connect with some other people from Texas. And I said— I, uh, he said, where are you going? And I said, well, I'm doing a session over here in about 1 hour. I'm going over here to check out my room. And he says, that's just where I was going. And so, so he came to my room And he helped me pass out handouts. And, uh, then he's, he loved it. And he said, I, he was the HR director. He was part-time at that time. What do you call it? Reserves in military. He had left his full-time 10-year thing. And so he was working, just had started working as an HR director at a major oil company. And he said, we need to bring you into our oil company, teach our, you know, engineers, lawyers, systems engineers, et cetera. So I did some writing, business writing, I think, and technical writing and proposal writing courses for them. And then about 2 years later, I get a call saying his company had been bought out. And so he was looking for a job. So he came to work with me. And the rest is history.

I love that story. And what a pickup line.

Yeah, people always go, how does that happen? You know, you talk about meeting people on an airplane or a train, but how about going down an escalator?

Well, not only that, I have a job for you. Right, right.

Kind of an unusual circumstance. It probably would never happen again in a million years, but it did.

Now, okay, so now talk to us about failure. You said the first book that you tried to, uh, release Tell us about it.

Made this— this was a major thing. And there's a major lesson here for all anybody who wants to be an author as well. I was not sure of my writing, you know, during that year that I told you I was going to take off, not teach for one year and see if I could make it as an author. And I was working on a novel because that had been my master's degree, was to write a novel. So I'd gotten good feedback on that. But I hadn't been able to sell it. So I didn't even know really all the steps, didn't have the connections to do it. And I just, just was finishing up. And so I saw, opened up the Houston Chronicle, and I saw a little display ad in the business section that said, literary agent moves out of New York to be where the authors are. For an appointment, call so-and-so. And I thought, wow, you know, all the agents are so hard to find. I can't believe one's actually not New York City and actually advertising. So Monday morning I call him up and the assistant says, oh, Mr. Paul Hudson is extremely busy, extremely booked. It's going to be at least 3 weeks before he can see you. And I said, no problem. You know, people wait for a lifetime to get that introduction. Yeah. So she finally made the appointment. I showed up at exactly 12 noon at this Houston high-rise in the Galleria area, very impressive office. An imposing, well-dressed, dignified-looking, 45-ish, 50-year-old man met me at the— at his suite door and said, come on in, you've caught everybody at lunch. And he gestured toward the empty receptionist's desk and said, everybody's at lunch, but if you don't mind waiting, come on back to my office. So I go back to his office and he said, I'm on the phone now. And I sat there listening. Yeah, Barb, we're going to start this book at auction if we don't get $1 million by tomorrow. It's off. I'm gonna end the auction with the bids we have. Thank you. And then he hangs up, and I'm thinking, oh man, I'm in the presence of a real live literary agent.

Uh-huh.

And I'm looking, I see this photograph of him and Michener arguing over a check, and I'm just soaking up all these items, memorabilia that he had. And the phone rings again. He says, sorry, I'm sorry. Let me just take this one call. Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, we're gonna start the floor. We'll start the bidding at $500,000. And I will— I'll get that, the rest of the proposal to you tomorrow.

This is so—

Hangs up and finally turns back to me. And he says, so tell me about your book and yourself. And of course, I start back in the 3rd grade and go forward. You know, I'm so excited. And when I finish, he says, that sounds just like the kind of manuscript I'm looking for. And I'm going to New York on the weekend. I'll just hand carry— I'm carrying one other book. I'll hand carry your book. And we'll see what we can do for coming with, uh, about coming back with a check. And I just, you know, I'm about to float out of the office and I said, oh, one more, one more question. Uh, you don't, you don't charge anything up front, right? Retainer fee? Because, you know, I'd read that those are— you run from those agents, it's a scam. And he said, oh no, no, no, no, no, I have no time to deal with authors that don't already have a platform and have a great book. No, absolutely, we just take the commission. And so I just float out of his office. You know, I go back, I told you about teaching that adjunct business class. I just happened to mention that I have a New York agent, you know, that's going to handle the book. Told my family, and then I don't hear anything for 3 weeks. I call up again and the receptionist says, oh, he said he is working on it. It's looking good. Um, just give him a few more weeks. So I'm thinking, oh, this is so promising. I'm so excited. Continue to work on that novel. About 3 weeks later, now it's been almost, almost 2 months, I call back and the receptionist said, let me check on that. Off the phone, she comes back to the phone and she said, Mr. Hudson said to tell you he doesn't think that your novel has quite the, the things that he's looking for, so you can come pick it up. And, oh, you know, I was, I was Devastated, because as a new author, you don't have that much courage. You know, like you're talking, your expertise is courage. My courage was just like this. So I pick up the manuscript and I put it in the drawer. I'm just so discouraged. I don't work on it.

Hold on one second. That's my dog. And everybody knows that this is live. And so he just, you know, London, stop. That really helped. You could see. Landon, come here. Mommy has a treat for you. Well, it looks like he stopped for a bit.

Okay. So he said, pick up the manuscript. And, and I just put it in a drawer. I didn't even work on it. I was so discouraged. About 6 months later, rainy Sunday afternoon, I'm looking, I'm sitting in front of the fireplace looking at the Houston Chronicle. And there's this I think I know that guy, and I look at the caption. It says, alias Paul Hudson, alias Jack Zippel, alias, and it gave about four names. Bilks authors as he moves across the United States, and I read the story, and it goes on to say his thing was it was a big scam. He wasn't even a literary agent. He was just asking authors and telling them he would represent them. And they didn't know better, but they would pay him upfront. You know, they'd give him $500 or $1,000 as a retainer.

Right.

And he wanted enough time. The reason he was holding me off, he wanted enough time to collect more retainers. And the way he got caught is that he said somebody had a novel and he said, I'm going to take this to McGraw-Hill. Well, immediately that author said, hey, they don't even do novels. You know, something's wrong here. And that's how the investigation started. But I tell you that story to say how devastated It was— how devastating it was for an agent to say, you can't do this. This is not the quality of manuscript that I'm looking for. So I pull that manuscript out. I send it to the next agent who does take it, who does sell it. But I really have learned 3 things from that. One, if you're going to be an author, you're going to be on an emotional roller coaster all the time. Somebody likes it, they don't like it, they like it, they don't like it. That goes for agents and editors as well. because they're all subjective, you know, what they think. But also, I learned you can't take other people's estimation of your value, your talent, your, your skill, your job, whatever service it is. You have to have confidence in yourself because there is going to be rejection over and over. And I guess the third thing I'd probably share with you about that is Everything isn't as it seems in publishing. There are a lot of people who have stories to tell that their facts are not exactly right. So there were a lot of lessons in that big failure with that first agent. Or I guess you might say it's a success because I didn't get scammed.

Absolutely.

I happened to think back, you know, why didn't you get scammed? And it was my question, you know, I asked him during that meeting, you don't charge an upfront fee, do you? And so he knew I was Onto the retainer thing. And you should be—

Exactly. Exactly. And that's why it just didn't move anyplace. And the fact that the administrative assistant said, oh, yeah, yeah, he's working on it.

Yeah. She was just buying about 6 weeks more time to get more people in there to say—

Make it look real. Yeah, exactly. Good for you for asking that question. You know, it goes to, you know, a great deal of courage is asking the right questions At the right time.

I hadn't thought about that. I was just thinking about the— I was thinking about the courage to go on, you know, to pull it out.

That too. But, but asking the right question at the right time is so important. Because many of us know deep down inside our gut, something is not quite right.

Yeah, well, I had no idea. But I did know that even if it burst my bubble, even if his answer was, Yes, I charge a retainer. I wanted to know the truth at that point. And that was, I guess that, as you say, was courage to ask that question, fearing what the answer was going to be. I was afraid he was going to say, yeah, write me a check for $1,000 or something.

Yeah.

And I, of course, would know not to do that.

Asking questions that will lead you to the truth is courageous by any stretch of the imagination.

I like that interpretation, CB. Thank you.

Yeah. Because I've been on the side where I didn't ask the questions. And I thought, you know, you knew that you should have asked that question, because that would have led you down a better path. Yeah. You know, or at least set it up so that you're aware. You know, you may not say something, but your antenna is up.

Yes. And at least you know that you should have asked that question. Oh, yes. Didn't want to hear the answer. Many times we don't ask the question because We don't want to hear the rejection or the no or the answer. But then we're just delaying the inevitable.

Exactly. Exactly. So I'm so happy that you picked up your novel. What are the odds that you saw that article? Right?

I'm sorry, what is it?

What are the odds that you saw that article in the newspaper?

Oh, yeah. In the Houston Chronicle. Yeah, that was just amazing. Otherwise, I would have probably never pulled that novel out, worked on it again. I would have just taken his word thinking, man, he's a New York agent that has a lot of experience, he knows, and you don't have the talent to do this. And I may never have written the books that I, that I have. So it was very fortuitous that I did see that.

And you know what's funny is when you were telling me the story as the lead-in, I knew when you, when you were telling me about his telephone calls, because it reminded me of a movie that I'd seen.

Oh, really?

I'm like, No, this is not going to end well.

Oh, well, I was too naive to understand. You know, I was sitting there, I think, and he was the real deal.

Yeah, well, that was the point. That was the acting. So tell us more about your experiences that you would consider failure that you moved to success, because that is a great example of moving to success.

Well, there've been a lot. One, I hired a chief operating officer at a 6-figure salary when 6 figures was a lot of money, when it was a lot of money back in the '90s. I mean, this is a long time ago. And he was— it was a mistake. And I did not have the courage to dismiss him because at the beginning I saw him delay. He loved his other job where he came from, a big consulting firm. He loved that. And, and when he came to our organization, he kept going back and spending time on the phone. He said, well, they need me for this. Well, they need me with this client or that. And I'm thinking, I'm paying you now, you're on my payroll. But he kept doing that. And then he was an officer in our industry's association. So he was very influential and he kept doing association business. And I, again, I'm thinking, right. I need you here. I need you. I'm paying your salary. You need to hit the ground running. And I just, I kept putting it off because I liked him. He was a great guy. He's very nice, very talented, but he just wasn't spending time on our organization. And, and he needed to build a sales team behind him. And I was asking him to, you know, hurry up and get this next salesperson hired. And I remember I'd hired him January 1st. It, this was like March, and he hadn't hired the sales rep. And I said, when? Finally, he ran an ad, got some candidates, and he came back and says, well, I hired him. He's going to be really good, but he can't start till June. This is March. We can't go 4 more months. And so, you know, I kept wanting him to do well. I wanted him to succeed. I wanted him to do things. And I kept saying, well, you made this decision. But I finally, at 10 months, I had to pull the plug and let him go because he just wasn't fulfilling the role, wasn't doing the job, was still running off doing all these other things.

Were you concerned because he was so well placed in the association?

Yes. Yes. That was part of the fear that he would, you know, badmouth me and have bad things to say. And, and so that, that was fed into the don't let him go, keep helping, keep working with them, keep trying to pull him in the right direction and give him the help he needs. But he didn't, you know, he was, he was very classy about the dismissal. And we have a cordial relationship. We've, we've seen each other since then at trade shows. But it was just a failure on my part to understand that you give an employee a period of time to get aboard and to make their mark and start things going. And if they're not cutting it, they're not working out, you have to to let them go. And that's hard.

I think it's hard. And, and at the same time, you displayed courage in realizing your error and using that information for the future to turn it into more successful relationships when hiring. And you, you obviously did a masterful job in the termination discussion. That he remains speaking colleagues.

Fortunately, he's a nice guy. So, so we did, we did maintain that relationship. But that's, that's not the only mistake. I mean, I've been in business almost 4 decades. And so I, you know, there are a lot of things I could think about. One, building a building bigger than we needed. When I got another general manager, He made the decision. We had really outgrown the building we were in. I had that building, but it was a small one. And so he wanted to build a bigger building and bigger than we needed. And he said, but we'll rent, we can rent out all the suites that we're not using. And I wanted, you know how when you hire somebody, you want to give them your full trust and your full support. And so I said, okay, I'm going to defer, even though in my mind I'm thinking this it's not as easy to rent out these suites as you might think. And sure enough, we built the building much larger than we needed, twice the size that we needed for our organization. And it was always a struggle until I sold my company and sold that building. It was always a struggle to keep those other suites rented. So it's just error in judgment about how much trust to give give to new employees, to senior people when you want them, you want new ideas, you want new blood, you bring them in, they want to try their oats, their wings, and you want to, want to help them. But at the same time, you know that you have more experience than they do. And it's a tight, tight fine line to walk.

So if you was to say, if you were to look at that experience again, What would you say was your courageous act in that whole experience?

My courageous act was, was continue— well, I wouldn't say anything that's courageous. I'm just saying that was wrong. That was bad judgment on my part. I think the courageous act might have been to, on future projects, not trusting as much. And when the person came in and said, hey, you know, let's do this. Well, Let's talk about it, you know. So I, I did buck him, so to speak, more often in the future to say, look, I have had a lot of experience here. Here's my experience. Here are my ideas. Here's my insight. And I permitted him to make mistakes if they weren't huge ones, like building that building. So I guess you might say that. I don't know. You're the expert in courage. I'll have to leave that to you to see. What was courageous about that?

Yeah, I think, I think there's some wonderful courageous actions in that. And one, courage doesn't always have to be outward bound. It can be inward bound, right? And so, you know, outward bound, you know, would be to say, okay, I'm going to trust this guy from now on. But inward bound is to be able to say to yourself, Hey, I learned an important lesson here, which is to stay steadfast in my beliefs and in my experience, and to give the person X number of— what do you want to say— mileage, or X number of opportunities to make mistakes, and it's okay. But once you cross that border, and I know the difference, Then I'm going to speak up based upon my knowledge and experience and stop moving forward.

Stop acquiescing to this other person's experience. I do have one that I considered that I did stand up for with the same COO that I think the reason I was so strong on it, to me, it was a moral issue. And that involved— he wanted to go for a different audience that, you know, we're usually dealing with executive vice presidents in major corporations, not the end user. And he wanted to go after that market with some of our services. And he presented the idea of having them free. You know, you hear all these subscriptions now, free subscription for 3 3 months or 6 months, and then we'll be glad to, you know, unfettered dislock, so to speak. In other words, if you want to, if you want to drop your subscription, no problem. If, if you'll fill out this form here telling us what was wrong. And anyway, the moral issue was people couldn't do it. It was too involved. Involved for them to do. And so you— the idea, his idea was, well, let's just keep billing their credit card. We just keep billing their credit card. You remember those book clubs that they used to have?

Yes, yes, I know that tactic.

Yeah, years and years ago. Oh, well, you didn't tell us to stop. And, and did you? And then that, you know, the seller goes back and says, well, did you read the fine print? Fine print down here said you have to, you know, jump over all these hoops to get us to not bill you.

Well, it's still going on today.

Yeah, yeah. But, and I didn't, I said, no, to me, that's a moral issue. I've, I've always run my business on the up and up. I mean, everything is above board, always, always, always with integrity. And I, we can't do that. And so I did stand up to him on that one.

I love it. I love it. Now tell us about what you're doing today to help authors be more courageous in their work.

Well, they call for all different things. I mean, some authors Or saying, here, can you help me write this book? Or can you help me edit it? But for the most part, they want me to coach them through the process. You know, they're the expert, they have the knowledge, but they don't know the ropes. They don't have the contacts. They don't know what should be happening at each stage. And so I'm just coaching them for a period of 2 years. So take us through that. That's the main thing. Occasionally, occasionally I'll run a book camp. I have one coming up, in fact, November 14th through 16th. It's what I call Booher, like my name, Booher Book Camp. And I'll take them, 5 or 6 people, keep the group very small so they can actually work on their project and get feedback from me and the other authors as I take them through a lot of things, you know, how to do the marketing, what should happen at what time, how to write a book fast in a couple of weeks. I'll go through that process, negotiating contracts, handling all their foreign sales and spinoff sales. So there are a lot of different ways that— it's just as many ways almost as there are clients out there who need you to do different things because they're at different parts on their publishing journey. They're at different stages and they need help with different things. Sometimes it's just negotiating a contract and looking through it, you know, the publisher's contract and said, don't agree to this. And here's what you should substitute as your language, et cetera. So that's a common thing as well.

And so what's the biggest mistakes that you see authors doing?

They settle for less than they could get when they're, when they're selling to a major publisher. They're just so thrilled to have their book published by a major publisher that they sign anything and they agree to terrible contracts when they, when they're very negotiable, and things can be changed and improved. Another mistake I see is They send something out. They send a query to an agent. Oh, CB, you just shouldn't have asked me this question because I'm going to throw out a whole bunch of mistakes.

Okay.

One of them is they send out a query to an agent and the agent says, I love it. Send me the proposal. And they don't have the proposal ready. And then by the time they do the proposal, it takes them a month because they're working around other things they already have scheduled. And then they go back to the agent and say, here's the proposal. And the agent doesn't even remember it. You know, they— I'm on to something else. I've already bought a competing book. So they lose their opportunity by not having all their proverbial ducks in a row before they do that first pitch. Another, another mistake is they— their dream when they first come is, I want to sell this book to a major publisher. I know it's a great idea. I know it's unique. And they give up too soon. They don't realize that agents are just People, and they have, you know, just like some people love mysteries, and some people hate them. I mean, I hate horror movies. I don't want to pay somebody to scare me to death.

Right.

But there are other people who love them. So agents are like that. They typically will specialize in one or two genres. They may have even written an agent who doesn't handle that genre, and they get turned down for any number of reasons. And then they just give up. And I can give you a story about That particular with a client from I think she was in my my Boer Book Camp in March of 2021, and she sent it. I helped her. I love the idea. I hooked her up with my agent, and he said he didn't like it. I thought he would love it, but he didn't. He said, "No, I don't think I can sell that.

It's too broad." Blah blah blah blah.

And she just you know her courage just fell. She just I kept trying to say, you know it's a good idea. Keep working on it. But she didn't. She Went back to teaching school and did not work on it for all this time. And she wrote a blog on the movie that came out last year, Top Gun, or this year. I think it was earlier back in the summer.

Last year.

And it was just a casual thing, had nothing to do with her business. She just wanted to spout off saying, this is a great movie and people like wholesome entertainment. And this is why that movie worked. And that blog went viral. And she had a publisher call her up and say, we love your writing style. We love your wit. We love your sarcasm. Even, would you be interested in writing a book? And she said, would I? I have a proposal already ready. And so now they have contracted with her to write a book, to write a political column, to do political cartoons, and to go on the speaking circuit, and they will book all of her speeches.

Yeah.

I mean, it's, it was a huge deal. And she was, she gave up for a whole year just because this one agent said no. In fact, 2, I'll take that back. She did try 2 agents. Both of them said no. And that was it. She just gave up and believed them. So that's a huge mistake that, that authors don't keep at it until they find the right agent who just loves their manuscript, who then finds the right editor who just loves that manuscript?

You know, it's— people have to realize that writing a book is a full-time job. That's the bottom line. It's like if you get turned down for a job opportunity, you're not going to stop there because you need to keep a roof over your head and food on the table. So you keep going until you find the job. It may not be an ideal job, but it's a job. And then the next time around, you'll have an even better job. And I, I think that people who want to write books like myself, you know, I just went to a hybrid publisher because I couldn't stand the rejection. Because first of all, I hate reading my own work, and I thought having to read it over and over and over again, that's just not my style, right? So I think part of it is recognizing what your style is and then what kind of publisher, or what do you want to do with that? And I don't think people realize that there's so many options today.

Yes, a lot, a lot of options, some a lot better than others. And it depends on your goal. You know, if you're doing it for credibility in your industry, then you want to go with a major publisher. If you have your own following like you do, and you have a lot of fans out there, and you do a lot of speaking and training, you have a built-in audience. So you might, you know, self-publish or do the hybrid thing. I don't, I don't ever work recommend hybrid because there are far too many of them that prey on authors. I just did a LinkedIn post on that today, this morning. Didn't even know we would be talking about this on your podcast. But there are just a lot of options and it depends on, you know, are you planning to launch a business for the next 40 years? That leads you in one direction. Or do you just want something in print to sell at the back of the room and you're happy with just, you know, making a few bucks on each? on each book. That's one great way to go. There's just all kinds of goals that people have. Sometimes they're writing a book just for their family. It's a memoir.

Yes.

There are all different reasons people publish, and there are different options that fit those, those goals.

I think you said it well. You really need to figure out why you're writing the book. What's your goal here? And so many people don't think about that. And so there you have it. So tell us about your boot camp. When is— well, you mentioned the date that it takes place. Where do people go to find out about it?

Yeah, that's the URL, just Booher, like my last name, B-O-O-H-E-R, like boo her, except I hope they don't. I always try to help them remember how to spell that, booherbookcamp.com, and they will see all the details there. there. Like I said, the next one, these are online. I used to do them in my home. I have a pretty large office and conference room and everything. I used to do them here before the pandemic. And once the pandemic started, I said, let's just do this online. And people loved it. They said, hey, I can, you know, meet with you at 6 hours a day and then do the homework overnight to get my, you know, polish what I've learned in class that day. So when they leave, they actually have the proposal done and they have their query letter written. So it's really ideal to do it online with a small group. It's very intimate, very personal. But if they want all the details about the things that we go through and all the topics, they'll find it there at boerbookcamp.com.

Great. And, um, how long is the boot camp?

It's 3 days. We meet Central Time, 10 to 4. So that works for every time zone to give them time enough, you know, to take care of email and phones in the morning or the evening, and then to actually work on— like when I'm having them do their selling handle, when I'm having them write their query, when they're doing the marketing section, they have time to do that between, you know, during our 30-minute lunch break. And sometimes I give them, for some things that are short, like your selling handle, that only takes somebody about 10 minutes. So I give them time in the program, and then we read them to each other and add Add things, you know, how about this angle, how about that angle, etc., and share marketing ideas. So it seems to work really, really well in those small virtual groups. And the next one, as I said, is November 14th through 16th.

That sounds fantastic. And so it— so you mentioned you have time during the day. What time does it start? What time does it end?

10 to 4 Central Time.

And before you did mention that, okay. Great. Well, I hope that you'll hear from a lot of people that are watching this. You know what? It just— I just realized then I really should air this sooner rather than later because we have a list of people that we are interviewing and a whole list of when it gets out. But because this is time sensitive, I'll let everybody know that we should release it sooner rather than later.

Absolutely.

Because it's November 8th. Okay, great. Well, I am so happy that you came on. I remember the day that you joined MG100 for the first early morning meeting that we had.

Yes, yes. Yeah, that happens at 9 o'clock in Texas time.

It was 8 o'clock.

Oh, was it? Yeah, okay.

Yeah, it was, it was a killer for me, but, you know, got to meet so many wonderful people like yourself. And it's a good thing. It's a good thing. I hope that Bill starts it back, but not quite that early.

Right, right, right.

Anything else you want to share with us before we jump off?

Well, you know, you mentioned earlier about looking at the big picture when you're having courage. One of the key things I think was a defining thing in, in my business was a client that I'd worked with for years, and they were about a $400,000 to a half million dollar client every year. And I was doing training programs, and I had my trainers out doing those programs. And the one division had me do a speech, a keynote. And when they did that keynote, they asked if they could record it. And I said no, it was back before that was common. And I said no, Yes, you can. But yes, there's a fee. You can't just record it for nothing. There's a fee. They decided this some vice president somewhere said no, we're not paying for that. And I thought okay, nope, no problem. And then I had a call to my office saying you know that that recording that we made could you send us another copy of it for our for our regional office? And I went what recording? They they they didn't have the right to do that. And I and then different divisions started calling and I realized that they against my will had refused. Refused to pay me for the recording of it, but did it anyway. And I was really upset, and I went to their headquarters and set up a meeting. And they said basically their their response was: "Look, we're a huge corporation. They're a household name. We're a huge corporation. We've broken down into these little regions, and we even compete with each other, much less our outside vendors. And we had if I use a training program from that division, they use." We have to pay each other and it's a nightmare. I don't know what you'll do except sue us and you probably should. And I said, well, I'm going to consider that. And they said, but there's one thing I would think about and that is you'll probably never do business with— and he called the company name again. And so that's when I had to get back up and look at the big picture. We were already making $1 million, excuse me, about $500,000 a year from this client doing training programs. That lawsuit may have taken 4 or 5 years and I might've got, you know, $10 or even lost it. I don't think I could have lost it because I had the evidence of what they had done, but I had to get the aerial, you know, big picture view. Do you want to keep doing a million dollars business with them every year, or do you want to win this lawsuit for the sake of pride or arrogance? And I took that bigger picture. So you always have, I I guess what I learned, you always have options. You know, when you think you're backed in a corner and somebody's just done something terrible to you, they may have, but you have the choice to either let it go or resolve it by compromise or collaborate to make it better. But you do have choices. You are not just a victim. And that was an important lesson for running the company for many years after that.

I love that lesson. I absolutely love it because a lot of us forget that you have choices in life. And that's part of being courageous is recognizing that you do have those choices and then deciding which is gonna be the best choice for you, either short-term or long-term.

That's right.

Where do you wanna take it?

That's right.

Yeah. And I just published just now the, November newsletter for courage on LinkedIn. And the— I thought, what a wonderful time of year to tie that into the courage to say no. Right? Because everybody's saying thank you. And, you know, recognizing it's Thanksgiving. And I'm like, wait a second. You've got to thank yourself for the ability to say no. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm grateful for all the— I, I'm very grateful to God for all the opportunities I've had, but I really needed help with saying no. I am not good at saying no.

And I'm your person.

And that's, and that's the, that's the opportunity that gets away from us because we didn't say no to A and we, we missed the opportunity for option B. And all of that's part of the running your business, being an entrepreneur, being an author, is knowing what to say yes to and what to say no to.

And there's also, as I say to people, there is a way of saying no that actually turns into a yes. And that's one of the things that I think that people from Europe do much better than we do as Americans. And it's a total art form.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I had, I have a client who I was working with one of their key consultants. And I said something about, do you ever say no? Do you ever turn down a client? And he said, no, we don't. We always will say yes for a price. If the price is high enough, you know, if we charge them enough until they finally walk away and say they can't afford that. So I thought, now that's a nice way. That's a nice way to get a no across.

I have heard that from friends of Marshall's. And in fact, Marshall says the same thing because he— I don't know if you've ever heard him say this, but it's a riot. People will complain they have too many clients and he looks them dead in the eye and he says, well, then you're not charging enough.

Right, right. You need to raise the price.

Absolutely. Exactly. So that is a way of saying no so that you get the price The price that you're looking for and the clients that you're looking for.

Yes.

So I think that that's something we all forget because we're all, you know, I think regardless of how much money you have, we all are concerned about saying no, that the money will just vanish. It really doesn't happen that way. Yeah.

That's a fear, common fear.

Yeah, it took me a long time to figure out it doesn't happen that way.

Right.

So it's all about the confidence that you have. And, and clearly being intentional about your goals.

Yes. Yes, that's true of any entrepreneurial venture I've ever been associated with. It's true of nonprofits when, you know, they're always needing more money. And working with the donor, you know, trying to please everybody so they get their money in. It's true of authorship. You have to have confidence in your work.

So tell us before we jump off, what's, what's your plan for next? What's your next?

I am working on another book right now with the doctor. And yes, I haven't done this in a long time so that I am actually writing the book for someone else. I've done that. I guess this will be the 4th time. Usually, like I said, I'm coaching someone else to do theirs. But this one I really liked. And so I'm in the process of doing that, right, of writing that book as a collaborator with her.

So can you tell us what it's about?

No. My agent always says, keep your mouth shut till it comes out. That gives you a head start on it. But it's obviously on a medical issue. She's an orthopedic surgeon.

Hmm. I can't even imagine an orthopedic surgeon writing a book for the general public, I'm assuming.

Yes, yes, it is. It's not for other healthcare people. It's for the general public. But it's, it's exciting. And like I said, I'm still doing a lot of coaching. So I always, you know, have— and next week, I'm taking 3 days to do the book camp. So there are a lot of things going on there and then speaking over the weekend. So what I did was I just sold my training, you know, division of the company in 2017. So I'm still free to speak and to work with authors.

And so can people contact you individually?

Oh, sure.

Okay, great.

Yeah, that my, my email is diana.boer@cbbowman.com. at Buer Research, just like my name, diana.buer@buerresearch.com.

Okay, great. Well, Diana, this has been fantastic. We've learned so much, especially in terms of what to look out for, uh, and how you can take not only your story for you, but how you can take that story and use it for whatever business that you're going to It's that old thing about the golden egg, you know, watch, watch for it.

Right, right, right, right. Well, I've enjoyed being with you, CB.

Thank you. Well, audience, thank you so much for being here. And please, if you're thinking about writing a book, contact Diana and try doing her book camp as soon as the idea of writing a book comes to your mind. Because you'll clearly learn so much and learn how to protect yourself. And I think one— for me, the most important part of her boot camp is about contracts, because that can get you in a whole lot of trouble.

Right.

And the self-pressure that you put on yourself to get your book done can lead you to mistakes in accepting the wrong kind of contract. We— I know that— a member of the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches. His book was with a known publisher and he had to end up buying the rights back.

That happens if you don't protect yourself in the contract. That is, that is for sure.

Yeah.

And you know, it's just not necessary to have those kind of mistakes in a contract because you can get help. And there are a lot, there are a lot of ways to change the wording and they are open about a lot of things. You just need to know to do that.

And be brave enough to do it. Be courageous enough to do it. Yeah. And that— and this year boot camp is where you can learn to be courageous and what to ask. I just had a recent situation where, uh, the association has a conference every other year. And so next year will be our conference and we were gonna go to a well-known hotel. Here, fairly new here in the Colorado area, and they sent us this contract that was just so weird from what I've signed before. And so fortunately on the committee are 2 attorneys, and they looked at it and they said, CB, this just, you know, we can't advise you as attorneys because we're members of ACEC, but give this some serious thought. And so fortunately, the guy who was responsible for putting together our previous conference, he didn't have a chance to look at it, but he saw all the dialogue going back and forth. And he said, CB, run from this.

Yeah.

So he gave us some alternatives. And that's what we're going to go with. Yeah.

Okay. He saved you.

Yeah. That contract is a whole, whole thing. And it's written in such contractese. That you really don't know whether it's here or there. So—

And I'm glad you mentioned that. My, my, I guess, standard for always hiring an attorney throughout all the years in business is one that can speak plain English. I thought, if I'm going to teach communication skills and how to write, you know, in technical writing and business writing, whatever, I'm certainly going to hire an attorney who can communicate in clear language, not this legalese.

I love it. I love it. Well, everyone, this has been definitely a learning experience, especially for those of us that are interested in writing. And I must tell you that getting a book done is a heavy, heavy lift, but it's also incredibly rewarding. So with that, I will see you next Tuesday. And Look forward to having our next guest on. Thank you so much, Diana.

Thank you.

Give us your website again.

Just as it's Boer, like my name, booheresearch.com.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

See you all next week.