Scarlett Johansson's enacted her bestselling book

Welcome to another Founder Wisdom Podcast. We have Nicola Cross with us today. She's a number one international bestselling author. She's a creative coach and a brand strategist for the next generation of aspiring author company. It's called The Finished Thought. And yeah, I have one of her books here that was later enacted by Scarlett Johansson, right? The Nanny Diaries. I think that one was A home run. So welcome to the pod, Nicola. Tell us a bit more about yourself and what you're up to.

Uh, thank you. I'm so happy to be here. So I started as a novelist, so I've been in publishing for 26 years. And then 11 years ago, I started working with CEOs and academics who need to or want to write a book, and I help them navigate the publishing process and figure out which part of their knowledge base will meet the marketplace. So usually the whole of their brilliance can't be put in a book, but one sliver of it can. And then we also address the branding piece of it.

I love it. How was, uh, how crazy was Nanny's Diaries like in 2002? Describe that story.

It was wild. Emma and I actually had been nannies while we were at NYU, and it was a purely financial decision. We were both studying children and child education, so So it was a natural partner to our academic pursuits. We never imagined in a million years that we would write a book about it. And when we started to work on it in the early aughts, it was because at the time, the whole economy of New York City had shifted. With the election of Giuliani and his focus on what he called fixing the broken windows, suddenly the quality of life in the city really shot up and wealthy families working in finance stopped fleeing to the suburbs. And you had a level of wealth in the city the city had never seen before. And it really changed the entire tenor of the employer-employee relationship. And what I was also observing is that the newly rich were not very good at managing their help. And there were a lot of women who also hired and fired for sport. So, all of this ended up being what we wanted to capture in our social satire. Because once she and I started talking about the jobs we'd had, We realized that these experiences weren't unique to us or unique to one family, that there was an entire system that was worth calling into question. And then the book came out and blew us away. We really thought our parents were going to buy it. We had no idea that 6 million people were going to be interested in this story.

It just catch fire by itself, or did you actually do some promotion?

Timing had a lot to do with it. And a lot of the CEOs I work with talk about the magic of the timing piece of when you launch. September 11th had happened 9 months before and really nothing, no book, no film. It just wasn't the time for the media to be talking about other things. But by March, I think people were fatigued. They were ready to move on. And this story felt distracting enough to be fun, but substantive enough that it didn't feel embarrassing to talk about. And the first press that we did was the Sunday Style section because I met the writer at a party and I pitched him directly because no one at the publishing company seemed to be doing anything. And so that story ran and then it was really reactive. So we started getting publicity off of the publicity. And one of the first things we did was the Today Show. And at the time there were still 7 million viewers every morning in the 7:00 AM hour.

Wow.

So that really launched us. And we were on our 12th printing by our pub date.

The story itself was inspired by your own childhood, right? Like, I guess one of you two, is it you or Emma, lived in like a prominent— well, a prominent building in New York, right? I think at Towson Park Avenue.

Yes.

And you saw a lot of these, I don't know, fancier or upper-class people. In real life, what did you learn from this upper class, right? It's quite interesting. I have 2 nannies personally, and I mean, they must think I'm an alien sometimes. I mean, they always hear me doing business, and, you know, it's like surface-level relationships, like, oh, thanks for taking care of my daughter. And I mean, I'm not like as outrageous as a Wall Street guy in the '90s, right?

Mm-hmm.

But what did you learn from uh, these people? And yeah, how did that inspire, like, partly, uh, Nanny's Diaries?

Primarily what I learned is that money does not buy happiness. It can buy a lot of ease and a lot of space, but we worked for so many deeply unhappy families who had limitless resources. So that is the best lesson you can possibly get as you're heading out into the world of adulthood, you know. Follow the compass of your passion, because if you just blindly follow money, that may not actually end up leading anywhere good. And I did grow up at 1000 Park Avenue. I did see these families from when I was a little kid and at these elite schools. But the difference is that there was always a system of childcare.

Right.

The, the upper classes have always had someone raising their children, and it worked beautifully. Because typically these families would bring someone in when their first child was born, who would stay with them until their last child got married. And the mother was not expected to do more than put in an appearance periodically. But the child was allowed to have a really secure emotional attachment to the help. And what changed is that the women that we were working for didn't feel that sense of secure attachment. And so they started hiring and firing for sport. And so what Emma and I were observing while we were studying child development is that by the age of 4 or 5, these children were becoming incapable of developing a secure attachment with an adult. And that kind of lasting neuroses was what we were calling into question.

And that's so interesting. Um, I feel also a bunch of parents outsource the education of their kids, which is pretty ridiculous. And in my opinion, it has the counter effect of spending less time with your children. The less time you spend with them, or the less energy you deploy in them, uh, the more you're gonna have to deploy later on, right? Like, whether—

Yes.

And if they— if these kids have like attachment problem, and maybe that will turn into drugs, right? We've all heard of these Manhattan, uh, trust babies that just cannot, uh, I don't know, process their emotions efficiently and are constantly in inner pain. Not saying all kids are like that, but If your dad is rich and never spending time with you, it's like, what signal is that sending to you? It's like you're unworthy of his time and love, right? And, uh, I mean, I have nannies right now. She's quite young, but I do want to, uh, have my own AI school, and obviously that will be mostly for her and my other kids, right? So we'll spend great quantities of, uh, of time with her. What, uh, what do you have to say about that?

Yeah, I think that it's about the time and intention because I think it's so important for women to be able to work outside the home. And my daughter went to daycare and childcare is fantastic, but it's about not feeling threatened and letting your child have a strong bond with that person, whoever it is. And then the whole system can work really beautifully. It doesn't have to be parent who is the lead caregiver.

That book, where— what part actually led to the movie? And I guess you were paid for, for that movie, sell the rights for a movie to be made about it, right? Like, tell us a bit more about that craziness part of the story as well.

That was a wild experience because we'd only just finished the book and had no idea that the film rights were being shopped yet. So Emma was on her honeymoon. I get a call out of the blue, actually several calls, from Richard Gladstein, who won the Best Picture for Cider House Rules, saying that he is going to produce the movie for Miramax, from an agent who I didn't know was representing us for the film rights, and from another producer who had done Legally Blonde who wanted it for, I think, Universal. And A bidding war rapidly ensued. And over the course of a few hours, Harvey, who is not known for ever taking no for an answer, won. And we were completely outside of our bodies. I mean, it was— we were in shock, complete shock. We had no idea that this was even possible. And that was a full year before the book came out. So it also did help in the lead-up that Julia Roberts recorded the audiobook. And we had already sold the film rights. So there was, there was a media story there that was also very helpful.

Was that life-changing money?

Oh yes. I mean, we'd gotten $24,000 for the book split between the two of us. And then there were agenting fees and then there were taxes. So we were both living on credit cards and this absolutely changed our lives. We both bought apartments, but primarily we spent all of our money on therapy.

Which— oh, that's so good. Um, why the decision to co-write books, right? And what's the chemistry with Emma?

That was really a magical part of it. Uh, we had gone to college together. We moved in 2 different directions after graduation, but we kept running into each other. And then I had written a play, and I invited her to a reading of it, and she sent me an email the next day and said, I didn't know that you were writing. I've been looking for someone to partner with me on this. I really think there should be a book about nannying. And I thought, well, that's a terrible idea because that was the worst job we ever had. And who on earth would want to read about that? But because I was transitioning from acting into I did not know what next, I said, yes, no, absolutely. Let's, let's give it a go. And we sat down the very first time and we both started talking about the interview and realized that our memories were so consistent. And that's part of what I was saying earlier about calling an entire system into question. And so we divvied up how the chapter would go. I would do the arrival into the apartment. She would do the tour of the kitchen. I would do meeting the child. And over the course of the next week, she sent me her snippets and I strung the whole thing together. And that is the prologue of The Nanny Diaries. It was never edited after that. So if you read it, you can see that it's impossible to tell where one of us stops and the other one begins. And I saw that before she did, and I got goosebumps because it's almost impossible to make 2 people's voices merge into one voice. It's easier in film. It's very common. And television shows are all written by a table of people. But for a novel to be written by more than one person is rare. And that's why we've taken such good care of each other for 26 years.

Yeah, it's pretty fascinating, right? Because I mean, the capitalist in me is like, you need to separate the bill in 2 and the profits in 2, right? But also there's like magic there and seems like 1 1 100 in that case. And like you said, I haven't seen that a lot in the writing world, right? Like, is there a specific process? One starts, the other edits and finishes? Like, how does that go?

No, we would outline together, and then initially we would do it by scene, and then eventually we separated it by chapter. So when we had the time, I would write chapter 1 and then she would write chapter 2, and then we would swap. We always edited each other's work, and there were characters one or the other of us felt more affinity toward. But eventually—

Can the readers see that, like, a difference from chapter to chapter, or Is it the same voice?

We really are freakishly 2 human beings who share one brain. But then when we shifted to a book-a-year schedule, we would be writing simultaneously. And that's when it got stressful because I was writing coming out of a chapter that didn't exist yet. And she was writing into a chapter that didn't exist yet. And so we really had to trust the outline and each other and sort of hold on for dear life and trust that we would get it done.

So there's similitudes between the both of you, but what are the differences? Because obviously differences are good as well, right? Like, she might complete you where you're not good and vice versa.

I'm a little more fearless than she is. I think she would also say that. Uh, I am— I don't mind the business of entertainment. And what I mean by that is I grew up on Park Avenue. I am fine with people lying to my face. It does not bother me. And it did not, and it really bothers her. So I think over the years our career started to wear her down in a way that it didn't wear me down.

Interesting. Uh, is there some in-person as well, like when you write, or is it like each on other's side and then you merge both work? Like, is there some in-person magic too?

Absolutely, because when we started There was no Google Doc. We couldn't even get a Mac and a PC to talk to each other. So we would work often side by side at one computer, taking turns because the technology just didn't exist yet to help us. Eventually, we got a program that was designed for coders, and we were able to have a friend retrofit it so that we could use it for language, but it was really hard. really clunky. And now it's so easy, right? You could just— people can get into one Google Doc from anywhere on the planet, and it would have been a breeze.

Are you still getting paid by Nanny Diaries-related activities?

Yes, which is really magical.

From the books and/or the movies, or both?

From the book and the movie. So I love it. We had a huge surge in sales during the pandemic, Which was surprising. And then we realized that kids were home and they were voraciously reading and asking their moms what they should be reading. And the moms were probably saying, oh, well, we watched The Avengers, you'd love Nanny Diaries. Oh, and let's order the book. So that introduced us to a whole new generation of readers, which was lovely.

How was the movie itself? I mean, Rotten Tomatoes doesn't rate it very high, but I mean, I don't trust Rotten Tomatoes anymore. And what was your involvement in the movie? Did you get to see the actors on set, meet them, greet them? Scarlett, Alicia Keys, Chris Evans, I think.

Yes. Um, when Scarlett signed on to bring the film together, she said she wanted it to be something that people would watch when they had the flu. And that over 25 years has proven to be true, you know, that it is, it is people's go-to film. It's always on cable somewhere. And there is also the story of the journey of this film, which is the story of Harvey Weinstein. So there was the shooting script, which was rocket science, dark satire. And then there was the final film, which he cut and cut and cut and cut to the point that none of the actors did any promotion for the film. So that was really painful to be on the sidelines for. There was nothing we could do about it. We couldn't fix it or make anything better for anybody, and we just had to wait for the fullness of time and for karma to take him down.

Or does it just make sense to take him down now? Because he did some good work, did he? I mean, he was a pervert, but he did some good work as well.

Monster, you know. Yeah, he's a monster. And he was abusive. He was abusive in the workplace. He was sexually abusive, verbally abusive. Uh, yeah, the world is a better place without him walking around. And we could sense all of this happening, but we were powerless.

Oh shit. Yeah, that sucks. Um, the, the book, um, the, the book itself, I guess, um, did you get a hangover from like having such a gigantic success with that one and I mean, not being able to, I don't know, surpass your initial crazy success with the other novels?

I think it was an interesting journey for us because our first few books were social satire, and then the world got very hard to satirize. I mean, obviously outlets like The Daily Show do it very well every day, but when you're writing a novel, there's a lag time. And so what we were finding is that we were creating extreme scenarios. And by the time our books were coming out, they'd come to pass, which made them less funny. I'll give you an example. In Nanny Returns, which was the sequel, we invented the idea, the outlandish idea of a private school in the Meatpacking District that would have a Chuck Close painting in the cafeteria and uniforms by Agnes B. And by the time the book came out, Avenues had come in out of nowhere and was exactly like the school we'd invented. And so little by little, I think we were feeling increasingly constrained by the notion of women's fiction at the time or commercial women's fiction because we never wrote about guys and girls. We always wrote about professional settings and about ambitious young women. And I think the world has caught up to that, but I think we were perfectly with the zeitgeist and then we were slightly ahead of our time.

Yeah, nowadays it feels that— I mean, your evolution, if we can call it that, would be in erotica novels, right? Like all these weird novels with explicit type of stories like Fifty Shades of Grey, right? Like these types of things. Like, I think that is what is sticking nowadays because attention is scarce and people want like stronger sensations, right?

I think certainly romance and erotica exploded during the pandemic, and there's this proliferation of bookstores like the Ripped Bodice, which is a few blocks away from me in Brooklyn, which is just a magical little place. And I think that's also a response to the explosion of porn and the way that that left women behind in entertainment, right? Because romance and frisson got completely pulled out of commercial entertainment. So women were feeling kind of abandoned, and fiction stepped in to fill the void. And yay!

Yeah, that's— that sells a lot. And not just women, but I guess men, right? So what are you writing nowadays? How did, uh— are you still tailoring your style to what the market wants?

No, that is the gift of what I do now. So I published my first solo novel last— this time last year called The Best We Could Hope For, and that was an extraordinary experience. I got to release it first in England and then tour all over the United States with it, and to have my own readership was an extraordinary experience.

And I am almost done with And did you have clients that were major success stories as well?

Yes. So I worked on a book that just came out in January called You Could Be Having Better Sex, which was a fantastic book from America's number one sex professor. She teaches the largest class in the United States. And I was working with Jackie Friedland, who's now— we've done multiple USA Today bestsellers. And I just support her in an editorial capacity. She's a phenomenal writer. But it's been so gratifying to meet people when they just have a loose idea and they're not really sure how it's all going to come together, to support them to, you know, to end up on the, on the Times list. In the case of my client Susan Peirce Thompson, she didn't, she didn't get to number 1 because Elton John was at number 1. And I said, Susan, you are not going to be Elton John.

Yeah, it must have been a good one. I probably need to add it to my repertoire of books. Although I don't read much books nowadays, I read my long AI deep research, but sort of stopped reading books. I'd listen to books though. I saw a couple also in your list that I added to mine. One was by Bono, right? Tell me about like your favorite books and why they're on top.

Oh, Bono's memoir Surrender is Sublime. I will also give a plug for that because it is audio engineered with samples of their music, and it's an extraordinary story.

So good.

I also love listening to audiobooks, but the reader has to be really talented because telling a story vocally is its own skillset. So don't just plunk an actor in there and expect that they can do it because maybe they can't. Favorite books of mine recently, I just read *The Director*, which is a German novel that was translated into English and nominated for several awards. It's based on the true story of G.W. Pabst, who was a groundbreaking German director or Austrian director who managed to get out in 1939, came to the United States. and then was really shunned by Hollywood. So he went back and then ended up inside the Third Reich during the war. And it's about myopia and moral compromise and what is art and what is the cost of art. It's a stunning novel.

What do you think about Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey?

Oh, you know, I haven't read it and I really should because it's one of the biggest bestsellers of the last 5 years.

It's pretty damn good. His last one, I didn't like it.

The top five.

It's it's pretty effing good. Great story. The guy has such a great voice and pretty hilarious, right? So is that I think yeah he has like all the ingredients take someone to a bestseller, right? Like story, having them laugh, being famous helps, right? Being successful helps also is like. Did you accomplish something exceptional? Uh, his second one was less good though. It's like, it's always hard, man, to, to like beat yourself and your first bestseller. And I know like so many artists, right, that had albums that were crazy good but could never surpass themselves again. I think the Beatles were like the only exception to the rule. They always— they were like a hits machine, but Um, yeah, do you often think about that, of how to beat your own past self? Is that something that's possible, or is this like right place, right time?

I think that that is the pursuit of insanity because we are creators, and I think at a certain point you have to ask yourself why you're doing this. And if you are putting financial pressure on your creative pursuit, which is a very 21st century approach, right? You can't make jewelry unless you're putting it on Etsy. You can't make pictures unless you're trying to sell them in the park. And so this pressure to monetize or demonstrate the worth of something based on its commercial viability, it's a space a lot of people can successfully operate in. And I managed to for 15 years. But if you're not simultaneously creating the work that you think is your highest work, that is your soul's strongest expression, It can be kind of crushing.

Yes.

The liberation—

Tim Ferriss is a good example of that. I mean, he surpassed himself a couple of times— 4-Hour Body, 4-Hour Workweek— but burnt out in the process, right? I mean, he did it twice, which is almost— it's incredible. And then he had a couple of other hits after that. It's so hard to make it again and again. Another story that's relevant probably to talk about before we end the podcast— Tribe Media and David Goggins' Can't Hurt Me. Um, maybe you didn't tag that one, but that's a masterpiece. And it's intriguing because, you know, Scribe Media is creating a similar firm to yours. They help people write books, right? They went belly up, right? So that's, that's like the challenge, uh, in there, but they still created like an amazing book.

And that's what I love about the industry right now. There are so many people who are innovating and finding new ways to get stories to the audience. You know, the, the Big 5, as they call them— Random House, Simon Schuster, Harper— they're not the gatekeepers anymore. There are a lot of ways to connect with readers, and readers are hungry for relationships with authors.

And is that a scalable business? Sort of my question. I didn't finish my thought there, but can you help people write books pretty much forever? What about AI, right? Like, is there still human magic touch needed?

I think so. I have noticed that when people come to me with AI-generated material, whether it's a proposal— I haven't seen any AI-generated fiction yet personally. I'm sure people are using it for that as well. But what it's missing is the thinking piece, right? There was that interview with Adam Grant a few weeks ago where he was saying, why would you outsource thinking? So when I get in a room with somebody I'm able to identify some piece of their narrative or some piece of their genius that maybe nobody has noticed before or brought to the fore. And AI may be able to do that eventually, but it can't just yet.

Yeah, interesting. I mean, my response to Adam Grant is that like, AIs are certainly going to think better than us and think differently one day. I mean, better is not an objective definition, right? But And if you talk about Adam Grant, I'm not sure. His books never really caught my attention. It seems there's a lot of stuff that is recycled in his own books, right? But, uh, no, I think he's pretty well received in the writers community, or at least writes really well. Um, yeah, right. But outsourcing your thinking is just straight up dangerous, like in, in many aspects, right? I mean, if you stop thinking for yourself and stop vetting and being skeptical about the AI answers? How can you even create, um, yeah, neurons in your brain, right? And I mean, that's how we grow. It's like—

That has no media literacy, so they don't know how to take in information with a skeptical eye. And now you're adding AI on top of that. And even my most intelligent clients will hand me something and I'll be like, this is absolutely plagiarized slop. We can't use this. And it's presented in a way that sounds so dazzling and sounds so real, but it's not. So I think it's just important to constantly be sort of combing the material, vetting the material, taking the best of it, and leaving the rest.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. Also, AIs won't go places, right? Like, AIs are pretty compliant, you know, they won't go in the danger zone, the gray zone, And usually the gray zone is the risky, exciting zone, and it's also where money happens to be, right? So, and I think that's the human edge we have on short-term. Uh, Nicola, where can people find out more about you?

Uh, at thefinishthought.com or nicolacrouseauthor.com.

That was Nicola and Charles for another Founder Wisdom.