The Empower U Podcast Interview with Charlie Yates

Oh everyone, and welcome to the Empower You Podcast. I'm your host Kenston Henderson, founder and CEO of Live of Life, where we help groups and organizations get unstuck and equip them to achieve their personal and professional development goals through keynote speaking and corporate professional youth and development training services. This podcast was created to, uh, and designed to ignite, inspire, and equip you to find and operate in your purpose, whether you are an adult or youth. This This podcast will help you declutter your life to include healthy self-leadership practices. The first series that we are kicking off here in 2021 will showcase the journey to becoming a self-published author. If you know of any self-published authors, please connect them with me, as I would love to have them featured on this podcast series. In today's episode number 4, we have as our featured author is my friend, my brother, funny brother, Charlie Yates. Hello. Charlie Yates is a retired RN. A Christian writer, and a Christian comedian. He daily allows God to direct his steps, and as he fosters 5 teenage boys, Charlie loves being able to touch people's lives through his gifts. And so Charlie's book is called Our Selfie with Jesus. Our Selfie with Jesus. So welcome, Charlie. Welcome. How are you?

I'm doing good today. I appreciate you having me on and You know, now I can tell people I know you, and I said that's gonna give me a little discount at the stores. I throw your name out there and everything, but I appreciate it.

See, the jokes has already started, folks. The jokes has already started. But man, it's an honor and privilege to have you on here, and, and I just want to, you know, want you to tell me, tell us a little bit about your book, uh, Selfie with Jesus. What are you talking about in the book?

Well, a number of different things. You know, the book Um, it's just kind of a, a sketch of my life throughout the, the stories and that kind of thing. Many of them are something that was happening in my life, and I was able by God's grace to go ahead and write them down and, and also have, have some scriptures in there, have something to touch people, maybe move them a little bit in their life in different ways. And so that's kind of what, what got me to, to do it. I started doing on a regular basis and And, um, that's, that's, that's the beginning of it.

Good, good, good, good. Now tell me, who, who, who has been your— or who is your target audience for this book?

Well, it's interesting, it's mostly Christians. The way it started out, again, and this is my second book, the way it started out was years ago when I was going to church, I would on the weekends, I would write a notation. I'll write, you know, a a, you know, a short, uh, story, and I'll send it in, and the, and the guy would send it from the church, would send it to all the, you know, people in the church. And so I did that years ago on a weekly basis, right? And so it's, you know, from all ages basically, um, you know, as far as Christians go, and, and depends, you know, women, men, teenagers a lot. So different people, just like any kind of stories, any kind of publication, people may see a little nugget that grabs them and, you know, hey, I needed this today. And that's kind of what happened. That's good.

That's good.

That's good.

Um, and so tell me, like, along your authorship journey, uh, with writing this book or any of your books, like, you know, what are— what were some of the barriers that you faced during the process?

Um, the writing itself, it came naturally to it. That was in my spirit, so I had no problems writing. And also connecting— something would happen in my life or whatever, or I'll see something, and automatically my spirit would be to write that down to be able to share it. So that wasn't a problem. It was a little bit challenging, actually. I self-published, so a little bit challenging self-publishing, going through those kind of things, but again with help from here and there, and finally I got that done too. So that was— I was kidding, I thought I was all that, so I figured, no, big publisher, and they come grab me up and throw me on there, and I'll be going to see President Obama and shaking his hand on that. That's why I waited for 50 years, and that didn't happen. So I had to go the self-publishing route. And so that was basically the— I would say the most challenging part of it, but actually the writing that come naturally for me, connecting with people, to talking with people, to helping people, all that, which is my spirit.

That's good, that's good, that's good, man. So, um, if there's one, one nugget that you could share to, um, that your book— and we're just still talking about your book— one nugget that you could share about your book that, um, would grab their attention, like what is something that you want them to take away from your book? That you want them to get?

That their life— God didn't just give them their life for themselves. God gave them their life to share, share with friends and non-friends, to share with family, non-family. There's different ways to do that, and in my book, that's how I put it out there. I challenge people in most of the different writings to, you know, go out and hug somebody. Everybody needs a hug. Go out and maybe give somebody a, you know, a couple dollars to buy some food or, or, or something like that. So I challenge people to go out and just share themselves through God. And when God takes a look at you, he'll, you know, he'll, he'll know what to do. He'll direct your steps. And when people take a look at you, they'll see Jesus.

Yeah, that's good, that's good. Listen, we need a lot of that right now. We need a whole lot now. Um, And so what is something that you would share with someone who is there, they're trying to write their book, right? They know they got a message to share with more than just themselves and they want to share with the world. What's a nugget that you would want them to take to make sure that they take steps forward to making sure they release the book?

Um, they need to believe in themselves, one thing, and that's through prayer and through friends. It's okay to ask a friend, hey, do you think I could write? Read this. You think I can write? Do you think I communicate well with people? Do you think I'm kind? Do you think I help people a lot? It's okay because that builds your spirit up. Because our society right now is kind of negative. So if you're just kind of going through Facebook and something else, you won't get a lot of encouragement a lot of time. So you have to start by building yourself up, just your love for yourself. And if you go through Jesus, he will show you that he loves you and you shall love yourself. So once you get that love for yourself, then, you know, you know, all bars are down and you can move forward doing what God has proposed for you to do. So I think that's the main thing there, just a love for yourself, caring for yourself, you know, I can do this, dot com, you know.

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that, that's very important that we believe in ourselves and, and also, you know, building our community, you know. If you have, you know if you don't have the right community around you to support you as you're on the journey, it's gonna help you not, you know, make the book happen. You just gonna be stuck and, you know, wondering year after year, man, I wish I'd have did that, or I wish I could have did that. But again, I don't want anybody out there who's looking to release their story to be selfish enough not to do it. So let's act on it. And if you need to get connected to my good brother Charlie or myself, other people who are on this journey,, of being authors, um, and continue to write, you know, definitely let's connect, uh, so that way you're not doing it alone. But the first thing it's going to take is for you to believe in yourself, and then we could come along the journey with you to help push you along the way.

Yeah, good point.

Cool, cool, cool, man. So where can people find, uh, your book to purchase?

You can find it on On Amazon, it's there. And you can go to the website ourselfiewithjesus.com, and that will ship you to Amazon where you can purchase it. It's $7.99. It's not a whole lot of money. If you want to throw me in there an extra $400 or $500, I mean, I'll accept that too, you know, just saying, gas money. But just go to ourselfiewithjesus.com. It's there, and it has a little bit of, you know, nuggets about the book and talks about it and that kind of thing. Or I'm on Facebook and I kind of— if you want to reach out to me, ask any questions about it, even before you purchase it, um, we can do that also.

Awesome, awesome. So, uh, definitely, again, as I always say, support, support, support our self-published authors, um, because we, you know, we out here, we just, we just trying to make it to that level of Obama, Michelle, you know, we just trying to get there, we're trying to get there. And so Uh, but definitely support by way of your local authors and, and really push that support. So, uh, for those who need a comedian, like Charlie is that guy. Charlie's that guy, and, uh, he's funny. I'm, I'm laughing because, because he is that funny. So definitely check him out. Um, definitely follow him on YouTube or Facebook page, or again, let's just connect and, uh, let's keep putting that positivity out there. Uh, this world needs it. And definitely, definitely appreciate you, Charlie. Anything you want to leave before we get off of here?

Well, I'll tell you one thing. It's interesting. Something else real quick that encouraged me to write was back in 2012, my doctor called me in. You do a regular physical once a year as a nurse. He said, I got some news. I got to tell you, come into the office. He's a friend of mine. I went in and he says, you know, you're Chemical analysis came back and you have prostate cancer. And I said, okay. He said, I'm gonna send you over to another doc, somebody else I knew. I went over there. He said, we're gonna have to do surgery, but I wanna tell you, this is an aggressive kind of cancer. And so we don't know what the outcome would be here in the next, you know, near future, but I wanna tell you ahead of time. And I prayed about it and thought about it. My wife prayed about it. And, you know, the doctor asked me, well, what do you want? My first doctor, what do you want to do? I said, 4:6. He said, what's that? Do not be anxious about anything, but do everything with prayer and petition, with thanksgiving. Take your requests before God, and peace, transcends all understanding, will be with you in Christ Jesus. And I, at that point, I said, well, I need to go ahead and do this. And that's really what hit me to go ahead Write the book now, you know. Um, so I wrote one other book and then I wrote this book. And, and then one day the doctor called me, he said, hey, you're cancer-free, you're good. And, um, the doctor didn't do that. Who did that? The real doctor. Yeah. So, so that's the thing, you know, God is out there for us. People connect and just, just, just allow God to direct your steps.

That's good, that's good, that's good. I ain't gonna say nothing more, but I appreciate you, appreciate you, my brother. And, uh, we're gonna connect well after this. And so whatever you need, just, just tag me, call me, um, and, uh, let's, let's make sure we keep making it happen.

Appreciate it, man. Thank you very much. God bless you.

God bless you. Take care.