Get Started Writing Your Dream Book!

Welcome to A New Life podcast with Pamela Jean, where it's all about empowering women to empower more women. Get ready, friends, to create a new life. And here is your host, Pamela Jean. Hello, my friends, and welcome to this week's episode of A New Life podcast. I'm your host, Pamela Jean. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I know you have so much you could be doing. Time is so valuable, but thank you for spending some of it with me. I have a very exciting guest today, someone I can't wait for you to meet. He has a very interesting story, an incredible business, and I'm really speaking to my friends out there who are looking at publishing books who may need a ghost writer. My guest today is Tim Jacobs. Tim is currently living in the Sarasota area. So smart person on a cold, wintry day where I'm living and perhaps you as well. But Tim is, is in Sarasota, Florida and he has a company, JWC Publishing, that he has had full time since 2012. So he has stood the test of time with his business and it was a side hustle for him before going full time. So that is such a great accomplishment. Tim also has a couple of startups that are coming that he's going to be launching this year that I will let him give us all the detail on that. But Tim, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to be a guest on my podcast. Tim, tell the audience a little bit about yourself.

Yes. First, you know, thanks for having me and inviting me on. I do appreciate that a little bit about myself is, you know, as far as being in this writing and publishing world, that started for me back pretty much when I was, you know, a child. I grew up with my mother having a little desk in the kitchen and she would always be typing as she worked from home as a typist. And I just fell in love with that click clack sound, which is now long gone with the advent of computers coming into the house. But that's kind of what it stems back to for me. And I've always, always been an avid reader, even as a child. Just, you know, my favorite place was the library. It was just getting books. It was getting Barnes and Noble gift cards for, you know, birthdays and Christmas. And I just kind of, over time, just kind of built a business around that is basically what I've done.

Isn't that great to create a business around something that you absolutely love to do?

Oh, absolutely. And, you know, that's one of the things there's that. There's that phrase that, you know, if you, if you have something that you love and you can make money doing it, you never have to work a day in your life, as the saying goes.

There's a lot of truth to that for sure. So when you started your company in 2012, what was the moment that you knew it was time to go ahead and do it full time? And what were you doing alongside of the publishing as your side hustle? Or maybe it was another career to be able to go full time. So how are you juggling and managing those two aspects?

Yeah, I, I had a full time job. I was with an electrical supply company where we would supply, you know, breakers and panels and wire for basically smaller electrical outfits and businesses. We were kind of like the, the middle person there. And after a while it just got, you know, it's kind of like a tipping of the scale sort of thing where after a while, like maybe 10 years of being there, it just got harder and harder to go to work, to be motivated to, you know, kind of get out of bed and put all this energy and effort into something that I really didn't have a passion for. And I had no goals in mind for it. And I just started to think, wow, if I could put this much time and energy into my own business, where would I be? And I just started to reach out to a couple people who did do their own thing. Not necessarily, you know, writing and publishing, but, you know, they were doing their own thing and I just kind of was kind of just picking their brain a little bit to, to finally do that step and give my notice at work and just kind of step into doing this full time.

So what did it feel like the day you walked into the office of your previous employer to give your notice? What did that feel like?

It was probably a couple different things. A. It was a little bit, I don't want to say sad, but it was like, there's definitely some people I'm seeing every day now I'm not going to see them every day was kind of just like, you know, that was kind of just like. I don't want to say sad, but it was just kind of like you, you know, you kind of miss that camaraderie that you would have with them. But more so, it was just, I, I think I was just excited and nervous about. I'm responsible for everything now. Everything is up to me. It's. I'm not relying on them getting clients. I'm not relying on, you know, are they going to Purchase the right things. Is this going to happen? Is that going to happen? Where's that business going? It's like I'm, I'm calling the shots and making, you know, kind of carving my own path of where I want to go.

Oh, that's so exciting. And, and honestly, every entrepreneur that's listening to this can identify with what you, what you just said. How did you shift your mindset away from the fear of what if I can't make ends meet? What if I can't grow this big enough to provide for my family and take care of my responsibilities? What did you do in your mindset shift to, to make sure that fear didn't become like a heavy burden.

Part of it was having a good relationship with the, you know, the manager or the supervisor of the store who, you know, called all the shots having that relationship there. I knew I could kind of walk back in should I need to. So I kind of had that maybe in my back pocket. But I think the first thing I did was to surround myself with people in kind of like networking circles such as, like Master Networks, where we have, we. Where you and I had met was just people who kind of had these answers, who've had these struggles, who've had these fears, and they know how to get over that, or you know how to like sidestep all the landmines that might lay in front of you. And it, it went from, instead of working with these people because they work here, I get to choose who I want to surround myself with. And that, you know, that made a big difference.

Oh, that's such a gift, isn't it?

Absolutely.

Oh, that's so good. I remember this year our conversation is taking me back to when I left my full time job. I was in marketing and HR for a bank, a small locally owned bank, eons ago, it seems like forever ago. And when I went to give my notice, the thing that I just knew in the back of my mind is that I'm employable. So if my new business I was starting at the time didn't work out, I was employable, Someone would hire me, I would just figure it out. There wasn't a lot of worrying about the what ifs. It was just, I'll figure it out and it's going to happen, I'm going to make it happen. And just a giant leap of faith for sure. And it sounds like you had kind of the similar mindset.

Yeah. And, and one thing I try to, that I try to do every so often and kind of goes parallel with that is to ask yourself, you know, if you were to be your own competition, what would you do differently? And it helps you. It helps your mind to kind of think of different things to do. If someone bought your business out and you still want to do the same thing, well, you have to do things differently now.

Oh, I love that. That's awesome. Really, really powerful point. So how did you land on helping aspiring authors to put their books out into the world? What does that process look like? If someone listening has a book on their heart that they have been writing it in their head, they would love to get this book out into the world. How do you help aspiring authors accomplish that?

It. Just to back up with your first question of how I kind of fell into wanting to do this or, or, you know, getting into this field as deep as I did. It started for me when I got a Kindle for Christmas. When Kindles came out in 2009, I. I didn't, you know, I didn't know what they were. I didn't understand them. And then I was gifted one. And what kind of attracted me to it was the wealth of writers that were now available where before you could only get the books that are in the library or the books that are in Barnes and Noble, and that's about all your selection was. And that just opened up a wealth of authors that you've never heard of that you could just kind of search by genre or, or, you know, other parameters. And the one thing I found was quite a few of these authors were basically clicking a few buttons and being published and they were skipping editing. And, you know, I don't mind that I spent $10 for your book, but I do mind that I just spent like an hour trying to get through your book. And it's just I have to correct everything in my head while I read. And so I put together, you know, just a small business plan. I was in a very large writing group. I was actually the president of a writing group in Fort Myers, Florida. There were 200 plus members in the group. And I got together with five people who I knew did editing within that group and said, I have an idea. Tell me if I'm on the right track. And I laid it out for them after one of the meetings. And not only did they all think that I had something there, they all signed on and wanted to be editors under my umbrella with me.

Oh.

So I knew I kind of had something from there. I just scaled from we do editing and proofreading all the way up through now. We do everything from, you know, ghost writing, the editing, proofreading, book cover design, book design, ISBN registration, marketing. We do everything now for an author. But the main reason why I want to probably help authors is when I was doing my own books early on, I didn't have anyone to help me. I was just figuring out things as I went. And one of the things I did was I had my first book came out in 1996. So in 1995, I actually got a job in a warehouse of a publishing house. So while I was there for that year, well, I met designers, I met graphic artists for book covers, I met the sales team, I was friends with the editors. And these are people you know, we're going out for happy hour, we're talking during the day, and I got to meet all of them and pick all their brains. So I always kind of say that was my education, except I got paid for it versus paying for my education.

Very wise, very smart.

And that's where I kind of learned everything. And that's kind of what I want to do to give back is, you know, someone's like, oh, I've written a book, I don't know what to do. And it's like, well, at least I'm, you know, one of quite a few people who, you know what, I know what to do. And I not only know what to do, but I have all the connections necessary for everything that you need to do and just able to just help them out. So if someone has a book that they've written and they're not sure what to do, I mean, that's the conversation we have. And it's. And it comes down to, you know, what's the purpose of your book? Why did you write it? What's the plan? Is this just for personal use? Is this something you want to use to scale your business? I mean, depending what their goal is for the outcome of their book, you know, what are they aiming to achieve that's going to make the difference of what do we do with their book?

That's so important. That's so important. So how. How do authors find you? How do. I mean, I realize you have a website, et cetera, but how did you build your business to the point of, of people finding you and hiring you and how great that we work virtually, right, that we can do things through zoom and don't have to worry about in person meetings? That's so helpful, I think, for your craft as well as mine, to be able to work virtually. And it just opens up the corners of the world to you and your business. So how do you find people? And do you have a style or type of author that you typically work with or do you work with all kinds of.

Yeah, I would say mainly, I find authors through. Mainly through referrals and I would say tied with that is definitely networking. So the more people who know me and know what I do, you know, they're the ones that have kind of like their eyes and ears and boots on the ground when they're out and about, if they hear someone. I've always wanted to write a book or I've written a book, I don't know what to do, or everyone tells me I should write a book, but I don't even know where to start. You know, they hear those things, they think, oh my God, you need to meet Tim, I can introduce you. And then I'm getting that intro email of, you know, hi, Tim, meet Bob and etc and you know, kind of running with it from there. As far as who do we work with? I would say our main client is just business owners. I say we do business books for business owners and it's to. It's basically an outlet or a resource for them that they can have this book and it can help scale their business. Because, you know, I say, yes, you have a website, yes, you have a podcast and you know, you might go out networking. But I mean, a book is such a different, you know, it's a different tool to have in your belt that you can get clients with. Because you know what I say, how a book is different is people schedule time to read. They get in their comfortable chair, they turn off the tv, they turn off their phone, they. They have their drink, whether it's, you know, wine or water, and they commit a couple hours to read. No one says, I'm going to spend the next two hours on Pamela's website and read all about her. No one's going to do that. But if you have. But if you have a book, they will do that. And if it takes them two or three times to sit in that chair and read through your book, well, you just had two or three conversations with this person and you're not even in the room and they already feel a connection to you.

Right. Powered conversations, Very high powered, intimate conversations, quite honestly, Yep. Oh, that's fantastic. That's such a great way to think about it and great way to see it. Do you see a difference, Tim, in a popularity of the physical book compared to an ebook versus an audiobook?

From what I see, I know audiobooks are definitely on the rise because for a lot of people, it's something they could do while they're exercising, while they're driving. It's, you know, where, you know, you're not going to read a physical book while you're, you know, trying to cook dinner or driving your car. Obviously.

Hopefully not.

Yeah, exactly. I find the, the difference between, like a paperback book and an ebook, I think comes down to the reader. Like, I myself, I love the physical book. I like that feel of turning the page. I, you know, I just enjoy feeling like, oh, you, you can kind of gauge when you're halfway through or how much of the book is left where an ebook, you know, you really, you really don't see it. You could, you could have like a little statistic show up and show you where you're at, but at the same time, I could get a paperback book and be like, oh, my God, this is printed so small, my glasses just don't magnify enough for me to read it. So then I'm kind of forced to be like, I need to get the Kindle, which is nice because I can control the font size, which helps me to read. And also it being backlit, it's like, you know, I could be lying in bed and have my Kindle on and I could be reading and I'm not disturbing my wife, like turning on a light, lighting up the whole room, because I want to read my book, my paperback.

Right.

So there's pros and cons to each and, you know, everybody. You know, some people like paperbacks for a certain reason. Some people like their audio books and some people like their ebooks. And it's just a matter of, you know, having each of those available so that you're not really leaving any reader out. As, you know, you're saying, hey, I have a book and would you have it in ebook? No. Well, you might have just lost someone reading your book, getting your content and, you know, maybe connecting with you for, you know, for business or giving you a referral.

That's a really good point. That's a great point. I was curious of what your opinion was there, and I'm with you, Tim. I love a physical book. There's something about the feel of the COVID I'm very texture driven as well. The feel of the COVID the smell of the pages, the physical turning of the pages. I'm definitely with you on the physical book. And I have a tendency to make them my own. I highlight, I make notes, I bend corners. I mean, I kind of make it my own and you never want to read a book after me because I've kind of made it too much my own. It's not shareable once I'm done with it. But I'm with you on having that physical book.

Yeah.

So you had mentioned. You had mentioned. So you have JWC Publishing and that's been your full time business since 2012. Congratulations on that. You mentioned having a couple startups happening and a couple launches happening in 2025. What's going on?

Yeah, myself and another publisher who I've been working with probably for, I don't know, 10 plus years just doing books together where my side is handling like editing and proofreading, his side is handling layout, book cover and design work. We've gotten together and created something called the Our Legacy book series. And what I had, what he had, well, I had realized it and he was kind of sticking his toe into the water a little bit with this. And then when we got together, we kind of, you know, made it, made it what we wanted it to be. And so far it's working. But we realized that there's a lot of people who have just like a story, which is a memoir, not a complete memoir, but they just have a story of how their grandparents met or they have someone might have a story of their time, you know, in the army and maybe they were in Vietnam for a few years and they just have that little snippet of their life that they want to preserve and they want to share it with family. Well, when they're reaching out to hybrid publishers such as myself and others, obviously they can't justify spending 30, 50, you know, even 70 grand to have a book written and published and all, you know, and all the other parts of the process just to get 50 copies for friends and family. And that's it. It obviously does not make sense. So we put together a team with a couple ghostwriters, an editor and a proofreader and then himself and myself and we were able to put together this, our legacy book where if they want it ghost written, right now it's 86.99. If they write the book themselves, it's 46.99. And that includes everything from start to finish with 50 copies being delivered to your door. And it's for those people that just want to do that short memoir about their grandfather or a couple books we've had are people who are at the onset of dementia or Alzheimer's and they want to tell their story and have that for future generations before they can't remember their stories and you know, they've put in their books together and it's just something that's, that's just very affordable versus like I said, versus that 30,000 plus price tag that's perfect for the business owner who has a strategy. They got some marketing plan in place and they're going to use that book to scale their business and get on stages and speak and do a lot of other things, that's an easy investment. But again, for the person that just wants to share it with friends and family and you know, it's not going on Amazon, they're not trying to be a best seller, it's just something they want to share it. You know, it just works out perfectly. So we're kind of, we haven't launched yet, but we've already done six books in it. So we're, we're definitely tapping the market and we got our team together and we're doing that. The second thing is with a colleague of mine, a fellow ghost writer, where he has gone through a lot of programs and training courses pertaining to ghost writing and he found them all to be the same. Where you join, you spend a few thousand dollars and then it's just in your Inbox you get PDFs, you get videos, you can't, you can't get in touch with the person that you signed up with that you paid. And it's all kind of go at your own pace. And if you're not really a motivated self starter getting on your calendar, you don't go through all that stuff. It just clogs up your inbox and that's where it sits. And he put together what he calls an elite curriculum and he put together a thing called the Academy of Ghostwriting. And this is to help ghost writers go from gig to gig to being basically a professional to, to, to ghostwriters having a professional ghost writing business. And when I saw that he had done this and, and he and I had been connected for a while, I reached out saying I would, you know, I would love to be one of the instructors and anything you need to teach, I'll let you know what I know. And if it works, I would love to do that. And he said, it's funny you reached out because I was just writing you an email. I want you to be my 50 partner in this.

Oh my gosh.

Oh. I was like, yeah. So I was like, oh my God. So, you know, we together now, we've kind of redone the, the kind of like the course outline and everything that's involved and what we're providing, which is very different, is the classes are all live. So there's going to be a group class and then individual two on one classes because you're getting two entrepreneur slash ghostwriters coaching you. We're going to do like a mock discovery call where you're with a client and you're trying to sell them your ghostwriting business to say, hey, you need, you need a book. And you know, will they sign up and do a book with you? And we're also providing, at the end of the six weeks, we also provide three months of one on one with. We help you land a client or two in that three month time period. And we're talking like high ticket clients. And my partner that I'm doing this with, he actually went and signed up to do this three month thing and in two weeks, less than two weeks, he had a 65k client sign on with him to do a book. So we're, you know, we're not, we're not going to do anything unless we've done it ourselves for the students. So.

You know what I love the most, Tim, about our conversation so far is every business that you've created has been created from the space of there's a need in the marketplace. There is a problem that you're going to fix. It started with that Kindle in 2009. You got the Kindle and it was like a train wreck. And I can imagine someone as knowledgeable as yourself reading an unedited book was probably like poking your eye out. It was probably really painful for you to read that. But every business you've created has come from where you've seen a void in the marketplace. And that is where some of the most brilliant, intentional successful businesses are birthed are from noticing that there's a need all the way back to that Kindle.

Yeah, no, absolutely. And, and that's one of the things like both he and I with the, the academy of ghost writing being in these kind of networking groups and circles and masterminds with other ghostwriters, you know, we can't even count how many times we've heard someone say, oh, I hopped on a call with so and so. We talked for like an hour. And then when I got to my price point, they said they can't afford it because they're just like, I can't do $45,000 just because I want 20 copies of a book about how my grandparents met. Which is an incredible story.

Which is a story that needs to be told and preserved.

Yeah. And and so that's why we thought of, you know, that's, that's where he kind of thought of the academy saying, you know, some of the ghostwriters, they're just kind of either not getting the point or they're dropping the ball or they've kind of just jumped into ghostwriting, but they've, you know, they haven't had any training. It would be like if I just hop behind the wheel of an 18 wheeler. Well, I know how to drive, but I don't know how to drive that.

Right. It might be a little bit different than your sedan.

Exactly. So.

Oh, that's such a good, that's such a good analogy and such a good example. And I think too, when you are in a business or a field where the product that you create is relatively personal, like you are the product, people have a really hard time crossing the finish line and selling that product if it's, if it's personal to you. And as a ghostwriter, I can't think of anything else that would be much more personal than writing somebody else's story.

Oh, absolutely. And for the, for the author on the other end, I mean, like in our circles of ghostwriters, a lot of people call it ghost therapy because you become sometimes that person's therapist because, you know, they're, they're telling their story of, you know, how they overcame addiction or how they got out of, you know, a bad relationship or whatever it might be. Whereas the business ones too, even they have their stories of kind of like their struggles and how, you know, I had a partner, he robbed me blind, you know, those kind of things.

So absolutely. Wow, that's fantastic. I love that. So let's pause for just a second, Tim, because what I want you to do is share with the audience how to get in touch with you on each of those entities. So we have the JWC Publishing. How can someone get in touch with you to talk about publishing?

Yeah, that would be my email address, which is tjacobs j a c o b s, the @ symbol and then jacobs wc.com and that could be used for any three of the businesses, the JWC Publishing as well as the Our Legacy and the Academy of Ghostwriting. We don't have websites up for those other two yet.

Okay, perfect, perfect. So I want, I want people to have the opportunity to reach out to you or go to your website and get a little more information just about yourself and how to contact you and how to bring what you're offering into the fold. Because between the publishing and the Legacy writing, which I think is so powerful and so important. And the idea that you and a colleague have partnered up to teach and train other ghostwriters how to create a successful business is so, so valuable.

Yeah, we're definitely looking forward to it. We actually. I don't know when this podcast will launch, but we have a webinar we're doing on the 15th of this month. Kind of just like a open Q and A after we do a short little presentation of what the Academy is all about.

That's phenomenal. Well, congratulations to you and your colleagues, Tim. This is just fantastic. So I'm going to shift gears just a teeny bit. As you look back at your life as being an entrepreneur, what was one of your biggest struggles in business ownership?

I think it was just. What I didn't know was what I didn't know. I mean, I didn't know how to start. I didn't know who to reach out to. In a way, it was like, I really didn't have someone to talk to, to kind of be like, you know, how do you do this and how do you do that? And, you know, just. Just anything that, you know, what do you need to know to run a business? I mean, to me, I originally just thought business was, hey, you know, you make business cards and you hand them out and, you know, that's. That's how you run your business.

But it's so funny. Everybody starts. I'm, well, I got business cards. That's like the first thing you do.

Exactly.

So how did you overcome that? How did you. Where did you turn and get the answers to that? That question of, I didn't know what I didn't know, because I think we all can say we've been in that place before.

Yeah. A good friend of mine who was or who is a real estate agent in South Florida, you know, for a while, he kept telling me, you know, you're with this electrical company, and, you know, that's all good and great, but he goes, you're not doing your own thing. You're not doing what makes you excited and what makes you happy. And, you know, he kept trying to tell me, you just need to step out and do things on your own. And I had every excuse why I can't or shouldn't. And he's just like, you know, all those things are just, you just do it yourself. And finally, I did do that. I gave my notice, I left. And the first thing was I reached out to him to tell him I did that. And he goes, great. He Goes, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to come with me to Master Networks. And this is back in 2013 or 2014. And I'm like, well, you know, what's that? And he's like, oh, it's a networking group. And I didn't even know what networking meant. I had no, I, it's not anything I'd ever done before. It's not anything I had to do. I just would go to wherever my job is, punch in, punch out and, you know, get a paycheck. I didn't, I didn't have to worry about getting the customers. And so I went to a Master Network meeting and you know, they go as, as, you know, being a member, you know, went around the room, everyone introduced themselves, then it was my turn and, and I introduced myself. And then after the meeting, I, you know, went up to my friend and told him, you know, this is kind of interesting. I'm definitely going to come back next week, check it out again. And he says, oh, I have some advice for you. Next week when you come back, you introduce yourself. You might want to mention your business and what you do because I guess I just talked about me. I didn't, you know.

Right.

So it was kind of funny, but kind of eye opening. And, and you know, I did definitely learned a lot, but it was definitely going to that Master Networks and meeting people in there who then introduced me and took me to other networking groups. And just from there, like I said, from there it was just building out. You know, the more people who know me, the, you know, the more likely people are going to hear someone mention something about a book. They're going to think of Tim Jacobs, they're going to make that introduction. As you know, networking is not about going to the room to try to get anyone in that room to be a client. You're going there to kind of tap into their mental Rolodex to be like, who do you know that might need what I can provide?

Correct, correct. Oh, that's so good. That's so good. The things that you can giggle about that you didn't know that you didn't know. And you're like, oh, well, huh, Rookie mistake there. Yeah, that's so funny. So what question would you ask a business coach today? If you had an opportunity to ask a business coach any question, what would that question be?

Wow, that's a very good question. Right now. I think I would probably gear it toward maybe one of the two startups and just kind. I think my Focus would be toward, you know, maybe the best way to go about marketing either business, like how to find the audience that we're looking for, how to tap into them and kind of how to make them realize, you know, what we offer is something you probably need.

That's good. That's a really, really good question. That's so good. And I think, you know, you know the answer with. With your academy, I think that answer is just how you grassrooted your business. Your publishing business will be pretty similar. It'll be, who do you know that wants to do this for a living? I think that's. That's really, really. Because the ideal client, your ica, is so different from your academy versus the legacy stories. That's a different client. So the marketing for those two things would be completely a different approach to the marketing for those.

Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely two different. Two different clients. Because the academy, we're kind of looking for ghostwriters who are really serious about scaling their business and turning their ghostwriting from gig to gig into a solid pipeline of vetted leads that will pan out for them. And they know how to close meetings and discovery calls and whatnot. Whereas the. Our legacy books, again, that's just for the people who are just looking to put together a short little book. And, you know, that's the gift at the summer family reunion. That's the Christmas gift. That's the just because gift. And, you know, and again, it just doesn't have a heavy financial investment behind it, like. Like most books do.

Right. Oh, that's fantastic. That's so good. So what is your life mission with all that you're doing? What. What is your mission in life?

I think it's just, you know, it's just to kind of keep doing what I'm doing and just kind of, you know, it. Sometimes it's like, I almost say, like, I might even be more excited about someone finishing their book than they are and seeing the results that they get is just to know whether. Whether it's known or not known, but just that myself or myself and my team had a hand in making that book and seeing them. They're getting clients from their book, or they're. If they're doing sales, they're getting sales or, you know, whatever comes of that. Because otherwise, who knows where their book would be. It still might be sitting in a folder on their computer doing nothing.

I love how you take a little bit of personal responsibility with somebody's book and personal interest and are invested in it personally that you want to see them succeed, probably more so than they do. That's taking that personal investment. Trust truly is what makes you good at what you do, Tim, because without that personal investment, I. I don't think you would be getting the same results that you're currently getting.

Yeah, no, absolutely. It's, it's about, you know, it's about being invested in them and, you know, in their story and more so what their purpose is for their book. And, you know, most people have a different purpose than the next person. And I think the one thing that turns out most people off about wanting to do their book, particularly in the. In the business scope of things, is. Well, yeah, what I have to say is kind of been said before I go on Amazon and I see like 35 titles that kind of relate to what I want to talk about. And yes, that's true. But none of those books are the way you tell that story, the way you share that content, the examples that you have and how you got from A to B to where you are. None of those books have that. And believe it or not, there's some people out there, they could read all those 35 books and it still won't connect with them because it has to come from you. It has to be your voice, it has to be your style. It has to be how you come across that you're going to make that connection.

So you're like a mindset coach when you're working with some of these authors, aren't you?

Sometimes with the business books, definitely. When it's like someone doing. Yeah. When someone's doing like a memoir book or we're just editing. You know, with fiction, we don't do like the. The ghost writing and a lot of the production that would just be editing. But you know, with those, it's. It's kind of like their story is their story. There's not too much you can go in and. And change or show them. Like, this works. This doesn't work where you can with a business book.

That's awesome. That's so good. I love that answer. So I'm going to ask you a question. It might be a hard one, but what is the most favorite book you've ever read in your whole life? What is the name of it and the author?

Wow. To date, I would say for nonfiction, I would say it's Awaken the Giant within by Tony Robbins, which came out in the early 90s. I remember living in San Diego on the beach, and I had that book, and I think that kind of planted a Seed with me that didn't really sprout until many years later about just doing your own thing and kind of having a purpose and be goal driven and things like that. That book really kind of just. It really kind of got me started thinking fiction, I mean, which I read a ton of because I read about 60 books a year. Yeah. Both fiction.

A lot of books.

Yeah. But I would say with fiction, the one that's sticking with me at the moment, which I only just discovered, although it came out in the early 2000s, is House of Leaves. And I know the guy's name is Daniel. I can't think of his last name. But what's really unique about that book is the formatting of the book is part of the story. And you can't get the book on audio, you can't get the book on Kindle because it has to be printed in order for you to follow the story along and how everything unfolds. And it's just a story about this couple that go into this house and for some reason it turns out the inside of the house is like 10 or 20 times larger than the outside of the house. And they can't figure out what it is that's causing that. And there's a couple other side stories that are very strong that kind of unfold throughout. And it's just. It's just a very. It's just a mind boggling story. And I. It was one of those ones where I found like, I just cannot put it down. And at the same time, you can't really explain it to somebody. It's just. You just need to read it. It's the only thing you can tell someone is just get a copy and read it.

Oh, I love that. House of Leads, correct?

Yes.

Awesome. Sounds so good. Okay, I'm going to wrap us up today with a final question. What big goals do you have planned personally and professionally for 2025?

Personally is, you know, my wife and I just made a major change in 2018. We had sold everything. We bought a motorhome, a class a motorhome. And since 2018, up until actually just this past Christmas, we have been on the road full time, just traveling and visiting friends and family and just kind of going all over the east coast from everywhere in New England, you know, down into Florida. So a big change for us was we sold the RV just before Christmas and now we're in Sarasota, Florida for a little bit. But our goal is to go to Tennessee and we're going to be living there for at Least a few years. So one goal is just to get situated up there, get acclimated back into some cold weather months again, which I have never really had in quite some time in my life. And also just kind of. It's a little bit different to get back into like, wow, I have like a home base. I have, you know, a situation room, if you will, where I could actually have a desk and monitors and you know, living in the rv. It was strictly just. My laptop was all I had.

Right.

You'll have to buy a lawnmower possibly. If we don't, we'll probably live in an apartment complex, so don't have to worry about that. But okay, so. So that would be. The personal thing is just kind of get back used to having like that office setting and, and you know, just being stationary and, and like, usually when there's cold weather, we leave and go where it's warm, but we won't be doing that. Yeah. And business would definitely be just to, you know, launch the academy for sure and just have some ghost writers just really reap the benefits of a. What they learn from us as well as landing a couple clients right out the bat when they finish the course with that. Three months of one on one we do with them afterward would definitely be huge. And then with the. Our legacy books is just to. We're just going to keep doing. What we're doing is just, you know, reaching out to people and letting them know, you know, if you have a story that you want to share, you know, we definitely have an affordable way to do it. I mean, the books come out just beautifully. You know, it includes 50 copies sent right to your door where a lot of people is. You know, you're spending 30, 40 grand to do your book and like, oh, now you want printed copies? Well, that's another five or six thousand dollars, depending how many books you want. So, you know, we're just including everything in one package and we're excited just to get more of those books, you know, out into the world because, you know, on that end it's just like the sad part is you don't want someone who's just like, you know, I did three years in Vietnam. I have so many little stories of what happened there. It's like, why should that person take that to the grave? It's like, no share those stories. Whether it's just for family or even people outside your family find it, you know, it's something that, you know, it just should be told and shared.

Right. You know, it's different With. With the ability of. Of following your family tree and your lineage. That's great. That's awesome. But if you could hear a story from 1890 of something that came from the voice of a great, great grandfather or something like that, that would be so powerful. And that's what you're creating with Our Legacy story is putting all of the story of somebody's life in print so it's never forgotten and can be shared for generations. Yeah.

And. And exactly like I said with the Academy of Ghost Writing, how everything my partner is doing and I'm doing, this is all stuff that we've gone through. It's the same thing with the. Our Legacy book is. You know, my publishing partner, he did a book in that series that he found some journals that his grandfather left behind, and then him and his daughter went through it, edited it, and put it together and created a book for their family. And I myself, for many years, have been researching a relative of mine, my great, great uncle, who was an aeronaut from 1906 to 1912. He would go up in a hot air balloon and then jump out at state fairs, vaudeville shows, and he would parachute back down, but he would cut the cords of the parachute and free fall, and then another shoot would come out, and he'd cut off that chute and fall, and he would do what just called parachute drops, and he'd do up to 12 at a time. And this guy was a celebrity during his time. I mean, he was on front page newspaper. Every state that he went to and performed at, he was on the front page. And, you know, I did my research, I put that book together, and then, you know, I got my printed copies and I mailed it out to all of my family. And, you know, nobody had ever heard of him. Nobody knew who he was, because when he died in 1912, so did his story until I heard about it. So that's kind of what this provides. It's a way just to keep these stories alive. Now, his story will never die. It's never going to go away.

Oh, Tim, that is so powerful. Oh, gosh. Thank you, Tim, for being with me today. I truly, truly appreciate hearing your story and understanding more about what you do, but thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me. I definitely enjoyed it, and I appreciate you giving me the time.

Absolutely. Oh, my gosh. Friends, thank you for joining me on today's podcast. In the interview with Tim Jacobs, I'm sure you found it as delightful as I did. I knew Tim before, but now I know him even better. And this has just been a fantastic interview for me. But friends, thank you again for joining me. Make it a great day and I will see you next time. Thank you for joining us today on a New Life podcast. We will see you next time.