Best-Selling Author Secrets

Speaker 1: [Music] I wrote The Science of Getting Rich for Women. And that book came out of a very upsetting statistic that women had lost $800 billion in the pandemic. And that's so appalling after we already have a pay gap and a confidence gap. And a friend of mine said, I was stomping around ranting about it. And she said, "What are you going to do about it?" Like, you're sitting here complaining to me. What are you going to do? And books have changed my life and saved my life. And there's many good women's wealth books. And I thought if I could be even tiny fraction of a piece of a comeback. And so that book, the writer Ray Bradberry, he he says the two great places to write from always are your passions and obsessions or your rage. And it's really true because there's a lot of energy in both of those poles. I'm Melanie Bar. Welcome back to the Sheila Tip podcast, your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave. I'm here to talk about everything from having the courage to make life and career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively, create successful teams, implement strategies for growth, and infuse tech innovation. I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges. I live in the city now, but I grew up in a town of a thousand people. I've navigated major life leaps, a senior level corporate career, worked in professional sports, and now as a successful entrepreneur who loves business, technology, family, and making meaningful connections with you and the She Built It Community. I also love a good workout and dose of self-care. Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy. So, turn up the audio, open your favorite notes app, grab your favorite drink, and here we go. Welcome to the Shiva podcast. Thank you for joining us. Sarah, share with us who you are, what you do, and what parts of your work truly drive you. Thank you so

Speaker 2: much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. I'm Sarah Canel. I live in Chicago, Illinois currently, and I specialize in helping amazing women who have a methodology, a story, a idea, a process to share. I help them scale their businesses and their revenue, their impact in the world by becoming best-selling authors and in demand speakers, doing TEDex talks, using what I call thought leadership to really make themselves the go-to person in their industry. So really exciting in terms of

Speaker 1: what you do and what you're helping people do, talking about when we build it, how are we making sure that enough people know about that thing we built is really where I come in. That's so true because we can build something amazing, but if not enough people know about it, it's not going to scale and get the reach that we want. It's the heartbreak both financially because people pour so much into whether it's a course, a business, an idea, a brickandmortar type of store, a book, any of these things that we might create a coaching program. So, there's an impact piece that doesn't happen if we're not visible and positioned as that industry leader, that thought leader. But also, we don't make the impact. And I think probably everyone listening to this is someone who cares deeply about helping people with what we're building. And you're a multiple times bestselling author. Tell us about your path to becoming an author, what you learned along the way.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it was funny. I laugh about this a little bit because it seems silly in retrospect, but it was significant at the time because I wanted to be a writer. I loved books. I liked reading. I liked writing. And because I'd watched lots of movies and read books, I understood on some level that when you were destined to be a writer that a teacher would take you aside and tell you were special and give you books. And that's what happened in all the movies and the books. And that didn't happen for me. And so I didn't realize I did this, but I unconsciously gave teachers the authority to decide if I was allowed to do this thing that I wanted to do since I was a little kid. So I don't know if anyone listening has done that ever. you delegate permission to go for your dreams and live out your destiny even to someone else. And those teachers, that wasn't their job. Just cuz that happened all the movies doesn't mean that's the only way you're allowed to be a writer. And so that's why I laugh at it now because it seems so ridiculous. But I truly believe that I wasn't good enough. And so I went to college and read other people's books as an English major and got a job in advertising which was creative adjacent. And again wondering if anyone listening has had this experience when you don't do your true path whether it's in a relationship, a job, whatever. I take this job that I didn't want to do and it wasn't aligned and it was an absolute nightmare. It was the height of the me too era. It was really abusive and really toxic and really traumatic and I felt completely trapped because I was single woman supporting myself. My parents were understandably just don't ever ask us for anything. We put you to college. Go make a life for yourself. And I didn't want to ask for any help. But I truly felt like my choices were going to this awful place or being on the street. That's the stakes that I built it up into. And one day I was in an airport bookstore and I randomly grabbed a book off the table. It was a book by someone who's not famous. It was a woman named Margaret Bullet Jonas and it was called Holy Hunger. And I read the whole book on that flight home and it switched something in me. This woman's story was completely different than mine, but there was enough similarity and by the time I finished the book, I said, "Even if I'm on the street, I'm not going to do this anymore. This is going to kill me if I stay here." My mental and physical health had suffered so much in that environment. And I read the book and I said, "I don't know how I'm going to change this, but I'm going to go get help for my health and I'm going to

Speaker 1: start writing." And again, that might mean I'm homeless, but that's what I'm going to do. And I credit that book as saving my life. So, when I was able to figure out how to support myself as I learned to write and everything, I was so incredibly blessed in my first book to get on Oprah and get featured in the New York Times and these incredible things. And I vowed to spend the rest of my life paying that forward, finding the people who need to be in the airport bookstore on someone's dark day and making sure that my books are there and that their books are there and they're now it's talks and YouTube channels and all the other things we do as well. And that's what I've spent the last almost 20 years doing. It's crazy.

Speaker 2: That's amazing that happened. And it's interesting because the universe will push us in the right direction. That book showed up for you at the right time. And we've all been at those moments where I call it a meantime job. We've all taken a meantime job, but you get to that point where you're like, I can't continue doing this and there is so much more for me out there. Tell us about the path to publishing your first

Speaker 1: book. It's very different landscape even 10, 15 years ago than it is now in a good way. Meaning that people that want to share books, there's just so many wonderful, legitimate, highly respected options. at the time when I was pursuing that first book was very much the traditional publishing route where you get an agent, write a book proposal and so I did do that and it certainly didn't happen overnight. I have friends who talk about feeling like this when they want to be set up that were single. I've been married for 24 years at this point but friends of mine it's like asking everyone to set you up on a date is this really awkward uncomfortable and I felt that way as a writer. It was like I had no connections and I had no experience and I hadn't majored in creative writing. And so I started to ask everyone I knew if they knew any literary agents and it was like that icky god of asking people to set me up thing. And I finally knew someone who knew someone who knew an agent. And he said she's not going to sign you but she might take a phone call. Do you want me to make the phone call? And I thought no I feel like I'm going to throw up but yes please make the phone call. And so I got on with this agent and she was lovely and she said, "I'm going to give you a whole bunch of changes to this manuscript you sent me and if you're willing to do the work, I'd like to meet again and possibly consider representing you." So this was not the, "Oh my gosh, call the New York Times. We've been waiting for this great was not that usually start out that way." And it never does. And I didn't understand that that's what agents do. They're going to work with you for like a year. So I got home and I didn't write for 3 weeks. I was so freaked out that I would try. And ultimately, this would be the moment that I determined I was not good enough in the eyes of this big New York agent. And that's when I actually got a writing coach. That's how I found out about what writing coaches were. I didn't want to spend the money. I did not want to invest. I didn't want someone to see that I didn't know what I was doing. But I, thank God, hired this amazing woman named Brooke Warner. And she held me accountable and gave me professional guidance to coach me through that process. and I flew back to New York and presented these changes and that's still my literary agent if I'm doing traditional publishing that I work with Joy Chutella of the David Black Agency and has become a friend and that's how the first book happened

Speaker 2: and you have multiple books tell us

Speaker 1: about your books. Yeah, I am writing book number seven which is so funny to think about because I would watch people that were doing like a book a year. I'd start meeting people as I became a writer and I was so envious because I thought it takes me three years to even think about putting a book together. How are they doing this? I couldn't understand how they were stringing these books together so quickly. And I wanted deeply to have prolific was a word I would use like it would be prolific. And so that first book I wrote was a memoir and it's about the very wild experience my husband and I had starting our family. We had a lot of fertility issues. We had stillborn twins. Like it was really rough for a lot of years. And ultimately our journey took us to my mother at 60 years old being our surrogate. And that is how my son who is now 14 came into the world if you can believe that. Some people would find that like freakish and science fiction which I totally understand. And it was a really incredible miracle in our family. And my mom's doing great. And 14 years later she's healthy and good. My son's great. And it was a story of that seven-year journey that was about both reproductive technology and our family's journey. That was the first book. And then I started writing really more thought leadership books like what I teach a lot now in our work with clients. So I wrote the science of getting rich for women. And that book came out of a very upsetting statistic that women had lost $800 billion in the pandemic. And that's so appalling after we already have a pay gap and a confidence gap. And a friend of mine said, I was stomping around, ranting about it, and she said, "What are you going to do about it?" Like, you're sitting here complaining to me. What are you going to do? And again, books have changed my life and saved my life, and there's many good women's wealth books. And I thought if I could be even a tiny fraction of a piece of a comeback and so that book, uh, Ray Bradberry, if anyone's heard of the writer Ray Bradberry, he he says, "The two great places to write from always are your passions and obsessions or your rage." And it's really true because there's a lot of energy in both of those polls. And so I wrote that book. I wrote a fiction collection of of short stories. All the books are about women agency and women's empowerment. And whether they're self-help or fiction or memoir, they all have that thread. And just came out with a book called The Millionaire Codes with a neuroscientist client of ours who we brought in hypnosis and neural linguistic programming. We put these sequences that we've been using on ourselves and in our work with clients for the last 10 years and really help using brain science to help get us unstuck creatively to manifest more financial abundance. And it's a series of 10 codes that so fun. You can just turn to the one this is the one I'm stuck on or this is what I want to create and it walks you through a brain science-based sequence to help you achieve whatever that goal is. So that was a really fun book to write.

Speaker 2: That's so interesting. And much like you during the pandemic, I launched this podcast and was determined to keep it going because I saw so many women leaving work and not doing the things that they love because of taking care of kids or taking care of their families and I thought this is not okay.

Speaker 1: Yes. And thank God you did because had an interesting conversation around that time. I could have been on the other end of that rant. There's so many women feeling the same thing. I know in our house with even one child daily tears with the adults and the children over homeschooling and while we're working and all the things definitely grateful for being not in that exact situation now. Not that there aren't things we are still working on in our world.

Speaker 2: All kinds of things. Yes. And I understand the fertility. I am a twin mom and our twins were in kindergarten at the start. So they came home mid kindergarten and had to finish kindergarten. So yes, um interesting with that age. Oh my goodness. Yes. Yes.

Speaker 1: Melanie. Yeah. So you feel it, you know that pain train. Yeah. For sure.

Speaker 2: What mindset shifts helped you go from

Speaker 1: entrepreneur to thought leader? There's a lot of debate too because there's many people who have reached out to me and told me they hate the term thought leaders. It's funny because we're thought leader media is our company and the thought leader academy and different things. And so it's actually a fun conversation that I enjoy having with people. what do we think that even means in terms of the way that I think about thought leadership just to give that a context in terms of the mindset shift was it starts with leading our own thoughts and so if we are constantly in a state of I'm not enough and I'm not worthy and all that stuff that's very common our imposttor syndrome and insecurities and things that's a piece to clean up first in thought leadership of really getting aligned with our own value our own worth our own calling and our purpose and our legacy that we're here to create in the world and then figure out the way that we think is most fun to share that whatever that legacy and whatever we're going to build back to she built it. One first important mindset is that you have something important to share. And that sounds so simple. We tell ourselves the opposite all the time. I feel like I'm not a celebrity. I'm not Mel Robbins. I'm not Oprah. I'm not whatever. And no one would care if anyone's read the literature on the confidence gap. That's why I think that Atlantic magazine article hit so many people years ago when it came out because the studies showed that women underestimate by 25 to 30% their accuracy, their performance, their values, their skills. So women will leave a test and be like, I'm sure I did horribly. And then men over typically, but in the research, men would over value their skill, their performance, their confidence by 25 or so. So, you've got this like 50 to 60 point swing. And it's so funny to watch even having a 14-year-old son because the high school entrance exams, he's starting freshman year in the fall, and it was intense getting into the high school we wanted to go to, but he came out of the exam, he's like, "Oh, I did awesome." And I was like, "I don't think I've ever walked out of an exam." I it just once in a while, you know, you you nailed it. But especially one of those kind of entrance exams, SAT, something like that. And so I just thought it was hilarious. I was like, isn't that so interesting? Oh, I did great. I'm amazing. Versus a lot of times, especially depending on how we were raised, that wouldn't be the reaction. So one of the mindset shifts is I do have something important to share. Doesn't matter how much money I make or how big my following is, that I have something to share. I'm leading with my own thoughts and I'm going to invite people into that conversation. And the other one is that it's not about us.

Speaker 2: Melanie, you just shared that you did this podcast not just for yourself. You did it cuz you knew people needed, especially during that really hard time, they needed someone to keep showing up for them and have inspirational stories that we can get excited about and hear. And so that servant leader mindset is really important. So often people get started on a book or a TED talk or they imagine that next vision and then they start talking themselves back. Oh, again, who's going to really want to hear? Everyone's already said things on my topic. All that kind of thing. And so really thinking about who's the one person in the world that doesn't know us yet that needs to hear this. Now, it might be hundreds, thousands, millions of someone's that need to hear what we have to say. But that is such a powerful mindset because I kept thinking when I was going through all that self-doubt about writing, thinking about the people who wrote the books that have helped me. Yes, the book that saved my life, but lots of books have impacted me in a huge way. And thinking, I've met some of those authors now, the really big famous people that we all know their names. And not a single one of them said, "I started writing my book and I thought, I am amazing. This is going to be great." People were riddled with the same fears that we all have, but the difference is

Speaker 1: they kept writing. Elizabeth Gilbert showed up for me and wrote that book and it helped me. It's my turn. So that pay it forward really helps me to keep going and it's helped a lot of our clients. So I hopefully maybe someone listening that can create a shift because we if it's left just about us, we won't do it. We won't get on the stage. It's too scary.

Speaker 2: Yeah. My background is with the Los Angeles Dodgers, so I work with a lot of men. So, I understand that confidence piece and it's so easy to get in our own way at times. Good for you for continuing to use thought leader because we are all good at certain things and it's great to promote our knowledge that we have cuz you're right, it does help people.

Speaker 1: It does. And you know the thing about oh everyone there's already people talking about everything. There are hundreds of TED talks on all the main topics. There's hundreds of talks on law of attraction. There's hundreds of talks on parenting and hundreds of talks on making money or self-esteem. It doesn't mean that a new one won't be amazing and totally change lives. I think of it now, this is another mindset shift as proof of concept. So, if there's a lot of people that already speak on a topic that you have thought leadership in, that just means it's a great concept that people there's an appetite. It's proof of concept. Now, what's your unique take on it? your own story around it makes it different. And so that feels so freeing, too, cuz your unique take is going to hit someone so differently than all the other I don't know if you've had this, but so many times people recommend a book and I'll go get it and I just it's flat. Like I just don't feel moved or I don't feel inspired and I think, "God, everyone else loves."

Speaker 2: This happened to me actually. Did it? Yeah, it does happen.

Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Okay. And isn't it I don't know if you started gaslighting yourself. Wait, what's wrong with me? Everyone else is obsessed with this. it's not doing anything for me. But then what's so great about that is someone could come along and tell a similar story or a similar road map and suddenly you're lit up. You're like, "Oh my gosh." And they're really saying similar things, whether it's about nutrition or about whatever. Yet they said it and presented it and framed it and talked about it in a different way that suddenly it created your shift.

Speaker 2: Yeah. And I always say, no one's going to start or launch a business like you are. No one's going to respond to client services like you are. No one's going to write a book like you are. It can be on similar topics. You're right. But no one's going to do it the exact same way. They could never because that's how awesomely unique we all are. And there

Speaker 1: are people out there in pain right now. They're in therapist office. They're in coaching sessions. They're praying because they've tried all the stuff that's out there and it didn't give them their miracle. And my new book's on the neuroscience of miracles and tapping into the genius zone and really what's needed to receive. I call it's called the download. So it's about these downloads that we get creative ideas, intuitions that all everything in that continuum. And what's so interesting is there are so many people that have read all the books that are out there. They've listened to the people who have the YouTube videos and they didn't get what they need yet. And it's because your book, your business, your program, your course is the thing. That's going to be their thing if we withhold that from the world. And that's an exciting feeling to have. It makes us like, let's go. Let's get this out there. Someone's going to get their miracle out of it. And they will and maybe probably lots of someone's. Magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy. We've talked a lot about business today. What is one thing that you do for you to make sure that you're

Speaker 2: finding and living your joy? I love to laugh. So, comedy and we have a Bernie doodle that we actually got right before the pandemic. Thank God. We have this dog that my husband and son and I are all obsessed with. So, honestly, one thing is we even if it's 10 minutes a day, my husband and son and I are playing with the dog and laughing because the dog's really funny. He's got a real personality or watch some funny video. We each get to bring what made you laugh today and just laughing that and I walk every day outside. That's everything to me. That's where the downloads come. That's where I feel right-sized about stuff. I let go of obsessing. Feel some nature. Even living in a city, it works. So, I think that that's just joyful union of being alive.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Laughter takes us out of our reality. And everything seems to go back to nature. Nature fixes on fixes most.

Speaker 2: It it does truly. If I'm ever really stuck on go outside even if it doesn't come during that walk, I know that it's going to because I calm down, tune back in. Nature really does heal everything. Hold every answer. It's right there for us.

Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us today, Sarah. And thank you for reminding us to not be in our own way. Love that reminder for going through the rest of the day and week. Share with us how and

Speaker 2: where we can find you. Absolutely. Please feel free anybody DM me, especially if you've got ideas or you're stuck in the confidence gap. I am so here for shifting that. We've all kinds of good free tools. I'm on Instagram, Sarah Canel, which is S A R A C O N E L L. And our YouTube channel has all kinds of fun stuff, especially if you do feel a little spark about being a thought leader or identify yourself or aspire to that. It's thoughtleer media on YouTube.

Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us today. I'd love to hear from you. Reach out to me at hellom shebuiltit.com on our shebuilt website or at she built it on social. Thank you to my editor, Rich Duffelino, who always makes us sound good. Until next time, let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave. [Music]