PP 324: LIVE Book Coaching Session! with Jennie Nash

Kim Sutton: Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. This is your host, Kim Sutton, and I’m so happy that you’re here to join us today. I’m also thrilled to introduce our guest, Jennie Nash. Jennie is the Founder and a Book Coach at Author Accelerator.

Jennie, welcome.

Jennie Nash: Hi, thank you for having me.

Kim Sutton: Oh, you’re so welcome. I have to say I’ve been having bloopers all day so I’m so happy with myself that I managed to make it through your introduction without stumbling over my words.

Jennie Nash: Very nicely done.

Kim Sutton: Yeah, I’m giving myself a big pat on the back. Listeners, you know that Positive Productivity is not about perfection, and today has just been one of those days. I have not managed to burn anything yet, though. Jennie, I would love it if you would do yourself more justice. That sounded bad, but I meant it all good. But give the listeners a little bit more about your background and how you got to where you are today,

Jennie Nash: I’d love to. That first thing I should probably explain is what a Book Coach is, because a lot of people have never heard of it, and don’t know what it is. And I shall start with that. So my book coach is like a personal trainer for your writing life where instead of going to the gym to get fit, you come to a Book Coach to finish your project. So it’s editorial support, accountability, and feedback while you’re writing so that you can get to the end of your draft or your polished draft in much better shape with much more efficiency than you would otherwise. That’s what coaching is. And I came to book coaching completely by accident. I was a writer, I had a long career as a writer. 

And before that, a long career in publishing. I worked at a publishing house, I work as a magazine staff, I’ve taught at the UCLA writers program, which is actually the largest adult writing program in the country, mostly because we’re in LA, and it’s all the TV and screenplay stuff wrapped up in it. But I teach in the nonfiction creative and fiction writing side. So I have a whole career in those things, that side of publishing, and I’m the author of seven books, six of which were published by Big 5 Publishers, and one of which I published myself. So I’ve been all over the map in the publishing universe. And when I began to teach at UCLA, I learned something about myself that I didn’t know, which is that I have a very strategic mindset about the creative process, and I approach it in a very strategic way. I didn’t know that I did that, and they didn’t know that it was different, that a lot of creative people don’t have that piece of the puzzle.

Kim Sutton: You’re talking to–

Jennie Nash: People would come to me, my colleagues would come to me to ask the strategic questions about their work and how to do this, and that I’m very market focused as well. I am very focused on writing books that are going to get read and going to get bought and sold. And so people started coming to me, one of my colleagues, Lisa Cron, who is very well known in the writing world now for her book, Wired For Story and Story Genius. She came to me with her first book idea and she said: “I can’t do this by myself. I’ve tried, I can’t get it out of my head. I’m overwhelmed and don’t know where to start. Don’t know how to move forward and keep getting stuck. I really want to write this book, will you help me? Will you hold my hand all the way through?” And I said: “Yup, I can do that.” I didn’t know how I would do that, but I knew I could do that. And so together we did that work, and she ended up getting a two book deal at Ten Speed, which is a division of Random House. 

And suddenly, I had people knocking on my door wanting the same thing. And I really never looked back from coaching other people. I continued to have a lot of success with it, and I found this really curious thing. I found it as engaging, exciting and satisfying as doing my own work. So I found that the creative process is just a process I love, whether I’m doing it or whether it’s somebody else’s process. And that is what’s propelled me forward . And four years ago, I started Author Accelerator, which is a company that takes my systems and strategies, and trains book coaches to deliver that same sort of hand holding or personal training for your writing to lots and lots of writers. I have 26 foot coaches working for me at Author Accelerator, and it’s just a complete thrill. So I’m an accidental book coach and an accidental entrepreneur, and I couldn’t be more excited about where I am in my work life and what I get to do every day.

Kim Sutton: Oh, my gosh, I hear that. I’m an accidental mom of five, yes, I know how it happened. Marketing automation person, I mean, I thought I had it all planned out back when I was younger. But clearly, as I believe, a lot of entrepreneurs experience, we didn’t really know, I don’t want to say anything, I knew a lot.

Jennie Nash: Yeah. And what I love about, well, I’m going to be 54 in May and I’ve raised two kids, and they’re gone from the house, and I’ve had all these different careers, and I feel the thing people always talk about which is everything I’ve done in my life just has gone toward what I’m doing now. It’s like I was meant to do what I was doing now, and all those twists and turns, and ups and downs. I was like you, I thought I had it all planned out too, and I’m doing nothing like what I thought it was going to do. And it’s better than what I thought I was going to do. I’m just happy to have lived so long to get to experience this because it’s the coolest.

Kim Sutton: Jennie, one of my favorite questions to ask is if you could go back and change anything, do you think you would still be where you are today? Or do you think you needed to go through what you went through before now to get to where you are?

Jennie Nash: Yeah, you can always think, oh, I wish I had known this, or that, or about the world, or about myself. You can always say that. But yeah, I do. I look back at all the things and I think, here’s a perfect example. I said in my little intro that I self published my seventh book. That was because it was massively a big failure of many things including my own ego, I guess I could say. There were just so many things around the publication, the writing in the publication of this book that went wrong and that went sideways, and I just kept pushing this bad energy around, and trying to make something out of it that it was never going to happen. And it was a disaster. There were some days in the process of that that were really bad days. And there were many days where I thought, well, I’ll never do anything. 

Again, all the things that you think. I’m not really a writer. Those six books before were just a fluke, the whole thing that you’d say to yourself. And that was not fun by any stretch of the imagination. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, but it actually is the thing that I think made me realize what people needed in the creative process and what they didn’t need. Just really made me a much better support to people going through that process. So if I have a client who’s going through some sort of massive rejection, seasoned rejection, or they’re not getting the sales they wanted, or whatever thing is not happening for them, I know exactly what that feels like. I also know exactly what helps, and what helps is always just to go back and do more work, do something else, just move on. But if I hadn’t had that negative experience, I wouldn’t have that wisdom. So it’s such a cliche to say that all the things made me who I am, sounds so ridiculous, but it’s actually totally true.

Kim Sutton: Oh, it is totally true. Actually, the day that we’re recording this, I’ve just released Episode 306 with Kimi Morton and Pua Pekele & Cabot. And what we talked about in their chat was that our mess has made our message. So while I would have loved to have met my husband way before I did, everything that I’ve gone through up till now has made me who I am now. I mean, if I hadn’t gone through all my struggles, I would have no content for the podcast. But it would definitely not be this.

Jennie Nash: It’s a journey, and you have to go through it.

Kim Sutton: Yeah, absolutely. It sounds though, and we were talking about this in pre-chat that authors often write the books that they themselves need. It sounds like you needed one of you while you were going through books–

Jennie Nash: Yeah, I did. And it’s funny because I often think that in my own head, I wish that I had myself for myself. And I have sought that sort of help, I mean, that’s another thing about getting older, wiser and achieving certain levels of success. One thing I just know for sure is how powerful it is to ask for help, and think women especially are not good at that. And one of the things I find as a barrier to people hiring a book coach is that they think, well, I can do that by myself. I don’t need help. I need help to do whatever the thing is, I can figure it out. And especially if you’re a person who takes action, you’re a person who likes to learn and has a growth mindset. You can go look up anything on the internet and learn how to do it, learn what the steps are and learn the process. And it’s very easy to think that you don’t need help, and I did need help back then. I did not ask for it, but that voice in my head that says, oh, I wish I had me for other things. I’ve gone out and found that for myself, and I found the support that I need. And the act of asking for help is sort of magical, actually. Because first of all, you have to know what to ask for, what kind of help do I need?

Kim Sutton: Often the biggest problem, I choked on my coffee when you said, because I was on mute and I was taking a sip of my coffee, I choked when you said, you know that we need that person. Because I was like, are you talking to me? Listeners, you’ve heard me talking about chronic idea disorder, my book. I launched this podcast at the end of 2016, and I can tell you that it doesn’t fill up any more than a couple of pages on Google Docs.

Jennie Nash: Yeah, it’s interesting. You do sort of need to then ask yourself, I mean, I have this in my own business, you have this with your book, you need to ask yourself, why am I not doing this? What is really going on there? And I have this in my own business with a problem that I have refused to solve. I know intellectually exactly what I need to do. That’s the part you can look up on Google. I know exactly what needs to happen, but it wasn’t happening, it wasn’t happening, it wasn’t happening. And it’s kind of getting embarrassing. The number of times that people have said to me, so what are you doing to solve that problem? But actually, I was on vacation with one of my dear friends from high school. We see each other maybe twice a year for a weekend and sweet catch up on our lives on what’s going on. And I was telling her what’s going on with my business and what my challenges were, and this and that. She said to me: “You’ve been saying that same thing for four years.” And it was sort of like, oh, no, I was so caught. And that was a moment where I thought, okay, I need help with this. I need somebody to help me face this, and do this, and get past this. 

And actually, after our conversation, today, I’m getting on an airplane. I hired somebody to help me with this who has a program that’s fantastically expensive where you jet into where she is, and you spend the whole day with her. It’s like a boot camp, solving whatever problem you’re coming to solve. She’s a business strategist person, and I am so excited. Just the act of asking for this help of knowing when they needed, finding the person I wanted to hire or putting their money down which is a kind of energy. I signed up for it about a month ago, and that month has made more progress towards solving this challenge than I have in the four years. Yeah, it’s asking for help, and that I’m on the other side of that as a book coach of being the recipient of the askers. I don’t know what that person is, the one who is asked. And I know, it’s a sacred thing for somebody to ask for help, and to let you into whatever their challenge is. I mean, it’s just a huge honor and responsibility to be in that kind of trust with people, and I haven’t just done it myself. I’ve done it several times recently, actually. I tried to spend the same amount of money on myself and my business that I’m asking people to spend on me because I want to know what that feels like.

Kim Sutton: Yes, I love that very much. I just want to share with you and also with listeners where some of my reservation has come from. I think about actually putting time aside for my book. But I want to back up a little bit. Three years ago, I was working 100% of the time on client work. I wasn’t putting any time towards building my brand. And honestly, I didn’t know what my brand was. But when I figured that out, I was very resistant to pull back on the client work so I could start focusing on building my brand. I was concerned that I would be missing out on income and what that would mean for the family. But as I grew and grew, now, I’m probably 70% on my own brand and 30% in client work now. I have to say it’s a little bit painful at times, but I’m absolutely loving what I do. And another thing, even though that would still be building my own personal brand, taking time away from what I’m already doing to do something else new is concerning to me.

Jennie Nash: Well, and you’re wise in a certain way because writing a book is an extremely complex undertaking. It’s usually far more complex, and people think it takes longer than they think it’s going to take if they want to do it well. It’s a long term project, and you can’t just kind of tack that on willy nilly. Especially in the beginning of a project when you’re framing it and really understanding what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it and all of that. It takes time. I mean, I applaud you in a certain way for not, I think it’s worse, I think it’s better to just simply not do it than to do it badly.

Kim Sutton: Absolutely. And I think that’s another reason that I haven’t done it yet. Because with so many other parts of my business, I mean, I’m considering the book is called Chronic Idea Disorder. And in any other part of my business, when I get inspired to do something, then I face that battle of, well, am I gonna do it? Or am I not? A lot of the time, I do, which gets in the way of actually writing the book. But I haven’t been getting those inspirations of exactly where to start. I also haven’t given the time or space, I think. I think there’s actually just a brick wall there that I need to take the backhoe. Because I know that if I just let it leak through, then it’s going to be like the Hoover Dam breaking and everything’s just going to pour out and then, oh, my gosh, watch out world.

Jennie Nash: Yeah,. It’s interesting, the reasons that we don’t see something through, or we don’t start, or we get stuck in the middle, all the reasons for that are so fascinating. There’s so much written and said about procrastination or whatever the term you want to use is, but the reasons why we don’t do them are always going to go back to something very deep and very personal. Who knows what your idea is, because you have external validation that this idea is fantastic. I mean, when you told me the title, I was just like, oh, that’s an amazing book. It’s an amazing book. Nobody’s written that. Everybody wants that, every creative person knows what that is. It’s a fantastic iteration of that idea. I’ve heard people talk about that idea a lot. But the way you put those three words together, chronic idea disorder is fantastic. You have an agent, you have an editor waiting for it, you have so much external validation. And most of the time, people think that’s what they need. And when they come to me asking for books, they frequently ask this question, is my idea good enough? Are my pages good enough? Is this good enough? And it’s such an interesting question because you can’t answer it for one thing. The market rewards execution, not ideas. I didn’t say that, that’s a quote from Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. The marketplace rewards execution, not ideas. So you have to do the thing before you know if the thing is going to work. But people want to know, they want that external validation, is it good enough? Is it worth my time? Should I do this? All those things. And I said before, you can’t answer that because it’s never really about external validation. If that’s not really what the problem is, there’s some internal thing that they’re not facing or they’re not resolved. There’s proof of this. 

If you listen to Liz Gilbert, for example, in one of her famous TED Talks, she talks about what do you do after you’ve had the biggest success of your entire life, and you know you’re never going to write a book that good again? She is talking about Eat, Pray, Love and the success of that. How do you create after that? How do you go forward after that? Because it’s not about external validation anymore, and it’s not about making money anymore, she can make whatever she wants. Really, it’s not about, will people love it? People will buy anything she writes. So then, she really gets down to, why do you create? Why do you want to spend time on this? What does this mean to you? And so for the rest of us who are not Liz Gilbert, and probably will never be Liz Gilbert, how do we face that? So for you, there’s something around this idea, or being in the world with this idea, or being known for this idea, or it could be fear. Oftentimes, people think it’s fear of failure, they don’t want to be embarrassed with a book they put out, or they don’t want to put out a book that they don’t think is fantastic. What’s on the page doesn’t match the vision in their head. But other times, it’s actually fear of success. Do I want to be known for this when I’ve got all these other things that I’m known for? 

You see people who have great success with one idea, and it just becomes theirs. I think of someone like Susan Cain who wrote the book, Quiet, about introverts. And now, she has a sort of Institute of certified people to help businesses with introverts, and that’s what she’s known for. That’s what she’s about. Now, what happens when she wants to go out and write? I don’t know, I don’t know Susan Cain, and I don’t know what she wants in the world. But let’s just say she wants to write a romance novel. That would be a really hard switch because everybody knows her as the person who champions introverts in the workplace. It’s putting a stake in the ground of being known for a thing. It’s closing a lot of doors. And so there’s that fear that it will work. You’ll write about chronic idea disorder, you’ll go out in the world, it’s going to be a massive hit, and that’s all anybody is going to ever want to ask you about for the rest of your life.

Kim Sutton: It’s almost like with actors who are often,yes, exactly. I mean, Robin Williams, he was so often put in funny roles. And those times where he went into a serious role, well, he probably wanted to do it, we can’t ask him now unfortunately. But it was almost harder to watch because it wasn’t who we’re expecting.

Jennie Nash: Right. And you find yourself being disappointed. And he probably was an incredibly multifaceted actor, but we wanted him to be that one thing. And that’s exactly true. And it’s funny that you brought him up, because I was thinking of comedians as well, like Tina Fey. We just expect them, it’s like, okay, we just want them to do what they do. Acting is a very public, very physical thing. Writing is, writers don’t have to be that much in public, and their product that they make is not that physical, but it’s the same type of thing. And somebody who has a lot of ideas, and who has a lot to say, and who has a very multifaceted career might be afraid of the book working for that very reason. 

I wrote a book, my second book was a memoir about my experience with breast cancer. I’m a breast cancer survivor, and I wrote a book, the reason I knew that I had cancer. I was very, very young at 35 and I have two little kids. And the reason that I found out that I had cancer was because one of my best friends from high school had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and given a month to live. And it was sort of just an incredibly horrible, tragic thing. And it was because of her that I sought treatment and found out that I had cancer at an early enough stage to deal with it and to be alive today. I wrote this book called, The Victoria’s Secret Catalog Never Stops Coming: And Other Lessons I Learned From Breast Cancer, and it did very, very well in the marketplace. I spent three years working with Ford Motor Company who was a national sponsor of Komen Race For The Cure Events. And they sent me all over the country to speak, to do TV, to do radio, to talk to survivors and to go to luncheons. It was an amazing time of my life, it was amazing to write a book that resonated like that, it was amazing to stand in front of people and share my story, hear their stories and have them thank me, and trust me. It was a writer’s dream. And then there came a day where I sort of felt like a line in the sand where I felt like I was either going to be what was in my mind, I called it cancer girl. I was either going to be a cancer girl, or I was going to do something else. And what that meant to me was that I could write another book about cancer. I could start some sort of writing about your cancer story. At that time, a lot of people were starting to do research on the healing power of writing your story, and I was asked to do some things around that. I could have sort of taken that up and run with it, and I left it all behind. 

I wrote another book, which was actually another kind of failure, a different kind of failure. I wrote this book, basically, just to not write a cancer book, which is not a good idea for anybody out there wondering. But the point is, I was a cancer girl for those three years, then I didn’t want to be that anymore. I wasn’t famous enough by any stretch of the imagination that, nobody said, well, wait, we want you to write another cancer book, or wasn’t like the world was asking that to me. I was just asking that of myself. I really left it behind quite dramatically and stopped doing all of that, and it was very lucrative. I made a lot of money speaking and I loved it, but it was over. The season for that was over for me. Sometimes, when you’re reluctant to see a project through, it may be because you’re envisioning that. If chronic idea disorder came out, you probably would spend three years doing workshops on it, doing podcast interviews on it, doing TV on it, it would probably resonate for quite a long time.

Kim Sutton: Which actually sounds amazing.

Jennie Nash: Well, one thing that I would say, and I would suggest to anybody who is in the position you are, and just to make you feel better, everybody’s in a position you are who wants to write a book. There are so many people. It takes people a long time to actually do it. There’s so many people who want to do it, who have the idea, who are called to it, who yearn to do it. And there for whatever reason, they’re just not. One thing I always recommend is try to walk away from it, try to leave it behind, try to say, okay, I’m not doing that, and you probably can’t. It sounds to me like you can’t leave this idea behind.

Kim Sutton: Jennie, I had to share. I have a mentor who suggested that I leave it behind because I don’t even know how it ends yet, considering I’m still dealing with chronic disorder. And so I tried for the last two or three months, I know that’s not very long. But for the last two months, I have tried to the point that I even joined a challenge on how to write a book that would build your business, and I came up with a whole nother idea. Complete with an outline for a different book, but I can’t bring myself to write it because that’s really not what I want to be writing about right now. I want to get chronic idea disorder out of my head and what to talk about. And what I do have in my outline for the book is, for chronic ideas disorder, is that I have basically a graveyard of ideas in my backyard, I call them shallow holes that I’ve dug with plastic spoons. And part of overcoming my own chronic idea disorder is actually finishing projects because I have left so many, I wouldn’t even want to know how many books have been started out there. I mean, considering I have at least two, okay, let’s be serious, I have at least four or five, but I’ve just forgotten the other titles. It’s such a big hurry to actually finish something. But that’s again, I want to do it right, instead of just doing it, no pun intended. That was a good one, though.

Jennie Nash: Try to walk away from an idea and you can’t, and you feel it in your body. It’s almost like, I often use the metaphor, it’s like a ghost in the attic rattling the chains. Like you can’t, it won’t shut up, it’s just in your head. And if you try and you can’t, well, then you know you have to write this book. One thing that I think can really help is to do what I was just talking about, envision what it will be like to be out in the world with that book in very specific detail. What will you be doing? Where will you be with that book? A book is a gateway to our society for whatever reason, lifts book writers up, we elevate them, we see them as experts in a way that we don’t see people who don’t have a book. And so picture yourself as an expert. Where will you be speaking? Who will you be on panels with? Where will you be signing that book? Who will come up and talk to you? Who will you influence? What’s the dream podcast you would be on? What’s the dream radio show? 

In very, very specific detail, picture. I have an exercise I always do when I teach a class, which is, I call it the Oprah exercise. You’ve written this book, you’re going to go on Oprah. What we do is, everybody has to say what they’re going to wear so that you can literally picture yourself, there’s no more Oprah TV show. So now, you have to go on Super Soul Sunday. You’re gonna walk out on this big stage and this big auditorium, what are you going to wear? What shoes are you going to wear? How are you going to do your hair? How is Oprah going to introduce you? What is she going to say you’re known for, or that you’re about, or that you blew her mind over? And really specifically see that and picture that, and we go around the room and everybody has to say what they’re wearing, and what the message is. It’s just a way of making it real, what that will be like to have a book in the world, and to be known for that in the world. For someone like you to see how that book could impact your business. 

I mean, I love what you said before that you have shuffled your time to spend a significant amount of your hours on your own brand, in your own business, and writing a book is a powerful expression of that. And what would that do for your business? What would allow you to be more discerning with the clients you serve? Would allow you to have guests on your podcast who you don’t dream would ever say yes to you? Would it allow you to write the next book? Would it get you enough money that you could send a kid to college? Like really picture how it would impact your life in your business. I sometimes find that really helps. Rather than just hammering away at the outline or what’s going to be in it, really think about what it’s going to be like to have this book. Does that resonate at all with you?

Kim Sutton: I can’t picture what I would wear to see Oprah, but I can picture giving her a big hug. Oh, I can hear herself to voice because I actually subscribed to the Super Soul Sunday Podcast. Wow. Wow. That would be huge. That will be huge. I’m not gonna say would be, will be.

Jennie Nash: I would skip over to, what’s in it part, and go to, what’s it gonna do for you part, and that’s what I call The Deep Level Why. I have a piece on Medium that recently came out a blog on Medium called, The Deep Level Why? And it comes from Simon Sinek, Start With Why. It absolutely comes from that. But for a writer, a business needs to figure out why they’re doing what they’re doing, and that’s what Simon Sinek whole thing is about is know why you exist as a business. But for writers, it’s a really personal deep level why? And you’ve got to really get down to, why do you care enough about this to bring this out into the world? Why does this matter to you? And really, why not just, oh, because everybody has chronic idea disorder and it’s such, all the entrepreneurs are stuck and I want to help them. That’s all great, but that’s the surface. We want to get down into like, [inaudible]. And I have to say something about occupational hazard, I can’t book coach anybody ever. But I’ve heard you say, I can’t finish this book because I don’t know how it ends. My immediate reaction was, Kim, wait a second, that’s totally the wrong framework. That’s totally the wrong question. The title of your book is a chronic idea disorder. People who have chronic disorders have to learn to live with them, they don’t get over them.

Kim Sutton: I think you just changed my subtitle from overcoming to conquering, because we can conquer it and not cure it, right? 

Jennie Nash: Right. Or how about living with? Like somebody who has chronic fatigue syndrome doesn’t get over it. Somebody who has chronic migraines doesn’t stop having them, that would be me by the way. You have to learn to live with them, you have to learn to accept them, you actually have to learn to embrace it. Also, chronic idea disorder, if you’re saying I don’t know how it ends, I don’t know how to cure it, what you’re saying is it’s a bad thing. It’s not a bad thing. I have chronic idea disorder really bad, and that’s actually terrible English

Kim Sutton: It’s not perfect grammar.

Jennie Nash: But here’s the thing, you could not pry it out of my cold dead hands because it’s the thing that’s gotten me all that good stuff. I have an idea a minute, and I have four full time employees who work for me and I’m embarrassed by how many great ideas I have and their job. I mean, I hired them for this. Particularly my manager of operations, I hired her to say, no, you will not be doing that. No, we will not be doing that. And so all come with these great ideas and I’m like, you guys, I talked to someone, we’re gonna do this thing. There’s gonna be this partnership and we’re gonna do this webinar in this class. And they’re like, no. And I get mad at them, you can’t tell me no, I’m in charge, I hired you, this is a great idea. And they’re like, no. So I know that’s what I’ve done to help manage my chronic idea disorder, but don’t take it away from me. It’s my superpower. I don’t know, if I were coaching outside, I think you’re framing it wrong.

Kim Sutton: Actually, you know what? I’m not gonna give away too much right here, but you just actually pulled the other book for me into chronic idea disorder. And I see well how the two will mesh together now. And honestly listeners, you’ve heard me talk plenty about sleep and why we need to get it. I have to admit that I stayed up way too late last night because I had chronic idea disorder and I was working on something, so I wish I had a little bit more energy so I could get started on it tonight. But that’s what series four, and the five minute drive to and back from daycare. That was not proper grammar either. I know where I’m going, the outline just became, oh, my gosh, like all those dots in my head just piece themselves together.

Jennie Nash: Well, send me [inaudible], that’s what I have people do. I have envisioned where you’re going to be in the world with this book. That’s one thing, the Oprah test. And then just write the book [inaudible] copy, don’t write anything else because you can get the whole idea of what’s going to be on the back of the book. And if you write that up and send it to me, I would love to see it, and I will comment upon it and send it back to you.

Kim Sutton: I will have that in your inbox tomorrow.

Jennie Nash: I’ll do it. Tomorrow though, I’m going to be at my boot camp so you’ll have to–

Kim Sutton: I need to commit to tomorrow, and you can get back to it when you get back to it.

Jennie Nash: Chronic idea disorder is not going away. It’s superpower ,you should be blessed if you have chronic disease ideas disorder. I’ve been married for 29 years to my husband .I love him with all my heart. He’s amazing in everything. He does not have chronic idea disorder. He thinks I’m crazy. He thought I have been crazy for the 33 years that he’s known me. He just looks at me like, really? Another idea? Really? You’re sitting there at night typing this thing out like, why don’t you sit down and watch a movie? Why don’t you sit down and read a book? Why not sit down and have a glass of wine? I’m like, I got an idea. I gotta go. I mean, he thinks I’m crazy. I know that there are people who do not have it. I don’t look at him and pity him because I love him and he’s awesome in his own way, and in different ways. And honestly, if I were married to a person with chronic idea disorder, it would–

Kim Sutton: We go crazy. My husband doesn’t have one either.

Jennie Nash: But look at the people who don’t have it?

Kim Sutton: It is a little bit sad, but it also keeps me sane.

Jennie Nash: I know for a partner, for sure. But don’t you think it’s awesome to have it?

Kim Sutton: Oh yeah.

Jennie Nash: So that’s what you have to write about. It’s like, okay, you have it. What are you going to do now? How are you going to manage it? How are you going to get through the day when you have 47 [inaudible]? How are you going to actually pick one? How do you know which one to pick? What happens if you pick one and you don’t like it anymore? How long do you give it? How do you know when to push past the thing and finish it? And how do you know when to walk away? Give us all that because my chronic idea disorder is not going away, and neither is yours, and neither of us.

Kim Sutton: No. Listeners, welcome to the live book coaching session between Jennie Nash and Kim Sutton. Oh, my gosh, you have just kicked my butt in the best way possible. Oh, my gosh I wish there, okay, sometimes I do wish I could clone myself. However, I know that the other me would probably do all the fun stuff because I do love to learn and like to do all of it myself. But I do wish tonight, there was another one of me, the other one would go to sleep so I could get to this.

Jennie Nash: Also, tell me what you’re gonna wear on Oprah coz that matters, because that’s how you are in the world. What you’re going to be known for? What are people going to see when they see a person with chronic idea disorder?

Kim Sutton: Okay. Of true authenticity, I have to be comfortably me. I obviously can’t go on in pajama pants and whatever I’m wearing on top, I think a t-shirt. So I would want to wear a nice turquoise, my color turquoise sweater. And Oprah? Does she wear jeans? I don’t know that I’ve ever seen Oprah in jeans. Okay, a nice pair of gray slacks in flat Toms, I’m even putting a name on them, Toms shoes so I won’t trip when I’m walking towards her because I definitely don’t want to take over.

Jennie Nash: Well, I think you might be in the wicker chairs in the garden under her oak trees. I think the chat happens there. So Toms is really appropriate.

Kim Sutton: Yeah, Toms is appropriate for the garden chat.

Jennie Nash: Well, I have to say that I recently had the great honor of teaching three classes at CreativeLive. And it was one of the types of things that I’ve always wanted to do, a big live audience, and I love teaching in front of an audience. I had to prepare for these three classes, it was quite intense, a very compressed period of time to prepare for these classes. And I have a lot of work to do, and it was over the holidays and the whole thing. I’m not kidding, I spent so much time shopping for what I was gonna wear and it was kind of ridiculous. 

There was one day when that FedEx guy came to my door and he was, it looked like a movie. It was so comical. He had five massively big boxes of things that I had ordered. They were big because they were boots. I was really worried about shoes, five massively big boxes, and I quickly got them inside them. Nobody saw it because I was so embarrassed. And then I thought, that’s ridiculous. I’m fussing about what I’m wearing because I want to be, like you said, I want to be comfortable. I want to be authentic. I want to be myself. I want to reflect on my success. I want to reflect that people can trust me. Like there were so many things wrapped up in what I was wearing. And so I gave myself a break and it’s like, you know what? If I have to go to Nordstrom 47 times and buy and return things to get the right thing, that’s what I’m going to do. And I ended up with three different outfits. That’s why it was so hard. And I was really happy with what I wore, and I felt really good. And it really mattered in the end. So I’m thinking that what you wear is actually really powerful.

Kim Sutton: I have to just confess why that is such a difficult question for me. I went to The New Media Summit last September, and I’ll be going again in a couple of weeks where I’m an icon.

Jennie Nash: Oh, cool.

Kim Sutton: And I didn’t know what I was going to wear. I really don’t like shopping. And pardon my mouth, I’ve had a brain fart just now and I can’t remember what service I used. However, I went on to tell them my size, told them where I was going. They asked for my social media profile so that they could get an idea of who I was, and they sent me a box with two complete outfits, and a pair of shoes.

Jennie Nash: This is the coolest thing ever. Did you love them?

Kim Sutton: Oh, I absolutely loved it. Yes. I just wouldn’t have picked out on my own, but I absolutely loves them.

Jennie Nash: Well, already in my head thinking about where you’re going to get your turquoise sweater.

Kim Sutton: Jennie, this has been such a fantastic chat. You’ve given me so much inspiration, and I know you are inspiring the listeners as well. Where can they learn more about you and get in touch?

Jennie Nash: I would love for people to come visit authoraccelerator.com We have a special six step writing challenge, it’s at authoraccelerator.com/productivity. So that’s just for your listeners. And it’s the six first things that I asked to everybody who’s working on a book, and the very first thing is, what’s your deep level why? So you’ll have a chance to listen, I have some videos and some lessons about that, and you’ll have a chance to write that. And then there’s five other framework questions to ask about your book idea to get you started. It’s part of my blueprint for a book process, which is what I use to help people get from zero off the ground and build a solid foundation for their books. So authoraccelerator.com/productivity, and that’s six writing challenges, and it’s free, it’s fun. You can get a kind of taste of what it’s like. And then if you’re interested in working with a book coach, you can check out our services.

Kim Sutton: Awesome. Listeners, that link and books that we’ve talked about, and all the resources that we’ve talked about will be in the show notes at thekimsutton.com/pp324. Jennie, again, thank you so much, like times 10,000. I can’t even say it any better than that. I should be more eloquent.

Jennie Nash: I love your book the second I heard it.

Kim Sutton: I’m so excited now that I’m speechless and I don’t really know where to go. So I am just going to ask you, what is one last piece of parting advice or a golden nugget that you can offer to the listeners.

Jennie Nash: Golden nugget. After our conversation, I would have to say, write with intention. That’s really the key to everything. just write with intention. Which means, know what you’re writing, know why you’re writing it, know who you’re writing it for, know what you want it to give you, all of that intention is what you need to move forward. And so often, we promise quick fixes in our society now, an instant bestseller, or a miracle method to writing a book, and there are none of those things. If you just stick with what your intention is and write with intention, you’re going to get to where you need to go.