To see more about Cheryl’s book, [click here ] or [see her media kit here]!
Janine Bolon: Welcome to the thriving solopreneur. I’m your host Janine Bolon today. And we are so cool. Why? Because I have basically, this woman’s like my freakin sister and I just can’t even get over. That we have been running around on planet for over 50 years and we have never met each other. This is a 20-year-old serial entrepreneur. Her name is Cheri Myers. She returned to her dream of a writing career after retirement. We were talking and laughing before the show about how she ended up retired probably three or four times.
And we just keep coming back to making businesses were both serial entrepreneurs. Anyway, this woman is amazing. See, I’ve only written nine books. This Woman’s written 30 self published novels. I mean novels and one of them actually was a memoir. So, her mission is to help other people fulfill their dreams of a successful writing career. And she also teaches you how to get down to business of writing and make yourself publishing profitable, and see that just sings to my little heart when it comes to me and the money thing that just makes me happy.
Janine: Her clients have achieved multiple five-figure or mid-six-figure annual incomes after they are done working with her. And so thank you so much for being with us today. Cheri, it’s great to have you.
Cheri: Thank you so much. I’m greatly glad to be here. Now, I do have to say one thing. You said. I was a 20-year-old serial entrepreneur. I have been a Serial Entrepreneur for 20 years. I’m a little older than that.
Janine: I get excited. And, so yeah, if people will forgive me, my twisted tongue on some of the stuff then yeah, we’ll just rock and roll. Yes. That is correct. She’s a 20-year or serial entrepreneur. Yes. I meant to say that 20 year old. Anywho so moving on let’s get down to brass tacks because my people have a lot of work they have to get done. So we have about 20 minutes to wrap it up. So why should you care about Sherry and what she is offering you for free? And this is, again warms the cockles of my heart, that she is offering this. She has these summits, where she brings in professionals to talk to folks about how to go about writing their boo,k how to make money after their book is published, how to run around the self-publishing gig, and she has these summits on a cycle. So you want to sign up for her newsletter. But today we’re going to talk about, the primary points of why it is important for solopreneurs to write their story about why you started your business and all that. So you want to talk to us a little bit about just from the business side of it. How you go about leveraging your story to help you with your clientele.
Cheri: Oh, I would love to this warms the cockles of my heart as well. When I started writing novels. It was as a Ghost Rider and that made me some money but it wasn’t a business. It wasn’t a scalable business and that’s what I have always wanted as a solopreneur. Now. I’ve done other things besides writing. I’ve been a real estate broker. I’ve been a lot of things. That writing sings to my heart. It helps my soul and writer is what I want to be. On the other hand, it isn’t a scalable business either. So we’ve talked about the fact that the sale of your book is going to make you a couple of bucks, maximum. And the Business of Writing is really more about how to make a sustainable income from it. So when we’re talking to solopreneurs about why they should have a book. It’s all about using a book as a marketing tool or as an entry point to a speaking engagement. It could be what you might call an extended business card. But the main thing it does is, allow people to know, like, and trust you. And every Guru you follow is going to tell you that these days, it isn’t your picture in front of a rented Learjet that’s going to get people to follow you. It’s that know, like, and trust factor.
Janine: I like the fact that you brought up the Learjet and having your picture taken in front of that because you know, I’m like that doesn’t even work anymore for the dating apps, you know, these will be gone now. I’m gonna hire somebody who’s real. So we talk a lot about you hear this a lot about relationship marketing. Now, if you don’t mind give us your two cents. Your opinion on how relationship marketing is now coming to the Forefront and how a book assists in that introduction.
Cheri: Well in the first place, I believe it’s coming to the Forefront because, in my opinion, the world is becoming more aware of reality. And what I’m talking about is of people being who they are, not the masks that they used to put on to make people think they were more successful or smarter or you know richer than they were. Those masks got people to follow them 20 years ago, but it doesn’t work anymore. Especially now that we have all, because of the pandemic turn to zoom, to meet with each other that gives us a further reach, and we’re on camera and it’s a lot harder to lie about who you are on camera Plus, who wants to, I mean that’s exhausting to keep that front up. So that’s why I think it’s more and more important. People are getting more cynical about the the unrealistic claims. And now I’ve gone on so long, I’ve forgotten the second half of the question.
Janine: That’s okay. It dovetails perfectly into the third part of this question, which is this and you were mentioning the acclaims. The authenticity and the claims that people make. I remember when I first started showing people how to build a business and I said, okay, I’m going to start with because I run, you know five businesses at once and so I have this 5th business and I was getting ready to start launching it and scaling it and I said, okay, so I have started off I have 236 followers and I are going to show you over a year how I build it. And people are like, you can’t use these numbers. Nobody’s going to follow you if they see your numbers and I said, oh contrary, everybody starts at zero or it’s you and your mom. I mean everybody know everybody starts out at Ground Zero before they start scaling their business. I said, they’ll follow me. They’ll see exactly and over the course of a year. I showed people how to go about building a business from the ground up. So with you, you’ve done the same thing as, totally, lead by example. These are the mistakes I made and now you’re inviting other people in with these Summits. So do you mind describing for people that I’m a busy solopreneur? You know, I’m wearing 15 different hats. How can I sit the quality advice that sharing Mertz is going to bring to me and to my life. So can you give us some suggestions of you know, is it 30 minutes that I need to give you? You know, what is it that you can do for me? so that I can build this relationship marketing tool that will assist not only me but also my customers.
Cheri: Wow, well, there’s there’s a lot I can do for you. But with regard to the summit’s, as you said I hold them on a cyclical basis. I put one out about every four months and I bring not forty or fifty or a hundred people for you to listen to all day, every day for a week because you’re busy. I don’t even do that. What I do is bring five to seven experts for a pre-recorded Summit that you can listen to at your leisure for a week and you have access to every interview for that entire week.
Cheri: Each guest brings a free gift of some sort. Very valuable gifts that you can download and use if they appeal to you. So this particular Summit, coming up, is going to be how to monetize your book be on the sale. Because as I’m sure Janine has told you, you can’t make a sustainable income selling your book by ones and twos. So the book leverages your business in many ways and that’s what this Summit is all about.
Janine: And the thing that I love about Sherry’s motto, is that you get on her newsletter list and she’s not pummeling you with emails. We’ve all had that. Sherry is not going to do that to you. She’s going to say I have a summit coming up are there speakers you think would be helpful to others and then she’ll start canvassing around because she wants people who are in the trenches doing the work like you’re doing and at the same time have a really good message, something that brought you into a place of harmony with your business model and then afterward she goes okay, here are the videos and she’s got all the videos for you. So I highly recommend that if you’re somebody that wants to start writing your story you kind of take a look at what Sherry has going on. Because she and I like I said, were sisters, I should say soul sisters. We’re kind of soul sisters because I call myself the right habit, right? I help people right? I help them get into the habit of writing no matter what their business model is. Well, Sherry calls herself the right expert and I just busted out laughing when I first met her, but if you’re on the fast track and you’re trying to get to a place where you can start using your book as a relationship marketing tool. Sherry is definitely the woman you want to go to. If you want to take a year to write your story because you’ve got a lot of other products and launches things. Yeah talk to me about it and I’ll be glad to help you. But the coolest thing is Sherry has me on our next summer and that’s why we’re having this podcast so that you can see some of the videos where I give some tips that you won’t see anywhere on my websites because I wanted to, give Sherry’s audience a bit of difference. A different way of using their book and monetizing it. So, I definitely recommend that you sign up for that. So another question for you though, since you call yourself the right expert. Kind of talk about your thing. How is it that you are writing so many books and yet you are running a business too. So it’s not like, you know, you just write you’re wearing 15 hats too. Talk to us a little bit about that.
Cheri: To be perfectly honest, I haven’t written a book while I was building this business. I am writing a book now and it is not a novel. This will be a book about, it’s actually a book that, the companion to my course. But, it’s all about what most people call time management and I call workflow management. I don’t surf Facebook all day long, I don’t look at funny cat memes. Although I love funny cat videos. I don’t do it all day long. In fact, I also have a course about how to be productive as solopreneur. But that’s a different subject. So it’s just a matter of being productive and developing habits. Like you say, the right habit of doing what needs to be done in the time frame that you are most productive at doing it. So that’s how I do it.
Janine: And one of the fun things is when you actually start building businesses or trying to scale the things you enjoy like you and I both talked we both love writing. You know, we just we enjoy it we get lost in it. We can totally drop all our carriers at the door and just sit there and have conversations with our characters and what have you. And then we find ourselves moving into nonfiction all of a sudden because here we are just trying to coach, help, guide, mentor other people that are struggling and so we do want them to be successful.
Janine: So you were talking about several of the courses that you have in your working on this workbook that’s going to work with people. So talk to us a little bit about workflow. I mean what are some things that you have noticed that people are struggling with and that you have answers for.
Cheri: It’s actually one of the reasons. I started this business. I do get into Facebook groups where Indie writers are helping other Indie writers, and I noticed a lot of young mothers, posting that they would love to quit their day job and just write for a living. And having been through the trenches, although all of my was an empty nester when I started I knew that they needed more advice than they were getting about writing. I knew they needed business advice and has been a solopreneur for 20 years. I knew I had that, I knew I could develop a system and I actually didn’t develop it. I just wrote down mine. And so I guess you could say I developed it over those 20 years, but I knew I could give them the pathway. To follow their dream. So, that was the reason I started the business and one of the first things you have to do, whether it’s when you want to write a book or when you want to start a business is to ask yourself, why? And in my opinion, it can’t be just to make money. Although of course making money is important and there’s nothing wrong with making money. That won’t sustain you through the parts of it that don’t make money right away. Writing a book is one of them. So first thing why? Second thing when? Or maybe it’s who? But we can explore that more if you wish.
Janine: Almost definitely we hear that a lot. Okay, I don’t know about you. But if I have one more person that scrolling on my Facebook feed that pops up and starts telling me that I need to know why I think I’m going to scream and but yet it is the key. So I’m not knocking those people at all. Don’t think I’m busting them. I’m not there. Absolutely correct, but some people struggle. They don’t know how to articulate. What they know in their heart, they’re struggling with words because they’re not writers write, you know, they just they’re artists our creatives or there are very very analytical and highly introverted and they just know they’ve got to do this. So, what are some tips that you think will help them pull that why out? I mean we could talk about your eights step process, but that’s moot. If you don’t have this why this is the key. This is the Cornerstone, the foundation whatever you want to call it, for everything else you build on. But yet you get stuck there and there doesn’t seem to be really too many people talking about how to carve into that and start pulling out of your heart. The words and being able to state. What is your why? So give us some help Obi-Wan, we need you.
Cheri: Well, and I have to confess. I was one of them. I’m also introverted. Although, people don’t believe it. I’m not a shy introvert.
Introverts have a spectrum too. But, it is a struggle. You have to dig deep and in my case, it took some personal development work. Many years of personal development work. That doesn’t help somebody who’s got to do it right now, but here are some tips, I could give. You could get some energy work done very quickly.
Cheri: May I say what modality I don’t know.
Janine: Yeah, go for it. Yeah, whatever works for you. See it’s what worked for you because what works for you, we know may not work for someone else. But at least you’re giving us some sort of a stepping stone.
Cheri: So what worked for me, faster than anything else was Theta Healing Session. And, that’s because, believe it or not, gets rid of limiting beliefs in one Fell Swoop. Now, once you get rid of one limiting belief, you might uncover another so it may not be you may not suddenly be the CEO of your own multimillion-dollar business because of it, but it does help you understand your deep reason for starting this business was. Your reason for writing a book can be nothing more than I want it to enhance my business. And if your business is important enough to you, you can reach back into your mind, almost as if, you were writing a memoir, and say why did I do this? What was the reason and if it was because I want to be on my own then ask why again and asked why the particular business I chose. What drew me to that? You’ll find you why. It’s just a matter of continuing to ask.
Janine: And it’s all about the story right? It’s about the story, human beings are designed to latch on to the story. I can tell you honestly. The reason I have that your insurance agent, I do. was because of his story. He said this is why I’m in insurance and within five minutes, he told me his story without going into gory details or anything, but he had a story. I looked at him and I said, I know I can trust you. At that moment, I knew based on the story. I knew that his story was in alignment with what my fears were. That somebody was going to take advantage of me, but he totally dissipated those fears because his story was in harmony with where I was headed as well, with my own. So that is one thing that I really want solopreneurs to focus on. What Sherry’s telling you about. Why did you start the business and that feeds perfectly because of that story about your business? I don’t care if you’ve been in it for a total of three months or if your business has been rolling for 25 years. How many people know the story of that? So, as they’re digging through their why, Sheree? What do you recommend that they focus on, their story for their book?
Cheriy: I’m having to think here because I come back to the why? And the reason I’m coming back to the why is that the book that I want people to write first, is what I call a Mission Memoir. Now, I told you that I started this business because I knew I could help those young mothers, but I didn’t tell you why I wanted to help those young mothers. And that is because my four children grew up with a working mom and there were issues because of that. There were school dropouts. There was bullying that I didn’t know about. There was a lot that I didn’t know about what was going on with my children while I was working for somebody else to put shoes on their feet and food on their table. And I wasn’t a single mom, it took two incomes. So, to do this for four children. And I knew as soon as I saw the first young mother say, I really wish I could be home for my children. Rather than working a full-time job. I knew in my heart that my kids would have had a totally different growing up experience. And of course that led to adulting, that like my daughter, one of my twins just said yesterday adulting is hard. It’s even harder when you don’t have a mom at home to guide you into how to become an adult. So I can’t really do anything about my children’s growing up experience now. But I can do something about somebody else’s. And if I can do it for one person, it’s worth all the blood sweat, and tears, I have poured into this business.
Janine: And spoken like a true solopreneur or because I haven’t met one yet, that didn’t have the 2:00 am sweats, where they woke up wondering, I hope this contract goes through because we really need to pay the mortgage. You know, all of us have gone through those rare times, as we were building something according to our dreams. So thank you so much for sharing your story about the young mothers and I was one of those, that I was writing my Master’s thesis and my mentor turned to me and said you need to make this a book and I had no idea how to make my Master’s thesis into a book? I had four children under the age of, you know 10. And it was all I could do to, you know build this degree program and graduate. But somehow, you start plotting away and it will eventually work out for you. So I hope everybody was able to learn a little bit about why books are important. Your stories, however, you want to put them together. I highly recommend that you go visit Sherry’s website. Sherry if you would give us some clues on how to get to these Summits that you run on a routine basis so that we can continue to educate ourselves on what’s in our highest and best goods.
Cheri: Thank you. I will be happy to do that. So the website to register for the summit is the write expert all one word. And write of course is, thewriteexpert.com. Now that’s the registration page. There’s a big yellow button that says register and when you do that, you will immediately get an email that says welcome. You’re in, I will send you another email on February 1st, giving you access to the interviews, until then. You’re welcome to join my Facebook group of the same name and we can chat there, but everyone gets access to the interviews on February 1st and not before. Now, once you have registered for one of my Summits, you will continue to get invitations to view the summit’s on release day, every time I release a new episode, so there’s no need to register again.
Cheri: I do want to say I’m working on a little problem with my website, for some reason, the thank you page doesn’t pop up you get a 404 error. I’m working to fix that just as rapidly as I can. But that’s okay because you are in the invitation list.
Janine: Thanks so much. I appreciate that. Yeah, we’ve all been struggling up and down the Front Range with various tech issues, less than a couple of weeks. So it doesn’t surprise me. On my own websites, I’ve had some fun stuff. I’m working out but as we continue to move forward, thanks so much for listening to us and the thriving solopreneurs show. Before we go one last bit, say they’re not interested in signing up for the summit’s they just want to talk to you directly. What is the best way for someone to reach out and just say hey Sherry, I like what you said. I just want to talk to you directly.
Cheri: Well, my email address is all over Facebook and the registration page may even have it. But, it’s coach.cheri.metoproperity.org. And org is important. Yes. It’s not a .com. It’s a .org. MetaProsperity.org got it. No problem.
Cheri: I’m hoping there’s a way to put a link for that, beneath your podcast episode, Janine.
Janine: I Will see, I’ll talk to my team. But, anyhow, so that’s how you ended up. Yeah, it’s on Facebook. You can sign up for her. You can go to Facebook finder there and you’ll see where you can get an email to her. And you’re also welcome to messenger there and let just know that if she’s in the middle of one of her Summit. She’s going to be a little engaged. So it may take a few days to get back to you. So thanks so much, Cheri. I loved having you today and good luck with your summit. I hope you are able to help as many people as possible.
Cheri: Thank you so much.
Janine: All right, and this is Janine Boland with this episode of the thriving solopreneur? Keep your feet firmly on the ground folks. You have a dream. Stick in that dream and don’t quit reaching for the stars. Don’t ever give up. We’re here to help you. If you find yourself struggling, reach out. Somebody will be glad to help you with it. So don’t suffer alone keep reaching for those stars and you keep stretching and moving toward that dream. Have a great day.
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