Carrie Wilkerson is a best-selling author, international speaker and a sought-after television & radio personality.
Featured on CNN and Fox Business News, in Success & Entrepreneur magazines and named by Forbes as a top small business influencer, Carrie has consulted with Google and other business thought leaders on growth strategies, productivity and current trends.
Carrie loves showing people how to transform their lives, bodies, relationships and bank accounts. Whether you hang around for her tough-love, her hysterical no-filters humor or her big-as-Texas heart, she’ll inspire you and help you make a plan to be more productive and more profitable, without sacrificing your priorities.
Listen to this informative Publish Promote Profit episode with Carrie Wilkerson about writing the book that made the barefoot executive.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
How writing a book should bring you more business and position you correctly.
Why having a book automatically gives credibility to your brand.
How self-publishing has changed immensely in the past 10 years.
Why getting sales from writing your book should be your ultimate goal.
How people should be using their books to get on stages and podcasts.
Connect with Carrie:
Guest Contact Info:
Twitter
@CarrieWilkerson
Instagram
@carriewilkerson
Facebook
facebook.com/CarrieWilkerson
Rob Kosberg:
Hey, everybody, Rob Kosberg here with another episode of the Publish. Promote. Profit. podcast. I’m here with a great lady and good friend, Carrie Wilkerson. Carrie’s an international speaker, sought-after radio and TV personality. She’s the bestselling author of The Barefoot Executive, which we’re going to talk a little bit about today. Excited about that.
Carrie teaches thought leaders and experts how to maximize their business results while keeping their priorities intact. And she’s of course a mom of four and is a great person to teach on that respect, because I know personally that she does that. So, Carrie, thank you. Thank you so much for being with me today on the podcast.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Yeah, thanks for having me. This is up close and personal. We’re actually in my bedroom. My rescue pup is right here with us. This is what the pandemic has done, right? We’ve taken away all formality.
Rob Kosberg:
It’s all gone. That’s right.
Carrie Wilkerson:
It’s all gone. We’re just right here, hanging out with the pups in the middle of a storm. But yeah, mom of four, ranging in age, I used to say from toddler to teenager, and now I have to say from teenager to adults, because dang, time flies.
Rob Kosberg:
Yikes.
Carrie Wilkerson:
I know.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, I know what it’s like. When my baby is 20, I’m like, oh my gosh. I should be old, but I certainly don’t feel old.
Carrie Wilkerson:
How are they getting so much older and we’re not?
Rob Kosberg:
Exactly.
Carrie Wilkerson:
It’s a phenomenon.
Rob Kosberg:
Exactly. So, talk to me about the writing of your first book. What made you write a book? We’re going to talk, of course, towards the second part of the podcast about what the book has done for you, but more, why did you write it? What made you take on that kind of challenge? And it is a challenge, right?
Carrie Wilkerson:
Oh yeah, it’s worse than giving birth.
Rob Kosberg:
Yikes.
Carrie Wilkerson:
It’s unmedicated birth that was unexpected and no deadline and no doctors. It’s a process. When I was little, I found a note in my mom’s hope chest one time of my schoolwork from when I was a kid, and I was creative, and I was writing stories and poems and all that. And she said, “Carrie, you should write a book.” My mom has always said that since I was little.
But I think she assumed fiction or storytelling. Then I got older, and in the process of creating a business around my family, I’m probably a little bit different case than most of your clients in that I was on Twitter one day, and I went into my DMs, and there was a message that said, “We want you to write The Barefoot Executive for us,” which was the name of my company at the time. “We want you to write The Barefoot Executive for us. Do you have any interest?” And it was the business acquisitions editor for Thomas Nelson at the time, who’s Joel Miller who is Michael Hyatt’s son-in-law. So, I did all my research before I responded. I called him and I said, “I don’t think this is how this process normally works. Shouldn’t I have a proposal? Shouldn’t I want to write the book?” He said, “We want you to write a book for people that want to create a business at home.” This was in 2010 that he approached me.
He said, “I’ll help you craft a proposal, because we know what we want, but are you interested?” So basically, they asked me to write the book, and they pulled me in to write the book. I jokingly asked you before we started, “Should I tell you what all not to do?” But unlike the process you go through with your authors, nobody walked me through, “What will this do for your business? Is this bringing to you the kind of client that you want? Is this putting you on the stages that you want?”
And the answer for all that, truthfully, was no, because I didn’t want to work with startups. And for keynote speaking, that’s a really rare kind of audience. Corporates aren’t going to bring you in to talk about starting your own business.
Rob Kosberg:
No.
Carrie Wilkerson:
They don’t want any part of you. So, in that respect, it was not good for my business.
Rob Kosberg:
Interesting.
Carrie Wilkerson:
However, the credibility of a book is always good for your brand.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Yeah.
Carrie Wilkerson:
So, I do still get to say, “I’m published by a mainstream company, and we have sold tens of thousands.” And I do still sell. It’s 10 years later now, and we still sell boxes and boxes and boxes of books. But it did not bring to me my ideal client or my ideal stages. However, it did help me set a bigger fee for the stages I did have.
Rob Kosberg:
Interesting.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Yeah. So that’s in a nutshell some of that, but that’s why your process is so valuable to your client, because you can kind of back them into, “Yeah, this may be a good idea or an in demand idea or whatever, but is this going to grow your business in the way that you want it to grow your business?” Because I also went through a mainstream publisher, so I also don’t make a dime, really, on the sales.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Painful.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Yeah.
Rob Kosberg:
Especially when you say, “We still sell boxes and boxes of books,” and it’s like, eh, so?
Carrie Wilkerson:
Right? Right. I can’t even get excited about a big book order. I’m like, okay, yay.
Rob Kosberg:
Oh, I super appreciate your honesty. It’s so refreshing. I love it. I didn’t know some of that, and that’s really interesting to me. I know that you’re a really sought-after speaker, and I know that that’s a really big part of your business. I know that you’re paid big fees to speak all over the world. And my assumption was always that you’re speaking for corporations, which I think is what a lot of-
Carrie Wilkerson:
Some. I do. I do, but it’s-
Rob Kosberg:
How did you transition that?
Carrie Wilkerson:
Yeah, it’s totally unrelated to my book. It’s more about, they’ve heard me speak somewhere else, and it’s honestly a slog to get other kinds of events. I have to send them all kinds of topics ideas because they can’t just point to my book and go, “We want you to speak on this,” because they don’t. They don’t want me to talk about The Barefoot Executive. They don’t want me to talk about that.
They do love that I’m an author. Now, as far as big keynotes for direct sellers and network marketing and sales forces and stuff, they do love The Barefoot Executive message. But yeah, the other is a really hard sell, until I come up with another title. You and I talked about this before. It was such a painful experience with the publisher, and they sold in the middle of my contract, so I lost my entire publicity team.
My launch was a little bit of a disaster. It only worked because I’m a marketer. But it wasn’t a good situation. So, I’ve been hesitant to do it again because writing a book, when it’s not done right, it can take away from your business. And so many times I have to decide, do I want to make money, or do I want to write the next book? And so, I just haven’t done it yet, but the right book with the right message for your right client is magical.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah.
Carrie Wilkerson:
It’s magical.
Rob Kosberg:
Take this question the right way. I know you will. It seems obvious, probably, to you looking back, holy cow, of course that book wasn’t going to help me to get the right stages and the right client and all of that. But what were you feeling in the midst of all that? I imagine there was a great sense of pride and in a good way, right, for example, “I’m being asked to write a book by a great publisher.”
Carrie Wilkerson:
Yeah. Yeah. They were the number three publishing house in the U.S. at that time. They published Ramsay and John Maxwell and so many thought leaders that I really respect at that time. And so yeah, the vanity side of me is like, holy cow, they’ve asked me to write a book. Look at my baby, The Barefoot Executive. Look at the validity of my brand.
So that was good. And honestly, at the time, I was really involved on Twitter, if anybody remembers that platform. I was really involved in Twitter because it became political, when it was still fun. And so, I was working with a lot of startups and entrepreneurs and motivating in those kinds of things, so at the time I just thought, this is going to be a bestseller, and people are going to love it.
And I do have a great fan base, and yay, serve the people. It was the book I wish I had had when I started. And it’s still very valid and valuable to this day. Some links don’t work in there. Don’t put links in your book, folks, unless you control those links. Don’t point to other people’s links, because other people don’t have the same attention span you do.
Rob Kosberg:
Good advice.
Carrie Wilkerson:
But it’s still valid and valuable, and it served at the time. But at that same time, I was developing the speaking part of my business, and nobody counseled me and said, “Okay, how many stages is this really going to get you? How many of your ideal client is this looking for?” Look at some beautiful examples of this. There’s nobody that does this better than Dan Kennedy. Dan Sullivan just came out with the Who Not How. And yeah.
Rob Kosberg:
They’re right there. Yeah.
Carrie Wilkerson:
People like you and I read it and go, “Yep, I see exactly what they just did there. That was so stinking genius.” Oh, sorry, Huckabee. I bothered Huckabee.
Rob Kosberg:
Aw.
Carrie Wilkerson:
I know. So, I see it now, and it makes sense now, but at the time, there was nobody kind of third party walking me through the process. I had authors walking me through the process of how to get the most out of my contract with the publisher, and then I had businesspeople saying, “Hey, we still want to do business over here.” But self-publishing was still very much, this was 10 years ago, very much you either did vanity press or you uploaded to Amazon, and it wasn’t nearly the same, right?
Rob Kosberg:
Right.
Carrie Wilkerson:
So really, we’re a different world as far as companies like you and some of the other companies that have really elevated what we can do. But at the time, it was a monumental thing in my growth to be asked to write a book, for my brand to be validated. And I did get an advance even as a freshman author. Of course, if you do it right, you spend that entire advance on marketing, and we did. But I do remember that checking off such a big thing on my life bucket list that after I finished it, I kind of thought, well, what now?
Rob Kosberg:
Right. Right.
Carrie Wilkerson:
It was really hard to set a new goal after that because that goal had been the book. And so, the way I coach people now is, “Don’t make the goal the book. Let the book lead you to your next goal of either funding a nonprofit or your retirement account or your next clients or your elevated stages.” But don’t let the book be your goal, because I think that that turns out to be pretty empty, especially if you look at the stats of who actually reads it, who actually reads the full book, if they take action on it.
If you’re really looking to change the world with your book, don’t make the book your goal. Make the sales of the book and the promotion of the book fund something that helps you change the world, because that’s more in your control than the actual book itself.
Rob Kosberg:
Oh, I love that. That’s great advice. The human psyche is funny, right? We’re motivated maybe on the surface by certain things, but there’s these deeper level motivations within us that oftentimes we’re not even really aware of. We have to talk about this with our authors a lot, because there is this sense of validation and this sense of extreme pride that somebody has in doing a book.
And oftentimes, they can let that steer them away from maybe the bigger goal on the back end and thinking about what that goal would be on the back end. We have to talk to our authors about this a lot when it comes to telling their story. If they want to write a biography, an autobiography, great.
We can help them with that, but they need to understand that an autobiography isn’t really going to get them closer to selling something or even necessarily speaking on stage. They have to think, how does that story fit within the desired result that you want? And I think you just said it in a beautiful way, so thank you.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Yeah. And people are so wrapped up in themselves. Very few people are touched by your story, and you could tell them in a book, but really, use the book to get you on a stage or a podcast, because they’re going to listen to you better there. Don’t make it about the book. The book is a tool to get you to the next spot. And so, the book does open doors, so when you say, “We sometimes lose the mission,” let me tell you something that happened, and it’s somebody that you know too, that just came into my life recently.
She was a counselor at a school district, and a social worker came in to talk to her about some kid, and she was burnt out and frustrated because these kids through foster care were not getting the help that they needed. And she said, “Somebody needs to set up a foundation to help,” blah, blah, blah. And the social worker looked at her and said, “Write this down on a Post-it Note, The Barefoot Executive by Carrie Wilkerson. She’s familiar with CPS. She’s adopted a foster kid, and she’s written a book for people that wonder who needs to set up something for someone else and read that.”
This happened three years ago. This person now runs a multimillion-dollar organization serving these amazing kids because of something she read in my book that touched a social worker because she read the adoption part of my story. It was these little touches. And she sent me a picture of the Post-it Note the other day that she has kept since 2017 that said, “The Barefoot Executive by Carrie Wilkerson.” So, does your book and your story change the world? Maybe, little by little. But now she’s also publishing a book, with you, so that she can reach the world in a bigger way, the way The Barefoot Executive did. She’s also adopted a child through CPS. So, when I look at, have kids been adopted? Have many, many kids been funded? Yes, we did that too, and we encouraged other people to do that.
Have we bumped up my fees? Yes. Have we attracted some clients? Yes. But when we look at my core mission of sharing about building a business around your priorities, like adoption or foster care or orphans or funding things you are passionate about, then yeah, it’s bigger than the big. And so I’m not going to say don’t write the book, I’m going to say focus on what you want the book to achieve, and I think that’ll help you not only get it done faster, but help you really stay centered on something other than your own vanity about it.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it, Carrie. You’re answering my questions before I ask them.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Oh, good.
Rob Kosberg:
This is fantastic.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Good. Good, good.
Rob Kosberg:
And I love our mutual acquaintance and thank you for the introduction. She is amazing. Reminds me totally of you.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Well, she’s a fire starter for sure. I adore her. But also, we just found out the other day that we actually graduated high school both in these teeny, tiny little Podunk nothing towns six miles away from each other.
Rob Kosberg:
No way.
Carrie Wilkerson:
We had mutual friends. We had mutual friends that we grew up together. We knew some of the same teachers that were married to each other in the different school districts. It was actually pretty funny. And so also, you don’t have to be from a big town or big stories to make a difference.
She and I are really good examples of growing up in a nothing town that shows up nowhere, population can’t wait to get out of here kind of town, both of us. And now, we are both female world changers in our own niches. So that’s pretty exciting, I think, and part of that’s because of books.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. No doubt. No doubt it is. And I can’t wait to see what we’re going to do with the next step for her book. Tell me, besides the obvious big mistake that you shared about writing a book without thinking about the end in mind, biggest challenges to getting your book written, biggest things that you wish you knew when you were in the midst of it. What does that look like for you?
Carrie Wilkerson:
You have to have somebody holding you accountable for all that. You’re not just going to get it done. We’re not Stephen King. He wakes up and writes until the motivation hits, he says. The rest of us do not operate that way. One of my current titles, I’ve been at the editing stage for three or four years, getting ready to fix it and I keep changing the angle in my head or whatever, and I should have finished it in the pandemic.
Good grief, we’ve been in lockdown for a year. I should have finished it, and I haven’t finished it because there’s nobody making me do it. So, you have to have an accountability team. I do also think it helps if you have a financial investment behind it, because often where we put our money, our heart will follow.
Rob Kosberg:
True. It’s true.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Yeah, so accountability really helps. Knowing the reason why you need it out, whether it’s for credibility or, unfortunately, when I came into my book, I already had some credibility and some notoriety, so to speak, in my field, and some really great peers and name recognition, and so I didn’t need it as much.
But if you’re starting, then a book literally gives you that credibility of, oh hey, she wrote the book on it. Here’s what I’ll say in my ancient wisdom. I have a birthday tomorrow, so in my ancient wisdom-
Rob Kosberg:
Happy birthday.
Carrie Wilkerson:
In my ancient wisdom, I will say this. And everybody writes this down. If it’s important, it deserves an appointment. If it’s important, it deserves an appointment. Put the scheduled time in your calendar, just like you would a doctor’s appointment or a dentist appointment or a date night. Put it in your calendar.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s good.
Carrie Wilkerson:
When are you going to write? And it’s probably a little bit like practicing the piano. It’s probably better if you write a bit every day instead of trying to cram in a big session once a week. We know Yo-Yo Ma did not get great at his instrument by practicing once a week for four hours at a time or when he found the time, right?
Rob Kosberg:
Right.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Yo-Yo Ma made the time. I don’t know if you saw this amazing video online recently. While he was waiting for his second vaccine appointment, he had his instrument with him, and he serenaded the people in the waiting room.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow.
Carrie Wilkerson:
And I thought authors, you should be writing while you’re in that time. Yo-Yo Ma’s playing for the people at the vaccine place and you should be writing. So, we’re never going to find time, we have to make time. If you want to get it done, it deserves an appointment, and you have to be disciplined about it. Books don’t just write themselves. Weight doesn’t just fall off your body. There are things that don’t just happen. You have to schedule them, and if it’s important, it deserves an appointment.
Rob Kosberg:
It does.
Carrie Wilkerson:
That’s what it has to be. And that’s why my next title isn’t done, because I haven’t. I haven’t declared it important enough to make an appointment. And I’m honest enough to say it.
Rob Kosberg:
Fair enough. Yes. Fair enough. Talk to me about that for one second. Last question, last line here. What’s next for you, and does the next book have a featured place in what’s next for Carrie, or what does that look like?
Carrie Wilkerson:
I’ve been in kind of transition. Even before the pandemic, I was in a little bit of transition. Part of that’s my age, part of that’s the stage of my kids. My youngest just registered for high school. Her nickname was Baby Barefoot when we started. She was 10 weeks old when I started the business.
So, I would like to say semi-retirement, and for me that means cherry picking projects, speaking on what I want to be speaking on, but not necessarily being reliant on it. I love to speak. I do not love to be away from my family. So being able to say yes when I want to say yes and no when I don’t want to. I have one going into college this year. She’s supposed to pick her school in the next few weeks, so we’ll know how far or close it is.
I have one that is a pandemic wedding, so I have a newlywed daughter too, and then I have a special needs son. So, what’s next for me probably looks like, I’m still doing business coaching. I’m actually working on contract, doing subcontracting with a coaching company you’re familiar with from Australia. And I am working some with them so that I don’t have to market myself as a business coach, which I think is going to free me up a little to a different thought leadership area on midlife.
And I’m really intrigued by this stage of life. I think midlife now doesn’t look like it did for our parents, and I would really love to encourage people financially, emotionally, physically, spiritually through this stage. As you know, I’ve had a fitness journey. I’ve lost about half my body weight.
I’ve had the getting out of multiple six figures of debt journey. We’ve parented special needs, as well as adoptive, as well as biological, and running a business at home the entire time of all that. We’ve now been through a pandemic with puberty and perimenopause all at the same time.
Rob Kosberg:
You’ve done it all.
Carrie Wilkerson:
I think there’s a place of encouragement or maybe helping people, specifically women, maybe, maximize their midlife.
Rob Kosberg:
Ooh, that’s a cool title.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Yeah. Yeah, and I’m also, instead of hell no midlife, hello midlife. I don’t know. I’m playing with some of that right now. But the book that I’ve been working on has been Move the Needle, and it’s been about how to change your body, your bank account, and your business one step at a time. It’s a quick read, so why haven’t I released it? I don’t know.
Maybe because I always felt like my financial journey or my weight journey or my parenting journey was kind of one of the only private parts of me that I still had after being a public figure. I don’t know. I can’t figure out what my holdup is there yet. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to be speaking on that.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s something to think about.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Yeah, because once you put the book out, you’ve got to be willing to step out on the stage or the podcast about it. And so, do I really want to be talking to people about how to drop weight or how to, because all of those changes, people fundamentally believe they can’t make them. And so, then when you really have a book on it, when you really have a belief about it, it’s almost like you’re constantly defending your thesis.
And maybe I’m weary of that. Maybe at my age I’m tired of defending that idea. I’m like, okay, stay fat. I don’t care. As long as you’re happy. But that’s the point. If you’re not happy and you’re still seeking answers, be open to the answers and be willing to move the needle. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s next, but I am kind of jazzed about the midlife idea.
But like any story, you kind of have to get through the healing part of the story. Don’t use your audience as therapy. So, I want to make sure that I have a really great, healthy, non-trauma perspective on it in a lot of ways. I do know that people are really hurting because of the pandemic right now. Even people that weren’t seemingly affected were in ways maybe they don’t even understand.
So, I can see me doing that, moving into encouragement and maximizing midlife. If we’re talking about dream partnerships and things I would love to do, I would love to speak with and maybe partner with or collaborate with Dr. Henry Cloud, Dr. Daniel Amen, Caroline Leaf, these neurologist experts and boundaries. I don’t know. There’s just so much more than paying our bills and slogging through.
There really is, and I think that there’s an obsession right now, especially I think with male entrepreneurs, on maximizing their life, their length of life. I think maybe we’ve got it all wrong, and maybe we need to maximize the breadth of our life, and-
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah, the quality.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Yeah. You and your wife have done a beautiful job of that, and it’s been inspiring to watch.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Thank you.
Carrie Wilkerson:
And we aspire to that. So, I don’t know. I’m kind of playing with that. I don’t know. But that would be a tough one to monetize, so I’m coaching in the background still and working with some clients here and there still. But that audience, that book would draw more of a Brene Brown audience and think about, who controls the money.
So that book, if we’re talking about maximizing midlife, if we’re talking about hello midlife or how to approach that, then that’s an audience of midlife women who I think we know control the purse string. If you look at the proportion of money controlled, it is going to be by the midlife female audience.
There’s in control of the majority of purchasing decisions right now. So that’s a Brene Brown audience. That’s a really great and growing corporate audience. Now that we have a female vice president who is in midlife, that’s now a global audience. And so that book probably has more of a TEDx feel and more of a broad draw in other areas, like female achievement or maximizing where you are right now.
So anyway, we’ll see. That may be where we’re headed, maybe not. Maybe just a passion project. We’ll see. Maybe we’ll launch into a whole line of supplements, and maybe I’m going to Goop it up like Gwyneth Paltrow. Who knows? The sky’s the limit. But meanwhile, I’ll just keep funding it with normal clients and with my contract work and speaking when and where I can, but not having to so that we can keep creating around our priorities instead of having to prioritize around our work, which kind of stinks.
We don’t want to have to fall in that crack. And if there’s one thing that’s beautiful about women being in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, it’s that we don’t have to if we don’t want to. We don’t care how people are judging us. We’re comfortable in our own skin for the first time, hopefully, in a really long time. And these are women I think that are changing the world, so there’s something pretty exciting about that, too. You’re probably seeing an uptick in those women publishing books, I would also imagine.
Rob Kosberg:
I am, and I’m married to one, so I have to say-
Carrie Wilkerson:
I would never have said Connie was in midlife ever, not out loud. I would never.
Rob Kosberg:
We have been married for 30 years, so I think that’s what midlife is. I think. No, for my two cents, for what it’s worth, I love that topic. I always do my three E’s thing when I’m always thinking about what’s next for me, and that’s, do I excel at it, am I going to earn money at it, and do I, most importantly, enjoy it?
And you clearly enjoy this. It’s clearly meaningful to you. I do think you can earn a lot of money and make a really big both income and impact in that market. Now, with that said, we’ll see. You’ll do what you want to do, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that market, and you are clearly passionate about it.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Well, and I think that market is a huge market for people growing their businesses.
Rob Kosberg:
Yes.
Carrie Wilkerson:
The research that I’m doing shows that there’s a high number of women who have been successful in other areas or maybe they’re just now empty nesters, and they’re really excelling at solving some problems that they see in a marketplace. Aunt Bee from The Andy Griffith Show was about my age when they started filming that show.
Rob Kosberg:
No way.
Carrie Wilkerson:
So, midlife has changed. Yeah, midlife has changed.
Rob Kosberg:
Oh my gosh.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Right? How we look has changed, how we act has changed, how our physicality shows up has changed. We’re stronger, we’re living longer, we’re parenting longer. My kids span a lot of years. So yeah, I think that that might be what’s next. It might be that I shift Move the Needle to be part of a midlife series. You know me. I tend to think in series, and I’ve always wanted to do a trilogy ever since I read Narnia when I was a kid.
Rob Kosberg:
How cool.
Carrie Wilkerson:
So maybe it’s a midlife series. I really don’t know what’s next. And kind of the beauty maybe of the pandemic is it’s forced us to not dwell on what’s next, but to dwell on now.
Rob Kosberg:
It’s good.
Carrie Wilkerson:
And here’s an example. I was driving around my daughter and her 13-year-old friends the other day, and one of them was saying, “Well, my parents are really adamant that they want me to graduate without any student loan debt, and so I’m looking at these particular schools.” They’re 13, 13 and 14. And another one was saying, “Well, I’m really focused on scholarships and grants because my parents are a little behind in saving,” blah, blah, blah.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow.
Carrie Wilkerson:
There were four girls, and one of them was saying, “Well, I’m pretty sure that with my focus on STEM and science and math, I’m pretty sure that the women are going to be pretty funded.” Then my daughter, who’s actually brilliant and very motivated typically, she goes, “Y’all, I’m just trying to get through eighth grade.”
Rob Kosberg:
That’s great.
Carrie Wilkerson:
She said, “I’m just focused on the now. I just got to get through eighth grade and this pandemic, and then I’m going to focus on what we got to do in high school.” She’s always been the one says, “Oh, I’m going to go to the Coast Guard Academy like Granddad. Oh, I’m going to go do this.” Right now, the pandemic has her really focused on the now. She said, “I’m just trying to get out of eighth grade.”
Rob Kosberg:
Great story.
Carrie Wilkerson:
I think that’s where I am in business right now. I’m just thinking, okay, first of all, let’s survive midlife, and then we’re going to walk people through some fellow survival and how we can thrive, too. So, we’ll see, but in the meantime, as an author, you have to know what you want the book to do. You have to know what your deadlines are.
If it’s important, you make an appointment for it. And also, get your own skin in the game. Nobody is buying this title from you. Nobody is coming with a big advance. Nobody is coming to give you six figures because your story is so moving. It’s not going to happen. If you’re watching this podcast, it is not going to happen. I’m sorry to say that to you, but publishing has changed.
And so, you have to set the appointment. You have to invest the dollars. You have to invest the time, and then you have to know how it’s going to impact the rest of your life. It’s not just about releasing a story into the world. The world has enough story. It’s how that story’s going to grow your business.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow. Well, I don’t think I can say it any better than that.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Hire Rob. Hire Rob to help you with it.
Rob Kosberg:
You’re awesome. Oh, I love talking to you, Carrie. I miss you. Maybe when this pandemic’s all over, you and your husband can come and enjoy some time in St. Augustine. We got a great guest house for you.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Yes. Yes, and my niece is in St. Augustine. Yeah, my niece is there.
Rob Kosberg:
No way. At Flagler?
Carrie Wilkerson:
Well, she’s not at Flagler, but her grandfather on the other side of the family, he was the president of Flagler for years and years and years. He’s retired now, but he was the-
Rob Kosberg:
No way.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Oh yeah. She’s St. Augustine royalty. She really is.
Rob Kosberg:
How cool.
Carrie Wilkerson:
I know. She’s somebody. So yeah, she’s in St. Augustine. We love that area. It’s just beautiful, so nice. I could just see you barefoot with all those boats.
Rob Kosberg:
I can see them right out my window. It’s spectacular.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Shut up. I’m in Texas with a pool that was busted during the freeze, and I’m just mad about it. I’m landlocked.
Rob Kosberg:
All right, Carrie. Where can people get some more information about you? Where’s the best place to go? Let’s give them a couple of links so they know how to connect with you.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Yeah. Facebook. Does anybody go to Facebook anymore? Facebook is Carrie Wilkerson. I spell it like Stephen King spells it, C-A-R-R-I-E. Instagram, I post a lot about my family there and just random thoughts. I have a YouTube channel, which is Carrie Wilkerson TV. So, you can find a little bit of me here and there and around. I have withdrawn a little from so much personality marketing during the pandemic just while I was reevaluating and deciding what I wanted to do.
Do not Google Barefoot Executive and stuff. One of the reasons we abandoned the brand was because of social media and some suspect markets, so take that at your own risk. But Carrie Wilkerson, you should Google me, and Google the word Carrie Wilkerson and podcast, and I’ve been on podcasts, and there’s lots of free resources and materials out.
My YouTube channel’s kind of fun, too. During the pandemic, I think I did the first 45 days, I did a daily shot of vitamin C where I just did a personal video every single day. Because if you remember, we thought it was just going to be two weeks, four weeks.
Rob Kosberg:
Two weeks. Yeah.
Carrie Wilkerson:
I stopped. I cannot do this for a year. But there’s about 45 videos there that are fun and encouraging, and I think people will like them.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. Love it. Carrie, thanks so much. You are full of energy and life, and you’re obviously someone that really cares deeply. So, thank you. Thanks for taking some time to be with us today.
Carrie Wilkerson:
Thanks for having me. Thanks, everybody.
