G. Scott Graham is an author, a career coach, and a business coach in Boston, Massachusetts.

Scott is driven to help clients follow their “true azimuth,” which is different from “true north.” It means coaching clients to identify the true focus of their life — something that speaks individually to them. It means recognizing the forces that push our lives off course and adjusting to them so you get where you want to go. It means that when you are 90 years old and you look back on your life you have a sense of pride, accomplishment, and meaning — with no regrets.

Hey everybody.

Welcome back to Author Ecke.

Scott Graham today and he's gonna introduce himself.

We're gonna talk about it, not but one, but many books and just see

where the conversation takes us.

So Scott, go ahead.

Hey, it's good to be here on your show.

Thanks for providing this service.

I wish it was around when I was first writing my first book to get a handle

on what other people were doing and what works and what doesn't work, those

other core pieces, it's always nice to learn from somebody else's mistakes.

That's when I thought about Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I'm currently working on book number 16.

Oh my goodness.

What kind of books are they?

So my books, and I have to tell you, I, checked out your

book on Amazon and website.

I'm so impressed, and this is true for other folks that are here, that

are fiction writers, people that are writing a story, that is a skill I am.

That's on my bucket list to get that skill.

I'm working on that skill.

Me too.

It's all a work on progress except for people like ludlum can

fancy hustler, stuff like that.

But I I've.

My books are of a nonfiction variety, meant to be a resource

for what folks need that might be looking for information.

And it's not all of them are in print.

I'm working to get more of them in print.

It's a business decision, but we have, here we go.

Ready?

Yes.

There's a book on marijuana legalization.

There's this hard cover book on grief and loss.

Okay?

There's this book on treatment planning, which is geared towards counselors.

There's this book on time management.

There's this book on growing a.

Plant called Good King Henry, which is and using it, there's recipes

in this book on how to not just garden the plant, but make food with

spice like a spice or something, or.

Looks like I buy fruits in Germany, they call it like buy fruits.

You gotta buy the book that Travis, you just gotta buy book.

No it's, it is, See I'm lazy as I'm, as I've gotten older, and

so I really like plants that are perennial and continue to serve.

So as asparagus is one of my favorite vegetables.

Cause once it gets going, you've got a ton of vegetables.

Me too.

That come up every year.

This.

Is a short way to think about this is perennial spinach.

So if you like spinach and you hate having to plant it every

year, this is the plant to grow.

And once it grows, it's like a weed.

And then we have this book, This is a fitness book.

This is the basic idea behind this book is that if you're overweight

and you're really struggling and you're thinking of joining a gym

get rid of your riding lawnmower.

You would not believe how many people who have postage.

Plots of land, have a riding lawn and they're overweight

and and mow your grass.

And if we only did those things that we used to do, Yes.

Now I don't even, now I don't even have to get up when I wanna change the

television station cuz I just say that person that rhymes with I don't wanna say

our name cuz then my, she's gonna go off and change the lights and other stuff.

But I say that name and I don't even have to change the television.

I'm say begin with the.

Yes.

Here's a book on bucket list.

I have a workbook that goes with the book.

And then here's a book called Andrew File Pride.

This is just a few books that I've written in the last, I don't knows, seven years.

Seven years, yeah.

Wow.

So what motivated you?

My goal is to write a hundred books before I.

I never even had a goal of writing a book.

I think I'm a, I never even had a goal of writing a book either,

but I, once I wrote the first one, I'm like, Oh, that wasn't so bad.

It's kinda it's a quest.

So you're on a quest.

I'm on a, I am on a quest.

That's one of my, Yeah, so I'm working on my 16th.

Once I finish that, I will have 84 more to go.

How do you pick the.

What the category or the title or what to put in the book, or how do you decide

what you wanna write a book about?

So again, these are like nonfictiony type books, right?

So if I'm, if I am doing some research on something or I'm thinking

about something and I'm li and I can't find the answer in my life.

That's how the good Queen Henry.

That's just, I'm like, I cannot find any, Is there no information on this plant?

I really want to grow this plant, but I don't even know how to cook

it and I don't even know what to do.

Or that never even heard of it.

And I'm googling around, looking around.

There's not even a single book.

And so then as I'm gathering the information, I'm like maybe a book would

be a good thing to write about this.

That's why I drew this little beard.

Cause I was doing.

And now I can actually do.

So smart.

But that's a good disruption.

It does.

It does.

It does.

And then the other piece is that and the, that comes to play is

that if I have a strong opinion on something or I see a piece that's

just lacking, I write about it.

So that's different than a lot of other folks, cuz I'm approaching

this from a needs perspective, from a business perspective as opposed to.

This is who I am and what I do.

Perspective, like there's a lot of coaches out there.

I'm a business and career coach and there's a lot of coaches out there

who write coaching books, right?

They're all about the one minute coach, this thing, best life, da,

seven minute meeting, stuff like that.

This is the only coaching book really I've written that's out

there about your bucket list.

And now all the other books are driven.

From a business perspective the analogy would be if you wanted to open

up a restaurant, If you're Italian right, My name is I'm gonna offend

some Italian person watching this.

My name is Japi gui.

I wanna hurt in the filming of this.

Yeah if I'm really good at pizza, And there are that's my Italian heritage

and I want to grow and I'm people like you make the best pizza, but there's

10 pizza restaurants in town already.

It's silly to open up another pizza restaurant unless I'm so confident

that my pizza restaurants is gonna crush all the other ones wanna

open up an Indian restaurant.

Because there's no Indian restaurants in town.

And so one of the things I do that if I'm looking at writing a book is see

what else is out there in terms of.

Competition in terms of books.

And I encourage my clients.

I have a number of coaching clients who have ended up

writing books that are crushing.

One of them is crushing the market.

Crushing the market.

He's wrote a book on electrical codes and troubleshooting for people who are

licensed electricians, troubleshooting.

He and one of his books is on knob and tube wiring.

Like people think I gotta write a broad, I have to be broad.

Cause who am I gonna attract?

But if you're like really strong he's making enough money.

He could send his kids to school book almost a book

or two sale every single day.

It's amazing.

Why my kids to school . We were in the same grade . That's great.

But so you looking at a, you're looking at a problem and if there's anything out

there that can help other people because there, there's probably somebody else

in the same predicament and you decide to write something that they can use

to overcome their problem or help them achieve what they want to achieve in.

That's exactly it, and I as, as long as there's not a lot of other

stuff that's out there and it's all, and it's, and it all has.

A, an opinion focused piece to it, right?

That like this is a book about marijuana legalization and I go on, which in

the seventies, I go on in this book to talk about what a nightmare.

Our current efforts around, cuz we're moving so fast, I'm not against

marijuana legalization, but we're moving so fast with it that we're not

even thinking about the ramifications.

Five years from everybody's got dollar signs in there, tax dollar signs in

their well, that's their mindset.

That's the, the quick gratification sided it.

Yeah, so I have this opinion about it and I was mulling about it and I'm

like, I'm gonna write a book about that.

And it's the only book that's out there that really is, looks at things in

an objective way from both sides of the issue and offers some solutions.

My wife usually tells me just to be quiet if I have a, so maybe I'll just

start writing them and not tell her.

There you go.

What?

That's a plan.

Not, or just gotta, I just can see the new plan.

That's great though.

I do like it because there's they're diversity because everybody had multiple

things that they're trying to figure out.

. And that's why they created libraries, right?

Cause you can't keep all that knowledge.

Somebody else had done something.

So where do you go to get that?

You go to someone where that knowledge is held, right?

That's exactly it, Travis.

You look for somebody else with that knowledge that can

help you with that piece.

And so I'm trying to fill these in and at some point, maybe I'll have a book

that's by itself sells two books a.

Someplace along that process.

Oh wow.

That's the, So how does it take you to write one?

How, like hundred 50 pages?

What's the average size?

How long it take you to write 'em?

Some are like 300 pages, some are more baby books.

It depends on how long I have.

I would call 'em a baby.

Someone's No, no book is a baby book.

Yeah, it's it really depends on the topic.

The first book I wrote was 40 pages.

I can't even get that book in print because, Cause Amazon

doesn't bind things that small.

But that was the very first book I wrote.

And then when I'm in the groove of writing, my goal is

to write an hour every day.

And whatever I write, I end up with.

And I only do that because somebody somewhere.

Sometime told me that's what Steven King does now, I don't know.

That's what Steven King does.

I have no idea.

Anyway.

Anyway, only used to write 500 words a day because he was such a perfectionist.

That's all he could get out a day 500 words.

Oh wow.

Yeah.

Maybe I should be more like, should I be more like Hemingway

or should I be more like Stephen King ? You could be a mix, right?

, I think I'm right for an hour until you get to 500.

Or I think I'm more like Charlie Brown.

If Charlie Brown wrote a book, I would be Charlie Brown.

So you write those are, have you ever thought about writing

fiction, novel, or anything else?

I.

I have I have my, I have a goal of writing a mystery novel.

No, of now.

That's really interesting, isn't it?

Cuz like I'm not starting off with like just some story, right?

It's, you really have to think through the structure of the mystery

novel, figure out the clues, figure out building up to a crisis.

How does that handle And suddenly, You discover it's the butler.

And not Professor Mustard or whatever.

Yeah, exactly.

You're like, Oh, that's that.

That would be a good cutting edge piece for me to start and work on.

Cause you're basically writing a mystery book.

You're just writing it in reverse right now.

Yeah.

Yes.

That's a great way to look at that.

It's already doing that, so that's amazing.

Writing that many books in a relatively short amount of time is pretty impressive.

and wanting to do more of it.

See that, that where a lot of people write a book or two Oh, I'm done.

I can't don't have any more ideas.

You always have.

Yeah, I've got, I have so many ideas to just, I have so much to say.

Now, the interesting thing is that I have started a number of books

that have completely fizzled out.

Because if it starts, and I only just discovered this in the last couple

years, if it starts to feel like a.

Book report for a college class.

Yeah.

Or a thesis for a doctorate degree.

Yeah.

I'm like, it just goes right out.

It's hard to write if you find it hard to write about what you wanna say, then

it may not be what you wanna write about.

Maybe look at something else to write or utilize that, or whatever.

But yeah, think of something else.

That's the way I kinda look at it.

Yeah.

I'm only written one book.

I'm almost done my second, But that's the way that.

For my very novice career as an author.

And how do you write?

Do you write for an hour every day?

Do do you write for 500 words at a time or do you just sit down on a long

weekend with a beer and start going at it?

That could be a weekday with a beer.

Yeah.

Retire.

You're retired, Travis.

That's now that you're retired.

That's how that is.

I figured when it's 11 o'clock or 10 o'clock here, it's five o'clock in

Germany sometimes, so I'm good to go.

No I do, I try to write every morning about an hour and a half or two hours.

And that can encompass anywhere between a thousand to 2000 words.

Wow.

and or, and I'll sometimes write in the afternoon, but one I've

been in, my, my mind is just jelly.

So I try to, but even though I'm not writing, I'm thinking about

what I wanna write tomorrow.

So I'm thinking about I don't plan out a book, I don't outline.

I just write it.

And so that's what I do.

And I can, I could probably manage in a week, depend on a

five day week, maybe 10,000 words.

So I'll write it like I'm at 80,000 words right now in my second book.

Wow.

Where is that?

I'm almost done.

It's almost done.

I only know how I even started writing, to be honest.

Maybe Ur, I have no idea how I even started to write a book.

I just decided to write.

Oh, Leg Bloomer.

That's what I call it.

I see your book, your books behind you.

So it's available in print.

Oh yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

E print and it's gonna be audio too.

Oh.

Have you started that process?

Oh, they've already, Yeah.

We, we had 25 people auditioned for the book.

And So you doing it right through acx?

No, we're doing it through a publisher.

I have a publisher.

Oh, okay.

And we're doing it through them.

So yeah, so it's already out and about, been out since the 30th of Mar of August.

That's brilliant.

Yeah.

Brilliant.

I enjoy it.

And what I really enjoy.

I get to talk to people like you who have done it, and you take

nuggets from everybody, right?

Everybody has a jam or a nugget that they share and they don't

even know that they haven't, right?

That's very true.

So you take that and you can build upon that and add your own little

nuggets and gems, and then finally you have some kind of a plan to work.

So that's the kinda way that I look at it from a business perspective or

from writing or personal or whatever.

That's why I kinda look at it like that.

Nice.

Nice.

Yeah.

My big, the reason I asked about acx, especially for you other authors that

are out there, that is a brilliant way to, I've made more money through

Audible than, I wouldn't have guessed it.

I'm making more money through Audible than I am through print and and eBooks

and I think that's gonna come up.

Listen to that.

Yeah.

I think the pandemic.

Folks were audio, they're driving to work, getting traffic jam, right?

You don't want to hear the same crap on radio all the time, right?

They sit down, listen somebody's story and, but the

pandemic, everybody's at home.

So I think probably print or ebook probably thrive a little bit, but now

people are getting back to work and getting back in those traffic jams.

I think the audio books are gonna be come back into play.

Because taking a walk, you can live to an audio book or

driving your car or whatever.

You can listen to that audio book.

I think that's, I.

Yeah.

In Travis, you talked about auditions.

Like you, you really do audition people to do your audio book and you

can specify do you want a young girl from the antebellum South and they, and

there's a person out there who's a young girl with a y'all accent back to read

your book for you, or do you want a.

An 80 year old British guy to read it.

And these these aren't how these people really are, but their voice

characteristics fill those bills.

Yeah.

How we picked how we picked the narrator for ours is I narrowed

down to about five me and my wife, and then I asked my son who works in the

field that is referenced in the book.

And he heard, he goes, That's just the way that people talk at work.

I go, Okay, this is the guy that's gonna do it.

So that's how it kinda came up with that kinda collaborative.

Wow.

Even though my son never read the book never not no contribution

at all, but I wanted to get his intake on the audio portion of it.

Wow.

Yeah.

Very cool.

So you do, and you're also a business coach and Yes.

Based on your coaching of other business Folks, they've written books.

Yes.

That is organic growth, you know that, that's pretty cool.

. Yes.

The guy that, it's really funny cuz this guy Jesse, that I worked with who is an

incredible owner and CEO of this company.

He's really grown the company in the years that we've worked together.

One of the things he talked about was trying to figure out

how to market his business.

And he was talking about knob and tube wiring.

That's a big deal up here in New England because all these houses have knob and

tube waring and they can't get insured.

They have to and they're fire hazards and they're just, It's old, crappy wiring.

Oh yeah.

And it needs to be replaced, and it's expensive to do that.

It's a big job.

Just imagine a standing structure that's already has fixtures and everything

in it, and you gotta replace all the wiring everywhere in the entire house.

And so he, his first book was an a homeowner's Guide to Knob and tube

wiring, and he really wrote that as a.

Place to market his expertise in the greater Boston metropolitan area.

And it grew so much that he was like getting offers from people to come

fly a crew out to Michigan to replace because they had the same problem.

Cause they had the same problem.

And there's not a lot of people, There might be a lot of people

out there that replace it.

But interestingly enough, if you write a book, you suddenly.

An expert, right?

You?

Yes.

It's, he's become the facto expert on knob and tube wiring in the country and

is even on wikiHow now about in stuff that he's that he talks about, which is

then increased his awareness Google's awareness of him, which has increased the

awareness of the business and off he goes.

That's amazing.

So do you do books, shows?

Do you, how do you get, how do you get your book out?

Cause I find, and it may fan strange, but I find writing the book was

easiest part, It's marketing the book, getting your name out there.

That to me that's the challenge.

Oh, marketing the book's the easiest part.

How's that?

Listen.

You write a book that should write a book on that.

I write that down and that'd be a good little piece to have.

How to market a book.

You wouldn't have to put anything it people would buy.

That's it.

That's it.

Blank page.

Just fill it out.

Fill it out yourself.

Connect it up.

so one of the first things to do is to figure out you, you have to think

of yourself as a brand, and you have to even to the point of your name.

And my, I go by Scott, we're, you're calling me Scott here.

But on all my books it is.

Here we go.

G Scott.

With a period after the G.

And so now if if you go to Google and you type in g Scott Graham, my picture comes

up, my bio comes up, not my bio from my website, but Google creates a knowledge.

When you type up George Washington, you get a little square box in the corner

of Google that has George Washington's picture and a few little details.

I Google even has my birthday.

There.

And so that piece, as people find me, is a, is a way to do that.

And then I've worked for each of my books, I shouldn't say each of my

books, the books that I'm really trying to promote all have a book trailer.

You have a book trailer, Travis?

Yes.

And so that book trailer is out.

And also my book trailers also have g Scott Graham in the title.

So that people can find that.

And so Google loves me around those things.

And I have an author website.

that has the books listed.

And I make made sure that my books are not just available at Amazon, they're

available at Cobo Apple, Google and Google's been the best in terms of you.

Indexing information from my books and actually then putting that, so

somebody might do a search result for how do I Grow Good King Henry.

And because my book, because this book is indexed by Google it shows

up in the search results or a little snippet from inside the book.

They can.

Read the book, but they can see the little snippet inside the book cuz

Google Books, which is different than having your book on Google Play.

Google Books is committed to having every single book on the planet

indexed and searchable by Google.

That's a hold and your books aren't sold.

Yeah, I've heard of that.

Yes, I've heard of that.

Yeah.

So getting your book on Google books, especially books like mine

that have detailed objective information that somebody might be

looking for, really helps with that.

With being found.

Yeah, the branding's important.

I, my, my daughter, I had a book signing last weekend.

My daughter's very creative and she goes, Dad, you gotta get, gotta brand you.

So she started helped me with branding and and get some bookmarks, put book

comes home, comes by the by sign the book, even though they don't buy

the book, Give a bookmark with your information, with hit a link and take

you to your website and everything.

That's a great idea.

So that's a great idea.

Yeah, she's pretty creative.

I didn't pay.

I'm not gonna pay her.

Oh man you've already paid her.

She has to pay you back.

You should keep a ledger Travis that says, All right, that's,

you still owe me a lot money.

My son.

I, maybe my son.

I would, I need a advocate for that.

No, that, that's great.

Think that's good advice for any new author or anybody thinking about an

author is look how you can brand.

Even if you have a common name like myself, right?

It's fairly common.

So how do you brand yourself so somebody can find you to learn

more about you, and then more about what you're doing or have done?

Correct.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so on your website, on you have an author website just dedicated to you and

your, not your book like I have g scott graham.com I'm gonna have to say no,

not, I have a business website that I run everything through, but I think I do

need to get an author website, so I'll probably do that the week sometime.

But yeah.

Yeah.

Finding it doesn't have to be a huge piece.

And if you have, if you go for that author website, sharing my little nuggets.

Good.

There is and you choose WordPress.

Most people are published through WordPress.

There is an author.

I'm not getting paid for this.

There is an author template that you can add into WordPress

so you can put your book in.

It makes it like a no brainer and it puts your picture of your book Oh wow.

Description of your book, reviews for your book, and then all the places that you can

buy it so someone can go on your website.

And it's it's a really nice template for for putting your books out there.

And that's a good idea.

Yeah.

That's.

I'm retired, I can do it.

So I can do whatever I do the day, right?

As long as I have my honey, do stuff done.

Yes, that's important.

That's, And then the only other thing to mention, once you have that website,

you wanna make sure that you have information in there for what Google

searches for called the knowledge graph.

So on my website I have my name, I have names that I'm also known as cuz

my g Scott Graham is my book name.

But my full name is Gregory Scott Graham Dash Stevens.

Really long name right.

And so that's in there cuz you want Google to say, This is

the site about Travis, right?

This is, And so this is this site about Travis is linking to this Facebook page.

That page must also be about Travis, and then Google starts to populate

things up in this magical kind of way.

Cool.

Good thing is recorded.

Yeah, you can see it . That's awesome.

It's it's been a pleasure talking to you today.

Learned a lot.

So Oh, good.

I was a little worried cause I was like, Oh my gosh, I haven't written a story.

And he's gonna ask me about how I come up with stories and I'm like,

I don't have anything to offer.

No.

So folks around my age you can learn more.

Never too late.

No, it's great.

I So tell everybody where they can reach you at where your books are at.

Easy peasy.

All you have to do is Google g Scott, Graham, and Google will feed that up.

Or you just go without the period and the spaces to g scott graham.com.

That's my main website for my author stuff and everything is linked from there.

Everything.

Awesome.

Great.

I can't wait to read the other ones.

Cause you seem like you got a few in the hopper there.

That's great.

I do.

And the way that you're doing it is not only helping yourself,

but you're helping people that you coach cause you're coaching by proxy.

So she was, oh, I never thought about that.

That's a great way to do No.

So I appreciate it.

Scott again, g Scott Graham, go out and check him out.

Checking out some of the, Pretty eclectic, different things he's talking about.

So something's gotta strike your fancy.

Enjoy.

Yeah.

And if it doesn't strike you now, it'll strike you at some point.

You'll have one.

He'll one.

Thank you Scott.

I appreciate it.

Hey, you're welcome.

What a privilege.

Bye-bye.