What is something you’ve always wanted to do that you’ve never done? That question, right there, can change the trajectory of someone’s life, which it did for my guest on today’s episode, Vicky Weber. Vicky, like most of us, was an educator, but had dreams of doing something bigger. However, it wasn’t until her husband asked her that question that she pursued her dream of writing children’s books.

One of the fears of people following their dreams is failure and not feeling like you have the right skills to succeed. Vicky shares her advice for pushing through and an important piece of advice for just starting. She details some setbacks and the adversity she overcame, and we circle it back to how teacher skills are once again, transferable to any profession and starting your own business.

Although writing children’s books and being a published author might not be your dream, take a note out of Vicky’s lesson plans and ask yourself, what is something you’ve always wanted to do that you’ve never done? Because really, the only person standing in the way of your dreams is you.

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As an elementary school teacher and a best selling author, Vicky Weber has successfully coached clients all over the world at various stages in their author journeys. She has a successful self published author, but it's also been published by Disney and Penguin Random House.

Vicky is one of the coaches and founders at At Home Author where she helps aspiring authors turn their ideas into best selling children's books.

Welcome, Vicky. So glad to have you here with us.

Thank you glad to be here.

All right. Well, I know you've had an interesting journey both inside of the classroom and out, can you start by telling us about your journey as an educator?

Yeah, I was an elementary educator for six years before I left. My degree is in music education, but my masters is in teaching and learning with an ESL concentration. So I was certified to do a lot of things. And it was a lot of fun.

My most recent job was teaching music and STEAM to pre K through fifth grade. So my principal called it the unicorn position. Who else was qualified to do music and STEAM and, and every day was different, I worked with so many different grade levels, and it was a lot of fun, no day looked alike.

And then before that job, I was at several low income schools, where I exclusively taught elementary music, but then the pandemic hit, and changed a lot of things for a lot of people. I was high risk, so I had to stay teaching virtually. And as some of you can imagine, trying to teach music over Zoom is an incredible challenge, especially when some of your students are preschoolers or kindergarteners.

So you know, it involves getting really creative, for sure. It was really high stress as well, as you know, many people are very well aware with.

Yes, that's awesome. So tell us a little bit about how did you become a published author? Or was that something you always kind of wanted to do? Or how did that happen?

You know, it's funny, because I get this question a lot. And I feel like my answer sounds like so many people who are probably going to listen to something like this. I've always wanted to write books, I've had quirky ideas. I've been a reader my entire life so much. So I used to get grounded from reading. And I was like, not doing my chores or like ignoring my mom or something like that I didn't fully deserve the grounding.

But I was such a bookworm. And when I came into the classroom, I realized that a lot of kids don't like reading and didn't have that same experience with that same passion that I did. And I kept thinking about, well, there's no reason why you can't love reading, you just have to find the right subjects, you need to see yourself in the book, or, you know, you need to find like the right fit, because some books are going to be more difficult than others.

Or maybe the pacing doesn't draw a child in, but it does draw another child in. So I had all of these ideas spinning in my head because I know my students so well, you know, and, and I wanted them to be excited about learning. That was always my goal for them. Even if it wasn't music, I wanted them to be lifelong learners.

And so I had all these ideas, I would use them in my classroom sometimes, but it was nothing formal, I would just tell stories or make up a game or put something on a PowerPoint. And one day, my husband, who does all these crazy side things all the time because he just loves it. He was doing one of his crazy side things and he looks at me and he goes, What is something you've always wanted to do, that you've never done?

And I didn't skip a beat. I said, I've always wanted to publish children's books. And he said, Well, what's stopping you? And I said, Well, I don't know. Like, that's not something you can just do. Why not? And I'm like, Well, I don't know why not. He's like, Well, let's go figure this out.

But I thought I needed to be something I wasn't like, I thought I needed to know people or I thought I needed a background in writing or some type of experience or, I don't know, be a celebrity. I thought I needed to be something I wasn't. And the more I dove into the industry, the more I realized that's not true. It's not true at all.

Really, what you need to be a great author is you need to be willing to make changes. Yes, you need to be committed to learn, which, you know, hey, teachers, that's you already, let's be real here. And you have to have the drive to keep pushing forward. Because writing books is something that can get personal sometimes.

It's kind of like your book, baby, you know, you're going to get criticism, or you're going to doubt yourself, are my ideas good enough? You start to wonder, like, should I really be doing this thing? Can my book actually help people?

So you have to have either the support system in place already, or create a support system for yourself to be able to push past any of those insecurities or moments of doubt when they do pop up. Yes, I love that.

Yeah, I mean, really, that's you can learn the logistics, you know, you can learn that anywhere. You can even go get a publishing degree, you can take courses, you can do all that. But you can't, you know, you can't learn from somebody else to believe in you.

Yes, absolutely. I mean, this reminds me of like I always say, so I have done curriculum development for the past decade plus, and now teach people how to work as curriculum developers. And that's similar advice that I always give like, you can learn writing skills, like you get that you have to be a good writer, right?

Like you do have to be a good writer to eventually publish a book or have a successful book or write amazing curriculum. But you can learn that through all the things you just said, right? Like, it's through taking action and taking risks and being open to feedback and revising.

And that's actually how you learn the skills that we often feel like, we're like, we don't have these skills. It's all from that kind of pre thinking of the way we go about things.

Right, like people think they have to start with those skills in place. You don't have to start as a good writer, you need to just start.

Absolutely, yes, absolutely. So okay, so you had that talk with your husband, which I also love that conversation. It's like my mission in life to be that person and being like, what do you want to do? What's stopping you? Because I think we all need that push sometime.

And we need somebody and like, I challenge everybody listening to this podcast to like, go out and ask somebody that question like, What have you always wanted to do? And then what's stopping you? And try and be their cheerleader and like support system and that push that I think we all often need.

But I'm curious about like, okay, so you have this conversation. And then did you go write a manuscript? Did you research publishing? Like, what was the next step?

So the next step was because I had my ideas, but I didn't know like, how to make the ideas actually, like come to life, you know, because it's one thing to say, I'm going to have this book and it's going to do XYZ, it's another thing to like, actually make it do XYZ.

So I went through, I just had a running Google Doc, and I wrote down every idea I possibly had in as many details as I could. But I didn't actually write the story. It was just bullet points, and, you know, scribbles and things that would help me later, actually flesh it out.

And then what I did is I started to research what publishing actually looked like, because I knew that I could learn writing as a skill. I wasn't worried about that. But what I was worried about was, well, what comes next? Should I be saving money right now? Like, should I be, you know, over the course of me writing, should I be setting aside a certain amount of money? Or should I be like researching connections as I go?

Like, what do I need to do, as I'm writing? And what I learned was there are two main publishing routes, and they're very different. The traditional publishing route is completely free. So note to anybody listening, if somebody claims to be a traditional publisher and charges you even a dime, that's a scam. So keep that in mind, traditional publishing pays you.

The hard thing with traditional publishing, though, is because it's the publishers money on the line, they're picky about what stories they pick up. So it can take time to break into the industry. And you have to pitch yourself well. Basically, their their philosophy is, if you can't sell me, the publisher on the book, me the publisher can't sell a reader. Sure.

So a lot of times what I actually see with authors with new authors now is they have a good story, but they have no idea how to pitch it. And that's the real problem that prevents them from getting into traditional publishing.

The other route is self publishing, where you are the publisher, so therefore, you have all of the expenses and logistics of the publisher. So it's very involved, it's very expensive to do well. And I kind of liked that. But I am a little bit extra.

I'm the type of person that I'm curious about something, oh, I'll just like, do a quick Google search. Five hours later, I've like, you know, dove into the head, the deep end over here, I just, I'm that personality type. So I liked being overly involved.

And so for my first book, I decided that I wanted to self publish, I knew it'd be difficult, I knew it would be expensive. But I really felt like it was a good fit for my personality and what I wanted to learn.

Flash forward to now I've been published both ways. And I do both simultaneously. So fun fact, you do not have to commit yourself to one publishing route or the other. It's just the individual book is committed to one route or the other.

So if you pick to self publish, it is very unlikely a traditional publisher will ever pick that up later, unless you have like Eragon or 50 Shades of Grey level of success. And at that point, you're already doing something right.

Totally, yep. Do you have advice for people who are like, I don't know which one to pick. Like, is there a certain type of book or do you recommend that when people are first starting out, they go one way?

Generally is very generally speaking, if like cost is a concern, go the traditional publishing route. If time is a concern, traditional publishing route, because with the traditional publishing route, you'll you basically just have to focus on writing once you get an agent, and you get to focus on the craft.

Whereas when you self publish, you need to be marketing, you need to constantly be, you know, worrying about printing, and fulfillment, and all of those details as well.

So if time or money is a concern for you, then traditional is probably better for you. If you like being hyper involved, and having a lot of control, if you like being able to, like really, really get creative with things and think outside the box, then self publishing is a great route because like I add QR codes to the back of my book with like, cookie recipes, if it's a cookie book, or, you know, fun activities, things like that.

I guess the biggest takeaway is you have to choose what's right for you. And if you have a book that's hyper specific to like a niche, usually self publishing is actually better for that. Traditional publishers usually want things that have like mass market appeal.

So that was part of the reason why the books that I wrote that were music education focused, did really well with self publishing, because it was a tight knit market that once people enjoyed word of mouth really helped. My marketing really helped. A traditional publisher probably would have looked at that story and wondered, how do I make this apply to more people?

Hmm, yes, that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, it reminds me of like, it seems like self publishing really is having your own business, right, like, doing the marketing, finding your people, getting clear on who your ideal clients are, like, all of that stuff, which I think is appealing to some people and not appealing to others.

And reminds me a little bit too, and like the world of curriculum, you know, like the easiest, the fastest way to cash is like working with big companies, right? Or organizations. So that's kind of similar to like the publishing industry.

And then you can also create your own curriculum and sell it. But that, again, requires you to do like all the marketing, getting the word out, and it's a slower ramp up, but then you have more creative control. So it's always kind of a trade off.

Yeah. And there are so many articles out there that are like, Oh, this publishing route is best. And here's why this one's best. And here's why. And I always tell people, it's no different than your students.

You know, when you are creating for your students, you already you go in there realizing they have different learning styles, they have different interests, they have different priorities. It's no different for you. Your priorities for publishing or writing or your business goals or your financial situation is going to be different than the next person.

So the only person that can tell you what is right, what's the best route for you is you and so that does take a little bit of research and some self awareness. I just encourage people to whatever route you do decide, don't flip to the other side, just because it didn't pan out the way you wanted.

You know, if you self publish, and it doesn't go the way you want, don't go, oh, I guess I'll go traditional because I suck at this, or, Oh, I can't get it. I haven't gotten an agent yet, so I guess I'll just self publish it.

You'll figure out what you know you're doing right and what you could improve on. Because if you're having problems on one side of the industry, you're probably gonna have similar problems on the other side of the industry, it'll just enlighten you in different ways.

Totally, absolutely. I'm like, you have to give yourself time to figure it out. And like, it's not gonna be with anything, probably a clear path of just like, I'm doing this thing. And then it's done. It's always bumpy. And that's kind of where the magic happens of the bumps. And like they figuring it out along the way. So tell us a little bit about the books that you've written.

Yeah, so I have a lot, so I'm not going to list them all. Yes, a quick Google search of Vicky Weber, they'll all pop up. But mostly what I write is I have music education based books, because I my ideas were based around books, like Don't Push the Button, or There's a Monster in Your Book, the interactive ones.

My thought was, well, why can't they be musical? And why can't they teach music ed concepts? So my best selling book is called Rhythm Rescue, it's a girl who's a superhero. And in order to activate her powers, she has two powers throughout the book, you have to clap the right rhythm. And the rhythms, there's two rhythms throughout, they're the inverse of each other.

So the kids have to pay attention to help her, you know, finish the story and you know, make it to the end kind of thing. I have another one that's called Tiger Tempo. And tempo is the word for different speeds in music. So in order to teach these speed terminologies, the illustration has a tiger running a race. And so every spread, he's doing something at a different speed.

So for Andante, which means walking speed, he is walking across a log, so you can't go too fast, or he'll fall off. So you need to clap along with the character and help him keep his pace. And there's a little speedometer in the corner. It's really cool. But it helps them in a in a fun engaging way figure out, you know, what each term means and they can visually see it and feel it, you know, with their class and things like that.

I also write books about my heritage. I am half Puerto Rican, my mom likes to call me sorta Rican. So I write about, you know, little known Puerto Rican myths or the Taino people who are the indigenous people in the Caribbean. So I write stories about that.

And then I've also worked with Disney on the Step Into Reading level three book for Disney's En Canto. So they actually found me, and I got to see like the movie script, before the movie was even announced to the public. Oh, that's cool. Um, so I had to fill out all this paperwork.

And but I got to see, like the illustrations coming to shape and like the research they'd done, down to like, they had a whole like case study on like the roof lines in Colombia. It was really, really cool to experience. So basically, they handed me the movie scripts and said, Can you turn this into a book? Awesome.

I got to work on that for them. And then yeah, I've got lots more in the works. Right now I have about 11 picture books currently published with many more on the way I've got two chapter books under a pen name, and then the early reader through Disney.

Awesome, that's so exciting. And you also have At Home Author, which I believe you started with some other authors. Can you tell us about that?

So when you have this much fun with publishing and you appear all over the internet, I get people all the time asking how do I publish a book? You know, how do I do this? What do I do here asking for advice. And I still to this day, I get hundreds of messages every day. How do I do this? How do I make this come true? This is my dream. I've always wanted to do this.

So myself and two other lovely ladies, Brittany Plumary and Chelsea Tornedo. They are also teachers turned best selling children's book authors and they're lovely friends of mine. So the three of us started a company called At Home Author.

And the entire purpose of the company is to help other people successfully publish children's books. One of the biggest, I guess kind of callings to that is A we you know, we can't escape being teachers. It's who we are.

So there's no getting rid of it.

There's no, there's no escaping that side of us A and B, what we found was, even though all the information you need to learn how to publish is out there on the internet, a lot of it is either conflicting, does not apply to children's books, or is not all nice and neat in one place.

And so, us being the teachers that we are, you know, we kind of, essentially develop curriculum in a way, you know, we have courses, we have blog posts, we have YouTube videos, but we purposely create content that is easy for anyone to follow, so that anybody can do this, too. So that's kind of our that's kind of our mission.

That's awesome. I love that. And yeah, I think it's so interesting to see teachers use their skills in so many different ways. And like, I always tell the story of my friends, I've had two friends who became photographers after leaving the classroom, which seems like not so connected.

And then they went back around to start having like workshops about photography, and creating workbooks that go along with our workshops, and like totally developing curriculum on how to use fancy cameras, and being real teachery, even in something that doesn't seem directly connected.

So I think it's so cool, just to see like, all the different ways that those skills can be used, even though you started, you know, writing your own books, and still continue to do that, but then can use your teaching skills to really package that up and support others to do that, too.

Yeah, and I think that it makes such a huge difference to that's one of the things we hear all the time is we'll we'll make a video and they're like, oh, my gosh, this makes me really feel like I can do it. And, you know, when I was starting out, I was watching videos and things, but I was sitting there trying to figure out how to make it apply to me.

Or Okay, so now I need to read about this and figure out what the heck that means. And they mentioned some terminology that I don't understand. And, and I don't have another resource to go figure it out. So how do I, where do I so it's really refreshing to see people walk away from, you know, reading a blog post, or watching a YouTube video or taking one of our courses and feeling like, I know what I'm doing, I've got this.

You know, maybe they're not confident 100% of the time every day. But you know, I must have researched for at least a year before I even started writing my stories. And I still felt super unprepared. And I still made a ton of mistakes with my first book that I wish I could go back and you know, I would do things differently.

But you know, it jumpstarted where I'm at now, you know, and so, mistakes are meant to be learned from but you know, I want to I want to be part of the solution that has people feeling as prepared as possible. You know, I don't want anybody especially teachers wasting money in places they don't need or wasting time in places that they don't need.

Because really this it's it's so rewarding. Even being out of the classroom now, I still get to go to classrooms and do the fun part. I literally as an for author visits, I get to do a lesson plan and then leave.

So amazing. That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, I think it's like, you don't ever feel entirely confident. Usually, you know, nobody does, like there's always gonna be some fear or things you don't know or like scariness so waiting for those feelings to go away is not realistic.

And I see that stop people a lot of just like, Okay, I'm just gonna, like gather some more information before I like take the leap. Because I don't want to feel scared. It's like, I'm sorry. Right? You're gonna feel scared doing something new. Like that's being a human.

And so I think like, yeah, gathering the information, and then figuring it out by doing it. Like it doesn't have to be perfect. Like you're saying your first book, you know, had mistakes wasn't perfect. Yet you continued on and have experienced success through doing the thing.

Yeah, and I think that's just the biggest takeaway is, you know, the only person standing in the way of your dreams is you. You know, and so, you need to decide, you know, what risks you're willing to take.

You know, for me, I was making a side income as a children's book author, in addition to teaching but my turning point was just, you know, I was I was pregnant, I was teaching in a pandemic, and then I had my baby girl, and I realized even though I was in an incredibly supportive district, I was in an amazing like, dream job, awesome district.

You know, the pay was good. Supportive environment, I still felt like even though I was in that great of a position, I couldn't be the mom I wanted to be for my daughter if I stayed. And not everybody is going to feel that way. But that's that was how I felt about my situation is if you know, if I stay, I'm not going to be the mom that I want to be to her.

And so even though it was a, it was a big financial risk for me, I took the leap, and in my first month of leaving, I made three times what I would have as a teacher purely because now I had time to pour myself into my business more.

You know, I already had success, but not enough to go full time. And so taking the leap for me really paid off, and it's continued to pay off. And that's really what people need to do is weigh the pros and cons and, and know yourself and what you're willing to risk and what you're not.

Yes, absolutely. That reminds me of my story, too. You know, I left the classroom when my daughter was born, and also found that I could make like so many more exponentially more income, working outside, you know, as a curriculum developer, as an education consultant, doing all these things.

I think sometimes you don't know until you're in it, because I also was doing like curriculum projects on the side while being a classroom teacher. So I knew I could do that, you know, I knew that the world was out there. But I didn't really understand how I mean, this sounds silly, but like how much of my energy was being zapped by teaching.

And even though I was doing all this stuff on the side, I wasn't going full force. And so when you allow yourself should go full force into the thing you really want to do, then it's a totally different outcome.

Because you have time you have time to reach people, and you have time to think about not just what you're doing, but how you're doing it, you know, and just the flexibility. And, honestly, my biggest saving grace is I'm like, I have time to go to the bathroom, I have time to eat lunch, I have time to do these things that, you know, I would come home already spent.

And if I was teaching virtually, I would walk away from my office already, like at my full capacity for the day. And so that didn't leave very much for me to pour into my interest to pour into my daughter, you know, and I think that having those little things, even there really are big things, but they feel like little things when you're in the middle of teaching morale wise, energy wise, it makes a huge difference.

Yes, definitely. So thinking about teachers who might be in a spot where they're like, I want to do something else outside of the classroom, and aren't really sure how to move forward, what advice would you give them?

I guess my advice would be to, well, first, find out what you're passionate about. Because if you're excited about what you're doing, it's going to feel so much less like work. And it'll really energize yourself rather than drain yourself, you know, you if you're teaching, and especially if you've got kids at home, you've already got a lot on your plate.

So think about this stuff that you are either already good at and really passionate about, or you have a passion for it and you really want to learn more, because that passion will really help.

And then my biggest suggestion would be to try to work smarter, not harder. A lot of times when it comes to writing books, specifically, people will say, Well, I don't have time to write, you know, I don't have time in my day. And I'm like well, you know, you need to find the time, but you don't have to sit down for an hour isolated in a quiet room.

I sometimes will put in my AirPods, open up the Google Docs app on my phone and speak a story to my phone while I'm doing the dishes. Or if I'm waiting in the daycare pickup line, and I'm parked anyway, you know, I'll go on the Google Docs app on my phone and write you know, oh, I have an idea for this.

Or it doesn't always have to be long spurts of time, you know, where you're only dedicated to this task. You can find the small spaces already in your day to make a little bit of progress.

Yeah, because it's the difference between you can look at the mountain in front of you and feel like I'm never going to get there. But if you look down at your feet, and you just focus on moving forward, no matter how minuscule that step is, you're going to be at the summit before you know it.

Absolutely. And any action is better than no action. You know, it really can be so so tiny. And if you're taking a tiny bit of action every day, then that takes you way further than you would be if you were just kind of thinking about the thing. So yeah, I absolutely agree with that.

Well, thank you so much for sharing all about your journey and and how folks can start thinking about publishing books and getting started beyond the classroom. If people want to connect with you to find out more, where can they do that?

If they want to learn more about my books, specifically, they can go to vickyweber.com. And if they have questions, or just want some help with getting their books published, they can visit athomeauthor.com or @athomeauthor on any social media channels as well.

Awesome, and we'll definitely put links to those as well. Thanks so much, Vicky. It was great talking with you.

Thanks for having me.