Lisa Tener is an award-winning book coach who specializes in helping experts, visionaries, and entrepreneurs write and publish compelling how-to, self-help, and business books. For over 12 years, Lisa served as Faculty of Continuing Medical Education at Harvard Medical School.
Her clients have signed five and six-figure publishing deals with dozens of publishers, including Random House, Harper Collins, and more. She’s the Author of The Joy of Writing Journal: Spark Your Creativity in 8 Minutes a Day. Lisa also runs a Bring Your Book to Life program.
Vanessa Levin is an Early Childhood Professional Development Consultant and the Creator of Pre-K Pages, one of the Internet’s most popular resource websites for teachers of young children.
She has more than 20 years of classroom teaching experience, and people across the globe follow her teachings. Vanessa is also the Author of Teach Smarter: Literacy Strategies for Early Childhood Teachers.
Christopher Littlefield is an international speaker and Founder of Beyond Thank You, an international consulting, training, and coaching company specializing in employee appreciation, recognition, and workplace culture.
He’s trained thousands of leaders to understand what their people want and need to be at their best. His clients include Accenture, Boston Medical Center, Salesforce, the US Army and Air Force, the United Nations, and more. He’s the Author of the best-seller 75+Team Building Activities for Remote Teams: Simple Ways to Build Trust, Strengthen Communications, and Laugh Together from Afar.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- How Vanessa Levin started and grew Pre-K Pages
- Christopher Littlefield shares how he pivoted from international conflict resolution to help managers build and maintain relationships
- Lisa Tener’s story of becoming a book coach
- How not to write a book
- Self-publishing versus traditional publishing
- How can you use your book as a lead magnet?
- What works — and doesn’t work — with a membership site
- The real impact of a book
- Secrets to compelling writing
- A must-have in your book
In this episode…
What are the odds you’ll write and publish a book? If it’s on your bucket list, you may be wondering how to go about it or what impact it can have on your business.
Here’s the truth: publishing a book has had a tremendous impact on today’s guests and their businesses. They share their experience, process, and lessons of publishing their books. Want to check book writing off your wish list? Three expert panelists will show you how.
Listen to this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast with Dr. Jeremy Weisz featuring book coach Lisa Tener, international speaker Christopher Littlefield, and Early Childhood Consultant Vanessa Levin. They discuss the process, lessons, and impact of publishing a book, and each author shares their journey and advice for turning your idea into a published work.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Lisa Tener’s website
- Lisa Tener on LinkedIn
- Beyond Thank You
- Christopher Littlefield on LinkedIn
- Pre-K Pages
- Vanessa Levin on LinkedIn
Special Mentions:
Books Mentioned:
- The Ultimate Guide to Transforming Anger: Dynamic Tools for Healthy Relationships by Jane Middelton-Moz, Lisa Tener, and Peaco Todd
- Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
- Hour of the Witch: A Novel by Chris Bohjalian
- Conscious Business: How to Build Value Through Values by Fred Kofman
- The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success by Diana Chapman, Jim Dethmer, and Kaley Klemp
- Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz
Related Episode(s):
- “[Chicago Business Series] What Inspires Perry Marshall? Author of 80/20 Sales & Marketing”
- “Does God Exist? with Perry Marshall, author of Evolution 2.0”
- “Negotiation Tactics From FBI Agent Christopher Voss, Founder of Black Swan Ltd”
- “How to Create Your Breakthrough Idea with Dorie Clark, Author of ‘Stand Out’”
- “[Sweet Process Series] Why Leading with Gratitude is a Must-Have Skill with Chester Elton of The Culture Works”
Sponsor for this episode
At Rise25, we’re committed to helping you connect with your Dream 100 referral partners, clients, and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast solution.
We’re a professional podcast production agency that makes creating a podcast effortless. Since 2009, our proven system has helped thousands of B2B businesses build strong relationships with referral partners, clients, and audiences without doing the hard work.
What do you need to start a podcast?
When you use our proven system, all you need is an idea and a voice. We handle the strategy, production, and distribution – you just need to show up and talk.
The Rise25 podcasting solution is designed to help you build a profitable podcast. This requires a specific strategy, and we’ve got that down pat. We focus on making sure you have a direct path to ROI, which is the most important component. Plus, our podcast production company takes any heavy lifting of production and distribution off your plate.
We make distribution easy.
We’ll distribute each episode across more than 11 unique channels, including iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We’ll also create copy for each episode and promote your show across social media.
Cofounders Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran credit podcasting as being the best thing they have ever done for their businesses. Podcasting connected them with the founders/CEOs of P90x, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Rx Bars, YPO, EO, Lending Tree, Freshdesk, and many more.
The relationships you form through podcasting run deep. Jeremy and John became business partners through podcasting. They have even gone on family vacations and attended weddings of guests who have been on the podcast.
Podcast production has a lot of moving parts and is a big commitment on our end; we only want to work with people who are committed to their business and to cultivating amazing relationships.
Are you considering launching a podcast to acquire partnerships, clients, and referrals? Would you like to work with a podcast agency that wants you to win?
Contact us now at [email protected] or book a call at rise25.com/bookcall.
Rise25 Cofounders, Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran, have been podcasting and advising about podcasting since 2008.
Insider Stories from Top Leaders & Entrepreneurs…
Episode Transcript
Jeremy Weisz 0:19
Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders, and this is going to be an amazing episode with a special panel about books and how they use books and the impact of books. And I always like to mention, and I’ll formally introduce everyone in a second, I always like to mention other episodes we’ll check out since this is book inspired. You know, I love books with Chris, Vanessa, and Lisa. And, you know, what I love about is like, it’s 15 to $25 and you get someone’s amazing life work all their lessons in this small package that they you know, had their blood sweat and tears they poured into it for really inexpensive. And so some of the ones that check out on the podcast, I had a Perry Marshall he wrote at 80 20 sales and marketing he also wrote evolution 2.0 Totally, two totally different books. One’s in sales and marketing ones is Does God Exist, okay. And I had never split the difference with Chris Voss, which is one of my favorite books I’ve learned a lot from and many more. So check out those episodes, on Inspired Insider and this episode is brought to you by Rise25 and Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships and partnerships. And we do that by helping you run your podcast. You know, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships and always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way to do that over the past over a decade to profile the people and the companies with their thought leadership shout out from the rooftops what they’re doing, so everyone else can learn from them as well. So if you’ve thought about starting a podcast, you should hands down. If you have questions, email us at Rise25.com. Both my business partner and I, John have been doing it for over a decade, so we’re happy to answer any questions that you have. I’m excited to introduce today’s guests. Like you said, we’re in for a special treat. If you’re watching the video can see I have a panel of authors here talking about their book in the impact. And just to give you a little background of each one. Lisa Tener is an award winning book coach and specializing in helping experts, visionaries and entrepreneurs write and publish compelling How to Self Help our business books. for over 12 years, Lisa served on the faculty of Harvard Medical School’s women healthcare leadership and publishing courses that our clients have signed five and six figure publishing deals with dozens of publishers including Random House, Harper Collins, and more, you could shout out check out her book, The Joy of Writing Journal, Spark Your Creativity in Eight Minutes a Day. She also teaches her bring your book to Life program, at Lisatener.com/book. So check that out. And Vanessa Levin is the Creator of Pre-K Pages. And it’s one of the Internet’s most popular resource websites for teachers of young children. I can imagine, Vanessa, this has been really popular with the pandemic. Everyone is is a teacher and homeschooling their kids at this point. So I don’t care if you’re a teacher or not, you should check out her website. And she has more than 20 years of classroom teaching experience. People everywhere follow her teachings and she has more than a million people on social media following her it’s pretty remarkable. Her book is teach smarter, and you can check it out. I’m gonna I’m gonna pull up the web pages for each of these so you can check them out in a second and Christopher Littlefield is an international speaker, TEDx, you know, because I was watching your talk on TEDx in Beirut, of all places, and it was pretty remarkable so people can check that out. And he specializes in Employee Appreciation, recognition, workplace culture, and the Founder of Beyond Thank You. He’s trained 1000s of leaders on how to understand what their people want, and need to be at their best. I even saw a video he did have someone on the subway, or it was a train interviewing them. So he interviews people everywhere, asking about their experiences with their employers. And some of his clients include Accenture, Boston Medical Center, Salesforce, the US Army and Air Force, the United nature, nations and more. He’s the author of the bestselling book 75 Plus Team Building Activities for Remote Teams. I’m going to stop talking, but thanks for joining me, all of you. And I want to start with the conversation. I’m gonna have you talk a little bit of just about your, your book in business and what you do. And I love Vanessa, for you to start. And we’ll also piggyback on we’re having a little conversation before we hit record on what Chris was commenting on. So Vanessa, why don’t you start off a little bit about your business and in what you do in your book.
Vanessa Levin 4:53
Sure. So I it Pre-K Pages started it when I would say I was probably in my 11th year of teaching, and it was about 2001. And I started a website. And it was just for the parents of my students, because that was what the district required us to do. And I wanted to get good marks on my evaluation as a teacher, right. And teachers are people pleasers. So I started this website. And big shocker here. Jeremy, no parents ever visited it.
Jeremy Weisz 5:31
Because you build it. And they all come situation usually.
Vanessa Levin 5:35
Well, it was just for the parents in my classroom, but But it started to get picked up on Google. And which was really amazing. To me, the Internet was kind of in its infancy then. And I started getting people from all over the world finding it and asking me teaching questions, whether it was parents or teachers. And so I said, Okay, well, I’m just gonna roll with it. And so I turned it into the precursor to a blog, a teacher website, and I just answered people’s questions about teaching early childhood, because it turns out that this was a huge gap that existed out there in the world, information about teaching young children at that time was just not readily prevalent on the interwebs. So it just grew and grew and grew. Until finally in 2010, I had started offering a few products for teachers to download, you know, like PDFs. And after a while, I was like, Well, I think that maybe I’m making as much selling these as I am teaching, like, Is that even possible? Like, how did that happen? So I left the classroom and devoted myself full time to serving teachers, and parents, if they’re interested and spreading the word about early childhood education, best practices, and most importantly, in today’s day and age, bridging the gap between what we think of traditionally as preschool and K 12 education, there’s this big gap that exists between these two worlds. And they often clash. And so that’s kind of where I come in to level the playing field and explain it to everyone. So that’s how to how Pre-K Pages started. And then, you know, we can talk later, if you want about how the book came to be. I mean, it’s kind of like a eventual conclusion to the whole thing.
