The CEO Digital Survival Guide: Navigating the Future of Business and Technology

you're listening to stimulus Tech talk a conversation-based podcast created by stimulus technologies that covers a range of topics related to Business and Technology hello this is Sher lip marketing manager at stimul stimulus Technologies and welcome to a stimulus Tech talk today I am going to be talking with our CEO Nathan Whitaker and we are going to be talking about his book the CEO's digital survival guide a practical handbook for the future um I have it sitting behind me so hopefully I got that title right um welcome Nathan thanks Sher it's good to be on the other side of the interview today yeah um so why don't we start out with talking about what your we've talked about we've mentioned it many times on the podcast but now that it's out why don't we go into a little more detail about what it's about so the book is to help business owners CEOs executives understand how to use technology inside their companies better and it encompasses a lot of different areas uh from you know starting a company and and systems you should Implement from a startup standpoint to a growing business um you know to a to a small to midsized uh business and we also talk about cyber security a lot in there we talk about uh regulations and compliance and the whole idea about the book is to give you enough information as a business owner CEO executive uh to be able to have uh or set plans inside your company and also have conversations with the Professionals in the industry about these topics because I found over the years that a lot of business owners get really nervous around it guys because we use acronyms and we talk about things that you know are confusing at times and the the purpose behind the book is to give you and arm you with enough information to make Intelligent Decisions around technology inside your business and that's that's the goal of the book and so you the book is for like any business owner it's not for technical people it's actually for really more for non-technical people yeah I I hope that I distill down the information well enough using some stories and and giving definitions of terms and things in there that a non-technical person can read and understand the book um what made you um decide to write a book and how long ago did you start the process I guess I've always wanted to write a book uh it's been kind of a a bucketless goal that I've had for a long time you know different ideas around the book um you know came up over the years but really there was two main impetuses for starting the book uh the first one was and and it's the design of the book The first one was I was um preparing to go backpacking and i' had never done a long backpacking trip before I did some backpacking as a Boy Scout when I was young uh but as an adult I never done a long backpacking trip and I had this goal for my 40th birthday uh to hike What's called the John year Trail it's about 210 mile U Trail in back country in the Sierra Nevada mountains and I knew nothing about this I didn't know what gear to buy I didn't know you know how to do the permitting um I didn't know any of the information and so I relied on um several guide books that I had purchased also some internet forums I went to seek some expert advice from um some local um backpacking stores and I just realized that you know there's a wealth of information to get me from not knowing anything to beep prepared to have a successful hike which ended up being very successful and I attribute that to you know the help of all these people that were around me that guided me through the process whether it was an author of a book all the way to you know people that I met um along the way and so you know I realized in that instance that a lot of our customers at stimulus Technologies were in the same boat they might be you know buying a new line of business application or might have a growing business or might wanting to do hybrid Workforce whatever may be and they don't know who or how to deal with that as a business owner they know what they want to do U but they don't know from a technology perspective how to implement it and so the the concept behind the book is to be a guide a Trail Guide um to if you you know if you want to do a hybrid Workforce you can go open up that chapter read about what you need to do and be able to make plans inside your business and then the second part of it is uh in 2018 um at a conference I think you and I both went to this was back in Nashville uh Adam witty who's the uh publisher at Forbes books um spoke about how to build uh Authority in your business and Authority in your industry um through a book and I really took a lot of things away from him on what the process is um several ways to do it and how to be successful in writing and and producing a book and so that gave me a bunch of ideas I started you know after that conference I started coming up with book titles and topics and and chapter headings and uh that was really the start of the process but that was 2018 the book just got published this year so as you could see it took you know five years uh to get from idea to to published and what kind of Step did you have to take I mean I know you're you're sharing your expertise as a you know as an expert in this field but what kind of steps did you have to take to to get the information you know make sure you're talking about the information you want to talk about and putting it together you know before you actually started writing so one of one of the things that I did kind of a two-step process one of the things I did is like you know just brainstorm about the different topics I wanted to discuss in the book and I I just took a notebook out and I just started brainstorming on uh main topics subtopics around those main topics and just started writing them out and a lot of those actually ended up in the book in the end um and they were things that you know I'd get questions on for business owners all the time things that I run into in the industry um and and that's what got me to you know this core idea behind how the book would be laid out and then when I finally chose a publisher um I sat down with a writing coach and we developed a detailed plan on what you know what information in each one of those subsections would be kind of the layout of uh information that would be in the book we made some decisions like if you look at the book um there's questionnaires that are in there that you you know selfs surveys uh there's definition sections and all that came about when we were doing you know the the book plan um and that helped really you know set an outline so when I started writing I know I knew like okay well this is a chapter I'm going to be writing about this is a topic and then I could either research on that topic which I had to do some research um on it um or you know I I could just start you know writing and doing what I needed to do and so that that book plan really helped Define you know what I was writing each time I was writing in the book how um you know you're running a company too how much time did you have to kind of budget time for it you know make sure you've sat down a certain amount of time each day or each month each week so great question so I I work a lot lot obviously and I you know I have a busy family life and you know personal life and things like that uh with other activities and so you know doing something that's you know really important for me um but it isn't like pressing you know nobody's calling me every day and saying hey did you write in the book did you write in the book and um whereas with you know customers or um you know employees or whatever it may be there's a lot of you know interaction that's trying to demand my time and so I found that I had to schedule that time out I blocked out before the workday started about uh 45 minutes every day um sometimes I wasn't able to get to it but most of the time I would take that you know 15 to 45 minutes depending on the day and just wrote for that period of time or did research and sometimes it was just writing a few sentences sometimes it was research sometimes it was a few paragraphs but it it kept the consistency going that I was writing every every day uh the other thing that really helped is I uh with my publisher they set me up with a writing coach that I met with weekly and so when I met with Susanna on Tuesday morning I knew that I had to have something written for for her to review and for us to discuss and so it was like a checkpoint every week that okay I had to get something done that's that money I'm paying to have this writing coach meet with me was kind of useless um it was a waste of time so uh it it really helped having um that scheduled and also some accountability to a to a coach uh to get that done and also to bounce ideas off of the writing Susanna my writing coach did a great job answering questions I had especially you know how to reference materials that I was bringing in from the outside some research some ideas on layout and and topics and and then she wasn't technical so as I'm explaining these highly technical things she bounced back at me and says I don't understand this that you're trying to write it doesn't make any sense to me and so I had to go back and you know rewrite things to make it um more understandable from a non-technical standpoint and so and this is kind of more for um people who other business owners are experts in their field who might be looking at writing um when you're working with Forbes they're geared towards people like you writing a book and that's different than you know somebody writing a bunch of query letters to a bunch of different Publishers trying to to get them to to buy so can you explain a little bit about like how that works for somebody like you so I think there's three ways to publish a book um in the industry now so the first way is like what you just mentioned is you have a manuscript or an idea for a book and you send it to a bunch of Publishers and somebody might buy your idea or might buy your manuscript and then publish it um that's really hard to do because there's over a million books a year published and it's really hard to find a publisher that's willing to take an idea today um and then the second side you know kind of the opposite end of the spectrum of that is self-publishing and with companies like Amazon they make celf publishing really easy you can write your manuscript work with your independent editors and then it's you know print to order um you can publish yourself and and it's really easy to get a book out there with the tools that are available now I I knew myself and I knew that I needed to work with a team um my first thought was is I could uh hire you know an editor or writing coach through something like upwork to help me with the process and I decided not to go with that I decided to go with this kind of middle of the road publisher uh Forbes uh books and advantaged media um they're kind of one in the same company they they have a really good process that I found uh for professionals that are looking to write you know non-fiction very specific books for their industry and they have a a great process there are other publishing houses out there very similar to them that have come up over the years I interviewed several um and I decided to go back to Forbes um Adam Woody's company the one that I heard because I I felt like they they really had a a very detailed process their their pricing to do it was fair but to be realistic I paid for this I wasn't paid to write the book you know that's that's something that you think about like oh you know you hear about uh JK Rawling you know having this you know big upfront M you know check when when she wrote their books or her books or you know um other authors that are probably getting checks cut to them like a Simon synic or Malcolm Gladwell you know they're getting paid upfront um kind of a bonus to start and then they're paid for the royalties of the book after the fact um with writing a book like mine and probably most people that are listening to this it's going to cost you as a business owner or executive or professional to write the book you're going to pay for it up front and the goal isn't really to make money on the book or the book Sals it's to really you know benefit your business and benefit what you're doing inside your business and allow you to um you know put yourself up there as an expert in in the field and one of the things I heard over and over again um about a book versus you know other marketing uh is if you hand somebody a pamphlet or you hand somebody a book what's going to set you aside better as a as a business owner or salesperson and obviously having a book is much more powerful than having a pamphlet to hand somebody and you know we keep books I mean you look at the books shelf behind me I have you know a couple hundred books between my couple of bookshelves that I have back there of you know different speakers I've heard over the years uh business um writers that you know I've used to develop my company and it really is something I hold on to them you know and I referred back to them if I I remember oh I I'm I'm interested in this topic or researching this topic again uh maybe on on marketing and or on Business Development I grab a book that I read 10 years ago on you know like the pth uh book and or whatever it may be and books are you know invaluable from an authority perspective and a marketing perspective and people keep them for a long time so again fors books did a great job I love their process um it isn't cheap to do it um by any means uh but I think it's it's a good system that they have and there's many others out there I just recommend if you're interested in doing it is interview a few look at reviews of working with the company and and uh and then you know the team that you're working with is really important I I really enjoyed working with Susanna my writing coach um she was a great help um just like anything you do with coaching you know you got to make sure that you interact well with the person you're working with and we did have Adam on a previous podcast so anybody interested can go should probably go check that one out too because there's a lot of information about about getting started um for you what did you know kind of as you were doing this what went differently in the end than you kind of anticipated in the beginning so I mean the first thing is the time frame on doing it I I remember my meeting with them uh December of 2021 when I signed the agreement with them um or November December time frame and they're like well how long do you think it'll take you and I said oh I could get you know get this written I have the outline I'll be done with the initial manuscript in February like two months I got done with the manuscript a little bit over a year later um so you know it was about six times as long as what I originally thought it would be um and you know some of it was just life gets in the way you know a lot of things different things were happening um Business and Professional professionally and personally um but you know also you know just really refining the topics I did a lot of research um you know from different authors getting some different ideas um coming up with the the stories that are in the book and making sure that those related um it it it was very timec consuming um and but it was very rewarding because it allowed me to really synthesize what we do as stimulus Technologies down on paper um so I mean the biggest thing was the time I I can't it took a lot longer than I thought it would um and so you did you know you Incorporated your personal you know your hiking Journey as you know and metaphorically into the into the book um how did you choose what you know kind of how how to incorporate those and did you ever find it difficult to write about your personal experience so it was definitely sometimes interesting to relate hiking or Triathlon or flying airplanes whatever it may be um to technical work um they're very different the other thing that I tried to do is you know relate stories that um that I've experienced in the industry over the years into the book too and so you know coming up with those ideas for the stories and how they relate was difficult I brainstormed both with the book plan plan er and the writing coach often about that and you know we discussed um you know a set of different stories um some of them made sense some of them didn't and so you know jettison a bunch of the the ideas for those because they just didn't relate and I couldn't get them to relate um so it was it was a difficult process to that and then the other thing that the coach as I was going through this is you know she recommended often as like okay this topic is complicated you need to tell a story in your industry about this to make it relevant you know something that happened to a a business owner or something that happened to an employee or whatever it may be and so part of the book was come you know remembering over 30 years that I've been in the industry remembering different experiences that occurred over the time that related to the topic that I was writing about and that was actually fun because it was reminiscent on things that you know happen when we started the company you know 28 years ago or um you know or or customers that uh you know we've had for a long time and talking to them making sure that the stories were okay to include um and so that was that was actually fun process but also difficult uh to relate those things and um what advice do you have um I mean obviously as a as a business owner and you know markeet a company um you you write a lot of content but I don't know if you consider yourself a writer or if um or if that's kind of just increased I know it's increased a lot since I've been with stimulus um as you're you know creating more content what advice you have for somebody who doesn't consider themselves to be a writer but they want to get their their expertise out there I so uh from my standpoint I I do enjoy writing um I enjoy you know creating content and um it's it's just a time thing that's difficult for me to do it um I I credit my junior uh year English teacher Sarah lassley um and I and I gave her a credit in the book for it um I I went into her class and and thought I knew how to write stuff and I just remember my first essay that I turned in came back with uh it was an AP class and and I think I got a one out of seven on it and uh burst my pride and my bubble pretty hard um but you know over that time I learned you know structure and how to you know how to write much better and and that helped a lot you know going back that far in my mind on on actually how to write um so you know a lot of business owners don't like like to write uh and there are options to do ghost writing and I you know Forbes proposed it they had the option for it and basically the way ghost writing would have worked which which I didn't do but it's you know definitely an option A lot of authors do um probably the majority of authors use some type of ghost writing and it's an interview process so whether it's weekly or just an extended interview um The Ghost Writer would sit down and and ask you a bunch of questions um about the topic and you would just talk and and have a conversation and then from that conversation they would take you know information that you gave them and your ideas and Concepts and put those down on paper and then you'd review what they wrote make sure it fits and then you continue on with the process um so if you're considering writing a book and writing is scary to you you know creating the content is scary uh you know think about working with a ghost writer there's great professionals that do it uh my writing coach also does ghost writing um you know there's Forbes and a bunch of these Publishers have ghost writers on staff that really work you know different Industries I felt like my topic was very technical and so finding a ghost writer that could understand and and put those technical Concepts on paper um would be difficult so you know in this sense um I I felt like I needed to write this on my own what I wouldn't suggest doing and if you go back as you mentioned Sherry we had Adam on as a podcast we talked about Ai and chat GP and these and these AI systems and there's this temptation I think now to say well I can write a book pretty quick if I use chat GPT and I just need to put some Concepts in and I and I know some people that have done that uh I I worry one about the copyright infringement potential in the future and Adam and I talk about that um number two then it's not really your um your words you know it's going to just spit out a language that you know it's very structured it's it's it's what it is um you know from what it's learned over the years but it's not going to include your stories it's not going to include um your history or knowledge it's just going to be you know a textbook and that's not interesting I mean I might be the only person in the world that actually enjoys reading textbooks um but but most people don't and so if you're if you're just generating a book to you know based off of AI and just to get information out there and put your name on it um I don't think it's a good idea and if you talk to you know Publishers um I they they would highly recommend not doing that too because it's not an interesting book um and it might not be you know legal from a copyright perspective it's that's going to have to be resolved in courts over the years um but right now I you know there's that there's that desire to do it I highly recommend not going that way so if you can't write or don't want to write use a ghost writer and there could be a lot more personality built into it that way yes definitely and we definitely have some topics on AI I know as somebody videos has uploaded into Amazon myself um they now ask you if you have any generative AI in your in your material so yeah it's definitely that's a it's an evolving topic um so and one last question do you think you'll write any more books in the future I do plan on it I uh my last conversation with with uh Susanna was about future topics so there's a few chapters in the book that um we talked about expanding um especially uh company culture um hybrid Workforce you know dealing with remote employees and and you know building that culture as a remote work so that's a that's definitely an idea that I'd like to expand on it might not be a 320 page book like the CEO's digital Survival Guide um but you know that that's I think an important topic that a lot of businesses are dealing with and you see this like whipsaw that's happening in the industry now that oh we sent everybody home because of covid and now we're doing hybrid now we want everybody back to the office and I think it's a lot of that is because Business Leaders are struggling on how to um manage um a a Workforce that is all over the place but you know like our company we have 75 employees in five different states I have Workforce remote from where I'm at no matter if they work from home or work in the office so there's this is a thing for growing small business that you have to deal with I think as a as a business owner so that's a topic the other thing is is you know I I um you know I went through a big change in my life over the last uh 12 years or so um through exercise and Triathlon and marathoning and you know I I've learned a lot that um you know it might be interesting for me it might be a book that I'm the only one that would ever buy is kind of the Journey of you know how to balance um maybe that's not the right word but uh you know how to how to manage all the demands that are placed on us as CEOs and Executives inside businesses and you know just from my experience what I've done that's been moderately successful um so that's that's another topic um but yeah I I definitely now you Sherry you've written a couple of books why don't you uh you know I know this was about me but uh why don't you talk about yours a little bit what have you done um so I've written right now written two cookbooks um so they're for special diet as I have Crohn's disease um and uh yeah so I went the the total self-publish you know wrote U my husband edited it and I uploaded in into Amazon you know like he talked about and um it's a learning process to too as soon as as soon as you're done you're like oh I would have done all these things a little bit different but that's why you write another one so but I am working on you know more of a personal story book That's which is kind of intimidating that's why I was asking about the personal aspect it can be a little bit like you're putting it out there you know um and uh but yeah it's an it's an interesting process as far as like the time and the you know kind of getting that self-doubt and and sometimes in there and and then getting it out and getting a good response is is the reward you know but it's LED you on you know interesting point has led you on some avenues that you've spoken at conferences and had some opportunities that you may not have had if you hadn't have been out there you know as a published author um giving you some opportunities you hadn't had before right yeah exactly and that is you know you're right I mean the the people who become best sell especially in the non-fiction world you know it's it's it's hard to do but you're you're getting it out there so that you have that piece that says you know I'm I'm an expert on this topic and I H you know I've put the effort into doing this I think that's a big a big thing too you know because that means you you know shows you that you have the passion for what you're doing you know like a lot of different things you know the time that you invest in it you know elevates you above people that have thought about it and just don't want to put the time in or aren't able to put the time in um I mean it's somewhat like getting a college degree you know it just takes a long time to do it but it it shows the dedication so proud to have the you know Sherry as our as an author inside the company too it's it's um you know it's definitely a lot of work so congratulations on your books oh thank you yes and uh yeah definitely I I enjoy your personal story I haven't finished the book yet but I think that that just gives it that extra something so you know I enjoy the hiking and and the stories you tell in there so I think you know from that perspective I think it makes it very a very readable book you know for people who are you know they want to they want to relate I think people like to relate so that really helps yeah I I doubt there's anybody else in the world that relates to the some of the craziness I do in different areas you know everybody has I I I don't know any business owner or executive or anybody in general that doesn't have some type of hobby out there and so whether if you're not into backpacking or you know triathlons you have your own passion whether it's you know motorcycle racing or um you know fishing or whatever it may be you know relating those passions to the work that we do I think is really important so that was what was fun about it too yeah yeah all right well thank you Nathan and thank you everybody for listening well thanks everybody thanks Sher for the [Music] questions

2024-01-09 14:07

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