The Practice of Therapy

Chris Swenson
Okay. Hey, it's Chris Swanson. And I'm glad to be on the practice of therapy podcast. Today we'll be talking about self publishing and some of the mindset struggles that go with that.

Gordon Brewer
Well, hello, everyone and welcome again to the podcast. And I'm so glad to have back on the podcast, Chris Swenson and Chris the doc. Matt. I guess it's been two years ago now. It hasn't been Chris. Couple years ago, yeah. At at killing it camp out in Colorado. And so you've survived COVID, just like the rest of us, I guess. And so glad to have you back on, Chris.

Chris Swenson
Oh, it's always a pleasure. It is. It's great. I enjoyed meeting you out there and being on the show, and I love what you all do. So it's just great to be here. Oh, five COVID as well.

Gordon Brewer
Yes. Yes. That's great. That's great. So as I start with everyone, why don't you for folks that don't know that you wanted to tell folks a little bit about yourself and how you've landed where you've landed?

Chris Swenson
Yeah, my name is Chris Watson. Sometimes people go with Chris Ryan Oh, Swenson. And what I do is helping like maybe like a self publishing coach, mindset coach at the same time. So I've worked a lot with over the years through my private practice. So mindset coaching, as well, but my Rhino mentality. And now I really, and I published a couple of books myself over the years, and saw how much people I always wanted to write a book, like I didn't realize it was like a bucket list for some therapists, coaches, consultants, and a lot of that ability, so like, overwhelmed with the process, or how this became, so I decided, like, maybe I need to help them out. And so I put some stuff out there, and people have been well received. And so now I'm, that's the thing, like, I just feel like, the information that we all have, can really be distributed out to people in a way that can really move people and a chance for us to put that dream to work. And so helping the people with the self publishing process has been a very great joy.

Gordon Brewer
Right, right in it. You know, one of the things about that, too, Chris, that I think most therapists or people in our space here, really began to think about is like you, like you said, they have a passion for something that they're that they want to communicate communicate to the world. But also, it's a great way to really think about diversifying your income, in terms of putting something out there that people content that people want to purchase, and that sort of thing. And I would say the other thing, too, is it really kind of helps kind of establish you as an expert in a particular particular niche or field or topic. And so that's a really cool thing. So I know, as you and I talked about, before we started recording, why don't you take us through just kind of the whole self publishing process? And what's involved in that.

Chris Swenson
Okay, definitely, just to kind of piggyback on what you were saying, I think that's a lot because people will look at, I want to write a book, and, gosh, I might not make a whole lot of money from the book. Now there are, like, for me, a lot of them, I still get like, royalty payments monthly. It's nothing tremendous. But it's been the other avenues from it. It's been that the authority, credibility, that can lead to, you know, speaking events, programs, the stuff that can build off of what that is becomes, like, astronomical. And so that's a lot of that is a way of kind of like having a great business card. I think for people in private practice. Having that book is a great business card that this is what I have done. put yourself out there instant credibility. I think that's a big thing. beyond just the thing about you're an author. Wow, yeah, that is something but when I look at like the, like the self publishing process to get into that there's a lot of hangups, I could go through it, but and so many like intricate details that can be pretty overwhelming, honestly, and probably too much to just really get into for the time we have. But we can kind of get a little process within that. I mean, you want to start off with obviously like an idea. There might be a certain idea that you have that you've always wanted to write about. I think there's people out there that maybe, gosh, I really in my practice, I've helped people with this and I just take them through this process. Well, that becomes an easy way of really putting that idea down on paper to write with having having that idea. First and deciding upon what that idea is. And you can definitely go like on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, kind of take a look at other books in that genre. See what kind of titles are there, see what people have already written maybe based on that, and then spend some time looking at reviews. Because the reviews will give you an idea what people liked, maybe there were sort of things that were missing from the book that you can add to that ignores. So a little bit of a research stuff with that idea. Once you get that idea, the next thing you want to do is really need to set up and identify your purpose for writing this book, and those book objectives. Because that purpose is what's going to guide you through that process. Because once you enter that jungle, like there's a path, and that's we're talking about the steps the path. But when you get out into there's a lot of whispers in that jumble of temptations and distractions, that if you forget why you're going to get off track, you're going to start not filling it not doing it. And so knowing what is the purpose of this helps you to kind of face some fingers face some difficulties. But it also gives you the idea, like if I just want to write a book, okay? When you get to like the marketing into the book launch, you there's a different way you might look at that. If someone's saying that I want to like write a book, but then build a program from that there's a different aspects of that purpose initially will help kind of guide the later steps that you're feeling need to get that purpose, and the book objectives about what do you really want the reader to get from this? No, it's not just to go write about me, me, me or whatever. But what do you really want that reader to kind of get from that. And then once you get that established, you're looking at moving into, you can kind of look at the style of the book, if you want to write, you know, as far as you want to do kind of like a traditional business type of thing where I want to scientific, hey, here's my method, here's the research behind it, you know, and that making it kind of a bigger book, or it becomes like the first book that I wrote was, I had hundreds of blog posts, hundreds of them. And I just wanted to narrow it down to some of the best ones that I had. So I narrowed it down to 32. And made my book right on life lessons. They're like 32 lessons to help with confidence and such. And each one of those became like a separate chapter. And I was able to expand on it, offer some coaching with it, and then put that through. So there's a way to repurpose, but

there's also Yeah, you're just looking at the style. And my second when I wrote it more like a story, you know that when you follow the character through you learn the lessons that come with it. And so you kind of establish what you want to do. After you get now you move into the outline. And the outline becomes something that helps with the writing process. And that outline is can be difficult for some to get set up. But ways of doing that. Sometimes it's just sit down and like just brain dump everything you can think of related their topic and just write it down or type it out or whatever you need to do that just get it all there. And then maybe you can sort through common themes to kind of put how you're wanting to go. outlines for people that have like a program, where you take them step by step through, that outline becomes those steps. In other words, somebody comes in whether it's anxiety, depression, or even helping to build a private practice, for example, there might be like certain steps that they need to go through. And as you outline the steps, how you get from point A to point B, those steps become your main chapters that are in there. And so you can put the chapters out in an outline. And as far as the information goes, there might be stuff that you can jot down the ideas and stories that you want to say in those chapters for the most part. You can also see oh my gosh, on this topic, I don't know very much. Maybe I need to do some research and kind of research some other those areas. So I can kind of add to this, or I've got too much here. Okay, well, do I make it a separate chapter? So you get that outline? That's out. And there's like storyboard is a really fun way. I know like, Casey Pennington does that. And she showed me hers when she puts a little sticky notes up.

Gordon Brewer
Oh, yeah.

Chris Swenson
It'll be hers has it all by colors, even like this color is my main thing. These other ones will be kind of their, you know the other parts to the outline, but in a different color. And then it was funny because she had told me that all of a sudden, she had to move that and a lot of them fell off and she had to reorganize. There's like a different way in which you can write however you get creative with the outline that helps what you do. And from once you've got that now it's time to write For a lot of people, it's I don't know if I have the time to do this. Now, when do I find the time? And you start getting a lot of that mindset stuff up does anyone even anyone probably not even going to be interested in this? stuff starts to kind of creep in. That's where that purpose really does help. And a lot of hangups, I'm glad that we're kind of going over this process, because people will be like, I have an idea. What next? And that's kind of what we're talking about here. Or I started writing Well, what do I do now. And so what I recommend is, when you start writing, it's try to get like a writing plan. And you can get very technical if you want, which is I want to have this book published by this day. Okay. So if I take a look at either how many chapters I need to write, you can back that up how many I need to do each day or week, some people look at how many pages I want to write, okay, how many pages Do I need to write each day each week, and then you just execute with the plan. What I tell people is, if you get, if all of a sudden, it's like my gosh, I said it was gonna have it done by this day. And it's not. That's okay, you know, maybe we just aired on how fast we could get that written, right? That's fine, just move it forward. But that first writing, just write it. And a tip that I eat is because I don't like to type, ice. And so I use like the word dictation feature. And we speak faster than we actually like typer, right. So you can actually get a lot more written a lot quickly. So when you go through that first rough draft, just put it out there, don't add it, don't start getting in your head, just put it out there, you'll go back to that later, but just get it out. And so when you get the rough draft done, then you want to go back and take a look at like a self edit, which is a whole process in and of itself. But I mean, technically you're looking at doing any grammatical stuff. You're also taking a look at like, what I'll do is each of those chapters are objectives. And there's a certain thing of how do I take the reader from point A to point B, and were they able to do that in there was like clear enough. And so I can do a little bit of a self edit, maybe do my own stuff. This is where it gets different in the process. A lot of people with self publishing will recommend that you hire a editor. And there's different kinds of editors, there's content editors, development editors, there's even just the grammatical people that look at different parts of it. But a lot of you can get editors through like fiber, there's a lot of writing associations to, and it's not too expensive. And sometimes that can be extremely valuable to do. But there is a pretty detailed still editing way that people want to do it on a budget that you can kind of go laughter look at. So you're gonna want to get it edited, so that it's pretty solid, all of that stuff is ready to go. Once that is done, you can obviously correct the edits or whatever. And you could go on and on with this. This is the other area people will get it to continuing to edit it. They start to they start to learn more information about the topic. So oh my gosh, I need to include this pretty soon, but they're never getting it done. Because we're always learning. And to keep adding all that can just drag the process on and stick to it, get it done. You can always revise or have another addition. That could definitely go on. But yeah, yeah. Once you get in sometimes, like once you get done with editing. There's also a part like, what do you do edit, if you do send it off to forget it. During that time, you can decide upon a title, you can start looking at how you want to design a cover what that might look like. I use Canva an awful lot. I think doing covers for ebooks is a lot easier because you just do a front cover. It's pretty much act. So you can use Canva for that. But it's also something to hire it out for a graphic designer or someone.

Especially if you go to paperback. That was a mistake. I've actually just stuck my one up on paperback. So I kind of did it on my own. But it's alright, I just want to get better because I'm not a graphic designer. Because then you're getting the front cover, you're getting the binding. You're also getting the back cover design all of those and laid out nice. So you can do those stuff while you're waiting to get back with that. It's a lot of times, right? Of course once the head is back, you read correct and then you now it's a matter of going back to your purpose. Now. What do you want to do with the book? What do you want to reach? Because you're going to look at how do you want distributed that book, do you want to just use Amazon? Amazon's probably the world's largest book sale thing now. I mean, it's phenomenal. And I mean, it's not too difficult to format, they have their own little KDP, Kindle Direct Publishing, that you can kind of go through a lot of videos that help you format. But it's also you could hire out to have someone format. option. But there's a format that Amazon wants. There's also a format that Barnes and Noble would want. So sometimes people might, if your goal was I just wanted to have like a freebie off my website, you could just format it as a PDF. You don't have to get it. So massively formatted for like Amazon. So you could just do a PDF, and then that might be how you move forward with that. Yeah, if you look at I want to definitely go through Amazon. But unlike a lot of these other retailers to get it, there are places like Ingram sparks is another great company that will basically format that stuff for you and submit it to those various things for you, and you still retain the rights, that's what's keeping, you still have your own rights to some of those, just pay a monthly fee to belong to that or perfect fee. Smashwords is another one, like you submit, basically, from that you need a Word doc submitted to Smashwords. And they'll format and all the various formats and send it out to everybody on all of the online retailers and stuff. And like Ingram sparks, Amazon, all of them also have print on demand, which is nice to have to buy like 100,000 books and storming.

Gordon Brewer
Right, right, yeah.

Chris Swenson
So somebody purchased it, then they send it out. I mean, there's a fee that they'll charge, but you still make some money from that as well. But the distribution stuff is things that you get, but you're also looking at a marketing plan. And this becomes kind of that final step, so to speak, is how do you get reviews. And I never realized until I was an author and got into this, how valuable those reviews are. As already, I used to read a ton of books I still do. A lot of times, I'll tell people about it all the time, but I never left. Those things become massive to help people, not only with the book sales, but to get like moved up to be like Amazon bestsellers, whatever categories, things like that. So one way of doing that is you put together kind of like a book launch team, you'll let them know ahead of time, hey, I'm gonna send you a copy of the book. You know, you read a few chapters, or whatever this is, but it's to promote out on social media with us, you know, do that. I know Casey's recent book. I'm actually in the book, which is kind of cool. Yeah, I'm in there. So it's kind of neat. I'm excited. Oh, wow. That's cool. Yeah. And so then she want to be part of that book launch team to to kind of help, you know, get that out there, which is great. And that's what's interesting, because with authors, there really isn't competition. Because if you somebody buys your book, like on Amazon, for example, they always have suggested books on the simpler topics. And your book is right there. Right, right. Yeah, definitely. Even if you leave a review, at times, people will say, well, who is this? And then Wow, it goes. So yes, the more you help others, they help you to win. Right? Right. But that marketing thing, you want to get that book launch team kind of together, and helping them to promote for one thing. But also, like on launch day, there are times like I was on a watch team with this other lady, and she had us kind of like, on this day, I'll give you a code. So you'll be able to buy it for free on Amazon. And then it's basically you can scroll through or read as much as you can, for so long, and then go on and leave a review. So on that day, there was a number of us purchasing read in that day, leaving reviews, and that helps to really pop it up to like, getting on it, you know, like new and noteworthy stuff like that and up on Amazon list. But there's so many creative ways of kind of watching the book, but a lot of it is building that. I think as authors, it's, you really do want to try to build an audience. You'd have a blog, you know, like most coaches or consultants are going to have kind of a following. That's there. And it's to make sure that that's part of what you're recommending out. But essentially, that's pretty much the process.

Gordon Brewer
Yeah. And now let thanks for going into so much detail about that because I think this is just going to be really, really helpful for a lot of people and just thinking about being able to self Self Publish. You know, it's, it's easier now than it ever has been to put a book out there. And I like what you said there towards the end about building a following. I think whenever you do something like this, I'm reminded of pat Flynn's book super fans are banging out. Yes. So yeah. And so that's, that's a, that's another way to think about with this, with this marketing stuff. You know what, you know, one of the things you hit on, maybe a little bit, maybe maybe even before we started recording, Chris was just around mindset. Now, I think a lot of times, people do have a bit of imposter syndrome when it comes to writing, you want to talk a little bit about that?

Chris Swenson
Absolutely. With me, when I developed my Rhino mentality before all that it was very defeatist, just my story like that, things don't go well, I'm not good enough, blah, blah, blah. And I started working and a lot of programs that a lot of our Special Operations soldiers put out there for mental toughness programs. I just got done doing a great one with David Rutherford, back in the fall was wonderful. He had us doing like cold showers and ice baths and all this crazy stuff to kind of face fears and deal with uncomfortableness. But I put together that my mindset of writing mentality, which has changed a lot. And so part of what I do when you look at, like imposter syndrome, you know, I see a lot of people like, how do I get rid of this, once I get rid of this? Now I can finally do, what I tell people is, you're not going to get rid of it. It's part of the whispers in the jungle, like, it's gonna be there is to accept it, to embrace it, and then move through it. It's just, you know, when you get out, it's like turbulence in an airplane, you're, they're going to experience turbulence as part of the climate, that's going to be part of it. I think if we're going to put ourselves out there. At some point, we're going to hear the whispers of imposter syndrome. And knowing that, okay, this is part of the journey, accepting it and bracing it moving through. That's what makes us stronger. as well. It's just not believing the lies, like imposter syndrome is, it's like a mafia that just lies and get you to believe stuff and you discredit you, when everyone else around you is like, what what do you see? Like we're seeing this great stuff like that. So sometimes, like owning those accomplishments, and really, like taking the lenses off that imposter syndrome, as you see you see you for who you really are, and accept the world. Well, here human will have. So yeah, those are big things. Because with writing imposter syndrome becomes big. Who am I? Can I really be an expert on this? Uh huh. Yeah. And those are those whispers. I always say that.

Gordon Brewer
Right. Right. Yeah, just, you know, it reminds me a lot to you. And being in the mental health field yourself, Chris. You know, this is the same kind of stuff that our clients deal with all the time. It's just that I've also referred to it as the internal critic that's there that's constantly bombarding us with this message. And you know, the other the other thing, too, is that it's better to take imperfect action than imperfect action rather than perfect action. It's just like what you said is just put the draft out there first, just get it done and get that out there. And then you can fine tune it afterwards. That's, that's great.

Chris Swenson
Yeah, absolutely. It's, like, a lot of our clients go through that. And then I've realized, like, when it's Austin it like, up here, I'll know what I'm supposed to do. Maybe have the awareness of this is happening to me, that emotional end. And then it's different, different, you know, now you start to find out about what's your usual responses, do you have a tendency to kind of run from things and you have tendency to avoid things. And a lot of that can just get trained into your brain as an automatic response. And, you know, sometimes, when a lot of us as therapists, nurses, retraining that response, and that was the point of, like, the last program I went through with ice baths and cold shower, was retraining your brain from uncomfortableness, where at first. It's like, This is nuts. This is crazy. You know, get in there and you're shaking it, it's so cold. And it's like your brains like I want to get out. I want to quit. And so that becomes your usual thing of either avoiding uncomfortable or running from quickly. Instead, it's no different. And the purpose, you get yourself in those situations when you're dealing with uncomfortableness on a regular basis, and still functioning through it, that starts to retrain our responses to when we hear those whispers. And that takes some time to do just like a muscle that we all need to have from a mindset standpoint, right? A lot of us, we miss some of that we get it, but to actually do the work it takes to retrain your brain. Right, right.

Gordon Brewer
It's learning learning to sit with the discomfort of things.

Chris Swenson
Yeah. Yeah, that's the portal, like you said, the imperfection. You know, how do you sit? You know, you release the book and realize, dang, I really messed up on this section. Right? Right. It's, it's okay. You're human. Yeah. Or you have learned something.

Gordon Brewer
Right. Right. Oh, man. Well, I love this, Chris. And I love what you've taken on with this project. Because I think it's something that's needed. And I think just, well, not necessarily project but just a new new direction in your your niche. And just having known, known kind of with things that you've worked on, and it's a great, it's a great thing. So I want to be respectful of your time, but tell folks how they can get in touch with you and find out more about this work you're doing? Well, the

Chris Swenson
easiest thing is is right on Facebook, I do have the self publishing, for therapists, coaches and consultants. It's a free therapy. It's a free group on Facebook. So you just search up, you know, self publishing for therapists, coaches, and consultants, or if you just search my name, Chris Swenson. I know there's a lot of Chris Watson's. Yes, if he looks like me, then that's the one. Okay, okay, to kind of find for the group. And what I have is that process we described, I put together a course, that's a guided course, it's not just your typical course, as, okay, if you're do this, okay, here's your information. It's me kind of like being like a guided meditation, like, guiding you through the process. Like, okay, this is Mission one, these are the steps to accomplish it. But it's also me like, saying the things like, normally about now is when you start to question whether or not you should do this, you know, are you doing that? If so, we need to, you know, XYZ, and then checking in, like, where are you at with this process? So it's almost like a virtual reality, kind of, if that's the right word, but virtual guiding, have a coach there. And I know, like, the so far now, when I'm running that I am actually, with so many like the first so many people or whatever they sign up, I, I will work with that. Because I want to know what's working, what's not working. Because I really want to give people like, you know, they have lifetime access. So it's book after book, like, login and do this. It's like having that, like Alexa or whoever they're like, Oh, this is I need to do just follow along. And when I'm done, I got it. So

Gordon Brewer
right.

Chris Swenson
There's that as well. But the Facebook group would be great way. There's a lot of great people in there. Questions and, and helpful too.

Gordon Brewer
Awesome. Awesome. And we'll have links here in the show notes. for that. If somebody wanted to email you could they do that?

Chris Swenson
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Probably the easiest is just Chris s. So ch RS s at Rhino Wellness Center, calm.

Gordon Brewer
Awesome. Awesome. And again, we'll have that in the show notes and shows me well Chris, it's been great to have you back on the podcast. And will I see you back in Colorado in the in the fall?

Chris Swenson
I'm thinking about it. Okay, quite sure. Cuz I was gonna go like next year to the not so typical therapist. in Nashville. Yes. And then when you when Ernesto put the dates out, I was like, No, because that was when my son graduates from high school. Oh,

my goodness. Yeah. Yeah, I figure I probably need to be at that. Yeah,

I'm actually considering it. I wrote. Okay. Okay. No shows working on the actual publishing, like the traditional publishing. Right,

Gordon Brewer
right.

Chris Swenson
He definitely has the following for that. He'd have a hell of a following. Yeah. Get to their route. That'd be Christ here. Oh, that's so yeah,

Gordon Brewer
Mike. That's great. Yeah. Well, good. Good. Well, thanks again, Chris. And look forward to maybe having you back again. Absolutely. I love it all the time.