July 23, 2025 • 66 mins
Valerie Francis is a bestselling author, literary editor and co-host of the Story Nerd podcast. Her mission is to teach authors how to write stories readers will love. By explaining the craft of storytelling in a way that is easy to understand and use, she empowers writers to develop the careers of their dreams, which in turn, raises the quality of storytelling industry-wide. www.valeriefrancis.ca www.storynerd.ca/courses
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, good morning, and welcome to break Through Walls. I'm
Ken Walls and I'm your host, and today I have
the amazing Valerie Francis on the show and she is
joining us from the great country of Canada. A. I
love saying A at the end. I always get crap from
(00:28):
my Canadian friends for that. But anyway, so we are
going to talk to Valerie and see what her life
story is and how she's made it through the ups
and downs in life and what she's up to these days.
So if you would do me a favor and share
this out so we can get a bunch of people
(00:49):
on here to hear all about Valerie and her story
and we will be right back. See in a minute.
Share this out, share it out. Okay, we are back.
(01:28):
Let me bring Valerie on. Valerie, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Thank you so much, Ken.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I am so happy to have you here. So I
am trying to share this out with a few groups
that I'm in, so let me all right do that.
And so Valerie, I started this show, oh my goodness,
six years ago ish and maybe a little longer than that.
(01:58):
And thank you. That is my buddy Operator four oh
four on X. Thank you that's Kat me and King
as well. But thank you for sharing this out brother. So,
so you know I started this, it's been it's been
I guess over six years ago. That's crazy. And it
(02:18):
was really to help people have a breakthrough in life.
And I'm assuming that you've had some ups and downs
in life. Oh yeah, So I'd love for you to
talk about, you know, start with where everything started for you.
Where were you born and raised? Let's start there.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I was born in Saint John's, Newfoundlands and Labrador, which
is on the east coast of Canada, and that is
where I still live, the youngest of three daughters. So
I don't know if that makes me the spoiled one
or not, but but I'm the youngest. My sisters would
say it does.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yes, I have two daughters, and my oldest would say
that that's true. So so what was it like growing up there?
Doesn't it get really cold?
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Well, it depends where in the province you live. In Labrador,
it's pretty cold because that's pretty far north. Where I
am in Saint John's it's actually pretty mild. The winters
here are not too cold at all. We tend to
have some snow. Yes, obviously, but then it'll warm up
and then it'll rain. So this past winter was very green.
(03:34):
I have no complaints.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Wow green.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
No, I still have a snowblower, though it's not so
green that I don't need a snowblower, but we I
think I only use the snowblower twice. So it's a
great place. Everyone should come visit.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Wow. So I used to have a Newfoundland dog.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Ah, yes I did.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Is that where they're from?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
I assumed, yes, yes, and I have two labradors also
from this province.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Okay, awesome. So what was it like for you as
a kid? I mean growing up? You went to school there,
and I think things are a little different than they
are here in the States as far as like high
school and then college, and you guys call it something different.
(04:23):
Why don't you explain that a little bit, talk about
what it was like growing up for you.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, well, grade school is pretty much the same here
in Canada as it is there in the US. When
I was growing up, there were only public schools, so
I went to public school and then when I graduated
in eighty eight, I think it was I can't remember now,
it was a long time ago. I went to university
which is what we call college. And I did an
(04:51):
honors degree in English literature, graduated top of my class,
and then went on to a career that was all
about writing. I worked in publishing, I worked in public relations,
I worked in communications. Now I am a writer, but
everything that I did had to do with the English language,
writing it, reading it, analyzing it, all that kind of stuff.
(05:14):
Working with other writers.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Look at look at my buddy Joe. He's just he's
just as smart. I like everything. So, so you that
was working for a what kind of a company was it? Then?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Well, different companies. I worked with a local publishing company.
The last, you know, quote unquote real job that I
had was working with the federal government in various different departments,
part of their communications team.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Okay, wow, and how like did you Was that a
long term thing you did? Oh?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
I was there. I felt like forever. I was there
sixteen years. And it was a good job. You know,
the benefits were great, the salary was great. When I left,
I had the corner office, you know, I had the
big job. I had the staff and the pension and
the benefit. I had all that, but I kind of
(06:15):
got to hate it. Loved the people. I worked with,
got really tired of the bureaucracy, and I just about
I can't remember when I left exactly. I started my
exit ten years ago. It took me a couple of
years of sort of taking some leave of absences and
that kind of stuff, and I just thought, listen, life
(06:36):
is short. I can't stay here. I'll go bonkers. Just
the layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy just got
to be a bit much for me. And I come
from family of entrepreneurs, so you know, I kind of
had that bug too, And they're it's different wiring, right,
If you're wired like an entrepreneur, working in the bureaucracy
(06:59):
can be tough.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
I I yeah, personally, I find it. I can't do it,
and I definitely couldn't do it for the government. Like,
I mean, there's bureaucracy in anything, right, in any kind
of oh yes, job, Like it doesn't matter if it's
the government or corporation. Yeah, but I would think that
(07:23):
the government would probably be even more sickening.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah. Well, I mean it just got to a point
where I thought, I'm working so hard to build something
for someone else. If I worked this hard, I could
build something for me, that's really amazing. And if I
in government, if you want to do something, you have
to go through twenty five layers of approvals and put
(07:48):
proposals and blah blah blah blah. Yeah, as the owner
of my own company, if I make a decision today,
I can be putting it into action an hour from now,
and I like that. That's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
It's it's or even sooner in some things, like you know,
you don't have to go through all the red tape
and the insanity.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
I can't.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
I can't even imagine. So so, okay, so you you
worked in government for sixteen and you said as that
in communications like what, yeah, how to get the message
out that they're they're screwing their citizens or how do
you tell them that they're being screwed and make them
(08:33):
like it? Is that what you had to Well.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
No, not quite, not quite.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
I mean every government. So what so what was the
kind of what type of messaging or communications stuff did
you have to focus on?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Well, it really depended which department I was in, Like
I worked with the Department of Justice for a number
of years, and that would be communicating, it could be
doing some education on what the legal processes were. It
could be training some of the lawyers in the department
for doing media interviews. I worked with Fisheries and Oceans
(09:10):
and Human Resources. The Human Resources department it's now called
Service Canada was I think probably my favorite because that
was the social programming. So if someone had lost their job,
what we did in Communications was explain to them how
they could apply for benefits when they were retiring and
they wanted their Canada Pension plan. Again, we outlined for
(09:33):
them how they could go about getting their pension and
all that kind of stuff. So that was sort of
of all the departments I worked for. I think that
was kind of the feel good department.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
When okay, so when you but obviously if you were
doing that, were you forced to move departments or did you.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Oh no, okay, no, I did it because it was
just fun, you know, and it's it's I guess, like,
I mean, I don't know what Washington is, like, I
haven't been there and I certainly haven't worked there. But
the seat of Parliament in Canada is in Ottawa, and
it's a fairly small department, a fairly small communications community,
so you get to know everyone and you're constantly working
(10:19):
with the communications folks in other departments, So it would
be just kind of nice every few years to switch
up the department and test your skills in a different way,
flex your your communications muscle and your writing skills in
a different way, and get to know different people. And
it was just just to keep it interesting, that's all.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Got it. So when you when you made the I mean,
was there like a moment where You're like, I can't
do this anymore. I'm out. Yeah, I mean you said
it took ten years, but like, what what what was
the fun? Was there a final blow so to speak,
(11:02):
that made you go, I can't, I just can't do
this anymore.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Well, I think it was probably something that had been
building up for a little while. And you know, my
kids were really young at the time, they were six
and ten years old, and I was a single mom.
My husband had passed away, and I remember being in
my oh, well, thank you, it's a long time ago now.
So I remember being in my office, a beautiful office,
(11:29):
surrounded by really wonderful people, and I remember looking out,
you know, because I was in one of the tall
buildings downtown, you know, the fancy things, And I remember
looking out at a woman who was walking on the sidewalk,
and I thought, she's free. She can walk along that
sidewalk in the middle of the day. I can't. I
have to sit in this office and this is this
(11:52):
is messed up. I don't I don't want to do
this anymore. And I thought, okay, I have to figure
out how to make the switch. Now. As a single
mom of two really young kids, it would have been
irresponsible of me to just up and quit one day, right,
And you know, I just wasn't going to do that.
So I started by taking my summers off because that
(12:14):
was a program available to us where we were kind
of like teachers, where we'd be paid for ten weeks,
but the ten weeks ten months, but the ten month
salary was stretched over twelve so I would still get
a check during the summer. But I just worked for
ten months of the year and that was really wonderful.
(12:35):
And my daughter, who's now twenty two, said, I really
like she couldn't remember me not being home when, you know,
because when she was home, I was home, and that
was that was such a gift to me to think, Okay,
you know, she did notice she was only a little
pipsqueak at the time six years old, but she noticed
(12:58):
and it meant a her. So I thought, Okay, I
did the right decision there. And when I finally did
decide to take a leave of absence for work like
a for a couple of years, I still had that
safety net that I could go back if I had to,
and I just paid No, no, no, I wasn't getting paid.
(13:20):
I had saved up my own money and was sort
of living off what I had saved to cover me
for a couple of years while I was building something.
While I was building my own business, right, so if
if I did a face planted, I still had a
job to go back to. And you know, I felt
so much more relaxed, even though I was working really hard,
(13:41):
because it meant when the kids were at school, I
was working like a crazy woman in those couple of hours,
and then when they came home, I was totally focused
on them and driving them to their activities and all
that kind of stuff. When they went to bed at night,
I went back to work, so I got to set
my own hours. I suddenly, I suddenly was in charge
of my schedule, right, and I wasn't trapped in an
(14:04):
office any longer having to explain why I took my
lunch break, why I actually left the office for an
hour to go for a walk around the block and
clear my head. And that was a gift, an absolute gift.
And I know that I was a better mom because
of it. I was a lot calmer. And what I
(14:26):
didn't really realize at the time that now that my
kids are twenty two and you know, will be twenty
six in a couple of weeks, right, what I realized
now that I didn't realize then is that I was
setting a really good example for my kids. They are
both now pursuing what they love to do, and they're
very happy. They're happy people. They enjoy what they do
(14:47):
for a living, and they enjoy their studies.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah that's awesome. So so you took this this two years?
Was that recently? Was that in the last When was that?
What year was that?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Oh that was twenty fifteen, okay, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, Yeah
to go wow, Yeah, oh yeah, I never went back.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah did they call and ask you to come back?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Well, interestingly, a couple of months before I was due
to let them know one way or the other whether
I was coming back. I got a call from a previous,
a former colleague who was in Ottawa and I now
had moved from Ottawa to Newfoundland. And she called and
she said, we have a position opening up in Newfoundland
(15:38):
and you would be perfect for it. I know you're
on leave of absence right now, but I also know
you're coming back. Because again it's a small community. Everyone
knew what I was doing. And so she proceeded to
tell me about the job and what she would need.
And when you work in the federal government here in Canada,
you need to be bilingual. And I was when I
(15:58):
worked in Ottawa, but in NEWFOUNDLANDE and French, French and
English and okay and so, but I mean, living here
in Newfoundland, I didn't need to use my French. So
I was I'll be kind to myself and say that
(16:19):
I was rusty. I was super rusty. And my friend said,
no problem, we'll work around it. We'll get your training,
like whatever you need. You tell me what you want
and we'll make it happen. And I thought, I'm being tested.
The Cosmos is testing me. And she said, don't answer me. Now,
(16:39):
call me back next week and let me know your answer.
And she said, just tell me, like, what what have
you been up to? And so then we had a
little bit of a chat and by the end of
the call, she said, you're not coming back. You're not
going to say yes to me. Why would you? Did
you you're happy where you are. She said, I'll leave
the door open, but I know you're going to say no.
(17:00):
And I thought, yeah, it's a no because the thought
of the chaos coming back into my life and that
rat race of having to get up in the morning
and get the kids out the door and get because
when I was working and my kids were younger, they
still needed daycare in the afternoon. I would take my
lunch at two thirty in the afternoon, pick them up
(17:22):
from school, drop them off at daycare, beat it back
to my desk for three thirty so that they could
be at daycare for an hour because I got off
work at four thirty.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Oh my god, and you.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Know, and then beat it home. And I just thought,
this is insanity, this is this is nuts, this is
no way to live. So I'm like, yeah, totally. And
you know what, there's a lot of parents of young
children listening to this who are saying, yep, been there,
done that.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Yeah, so you know, I assume that working for the government,
especially and your education, that you probably made a decent salary.
I would imagine.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah, I was comfortable for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Yeah. My when I met my wife, she had been
global VP of marketing for two different five hundred million
dollar a year companies, and you know, she was not
an entrepreneur in any way I was, and she had
been downsized in the eighth nine to twenty ten thing.
(18:32):
And I'm like, well, we can work together. And so
you know, now we still work together, but it's been
a battle because it's a it's and you tell me
what you think, but it is a massive difference in
mindset in the way that you view things, right, because yes,
(18:53):
you know, talk about that a little bit and the
fears that because there's a lot of fear going I'm
going to walk away from my twenty five, one hundred
dollars a week paycheck or whatever it is, whatever the
amount is. Yeah, you know, I'm gonna walk away from
that and I'm going to do my own thing and
(19:15):
hang out my own shingle. Talk about the fear around that.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Oh I love this question. Okay, So when I was
in the process of making all these decisions and you know,
would I come back, go back to work and all
that kind of stuff. I discovered a man named Bob Proctor.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah a minute, I just talked. Oh well that's how
we met, was.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Brob true, Brian Proctor. That's right. I love that's right, Thank.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
God, I love that dude. All right, go ahead, Sorry,
it's okay, that's right. I had a brain fart there
for a minute. Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
And so Bob would do these seminars and they were
you could go in person or you could go online.
And I decided to take one of his online seminars.
And even then at the time, spending the money at
one hundred and thirty bucks or whatever it was, I
can't remember, it really felt kind of like a crazy
thing that I was doing. But if there was something
(20:14):
about him that was very compelling. So I did this
seminar with him, and in the course of that seminar,
he said, are you willing to step out and bet
on yourself? And I thought, oh, oh, that's what this
is about. That's what this requires me to do, to
step out and bet on myself. I'm a safer bet
(20:37):
than the government. That is exactly my thought, because at
the time there was you know, the way that the
government would work is they would never come right out
and say there's going to be downsizing. There would be
a lot of rumors and they would let people leave
on their own, which meant then they didn't have to
go through the formal process of downsizing. But I'm a
fairly intelligent woman. I could see the writing on the
(20:59):
wall and I thought, no, I'm a safer bet. I
trust me with my pension more than I trust some faceless,
nameless person in some office somewhere in Ottawa managing my money.
So I mean I sat down with my financial advisor
and came up with a plan and said, you know,
if I cashed out, what would that look like? Or
should I left it in there? What would that look like?
(21:20):
And together we came up with a plan. I mean,
it didn't just one day up and leave right and
then figure it all out. I I spoke with people first.
I you know, Madu, my DUTs went a row make
sure my children would be cared for financially, and they
were and they are. And but that's line. Are you
(21:41):
willing to step out and bet on yourself? Yes, that
I can do. I'm a safe bet and so that
was the thing that made me go, yeah, all right,
let's do this. And my kids supported it. You know,
my kids said go for it, mom.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
You know that's it. That's so you had kind of
a somewhat it sounds like of a safety net a
little bit. I didn't do that. I got a twenty
dollars loan because I was broke, broke, oh wow, and
went out and knocked on doors. I didn't have a
safety net I had. I had to eat. And so
(22:22):
you know, that's that. But there's still there's this entrepreneurial
thing that and I think Bob talked about this probably
many times. It's the you know, I had Don Green,
the CEO of of of the Napoleon Hill Foundation. He's
(22:46):
a really good friend of mine and he was on
yesterday with me and Don is amazing. And it's all
about having that burning desire that no matter what, the
ships are burned.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yes, right, yes, yes, there's absolutely.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Right now, are you willing to step out and bet
on yourself?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Yeah, Jill, you're exactly. I mean, that's exactly it, right,
That's that's what we all, that's what we all are
doing and you've got two choices. If you're if you
want to talk about mindset, you all of us as
we're going through life, we've got two choices. I mean,
I don't know what your upbringing was like, but I
think mine was fairly typical, certainly in It's been pretty
(23:32):
common in all the people I've met in my lifetime
as I've traveled through the world. But we were taught
to the goal was to grow up, get a job,
get married, have kids, stay in that job until you retired.
That was that was the thing that everyone did. And
every now and again there'd be someone who was a
(23:53):
little different who might open up their own I don't know,
beauty parlor, their own hardware store, their own law office,
whatever it was. But most people went to work for
someone else. And there's nothing wrong with that, absolutely, and
there's a lot of people who are very happy with that,
and they like the safety net in that, so I'm
(24:14):
not in any way criticizing that. However, there are some
people who there's always this little niggling in there right
inside of us. We're like, yeah, this is good, but
I'm really looking forward to five o'clock on Friday, Like
I'm just living for five o'clock on Friday, and then
(24:35):
when Sunday comes, the anxiety starts to ramp back up,
and you're thinking, oh god, I gotta I gotta go
back to work in the morning. Oh what a rat race.
There is another way of doing it. There is there's
absolutely another way of doing it. And some people will
do what you did, and they'll just you know, cut
(24:56):
the ties and go cold turkey and go for it.
And then there are peopleeople who will sort of follow
more my route, which is wean themselves off the steady paycheck,
give themselves a little safety net and build from there.
I mean Bob used to say, you know, jump, you'll
build wings on the way down, and and that's kind
(25:17):
of how it is. But it's it's exhilarating.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
It is exst you know. It's like I was talking
to somebody yesterday, like they're like, what are you doing
for the fourth of July? I'm like working one of
my Like I hate holidays, I don't, but but like
I don't like I when you when you when you
(25:44):
love what you do and you're you, I mean really
love what you do and you're doing what you love
and you're I mean, it's not. It's not work. It's
it's it's no fun.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
And ken, what I do for a living now is
read books and write books and watch movies and write
screenplays and work with people with writers who are writing
their own novels and their own screenplays. I mean, I've
got a podcast too, and every week we analyze a
film from the storytelling perspective. We're not looking at cinematography
or the acting in it or any of that kind
(26:20):
of stuff, or the casting or the music. We're looking
only at the story. So when I'm watching a movie
on Friday night, it's actually work. I mean, come on,
that's pretty cool. That's a fun job.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
And it's a job that didn't exist before I had
to create it. And I so much prefer it to
sitting in the office looking out at the world wishing
I was out there in it.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
You know, I think about I think about something you
said a minute ago, and a few minutes ago you
said that you had that two year two years too.
Basically say, okay, I screwed up. I want my job back.
I give, I give. But you know, most people don't realize,
(27:11):
and I'll just throw this in there. Most people don't
realize that they have that too, and maybe not necessarily
the way you had it, but you had it whether
you had it or not, and that is you. You.
There's all kinds of places that will hire you, like
you can always get another job.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, even for sure not for.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
The government, or maybe it's a little less, but what
if it's a little more. Yeah, you know, so I think,
you know, I look at it from the perspective of
and I'm sure you do now, but like if if
everything hits the fan, I can start over whatever. It's like,
(27:53):
just you just keep going. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
I mean, I've gotten myself this far. And when I
did leave the government, I was halfway, so I had
sixteen years in I would have had another sixteen years
to go. I'm still nowhere near the sixteen years right right, Like,
I still have many more years to go before I
would even have been eligible to retire from that job.
And I think of everything I have done in the
last ten years and all the people that I have met,
(28:19):
and the places that I have traveled, and where this
job has has taken me. I God, I wouldn't give
that up. I mean, you know, and people say, how's
it going? Valerie and they assume. They assume it's not
going very well, simply because I'm a single mother and
I'm a writer, so they assume therefore I am, you know,
(28:41):
one step away from the food bank. And I say,
it's great. I live in a lovely home in a
lovely neighborhood. You know, I kind of make a joke
of it, and I say, well, you know, the lights
are still on, the children are still fed, but we're
doing a lot better than that. I've always had a
new car, you know, like it's good. It's good. Life
(29:04):
is good, and it's on my own terms, which is the.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Best exactly I was. And I'm pulling it open here
real quick. So Mark, Victor Hanson and Jack Canfield have
a book and it's on Audible. It's called Dare to Win.
And as you know, Mark I already shared with you.
Mark is a very very good friend of mine. They
(29:30):
co created Chicken Soup for the Soul. Yes, the only
book that's out sold their book is the Bible. And
you know, with six hundred million copies of Chicken Soup
for the Soul, now I think, yep, it's crazy. But
you know, I was talking to Mark one day and
we were going through a rough patch, and he goes,
(29:53):
let me tell you something, and and this story is
in that Dare to Win book and and it is
a night teen seventy four. I was he had been
doing two million dollars a year in another business and
the industry shifted massively and he basically went absolutely broke.
And he had a I forget what year, the Volkswagen something,
(30:17):
I don't know what it was, but he was broke.
And he he said there was an attorney standing on
a corner saying I'll help you file bankruptcy. It's three
hundred dollars. And he said. I looked at him and said,
if I had three hundred dollars, I wouldn't be here
to you know, He's like, so he had to go
to the library and check a book out on like
(30:39):
how to go bankrupt on your own right right? So
you know. And but what I love about entrepreneurs, what
I love about like Mark, Victor Hansen and anybody doing
what you're doing what I'm doing, is there is one
key ingredient that is required and oftentimes you don't even
(31:01):
know you have it until you need it, And that
is absolute tenacity. You have to be able to. You
have to be able to hang in there because sometimes
sometimes it gets really really really really real.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
So yes, I'm tenacious, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Oh my gosh, but talk about some of the I'm
sure it's not been all rainbows and unicorns since you
started your company. What are some of the downs that
you've went, Oh my god, am I because you've said
that graph on the thing on social media the journey
of the entrepreneur, like oh my god, we're gonna make
(31:47):
it and then boom next day everything we're all going
to die and it's like it's the up and down
thing and it's crazy sometimes. Yeah, talk about some of
the things you've been through that you were like, I
don't know if I'm going to make it.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
H Yeah, there have been a few of those, I'll
tell you that. Well. So when I started, I started
as a novelist. That's what I left the job that
you know, the real job to do is to be
a novelist. And the first challenge I had was learning
how to write a novel because it's a lot there's
a lot more to it than putting words on a page. Now,
(32:25):
I came from a writing background. All of the jobs
I had required me to write, but their different styles
of writing, you know, writing a communication.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
They started a novel company without knowing how to write a.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Novel, Well I started. Well, yeah, because everyone who becomes
a writer, everyone who decides they want to write a novel, yeah,
is in essence going into business, right, because it doesn't
matter what publishing model you follow, Like you could self
publish and then you were really starting, you know, you
inc But even if you want to be traditionally published,
(33:00):
you're going into business with an agent and a publisher.
So when you write your manuscript and you query an agent,
basically your query letter and your sample pages is your
business proposal, and you're going to someone and say, Okay,
I need you to sell this for me. Are you
willing to invest your talent and your expertise, in your
(33:21):
time and your business in going into business with me
to sell this novel. So it's the business of the arts.
And there's a lot of people who really want to
believe in I call them magical thinkers, and we kind
of all start out that way. That's not a derogatory term,
(33:44):
but we kind of get caught up in the romance
of what it is to be a novelist and it's
this image of well, I just sit on a beach
and wait for the muse to download a book to me. Well, no, honey,
that is not how it works. It is it's a job.
Like any other job. You got to show up every
(34:05):
day and do the job. And so one of my
first challenges was finding someone who could teach me how
to do this. And I spent a lot of money
and a lot of time on people and courses and
books trying to figure out how to do this. And
(34:27):
what I discovered is that, well, the screenwriters are way
ahead of novelists, first of all, in stories, because nobody
buys a novel because they want to read pretty sentences.
No one says, I think I'd like to read nice
pros as I go to the cabin this weekend. No
people say I want a good book to read when
I'm at the cabin, or I'm going to the beach,
(34:49):
you know, or I just need to unwind for twenty
minutes at the end of the day. So people buy
a book because they want a good story, not because
they want to read beautiful prose. So that was my
first challenge, and it took me a long time to
understand that there was two things happening. Because coming from
a literary background, I was always taught about the pros,
(35:11):
how to write distiff sentences and all that kind of stuff,
which is an important skill. Don't get me wrong. I
mean readers assume a writer can do that. Let's be fair.
That's just an assumption that you have those skills. Now,
can you tell a story? And it took me a
long time, a long time to find and I didn't
(35:33):
find just one person. I found a couple of people
after many years, who could fill in some gaps for me.
So that was when you're a writer, you're always playing
the long game, right. There's no get rich quick schemes.
No matter what you might think of fifty Shades of Gray,
there's no get rich quick schemes. You're playing the long game.
(35:56):
So so you're writing, and you're writing and writing, you're writing.
You're hoping one day the money will start coming back.
So it wasn't until my third novel that I started
to see some traction and that I became a best
seller and that I got regular royalties. I mean, I'm
doing zero promotion for that book. It's an open door
(36:17):
of romance called Masquerade. Other than something like what I
just said, I do zero promotion for that book, and
I get royalty statements from all the online retailers. But
it took me a while to figure that out. And
so you know, that was probably, I think the biggest
I don't know if I would call it a pitfall,
(36:39):
but the biggest light bulb moment for me to realize, Okay,
this is a job where I'm going to have to
this is a marathon, not a sprint. I'm going to
have to be willing to Uh, friend, where can you
order Masquerade? It's available wherever you get books. If you
(36:59):
want it on Amazon, It's on Amazon, yep. If you're
in Canada, it'll be at Chapters, Indigo or Cobo. It's available.
Should your library should even be able to order it.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
But yeah, it's just called Masquerade.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
And my name Valerie France's Masquerade. Get the complete series though,
because I here's where I followed some poor advice that
I didn't know was poor advice at the time. This
was way back when and authors were playing what I
call algorithm roulette at on Amazon, and the game then
(37:34):
was you had to publish every thirty days to make
the algorithm happy and blah blah blah. So what I did.
It's a story that takes place over a year. Okay,
so each chapter is a month of the year, and
I would write it and then publish it, and then
write it and then publish. So there's part one to twelve,
(37:55):
and then I bundle them as one novel because it's
one novel. But I take the other ones down because
I already had such great reviews and they're cheap. Someone
can just buy the first one and if they like it,
they can go and get the whole book. So it's working.
There's no reason for me to take it down because
they're selling. But I always recommend that someone just buy
(38:15):
the what's called the complete series and then you get
the whole story in one. It's an open door romance,
and it's designed to be fantasy, to be escaped, just
to have fun with it. It's not a heavy book.
It's like, you know, when you want to sit down
to a movie, and sometimes sometimes you want a thriller,
(38:36):
like you want something that you really have to sink
your teeth into, you want a Christopher Nolan movie, and
other times you want a rom com. You want how
to Lose a guy in ten days. That's just your mood.
This is an open door of romance when you just
want to sit back and have no one talk to
you for fifteen minutes. And it's the way I wrote
(38:56):
it was with my friends in mind, because they were
also super busy moms, super busy, and they had a
couple of minutes here, a couple of minutes there, so
they could read it while they were waiting for their
kid to get out of rehearsal, or they could read
it on the commute home, or if they were soaking
in the bathtub having a glass of wine, they could
just read the book for a couple of minutes and unwind.
(39:18):
That's the whole point of that book.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
You know. You and I've talked about this. Look, yeah,
she does a lot of politics. Yeah, Shelle is a
She has a national radio show and all kinds. She's amazing, Shelle.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
This book is for you, written for you with you
in mind, my friend.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Yes, but you know, I think about you know, as
we've already talked about. I own a publishing company too,
and I've had you know, there's so many authors, and
I tell everybody up front, like listen, you're not going
(40:01):
like let's get really super crystal clear on this. You're
not going to get rich off of book sales. It
just unless unless it's an anomaly, and that can happen.
It happened for the for for what's her name? That
did Harry Potter JK Rowling. Yes, I love her and
(40:26):
you know, like, but there are so many facets to
the book business now with that in the business side
of it, I'm not talking about the Oh, I'm gonna
sit down and craft the most beautiful I'm not talking
about that. I'm talking about the back end, like, Okay,
(40:46):
the book is done, it's published, and now we got
to sell it. It is a it's it's a I
don't even know how to put it in words. It's
go ahead. I feel like you.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Can't ask you a question when you are starting a business,
whatever kind of business it is in any industry, what's
the very first step. You got to have a product
that's worth paying for, right that The product has to
be great, otherwise no one's going to tell their friend
(41:20):
about it. And if you know, they say that publishing
is a word of mouth business, and it is. I
would argue that everything is a word of mouth business
because when you try a service like you know, say
you wanted to have your car washed, and you hired
(41:40):
this guy to detail your car and he did a
poor job. You're not going to hire him again. And
if anyone says to you, oh, I was thinking to
hire this guy to do what, you're gonna say no, no, no,
no no. You might not proactively go out and say
to your friends, don't hire the guy, but you're not
going to give a recommendation. Now if you hire that
guy to detail your car and he goes above and
(42:02):
beyond and your car looks amazing, it was done faster
than he said it would, and he did a couple
extra things that you weren't expecting, and you're gonna then
you're going to say, oh my god, you're fantastic. You're
going to proactively go out to your socials and say,
you guys, got to get this guy. He's going to
make one of your problems go away. It's the same
(42:23):
thing with a novelist. Job Number one is to know
how to write a really great novel. Because if you
don't have a really great novel which contains a story. Okay,
not just like I said earlier, it's assumed that you
know how to write sentences, right, that's assumed, right. But
(42:45):
if you can learn how to write a really great story,
then your readers are going to say to their friends, Oh,
I just read this book. You got to read this book,
and I want you to read the book because I
want to talk to you about the story. I don't
want to give you any spoilers, but I don't have
anyone to talk to about this book, and I want
(43:05):
to talk about this book. I want to bring it
to my book club, or like in the case of Masquerade,
you've got a friend who's stressed out, you'll say, I
got the book for you. It's not heavy, it's not
just sit back and relax and let it wash over
you and relax you just it's all good. Akuna matata.
(43:28):
I love that for the rest of your days. So
in any business, you've got to have a great product
to start. So any money that you put into and
time and energy and effort into promoting the book and
it isn't a great book, it's a waste of your
(43:49):
time and money and energy and effort because it's, like
you said, it's going to go nowhere. And right now,
the trend is to have AI generate a book. I'm
not going to say write a book because it doesn't write.
It's everywhere I go people are saying, Ah, I'm just
going to have AI do it. Here's the thing about stories,
And if there's anyone here who is thinking about writing
(44:09):
a book, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, because there's a
lot of people who who want to write a book
in their specialty as a calling card, right as a
proof of your knowledge in your field. A book is
a transfer of energy from the author to the reader.
It's always one on one. AI has no energy, there's
(44:33):
no soul in it. If when you are writing your book, again,
whether it's fiction or nonfiction, you have to feel what
you're writing. So if it's nonfiction in your subject matter,
write it with the intention of helping the reader and
genuinely having confidence that the information that you're giving them,
(44:57):
that the advice you're giving them is good advice that
is really going to help them. Because when the person
picks up that book, they're going to feel that energy
from you. They're not going to feel it from AI.
And if you can have AI generate the book on
the subject matter, so can everybody else. That's right, So
why would they need to buy your book.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
But people think, people think, but I'm the best at
writing prompts. It's like, I know you're I'm sorry, but
no you're not. Everybody's doing it.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
So oh, there'll be a whole business in selling prompts.
I'm sure there will be.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
There's already people doing it, like yeah, fine, but again,
I don't you know there are I have said to people, Look,
if you are, you know, getting stuck on chapter titles,
it's okay to go to AI and say, you know,
I'm writing a book and I'm looking for ideas on
(45:54):
chapter titles and and and get that that helps you
think deeper or not use what AI gives you. I'm
not saying to do that, you know. And I think
because look, I said this last night on I was
watching a buddy of mine's podcasts and everybody was saying,
I hate AI, I hate I. I'm like, listen, you
(46:17):
can hate it and be resentful, but it's not going anywhere.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Oh no, it's here. It's here to stay.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
And I don't think and I agree with you one
thousand percent. My wife, oh my god, she's a writer,
she was a paper she's done a lot, and she's
also an editor. So she's like, don't use a. I
A'm so sick of hearing people say they're going to
(46:45):
use AI. That's just dumb. It's dumb. Yah, I'm sorry,
it's just it's not it's not it's not writing a book.
When I wrote my first book and I read I
got the the pre copy and self published, I remember
opening it going, oh my gosh, these are my words. Yeah,
(47:06):
thousands of books. This is the first time I've read
my words on a page.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
It's magically cool, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
Yes, it's so cool.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Yeah, I mean that is a trip.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
So talk a little bit about what you're doing to
help people, because I know you're doing some really cool
stuff with the storytelling stuff. And I'm gonna throw I'm
gonna put your is it just it's the Valerie what
is it dot?
Speaker 2 (47:34):
My website is Valerie Francis dot ca.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
A Yeah, okay, yep, I'm going to put that up
on the screen. Go ahead, go ahead and talk about
some of the stuff that you're doing to help people
with the storytelling part.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Yeah. So, because I sort of ran foul of a
number of Charlatans in our business as I was learning,
and one of the things that I do now. In
addition to being an I have a podcast called story
Nerd that is totally free, and in it, my podcast
co host and I we analyze a film every week
(48:10):
from the story perspective, and we're talking about storytelling techniques.
And these apply to novels, to screenplays, obviously to memoir.
It's even the same techniques for nonfiction. For in business,
because everything is storytelling. In addition to that, I'm also
a story editor, so I do work one on one
with writers and help them with their specific books. And
(48:33):
I also have at story nerd dot Ca slash courses.
We're now starting to roll out some courses all about
the craft of storytelling so that we can help as
many writers as possible. And one of the courses is
called the Fundamentals of Storytelling. So this is where you start.
This is the course I wish I had when I
(48:54):
was starting, because I couldn't. I was so desperate to
find somebody who would just say, Okay, Valerie, here's what
you need to know. And if you never move beyond this,
you will still be just fine. But here's what you
need if your story must have these things in it,
otherwise it's not going to work and no one's going
to want to read it, and you'll just waste your time.
(49:14):
So it's called the Fundamentals of Storytelling, and we go
over the basics of plot and character design and genre
because one thing in our business, and the irony does
not escape me at all. In the storytelling business, there
is no common lexicon. So even the word genre, it
(49:38):
means something a little different to everyone you speak with, like,
for example, some people, when you say genre fiction, it's
low brow. It's sort of bargain basement y stuff, and
it's not worth anybody's time, and it is the opposite
of literary, which is the only thing that has any value.
For other people like me, the word genre simply means
(50:01):
what kind of story is it? So for me, literary
is a genre because that's one of the types of
books you can buy. When you go into the bookstore
and you see all the different labels around the bookstore,
those to mere genre's mystery. You might see a general fiction,
which means these are the ones books that are really selling. Well,
that's why they're at the front of the store. You
(50:21):
might see romance, you might see travel books, you might
see biographies. Those are all genres to me, So at
NERD story Nerd is all about me and my podcast
co host Melanie Hill, who's in Australia. It's and she
is also a writer. We're teaching other writers what we know,
what it has taken us ten years of blood, sweat
(50:43):
and tears to figure out, so that you all can
write the stories that are in your heads and in
your hearts and have the careers that you want to
have as fiction writers, as memoirsts, as screenwriters. Because as
Ken and I were just saying, app Number one is
having a really great book, because if you don't have
(51:03):
a really great book, it's game over. You're you're wasting
all of the other energy promoting it. And one of
the things that I've discovered, and I think we talked
about this a minute ago, when I came into this business,
the first thing I had to learn was how to
tell a story. Because I had come from journalism, communications, academia.
(51:27):
I had come from all that. So I could certainly
write an academic paper, I could certainly write a policy document.
I could write a newspaper article or a magazine article.
Those are all styles of writing it. And so I
had the I had the grammar. I had the line
writing skills, but I had to learn the storytelling skills.
(51:48):
And that's the piece that a lot of writers miss
that they might come into this. They might be a lawyer,
for example, well they can write a legal brief. Or
they might be a scientist. They know how to write
a scientific paper, and they have all those writing skills.
Now you need the storytelling skills. So that's what we teach,
and that's what these courses are designed to teach, so
(52:09):
that we can help as many people as possible, as
quickly as possible. Because I can only have so many
one on one clients and I can only help, you know,
maybe half dozen people in a year. Now I can
help hundreds of people in a year. So that's that's
the big thing we've got going on now, in addition
to finishing my current novel.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
That's so awesome though, you know, I do know, you know,
when I you know, we talk about all of the
the stuff about the business side of it and the
you know, but at the end of the day, I
believe that every and Mark Victor Hansen says is everyone
(52:54):
has a story in them, Everyone has a book in them.
Now I also believe that some people should not write
a book. I'm kidding, that's me. I think that there
are so many people that are going to go to
their grave with their stories still in them. Yes, yeah, sad,
(53:19):
I think that's sad.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
Well, there's a lot of people. It takes a lot
for someone to even start to write the book. There's
a lot of people wishing they could write a book,
and they don't take the first step because it can
be a little intimidating. It really can. I totally get it.
And then for the people who take the first step,
when they get into it sooner or later. And I
know this because listen, I did it, and every client
(53:43):
I've ever worked with, and I've now worked with hundreds
of writers through you know, the one on one and
through group work that I've done and all that kind
of stuff, everyone has had the same feeling where they
get into it and they realize, oh, there's more to
this than I thought. This is a much bigger project
than I thought. I'm so overwhelmed. What do I do now?
A lot of the people will just give up because,
(54:05):
like me, they can't find someone. You know, when I started,
I couldn't find someone who just said okay, Valerie, Relax, here,
here's what you do.
Speaker 1 (54:13):
Ye.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
So I want to be the mentor that I wish
I had. If that doesn't sound too arrogant.
Speaker 1 (54:21):
It does not at all. That's the thing is people
need mentors to if they want to. I mean, yeah,
I don't even know how much money I've invested in mentors.
It's a lot lot. You know, you didn't go to
Bob Procter's event for free? No, No, I know that
(54:41):
for a fact. He definitely believed in abundance, you know,
and so does so does his son Brian. So you
know the people are I think it's like, Okay, well
I'm going to put out this whatever amount of money
to do something that I've never done. Yeah, and I
don't know if there's going to be a payoff. What
(55:04):
I think that a lot of people are missing is
that it is an unbelievable business card because there is
a really good chance, let's say that you're a veterinarian,
a veterinarian and Toronto will stick with Canada for a minute,
and you know, you have a lot of competitors around you.
(55:27):
There is a really, really good chance that not one
of your competitors has written a book. Yeah, and you
could be the unicorn. You could be the one that
wrote a book and now you're a famous veterinarian if
you spend the time and the money marketing it and
all of that.
Speaker 2 (55:47):
Right, I offer up James Harriet. Look no further than
you know who James Harriet is.
Speaker 1 (55:54):
I do not.
Speaker 2 (55:55):
He's a vet or, he was elf White as the
man's actual name. James Harriet is his nom de plume,
his pseudonym, and he started to write I think the
first one is All Creatures, great and small, huge hit.
There's been two different television series. It's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful stories.
(56:18):
And he's a he's a storyteller. And the other thing ken.
Since we're just launching this the online school right now
for the Fundamentals of Storytelling until July seventh, you can
get fifty percent off use the coupon code Canada fifty
because we launched it on Canada Day.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
Where what is that? A different website?
Speaker 2 (56:38):
No, go to story Nerd. Well, if you go to
if you go to my website, there's a button at
the top call courses that'll take you there. Valerie Francis
dot Ca, slash courses.
Speaker 1 (56:48):
Or coupon code. Hold on, let me, let me put
a banner.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Oh my goodness, I'm speaking so fast. I get excited
about this.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
This is awesome code.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
What Canada fifty cant Is.
Speaker 1 (57:04):
It capitalized or does it matter?
Speaker 2 (57:07):
I don't think it matters, but capitalize it just in case.
Speaker 1 (57:11):
All caps for Canada. All caps Canada.
Speaker 2 (57:16):
Five zero five zero.
Speaker 1 (57:21):
Four off. Okay, so there it is up on the screen.
So coupon code for fifty percent off of the And
what is the course? What's the course called?
Speaker 2 (57:42):
It's called The Fundamentals of Storytelling. Okay, not a jazzy name,
but it does what it says on the tin. These
are the things that your story must have if you
want people to read your book all the way to
the end and tell their friends about it. And it
comes with an online community. So I'm in there, Melanie
(58:05):
is in there. If you get stuck and you have questions,
we can answer them. Our goal here is to help
you reach your goal. And we're writers to where story nerds.
We call it story nerd because listen, we can talk
all day long about stories. I can talk the leg
(58:26):
off a table about stories. So come and join us,
and I would love to meet you.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
That is so awesome, So I listen. I endorsed that message.
I mean, I really do. I think that if you
are thinking about writing a book, you got to learn
how to tell stories. Yes, it is a must, And
(58:56):
this sounds like a fantastic course. If Valerie has read
donated with you today and you feel like you'd like
to get into her community and surround yourself with her brilliance,
then definitely go to Valerie Francis dot c A and
use the coupon code Canada fifty. Now does that apply
(59:19):
for even people in the US, they still get a fifty.
Speaker 2 (59:23):
Yes, indeed, no matter where you are in the world,
that will work.
Speaker 1 (59:27):
What is the what is the the original price of
the course? And they get fifty off that?
Speaker 2 (59:38):
Yep, because because we're launching it right now.
Speaker 1 (59:40):
Oh my gosh, what do you have to lose? Seriously, crazy,
holy crap. Go sign up. You need you need this
in your life whoever's watching, and you need this writing
a book. I've told many, many people, you know, when
I when I grant cardone, you know, kind of motivated
(01:00:04):
me to write my first book. It's the greatest thing
I ever did. It literally put me on the map.
It made me and I was already doing very well,
but it just takes you to a different level. Like
most people are going to go to their grave without
(01:00:24):
ever having written a book.
Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
Yeah, yeah, And if you've got a burning desire to
do it, do it. Because writing a novel, I mean, yes,
I quit my job to do it. But you don't
need to quit your job. You can just spend an
hour a day and before you know it, your novel
(01:00:47):
is done, or your screenplay or your memoir or whatever
it is you want to write, it's done. And like
you said, Ken, when you pick up your book for
the first time and look at it and sniff the paper,
which is what we love to do, woo, it is
the best kind of high I am telling you it is.
(01:01:09):
And it's such a feeling of accomplishment. It's like you
feel like you can conquer the world when you get
that done.
Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
I think, Valerie, and I know you're going to be
able to relate to this. There. Let's say that we
had one hundred people watching, which we don't. We have
sixteen hundred and seventy one people watching right now. But
let's for my brain to work properly. Let's say there's
a hundred. Okay, there is a percentage of the people
(01:01:37):
watching that are like, God, yes, I'd love to write
a book. I'd love for people to know my story
or know who I am, or I have this novel
or I have this hobby that I'm the best at,
and I want to teach other people through my book. Yep,
But oh my god, what if somebody reads it and
they hate it? And what if they judge me? What
(01:01:58):
if my mom and dad read it and they hate
me for writing about that or whatever? It is? Like,
I those are the demons that I had. I mean
I fought with them. I mean I fought with those
demons because I was like, I finally reached a point,
and I think you'll be able to relate to this
(01:02:19):
and maybe even deliver the message to the audience. But
you have to face those demons. You have to.
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
But you don't have to face them alone, which is
why we have the community. That's right, because we are
all doing it. We're all like when my first book
came out, my nephew said to me, how does it
feel anti val to have your first book coming out?
And I drew, I would feel less exposed if I
strip naked and ran down the middle of the street.
(01:02:49):
It's so true, and it's you got to just take
a deep breath and just just go for it. But
once you step through that, once you've done it once,
then the second time is easier. The third time is
even easier than that. And then you have the situation
I have now where I which is the most wonderful
(01:03:12):
problem that a writer could ever have. I have reader's
message me saying when's the next book coming out? I
want your next book. I'm like, it's soon soon. I'm
on the last round of edits. It's out of my
hands on August first, so you know, but it is tough.
I absolutely. I don't want to downplay it because you
(01:03:32):
do feel very vulnerable when it comes out, which is
why Melanie and I really wanted to have this community
so that when your book comes out it's a soft landing.
You have a community of other people who have gone
through it or are about to go through it, who
get it, who can give you kind of a virtual hug. Definitely,
(01:03:53):
lots of virtual high fives and do it together and
all of.
Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
That for one hundred and forty Yes, with the coupon,
that's crazy. Yes, coupon code Canada fifty. Go to Valerie
Francis dot ca A, click on courses at the top
and use the coupon code Canada or Canada five zero. Valerie,
(01:04:19):
you are amazing. Your energy is contagious. Your your and
my wife said it. I love your.
Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
Laugh, she said, Ah, thanks, Jill.
Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
You have such a great laugh and presence. And you know,
people need to learn how to to be like that,
and it comes from loving what you're doing. It really does.
Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Yes, Oh, I'm having a ball and other people can
have a ball to Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
Anything else you'd like to share with the audience before
we wrap this up?
Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
No, I mean, I think that's it. If you've got
any questions, you can reach me through my website check
out the podcast story nerd and I just can't wait
to meet everyone on the inside.
Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
That's awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate you coming
on and investing your time with everyone today. If you
would stay with me and let's chat after this, but everybody,
go over to Valerie Francis dot ca A. Check it out,
go to the button at the top, click on courses,
(01:05:28):
Go over, get in this course and get fifty percent
off of the investment because it's launching right now. Use
the coupon code Canada fifty five zero. And yeah, this
is freaking awesome. Thank you. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
My wife even says, great interview. I think you planted
some ideas and inspiration today, Jill.
Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
How nice of you. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:05:56):
That's awesome. Yeah, all right, thank you so much. Everybody.
They have a wonderful day. Make sure you go follow Valerie.
Go over to her website, follow her everywhere, and we
will see you all later. Valerie, stay with me. We'll
be right back.
Hey, good morning, and welcome to break Through Walls. I'm
Ken Walls and I'm your host, and today I have
the amazing Valerie Francis on the show and she is
joining us from the great country of Canada. A. I
love saying A at the end. I always get crap from
(00:28):
my Canadian friends for that. But anyway, so we are
going to talk to Valerie and see what her life
story is and how she's made it through the ups
and downs in life and what she's up to these days.
So if you would do me a favor and share
this out so we can get a bunch of people
(00:49):
on here to hear all about Valerie and her story
and we will be right back. See in a minute.
Share this out, share it out. Okay, we are back.
(01:28):
Let me bring Valerie on. Valerie, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Thank you so much, Ken.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
I am so happy to have you here. So I
am trying to share this out with a few groups
that I'm in, so let me all right do that.
And so Valerie, I started this show, oh my goodness,
six years ago ish and maybe a little longer than that.
(01:58):
And thank you. That is my buddy Operator four oh
four on X. Thank you that's Kat me and King
as well. But thank you for sharing this out brother. So,
so you know I started this, it's been it's been
I guess over six years ago. That's crazy. And it
(02:18):
was really to help people have a breakthrough in life.
And I'm assuming that you've had some ups and downs
in life. Oh yeah, So I'd love for you to
talk about, you know, start with where everything started for you.
Where were you born and raised? Let's start there.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I was born in Saint John's, Newfoundlands and Labrador, which
is on the east coast of Canada, and that is
where I still live, the youngest of three daughters. So
I don't know if that makes me the spoiled one
or not, but but I'm the youngest. My sisters would
say it does.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yes, I have two daughters, and my oldest would say
that that's true. So so what was it like growing up there?
Doesn't it get really cold?
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Well, it depends where in the province you live. In Labrador,
it's pretty cold because that's pretty far north. Where I
am in Saint John's it's actually pretty mild. The winters
here are not too cold at all. We tend to
have some snow. Yes, obviously, but then it'll warm up
and then it'll rain. So this past winter was very green.
(03:34):
I have no complaints.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Wow green.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
No, I still have a snowblower, though it's not so
green that I don't need a snowblower, but we I
think I only use the snowblower twice. So it's a
great place. Everyone should come visit.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Wow. So I used to have a Newfoundland dog.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Ah, yes I did.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Is that where they're from?
Speaker 2 (03:57):
I assumed, yes, yes, and I have two labradors also
from this province.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Okay, awesome. So what was it like for you as
a kid? I mean growing up? You went to school there,
and I think things are a little different than they
are here in the States as far as like high
school and then college, and you guys call it something different.
(04:23):
Why don't you explain that a little bit, talk about
what it was like growing up for you.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Yeah, well, grade school is pretty much the same here
in Canada as it is there in the US. When
I was growing up, there were only public schools, so
I went to public school and then when I graduated
in eighty eight, I think it was I can't remember now,
it was a long time ago. I went to university
which is what we call college. And I did an
(04:51):
honors degree in English literature, graduated top of my class,
and then went on to a career that was all
about writing. I worked in publishing, I worked in public relations,
I worked in communications. Now I am a writer, but
everything that I did had to do with the English language,
writing it, reading it, analyzing it, all that kind of stuff.
(05:14):
Working with other writers.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Look at look at my buddy Joe. He's just he's
just as smart. I like everything. So, so you that
was working for a what kind of a company was it? Then?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Well, different companies. I worked with a local publishing company.
The last, you know, quote unquote real job that I
had was working with the federal government in various different departments,
part of their communications team.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Okay, wow, and how like did you Was that a
long term thing you did? Oh?
Speaker 2 (05:53):
I was there. I felt like forever. I was there
sixteen years. And it was a good job. You know,
the benefits were great, the salary was great. When I left,
I had the corner office, you know, I had the
big job. I had the staff and the pension and
the benefit. I had all that, but I kind of
(06:15):
got to hate it. Loved the people. I worked with,
got really tired of the bureaucracy, and I just about
I can't remember when I left exactly. I started my
exit ten years ago. It took me a couple of
years of sort of taking some leave of absences and
that kind of stuff, and I just thought, listen, life
(06:36):
is short. I can't stay here. I'll go bonkers. Just
the layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy just got
to be a bit much for me. And I come
from family of entrepreneurs, so you know, I kind of
had that bug too, And they're it's different wiring, right,
If you're wired like an entrepreneur, working in the bureaucracy
(06:59):
can be tough.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
I I yeah, personally, I find it. I can't do it,
and I definitely couldn't do it for the government. Like,
I mean, there's bureaucracy in anything, right, in any kind
of oh yes, job, Like it doesn't matter if it's
the government or corporation. Yeah, but I would think that
(07:23):
the government would probably be even more sickening.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah. Well, I mean it just got to a point
where I thought, I'm working so hard to build something
for someone else. If I worked this hard, I could
build something for me, that's really amazing. And if I
in government, if you want to do something, you have
to go through twenty five layers of approvals and put
(07:48):
proposals and blah blah blah blah. Yeah, as the owner
of my own company, if I make a decision today,
I can be putting it into action an hour from now,
and I like that. That's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
It's it's or even sooner in some things, like you know,
you don't have to go through all the red tape
and the insanity.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
I can't.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
I can't even imagine. So so, okay, so you you
worked in government for sixteen and you said as that
in communications like what, yeah, how to get the message
out that they're they're screwing their citizens or how do
you tell them that they're being screwed and make them
(08:33):
like it? Is that what you had to Well.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
No, not quite, not quite.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
I mean every government. So what so what was the
kind of what type of messaging or communications stuff did
you have to focus on?
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Well, it really depended which department I was in, Like
I worked with the Department of Justice for a number
of years, and that would be communicating, it could be
doing some education on what the legal processes were. It
could be training some of the lawyers in the department
for doing media interviews. I worked with Fisheries and Oceans
(09:10):
and Human Resources. The Human Resources department it's now called
Service Canada was I think probably my favorite because that
was the social programming. So if someone had lost their job,
what we did in Communications was explain to them how
they could apply for benefits when they were retiring and
they wanted their Canada Pension plan. Again, we outlined for
(09:33):
them how they could go about getting their pension and
all that kind of stuff. So that was sort of
of all the departments I worked for. I think that
was kind of the feel good department.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
When okay, so when you but obviously if you were
doing that, were you forced to move departments or did you.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Oh no, okay, no, I did it because it was
just fun, you know, and it's it's I guess, like,
I mean, I don't know what Washington is, like, I
haven't been there and I certainly haven't worked there. But
the seat of Parliament in Canada is in Ottawa, and
it's a fairly small department, a fairly small communications community,
so you get to know everyone and you're constantly working
(10:19):
with the communications folks in other departments, So it would
be just kind of nice every few years to switch
up the department and test your skills in a different way,
flex your your communications muscle and your writing skills in
a different way, and get to know different people. And
it was just just to keep it interesting, that's all.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Got it. So when you when you made the I mean,
was there like a moment where You're like, I can't
do this anymore. I'm out. Yeah, I mean you said
it took ten years, but like, what what what was
the fun? Was there a final blow so to speak,
(11:02):
that made you go, I can't, I just can't do
this anymore.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Well, I think it was probably something that had been
building up for a little while. And you know, my
kids were really young at the time, they were six
and ten years old, and I was a single mom.
My husband had passed away, and I remember being in
my oh, well, thank you, it's a long time ago now.
So I remember being in my office, a beautiful office,
(11:29):
surrounded by really wonderful people, and I remember looking out,
you know, because I was in one of the tall
buildings downtown, you know, the fancy things, And I remember
looking out at a woman who was walking on the sidewalk,
and I thought, she's free. She can walk along that
sidewalk in the middle of the day. I can't. I
have to sit in this office and this is this
(11:52):
is messed up. I don't I don't want to do
this anymore. And I thought, okay, I have to figure
out how to make the switch. Now. As a single
mom of two really young kids, it would have been
irresponsible of me to just up and quit one day, right,
And you know, I just wasn't going to do that.
So I started by taking my summers off because that
(12:14):
was a program available to us where we were kind
of like teachers, where we'd be paid for ten weeks,
but the ten weeks ten months, but the ten month
salary was stretched over twelve so I would still get
a check during the summer. But I just worked for
ten months of the year and that was really wonderful.
(12:35):
And my daughter, who's now twenty two, said, I really
like she couldn't remember me not being home when, you know,
because when she was home, I was home, and that
was that was such a gift to me to think, Okay,
you know, she did notice she was only a little
pipsqueak at the time six years old, but she noticed
(12:58):
and it meant a her. So I thought, Okay, I
did the right decision there. And when I finally did
decide to take a leave of absence for work like
a for a couple of years, I still had that
safety net that I could go back if I had to,
and I just paid No, no, no, I wasn't getting paid.
(13:20):
I had saved up my own money and was sort
of living off what I had saved to cover me
for a couple of years while I was building something.
While I was building my own business, right, so if
if I did a face planted, I still had a
job to go back to. And you know, I felt
so much more relaxed, even though I was working really hard,
(13:41):
because it meant when the kids were at school, I
was working like a crazy woman in those couple of hours,
and then when they came home, I was totally focused
on them and driving them to their activities and all
that kind of stuff. When they went to bed at night,
I went back to work, so I got to set
my own hours. I suddenly, I suddenly was in charge
of my schedule, right, and I wasn't trapped in an
(14:04):
office any longer having to explain why I took my
lunch break, why I actually left the office for an
hour to go for a walk around the block and
clear my head. And that was a gift, an absolute gift.
And I know that I was a better mom because
of it. I was a lot calmer. And what I
(14:26):
didn't really realize at the time that now that my
kids are twenty two and you know, will be twenty
six in a couple of weeks, right, what I realized
now that I didn't realize then is that I was
setting a really good example for my kids. They are
both now pursuing what they love to do, and they're
very happy. They're happy people. They enjoy what they do
(14:47):
for a living, and they enjoy their studies.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah that's awesome. So so you took this this two years?
Was that recently? Was that in the last When was that?
What year was that?
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Oh that was twenty fifteen, okay, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, Yeah
to go wow, Yeah, oh yeah, I never went back.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah did they call and ask you to come back?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Well, interestingly, a couple of months before I was due
to let them know one way or the other whether
I was coming back. I got a call from a previous,
a former colleague who was in Ottawa and I now
had moved from Ottawa to Newfoundland. And she called and
she said, we have a position opening up in Newfoundland
(15:38):
and you would be perfect for it. I know you're
on leave of absence right now, but I also know
you're coming back. Because again it's a small community. Everyone
knew what I was doing. And so she proceeded to
tell me about the job and what she would need.
And when you work in the federal government here in Canada,
you need to be bilingual. And I was when I
(15:58):
worked in Ottawa, but in NEWFOUNDLANDE and French, French and
English and okay and so, but I mean, living here
in Newfoundland, I didn't need to use my French. So
I was I'll be kind to myself and say that
(16:19):
I was rusty. I was super rusty. And my friend said,
no problem, we'll work around it. We'll get your training,
like whatever you need. You tell me what you want
and we'll make it happen. And I thought, I'm being tested.
The Cosmos is testing me. And she said, don't answer me. Now,
(16:39):
call me back next week and let me know your answer.
And she said, just tell me, like, what what have
you been up to? And so then we had a
little bit of a chat and by the end of
the call, she said, you're not coming back. You're not
going to say yes to me. Why would you? Did
you you're happy where you are. She said, I'll leave
the door open, but I know you're going to say no.
(17:00):
And I thought, yeah, it's a no because the thought
of the chaos coming back into my life and that
rat race of having to get up in the morning
and get the kids out the door and get because
when I was working and my kids were younger, they
still needed daycare in the afternoon. I would take my
lunch at two thirty in the afternoon, pick them up
(17:22):
from school, drop them off at daycare, beat it back
to my desk for three thirty so that they could
be at daycare for an hour because I got off
work at four thirty.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Oh my god, and you.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Know, and then beat it home. And I just thought,
this is insanity, this is this is nuts, this is
no way to live. So I'm like, yeah, totally. And
you know what, there's a lot of parents of young
children listening to this who are saying, yep, been there,
done that.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Yeah, so you know, I assume that working for the government,
especially and your education, that you probably made a decent salary.
I would imagine.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Yeah, I was comfortable for sure, for sure.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Yeah. My when I met my wife, she had been
global VP of marketing for two different five hundred million
dollar a year companies, and you know, she was not
an entrepreneur in any way I was, and she had
been downsized in the eighth nine to twenty ten thing.
(18:32):
And I'm like, well, we can work together. And so
you know, now we still work together, but it's been
a battle because it's a it's and you tell me
what you think, but it is a massive difference in
mindset in the way that you view things, right, because yes,
(18:53):
you know, talk about that a little bit and the
fears that because there's a lot of fear going I'm
going to walk away from my twenty five, one hundred
dollars a week paycheck or whatever it is, whatever the
amount is. Yeah, you know, I'm gonna walk away from
that and I'm going to do my own thing and
(19:15):
hang out my own shingle. Talk about the fear around that.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
Oh I love this question. Okay, So when I was
in the process of making all these decisions and you know,
would I come back, go back to work and all
that kind of stuff. I discovered a man named Bob Proctor.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah a minute, I just talked. Oh well that's how
we met, was.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Brob true, Brian Proctor. That's right. I love that's right, Thank.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
God, I love that dude. All right, go ahead, Sorry,
it's okay, that's right. I had a brain fart there
for a minute. Okay, go ahead.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
And so Bob would do these seminars and they were
you could go in person or you could go online.
And I decided to take one of his online seminars.
And even then at the time, spending the money at
one hundred and thirty bucks or whatever it was, I
can't remember, it really felt kind of like a crazy
thing that I was doing. But if there was something
(20:14):
about him that was very compelling. So I did this
seminar with him, and in the course of that seminar,
he said, are you willing to step out and bet
on yourself? And I thought, oh, oh, that's what this
is about. That's what this requires me to do, to
step out and bet on myself. I'm a safer bet
(20:37):
than the government. That is exactly my thought, because at
the time there was you know, the way that the
government would work is they would never come right out
and say there's going to be downsizing. There would be
a lot of rumors and they would let people leave
on their own, which meant then they didn't have to
go through the formal process of downsizing. But I'm a
fairly intelligent woman. I could see the writing on the
(20:59):
wall and I thought, no, I'm a safer bet. I
trust me with my pension more than I trust some faceless,
nameless person in some office somewhere in Ottawa managing my money.
So I mean I sat down with my financial advisor
and came up with a plan and said, you know,
if I cashed out, what would that look like? Or
should I left it in there? What would that look like?
(21:20):
And together we came up with a plan. I mean,
it didn't just one day up and leave right and
then figure it all out. I I spoke with people first.
I you know, Madu, my DUTs went a row make
sure my children would be cared for financially, and they
were and they are. And but that's line. Are you
(21:41):
willing to step out and bet on yourself? Yes, that
I can do. I'm a safe bet and so that
was the thing that made me go, yeah, all right,
let's do this. And my kids supported it. You know,
my kids said go for it, mom.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
You know that's it. That's so you had kind of
a somewhat it sounds like of a safety net a
little bit. I didn't do that. I got a twenty
dollars loan because I was broke, broke, oh wow, and
went out and knocked on doors. I didn't have a
safety net I had. I had to eat. And so
(22:22):
you know, that's that. But there's still there's this entrepreneurial
thing that and I think Bob talked about this probably
many times. It's the you know, I had Don Green,
the CEO of of of the Napoleon Hill Foundation. He's
(22:46):
a really good friend of mine and he was on
yesterday with me and Don is amazing. And it's all
about having that burning desire that no matter what, the
ships are burned.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yes, right, yes, yes, there's absolutely.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Right now, are you willing to step out and bet
on yourself?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Yeah, Jill, you're exactly. I mean, that's exactly it, right,
That's that's what we all, that's what we all are
doing and you've got two choices. If you're if you
want to talk about mindset, you all of us as
we're going through life, we've got two choices. I mean,
I don't know what your upbringing was like, but I
think mine was fairly typical, certainly in It's been pretty
(23:32):
common in all the people I've met in my lifetime
as I've traveled through the world. But we were taught
to the goal was to grow up, get a job,
get married, have kids, stay in that job until you retired.
That was that was the thing that everyone did. And
every now and again there'd be someone who was a
(23:53):
little different who might open up their own I don't know,
beauty parlor, their own hardware store, their own law office,
whatever it was. But most people went to work for
someone else. And there's nothing wrong with that, absolutely, and
there's a lot of people who are very happy with that,
and they like the safety net in that, so I'm
(24:14):
not in any way criticizing that. However, there are some
people who there's always this little niggling in there right
inside of us. We're like, yeah, this is good, but
I'm really looking forward to five o'clock on Friday, Like
I'm just living for five o'clock on Friday, and then
(24:35):
when Sunday comes, the anxiety starts to ramp back up,
and you're thinking, oh god, I gotta I gotta go
back to work in the morning. Oh what a rat race.
There is another way of doing it. There is there's
absolutely another way of doing it. And some people will
do what you did, and they'll just you know, cut
(24:56):
the ties and go cold turkey and go for it.
And then there are peopleeople who will sort of follow
more my route, which is wean themselves off the steady paycheck,
give themselves a little safety net and build from there.
I mean Bob used to say, you know, jump, you'll
build wings on the way down, and and that's kind
(25:17):
of how it is. But it's it's exhilarating.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
It is exst you know. It's like I was talking
to somebody yesterday, like they're like, what are you doing
for the fourth of July? I'm like working one of
my Like I hate holidays, I don't, but but like
I don't like I when you when you when you
(25:44):
love what you do and you're you, I mean really
love what you do and you're doing what you love
and you're I mean, it's not. It's not work. It's
it's it's no fun.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
And ken, what I do for a living now is
read books and write books and watch movies and write
screenplays and work with people with writers who are writing
their own novels and their own screenplays. I mean, I've
got a podcast too, and every week we analyze a
film from the storytelling perspective. We're not looking at cinematography
or the acting in it or any of that kind
(26:20):
of stuff, or the casting or the music. We're looking
only at the story. So when I'm watching a movie
on Friday night, it's actually work. I mean, come on,
that's pretty cool. That's a fun job.
Speaker 1 (26:32):
That's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
And it's a job that didn't exist before I had
to create it. And I so much prefer it to
sitting in the office looking out at the world wishing
I was out there in it.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
You know, I think about I think about something you
said a minute ago, and a few minutes ago you
said that you had that two year two years too.
Basically say, okay, I screwed up. I want my job back.
I give, I give. But you know, most people don't realize,
(27:11):
and I'll just throw this in there. Most people don't
realize that they have that too, and maybe not necessarily
the way you had it, but you had it whether
you had it or not, and that is you. You.
There's all kinds of places that will hire you, like
you can always get another job.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, even for sure not for.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
The government, or maybe it's a little less, but what
if it's a little more. Yeah, you know, so I think,
you know, I look at it from the perspective of
and I'm sure you do now, but like if if
everything hits the fan, I can start over whatever. It's like,
(27:53):
just you just keep going. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
I mean, I've gotten myself this far. And when I
did leave the government, I was halfway, so I had
sixteen years in I would have had another sixteen years
to go. I'm still nowhere near the sixteen years right right, Like,
I still have many more years to go before I
would even have been eligible to retire from that job.
And I think of everything I have done in the
last ten years and all the people that I have met,
(28:19):
and the places that I have traveled, and where this
job has has taken me. I God, I wouldn't give
that up. I mean, you know, and people say, how's
it going? Valerie and they assume. They assume it's not
going very well, simply because I'm a single mother and
I'm a writer, so they assume therefore I am, you know,
(28:41):
one step away from the food bank. And I say,
it's great. I live in a lovely home in a
lovely neighborhood. You know, I kind of make a joke
of it, and I say, well, you know, the lights
are still on, the children are still fed, but we're
doing a lot better than that. I've always had a
new car, you know, like it's good. It's good. Life
(29:04):
is good, and it's on my own terms, which is the.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Best exactly I was. And I'm pulling it open here
real quick. So Mark, Victor Hanson and Jack Canfield have
a book and it's on Audible. It's called Dare to Win.
And as you know, Mark I already shared with you.
Mark is a very very good friend of mine. They
(29:30):
co created Chicken Soup for the Soul. Yes, the only
book that's out sold their book is the Bible. And
you know, with six hundred million copies of Chicken Soup
for the Soul, now I think, yep, it's crazy. But
you know, I was talking to Mark one day and
we were going through a rough patch, and he goes,
(29:53):
let me tell you something, and and this story is
in that Dare to Win book and and it is
a night teen seventy four. I was he had been
doing two million dollars a year in another business and
the industry shifted massively and he basically went absolutely broke.
And he had a I forget what year, the Volkswagen something,
(30:17):
I don't know what it was, but he was broke.
And he he said there was an attorney standing on
a corner saying I'll help you file bankruptcy. It's three
hundred dollars. And he said. I looked at him and said,
if I had three hundred dollars, I wouldn't be here
to you know, He's like, so he had to go
to the library and check a book out on like
(30:39):
how to go bankrupt on your own right right? So
you know. And but what I love about entrepreneurs, what
I love about like Mark, Victor Hansen and anybody doing
what you're doing what I'm doing, is there is one
key ingredient that is required and oftentimes you don't even
(31:01):
know you have it until you need it, And that
is absolute tenacity. You have to be able to. You
have to be able to hang in there because sometimes
sometimes it gets really really really really real.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
So yes, I'm tenacious, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (31:24):
Oh my gosh, but talk about some of the I'm
sure it's not been all rainbows and unicorns since you
started your company. What are some of the downs that
you've went, Oh my god, am I because you've said
that graph on the thing on social media the journey
of the entrepreneur, like oh my god, we're gonna make
(31:47):
it and then boom next day everything we're all going
to die and it's like it's the up and down
thing and it's crazy sometimes. Yeah, talk about some of
the things you've been through that you were like, I
don't know if I'm going to make it.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
H Yeah, there have been a few of those, I'll
tell you that. Well. So when I started, I started
as a novelist. That's what I left the job that
you know, the real job to do is to be
a novelist. And the first challenge I had was learning
how to write a novel because it's a lot there's
a lot more to it than putting words on a page. Now,
(32:25):
I came from a writing background. All of the jobs
I had required me to write, but their different styles
of writing, you know, writing a communication.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
They started a novel company without knowing how to write a.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Novel, Well I started. Well, yeah, because everyone who becomes
a writer, everyone who decides they want to write a novel, yeah,
is in essence going into business, right, because it doesn't
matter what publishing model you follow, Like you could self
publish and then you were really starting, you know, you
inc But even if you want to be traditionally published,
(33:00):
you're going into business with an agent and a publisher.
So when you write your manuscript and you query an agent,
basically your query letter and your sample pages is your
business proposal, and you're going to someone and say, Okay,
I need you to sell this for me. Are you
willing to invest your talent and your expertise, in your
(33:21):
time and your business in going into business with me
to sell this novel. So it's the business of the arts.
And there's a lot of people who really want to
believe in I call them magical thinkers, and we kind
of all start out that way. That's not a derogatory term,
(33:44):
but we kind of get caught up in the romance
of what it is to be a novelist and it's
this image of well, I just sit on a beach
and wait for the muse to download a book to me. Well, no, honey,
that is not how it works. It is it's a job.
Like any other job. You got to show up every
(34:05):
day and do the job. And so one of my
first challenges was finding someone who could teach me how
to do this. And I spent a lot of money
and a lot of time on people and courses and
books trying to figure out how to do this. And
(34:27):
what I discovered is that, well, the screenwriters are way
ahead of novelists, first of all, in stories, because nobody
buys a novel because they want to read pretty sentences.
No one says, I think I'd like to read nice
pros as I go to the cabin this weekend. No
people say I want a good book to read when
I'm at the cabin, or I'm going to the beach,
(34:49):
you know, or I just need to unwind for twenty
minutes at the end of the day. So people buy
a book because they want a good story, not because
they want to read beautiful prose. So that was my
first challenge, and it took me a long time to
understand that there was two things happening. Because coming from
a literary background, I was always taught about the pros,
(35:11):
how to write distiff sentences and all that kind of stuff,
which is an important skill. Don't get me wrong. I
mean readers assume a writer can do that. Let's be fair.
That's just an assumption that you have those skills. Now,
can you tell a story? And it took me a
long time, a long time to find and I didn't
(35:33):
find just one person. I found a couple of people
after many years, who could fill in some gaps for me.
So that was when you're a writer, you're always playing
the long game, right. There's no get rich quick schemes.
No matter what you might think of fifty Shades of Gray,
there's no get rich quick schemes. You're playing the long game.
(35:56):
So so you're writing, and you're writing and writing, you're writing.
You're hoping one day the money will start coming back.
So it wasn't until my third novel that I started
to see some traction and that I became a best
seller and that I got regular royalties. I mean, I'm
doing zero promotion for that book. It's an open door
(36:17):
of romance called Masquerade. Other than something like what I
just said, I do zero promotion for that book, and
I get royalty statements from all the online retailers. But
it took me a while to figure that out. And
so you know, that was probably, I think the biggest
I don't know if I would call it a pitfall,
(36:39):
but the biggest light bulb moment for me to realize, Okay,
this is a job where I'm going to have to
this is a marathon, not a sprint. I'm going to
have to be willing to Uh, friend, where can you
order Masquerade? It's available wherever you get books. If you
(36:59):
want it on Amazon, It's on Amazon, yep. If you're
in Canada, it'll be at Chapters, Indigo or Cobo. It's available.
Should your library should even be able to order it.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
But yeah, it's just called Masquerade.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
And my name Valerie France's Masquerade. Get the complete series though,
because I here's where I followed some poor advice that
I didn't know was poor advice at the time. This
was way back when and authors were playing what I
call algorithm roulette at on Amazon, and the game then
(37:34):
was you had to publish every thirty days to make
the algorithm happy and blah blah blah. So what I did.
It's a story that takes place over a year. Okay,
so each chapter is a month of the year, and
I would write it and then publish it, and then
write it and then publish. So there's part one to twelve,
(37:55):
and then I bundle them as one novel because it's
one novel. But I take the other ones down because
I already had such great reviews and they're cheap. Someone
can just buy the first one and if they like it,
they can go and get the whole book. So it's working.
There's no reason for me to take it down because
they're selling. But I always recommend that someone just buy
(38:15):
the what's called the complete series and then you get
the whole story in one. It's an open door romance,
and it's designed to be fantasy, to be escaped, just
to have fun with it. It's not a heavy book.
It's like, you know, when you want to sit down
to a movie, and sometimes sometimes you want a thriller,
(38:36):
like you want something that you really have to sink
your teeth into, you want a Christopher Nolan movie, and
other times you want a rom com. You want how
to Lose a guy in ten days. That's just your mood.
This is an open door of romance when you just
want to sit back and have no one talk to
you for fifteen minutes. And it's the way I wrote
(38:56):
it was with my friends in mind, because they were
also super busy moms, super busy, and they had a
couple of minutes here, a couple of minutes there, so
they could read it while they were waiting for their
kid to get out of rehearsal, or they could read
it on the commute home, or if they were soaking
in the bathtub having a glass of wine, they could
just read the book for a couple of minutes and unwind.
(39:18):
That's the whole point of that book.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
You know. You and I've talked about this. Look, yeah,
she does a lot of politics. Yeah, Shelle is a
She has a national radio show and all kinds. She's amazing, Shelle.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
This book is for you, written for you with you
in mind, my friend.
Speaker 1 (39:39):
Yes, but you know, I think about you know, as
we've already talked about. I own a publishing company too,
and I've had you know, there's so many authors, and
I tell everybody up front, like listen, you're not going
(40:01):
like let's get really super crystal clear on this. You're
not going to get rich off of book sales. It
just unless unless it's an anomaly, and that can happen.
It happened for the for for what's her name? That
did Harry Potter JK Rowling. Yes, I love her and
(40:26):
you know, like, but there are so many facets to
the book business now with that in the business side
of it, I'm not talking about the Oh, I'm gonna
sit down and craft the most beautiful I'm not talking
about that. I'm talking about the back end, like, Okay,
(40:46):
the book is done, it's published, and now we got
to sell it. It is a it's it's a I
don't even know how to put it in words. It's
go ahead. I feel like you.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
Can't ask you a question when you are starting a business,
whatever kind of business it is in any industry, what's
the very first step. You got to have a product
that's worth paying for, right that The product has to
be great, otherwise no one's going to tell their friend
(41:20):
about it. And if you know, they say that publishing
is a word of mouth business, and it is. I
would argue that everything is a word of mouth business
because when you try a service like you know, say
you wanted to have your car washed, and you hired
(41:40):
this guy to detail your car and he did a
poor job. You're not going to hire him again. And
if anyone says to you, oh, I was thinking to
hire this guy to do what, you're gonna say no, no, no,
no no. You might not proactively go out and say
to your friends, don't hire the guy, but you're not
going to give a recommendation. Now if you hire that
guy to detail your car and he goes above and
(42:02):
beyond and your car looks amazing, it was done faster
than he said it would, and he did a couple
extra things that you weren't expecting, and you're gonna then
you're going to say, oh my god, you're fantastic. You're
going to proactively go out to your socials and say,
you guys, got to get this guy. He's going to
make one of your problems go away. It's the same
(42:23):
thing with a novelist. Job Number one is to know
how to write a really great novel. Because if you
don't have a really great novel which contains a story. Okay,
not just like I said earlier, it's assumed that you
know how to write sentences, right, that's assumed, right. But
(42:45):
if you can learn how to write a really great story,
then your readers are going to say to their friends, Oh,
I just read this book. You got to read this book,
and I want you to read the book because I
want to talk to you about the story. I don't
want to give you any spoilers, but I don't have
anyone to talk to about this book, and I want
(43:05):
to talk about this book. I want to bring it
to my book club, or like in the case of Masquerade,
you've got a friend who's stressed out, you'll say, I
got the book for you. It's not heavy, it's not
just sit back and relax and let it wash over
you and relax you just it's all good. Akuna matata.
(43:28):
I love that for the rest of your days. So
in any business, you've got to have a great product
to start. So any money that you put into and
time and energy and effort into promoting the book and
it isn't a great book, it's a waste of your
(43:49):
time and money and energy and effort because it's, like
you said, it's going to go nowhere. And right now,
the trend is to have AI generate a book. I'm
not going to say write a book because it doesn't write.
It's everywhere I go people are saying, Ah, I'm just
going to have AI do it. Here's the thing about stories,
And if there's anyone here who is thinking about writing
(44:09):
a book, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, because there's a
lot of people who who want to write a book
in their specialty as a calling card, right as a
proof of your knowledge in your field. A book is
a transfer of energy from the author to the reader.
It's always one on one. AI has no energy, there's
(44:33):
no soul in it. If when you are writing your book, again,
whether it's fiction or nonfiction, you have to feel what
you're writing. So if it's nonfiction in your subject matter,
write it with the intention of helping the reader and
genuinely having confidence that the information that you're giving them,
(44:57):
that the advice you're giving them is good advice that
is really going to help them. Because when the person
picks up that book, they're going to feel that energy
from you. They're not going to feel it from AI.
And if you can have AI generate the book on
the subject matter, so can everybody else. That's right, So
why would they need to buy your book.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
But people think, people think, but I'm the best at
writing prompts. It's like, I know you're I'm sorry, but
no you're not. Everybody's doing it.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
So oh, there'll be a whole business in selling prompts.
I'm sure there will be.
Speaker 1 (45:33):
There's already people doing it, like yeah, fine, but again,
I don't you know there are I have said to people, Look,
if you are, you know, getting stuck on chapter titles,
it's okay to go to AI and say, you know,
I'm writing a book and I'm looking for ideas on
(45:54):
chapter titles and and and get that that helps you
think deeper or not use what AI gives you. I'm
not saying to do that, you know. And I think
because look, I said this last night on I was
watching a buddy of mine's podcasts and everybody was saying,
I hate AI, I hate I. I'm like, listen, you
(46:17):
can hate it and be resentful, but it's not going anywhere.
Speaker 2 (46:21):
Oh no, it's here. It's here to stay.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
And I don't think and I agree with you one
thousand percent. My wife, oh my god, she's a writer,
she was a paper she's done a lot, and she's
also an editor. So she's like, don't use a. I
A'm so sick of hearing people say they're going to
(46:45):
use AI. That's just dumb. It's dumb. Yah, I'm sorry,
it's just it's not it's not it's not writing a book.
When I wrote my first book and I read I
got the the pre copy and self published, I remember
opening it going, oh my gosh, these are my words. Yeah,
(47:06):
thousands of books. This is the first time I've read
my words on a page.
Speaker 2 (47:09):
It's magically cool, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
Yes, it's so cool.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Yeah, I mean that is a trip.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
So talk a little bit about what you're doing to
help people, because I know you're doing some really cool
stuff with the storytelling stuff. And I'm gonna throw I'm
gonna put your is it just it's the Valerie what
is it dot?
Speaker 2 (47:34):
My website is Valerie Francis dot ca.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
A Yeah, okay, yep, I'm going to put that up
on the screen. Go ahead, go ahead and talk about
some of the stuff that you're doing to help people
with the storytelling part.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
Yeah. So, because I sort of ran foul of a
number of Charlatans in our business as I was learning,
and one of the things that I do now. In
addition to being an I have a podcast called story
Nerd that is totally free, and in it, my podcast
co host and I we analyze a film every week
(48:10):
from the story perspective, and we're talking about storytelling techniques.
And these apply to novels, to screenplays, obviously to memoir.
It's even the same techniques for nonfiction. For in business,
because everything is storytelling. In addition to that, I'm also
a story editor, so I do work one on one
with writers and help them with their specific books. And
(48:33):
I also have at story nerd dot Ca slash courses.
We're now starting to roll out some courses all about
the craft of storytelling so that we can help as
many writers as possible. And one of the courses is
called the Fundamentals of Storytelling. So this is where you start.
This is the course I wish I had when I
(48:54):
was starting, because I couldn't. I was so desperate to
find somebody who would just say, Okay, Valerie, here's what
you need to know. And if you never move beyond this,
you will still be just fine. But here's what you
need if your story must have these things in it,
otherwise it's not going to work and no one's going
to want to read it, and you'll just waste your time.
(49:14):
So it's called the Fundamentals of Storytelling, and we go
over the basics of plot and character design and genre
because one thing in our business, and the irony does
not escape me at all. In the storytelling business, there
is no common lexicon. So even the word genre, it
(49:38):
means something a little different to everyone you speak with, like,
for example, some people, when you say genre fiction, it's
low brow. It's sort of bargain basement y stuff, and
it's not worth anybody's time, and it is the opposite
of literary, which is the only thing that has any value.
For other people like me, the word genre simply means
(50:01):
what kind of story is it? So for me, literary
is a genre because that's one of the types of
books you can buy. When you go into the bookstore
and you see all the different labels around the bookstore,
those to mere genre's mystery. You might see a general fiction,
which means these are the ones books that are really selling. Well,
that's why they're at the front of the store. You
(50:21):
might see romance, you might see travel books, you might
see biographies. Those are all genres to me, So at
NERD story Nerd is all about me and my podcast
co host Melanie Hill, who's in Australia. It's and she
is also a writer. We're teaching other writers what we know,
what it has taken us ten years of blood, sweat
(50:43):
and tears to figure out, so that you all can
write the stories that are in your heads and in
your hearts and have the careers that you want to
have as fiction writers, as memoirsts, as screenwriters. Because as
Ken and I were just saying, app Number one is
having a really great book, because if you don't have
(51:03):
a really great book, it's game over. You're you're wasting
all of the other energy promoting it. And one of
the things that I've discovered, and I think we talked
about this a minute ago, when I came into this business,
the first thing I had to learn was how to
tell a story. Because I had come from journalism, communications, academia.
(51:27):
I had come from all that. So I could certainly
write an academic paper, I could certainly write a policy document.
I could write a newspaper article or a magazine article.
Those are all styles of writing it. And so I
had the I had the grammar. I had the line
writing skills, but I had to learn the storytelling skills.
(51:48):
And that's the piece that a lot of writers miss
that they might come into this. They might be a lawyer,
for example, well they can write a legal brief. Or
they might be a scientist. They know how to write
a scientific paper, and they have all those writing skills.
Now you need the storytelling skills. So that's what we teach,
and that's what these courses are designed to teach, so
(52:09):
that we can help as many people as possible, as
quickly as possible. Because I can only have so many
one on one clients and I can only help, you know,
maybe half dozen people in a year. Now I can
help hundreds of people in a year. So that's that's
the big thing we've got going on now, in addition
to finishing my current novel.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
That's so awesome though, you know, I do know, you know,
when I you know, we talk about all of the
the stuff about the business side of it and the
you know, but at the end of the day, I
believe that every and Mark Victor Hansen says is everyone
(52:54):
has a story in them, Everyone has a book in them.
Now I also believe that some people should not write
a book. I'm kidding, that's me. I think that there
are so many people that are going to go to
their grave with their stories still in them. Yes, yeah, sad,
(53:19):
I think that's sad.
Speaker 2 (53:20):
Well, there's a lot of people. It takes a lot
for someone to even start to write the book. There's
a lot of people wishing they could write a book,
and they don't take the first step because it can
be a little intimidating. It really can. I totally get it.
And then for the people who take the first step,
when they get into it sooner or later. And I
know this because listen, I did it, and every client
(53:43):
I've ever worked with, and I've now worked with hundreds
of writers through you know, the one on one and
through group work that I've done and all that kind
of stuff, everyone has had the same feeling where they
get into it and they realize, oh, there's more to
this than I thought. This is a much bigger project
than I thought. I'm so overwhelmed. What do I do now?
A lot of the people will just give up because,
(54:05):
like me, they can't find someone. You know, when I started,
I couldn't find someone who just said okay, Valerie, Relax, here,
here's what you do.
Speaker 1 (54:13):
Ye.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
So I want to be the mentor that I wish
I had. If that doesn't sound too arrogant.
Speaker 1 (54:21):
It does not at all. That's the thing is people
need mentors to if they want to. I mean, yeah,
I don't even know how much money I've invested in mentors.
It's a lot lot. You know, you didn't go to
Bob Procter's event for free? No, No, I know that
(54:41):
for a fact. He definitely believed in abundance, you know,
and so does so does his son Brian. So you
know the people are I think it's like, Okay, well
I'm going to put out this whatever amount of money
to do something that I've never done. Yeah, and I
don't know if there's going to be a payoff. What
(55:04):
I think that a lot of people are missing is
that it is an unbelievable business card because there is
a really good chance, let's say that you're a veterinarian,
a veterinarian and Toronto will stick with Canada for a minute,
and you know, you have a lot of competitors around you.
(55:27):
There is a really, really good chance that not one
of your competitors has written a book. Yeah, and you
could be the unicorn. You could be the one that
wrote a book and now you're a famous veterinarian if
you spend the time and the money marketing it and
all of that.
Speaker 2 (55:47):
Right, I offer up James Harriet. Look no further than
you know who James Harriet is.
Speaker 1 (55:54):
I do not.
Speaker 2 (55:55):
He's a vet or, he was elf White as the
man's actual name. James Harriet is his nom de plume,
his pseudonym, and he started to write I think the
first one is All Creatures, great and small, huge hit.
There's been two different television series. It's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful stories.
(56:18):
And he's a he's a storyteller. And the other thing ken.
Since we're just launching this the online school right now
for the Fundamentals of Storytelling until July seventh, you can
get fifty percent off use the coupon code Canada fifty
because we launched it on Canada Day.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
Where what is that? A different website?
Speaker 2 (56:38):
No, go to story Nerd. Well, if you go to
if you go to my website, there's a button at
the top call courses that'll take you there. Valerie Francis
dot Ca, slash courses.
Speaker 1 (56:48):
Or coupon code. Hold on, let me, let me put
a banner.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
Oh my goodness, I'm speaking so fast. I get excited
about this.
Speaker 1 (56:57):
This is awesome code.
Speaker 2 (57:00):
What Canada fifty cant Is.
Speaker 1 (57:04):
It capitalized or does it matter?
Speaker 2 (57:07):
I don't think it matters, but capitalize it just in case.
Speaker 1 (57:11):
All caps for Canada. All caps Canada.
Speaker 2 (57:16):
Five zero five zero.
Speaker 1 (57:21):
Four off. Okay, so there it is up on the screen.
So coupon code for fifty percent off of the And
what is the course? What's the course called?
Speaker 2 (57:42):
It's called The Fundamentals of Storytelling. Okay, not a jazzy name,
but it does what it says on the tin. These
are the things that your story must have if you
want people to read your book all the way to
the end and tell their friends about it. And it
comes with an online community. So I'm in there, Melanie
(58:05):
is in there. If you get stuck and you have questions,
we can answer them. Our goal here is to help
you reach your goal. And we're writers to where story nerds.
We call it story nerd because listen, we can talk
all day long about stories. I can talk the leg
(58:26):
off a table about stories. So come and join us,
and I would love to meet you.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
That is so awesome, So I listen. I endorsed that message.
I mean, I really do. I think that if you
are thinking about writing a book, you got to learn
how to tell stories. Yes, it is a must, And
(58:56):
this sounds like a fantastic course. If Valerie has read
donated with you today and you feel like you'd like
to get into her community and surround yourself with her brilliance,
then definitely go to Valerie Francis dot c A and
use the coupon code Canada fifty. Now does that apply
(59:19):
for even people in the US, they still get a fifty.
Speaker 2 (59:23):
Yes, indeed, no matter where you are in the world,
that will work.
Speaker 1 (59:27):
What is the what is the the original price of
the course? And they get fifty off that?
Speaker 2 (59:38):
Yep, because because we're launching it right now.
Speaker 1 (59:40):
Oh my gosh, what do you have to lose? Seriously, crazy,
holy crap. Go sign up. You need you need this
in your life whoever's watching, and you need this writing
a book. I've told many, many people, you know, when
I when I grant cardone, you know, kind of motivated
(01:00:04):
me to write my first book. It's the greatest thing
I ever did. It literally put me on the map.
It made me and I was already doing very well,
but it just takes you to a different level. Like
most people are going to go to their grave without
(01:00:24):
ever having written a book.
Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
Yeah, yeah, And if you've got a burning desire to
do it, do it. Because writing a novel, I mean, yes,
I quit my job to do it. But you don't
need to quit your job. You can just spend an
hour a day and before you know it, your novel
(01:00:47):
is done, or your screenplay or your memoir or whatever
it is you want to write, it's done. And like
you said, Ken, when you pick up your book for
the first time and look at it and sniff the paper,
which is what we love to do, woo, it is
the best kind of high I am telling you it is.
(01:01:09):
And it's such a feeling of accomplishment. It's like you
feel like you can conquer the world when you get
that done.
Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
I think, Valerie, and I know you're going to be
able to relate to this. There. Let's say that we
had one hundred people watching, which we don't. We have
sixteen hundred and seventy one people watching right now. But
let's for my brain to work properly. Let's say there's
a hundred. Okay, there is a percentage of the people
(01:01:37):
watching that are like, God, yes, I'd love to write
a book. I'd love for people to know my story
or know who I am, or I have this novel
or I have this hobby that I'm the best at,
and I want to teach other people through my book. Yep,
But oh my god, what if somebody reads it and
they hate it? And what if they judge me? What
(01:01:58):
if my mom and dad read it and they hate
me for writing about that or whatever? It is? Like,
I those are the demons that I had. I mean
I fought with them. I mean I fought with those
demons because I was like, I finally reached a point,
and I think you'll be able to relate to this
(01:02:19):
and maybe even deliver the message to the audience. But
you have to face those demons. You have to.
Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
But you don't have to face them alone, which is
why we have the community. That's right, because we are
all doing it. We're all like when my first book
came out, my nephew said to me, how does it
feel anti val to have your first book coming out?
And I drew, I would feel less exposed if I
strip naked and ran down the middle of the street.
(01:02:49):
It's so true, and it's you got to just take
a deep breath and just just go for it. But
once you step through that, once you've done it once,
then the second time is easier. The third time is
even easier than that. And then you have the situation
I have now where I which is the most wonderful
(01:03:12):
problem that a writer could ever have. I have reader's
message me saying when's the next book coming out? I
want your next book. I'm like, it's soon soon. I'm
on the last round of edits. It's out of my
hands on August first, so you know, but it is tough.
I absolutely. I don't want to downplay it because you
(01:03:32):
do feel very vulnerable when it comes out, which is
why Melanie and I really wanted to have this community
so that when your book comes out it's a soft landing.
You have a community of other people who have gone
through it or are about to go through it, who
get it, who can give you kind of a virtual hug. Definitely,
(01:03:53):
lots of virtual high fives and do it together and
all of.
Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
That for one hundred and forty Yes, with the coupon,
that's crazy. Yes, coupon code Canada fifty. Go to Valerie
Francis dot ca A, click on courses at the top
and use the coupon code Canada or Canada five zero. Valerie,
(01:04:19):
you are amazing. Your energy is contagious. Your your and
my wife said it. I love your.
Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
Laugh, she said, Ah, thanks, Jill.
Speaker 1 (01:04:29):
You have such a great laugh and presence. And you know,
people need to learn how to to be like that,
and it comes from loving what you're doing. It really does.
Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Yes, Oh, I'm having a ball and other people can
have a ball to Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
Anything else you'd like to share with the audience before
we wrap this up?
Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
No, I mean, I think that's it. If you've got
any questions, you can reach me through my website check
out the podcast story nerd and I just can't wait
to meet everyone on the inside.
Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
That's awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate you coming
on and investing your time with everyone today. If you
would stay with me and let's chat after this, but everybody,
go over to Valerie Francis dot ca A. Check it out,
go to the button at the top, click on courses,
(01:05:28):
Go over, get in this course and get fifty percent
off of the investment because it's launching right now. Use
the coupon code Canada fifty five zero. And yeah, this
is freaking awesome. Thank you. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (01:05:46):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
My wife even says, great interview. I think you planted
some ideas and inspiration today, Jill.
Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
How nice of you. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:05:56):
That's awesome. Yeah, all right, thank you so much. Everybody.
They have a wonderful day. Make sure you go follow Valerie.
Go over to her website, follow her everywhere, and we
will see you all later. Valerie, stay with me. We'll
be right back.
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