n the fast-paced realm of business and technology, staying ahead of the curve is crucial for CEOs and executives. To shed light on this intersection, Stimulus Technologies launched the "Stimulus Tech Talk" podcast, delving into insightful conversations with industry leaders. In this article, we explore the latest episode where Sherry Lipp, Marketing Manager at Stimulus Technologies, sits down with CEO Nathan Whittacre to discuss his recently published book, The CEO's Digital Survival Guide: A Practical Handbook for the Future.
Stimulus Tech Talk: The CEO Digital Survival Guide: Navigating the Future of Business
Exploring the CEO's Digital Survival Guide
The CEO's Digital Survival Guide is a comprehensive guide designed to help business owners and executives leverage technology effectively in their organizations. The topics covered range from initiating a startup to managing a growing business, emphasizing the critical aspects of cybersecurity, regulations, and compliance. The book is set up so readers can easily reference and take note on the topics they are looking for at any particular time.
Demystifying Technology for Non-Technical Leaders
One notable aspect highlighted in the conversation is the book's approach to demystifying technology for non-technical leaders. Nathan shares his vision of distilling complex information into a format that business owners can easily understand. The goal is to equip leaders with the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions without feeling overwhelmed by technical jargon.
From Concept to Publication: Nathan's Writing Journey
Nathan reflects on the writing process, acknowledging that the timeline from idea to publication spanned five years. He shares the challenges of juggling writing commitments with the demands of running a company, emphasizing the importance of consistent, scheduled writing sessions. The podcast provides a glimpse into Nathan's journey, revealing the meticulous planning and collaboration with a writing coach to structure the book effectively.
The Power of Personal Stories in a Technical Landscape
A unique aspect of the book is the incorporation of personal stories. Nathan seamlessly weaves tales from his backpacking adventures and other life experiences into the technical narrative. This storytelling approach not only adds a personal touch but also enhances the reader's comprehension of complex topics.
Looking Ahead: Future Topics and Book Plans
As the podcast concludes, Nathan shares his plans for future writing endeavors. He hints at expanding certain chapters from the current book, diving deeper into areas like company culture and managing a hybrid workforce. The conversation closes with a glimpse into potential future topics, emphasizing the ongoing commitment to providing valuable insights for business leaders.
Navigating the Digital Landscape Together
The latest episode of Stimulus Tech Talk offers a behind-the-scenes look into the creation of "The CEOs Digital Survival Guide." Like the book, the podcast serves provides an interactive platform for listeners to engage with Nathan and special guests' experiences and insights. As we navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape, this podcast becomes a valuable resource for those seeking guidance and inspiration in the intersection of business and technology. Stay tuned for more stimulating conversations on Stimulus Tech Talk and be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform!
Stimulus Tech Talk: The CEO Digital Survival Guide: Navigating the Future of Business transcript:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
book, writing, topic, write, business, years, people, business owner, relate, company, talked, manuscript, susanna, coach, idea, forbes, stimulus, publisher, information, stories
SPEAKERS
Nathan Whittacre, Intro, Sherry Lipp
Intro 00:00
You're listening to Stimulus Tech Talk. A conversation based podcast created by Stimulus Technologies that covers a range of topics related to business and technology.
Sherry Lipp 00:15
Hello, this is Sherry Lipp and marketing manager at Stimulus Technologies and welcome to Stimulus Tech Talk. Today I am going to be talking with our CEO Nathan Whittacre. And we're going to be talking about his book, The CEOs Digital Survival Guide: A Practical Handbook for the Future. I have it sitting behind me. So hopefully I got that title right. Welcome, Nathan. Thanks,
Nathan Whittacre 00:38
Sherry. It's good to be on the other side of the interview today.
Sherry Lipp 00:44
So why don't we start out with talking about what your...we've talked about, we've mentioned it many times on the podcast. But now that it's out, why don't we go into a little more detail about what it's about.
Nathan Whittacre 00:55
So the book is to help business owners CEOs, executives understand how to use technology inside their companies better. And it encompasses a lot of different areas, from, you know, starting a company and systems you should implement from a startup standpoint, to a growing business, you know, to a small to mid-sized business. And we also talked about cybersecurity a lot in there, we talked about regulations and compliance. And the whole idea about the book is to give you enough information as a business owner, CEO executive, to be able to have, or set plans inside your company. And also have conversations with the professionals in the industry about these topics. Because I've found over the years that a lot of business owners get really nervous around IT guys, because we use acronyms, and we talked about things that, you know, are confusing at times. And the the purpose of the behind the book is to give you an army with enough information to make intelligent decisions around technology inside your business. And that's that's the goal of the book.
Sherry Lipp 02:09
So the book is for like any business owner, it's not for technical people, it's actually really more for non technical people.
Nathan Whittacre 02:15
Yeah, I hope that I distill down the information well enough, using some stories and giving definitions of terms and things in there that a non technical person can read and understand the book.
Sherry Lipp 02:31
And what made you decide to write a book and how long ago did you start the process?
Nathan Whittacre 02:38
Because I've always wanted to write a book. It's been kind of a bucket list goal that I've had for a long time, you know, different ideas around the book, you know, came up over the years. But really, there was two main impetus for starting the book. The first one was, and it's the design of the book. The first one was I was preparing to go backpacking, and I've never done a long backpacking trip before. I did some backpacking as a boy scout when I was young. But as an adult, I've never done a long backpacking trip. And I had this goal for my 40th birthday, too, hike what's called the John Muir Trail. It's about 210 mile trail and back country in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. And I knew nothing about this, I didn't know what gear to buy, I didn't know how to do the permitting. I didn't know any other information. And so I relied on several guide books that I had purchased. Also some internet forums, I went to seek some expert advice from some local backpacking stores. And I just realized that, you know, there's a wealth of information to get me from not knowing anything, to be prepared to have a successful hike, which ended up being very successful. And I attribute that to, you know, the help of all these people that were around me to guide me through the process, whether it was an author of a book, all the way to, you know, people that I met along the way. And so, you know, I realized in that instance, that a lot of our customers that stimulus technologies were in the same boat, they might be, you know, buying a new line of business application, or might have a growing business or might wanting to do hybrid workforce, whatever it may be, and they don't know who or how to deal with that, as a business owner. They know what they want to do. But they don't know from a technology perspective, how to implement it. And so the concept behind the book is to be a guide a trail guide, to if you, you know, if you want to do a hybrid workforce, you can go open up that chapter read about what you need to do, and be able to make plans inside your business. And then the second part of it is in 2018. At a conference, I think you and I both went to this was back in Nashville, Adam Woody, who's the publisher at Forbes books, spoke about how to build authority in your business and authority in your industry through a book, and I really took a lot of things away from him on what the process is several ways to do it, and how to be successful in writing and producing a book. And so that gave me a bunch of ideas I started, you know, after that conference, I started coming up with book titles and topics and, and chapter headings. And that was really the start of the process. But that was 2018. The book just got published this year. So as you can see, it took, you know, five years to get from idea to published.
Sherry Lipp 05:50
And what kind of steps did you have to take? I mean, I know you're, you're sharing your expertise, as you know, as an expert in this field, but what kind of steps did you have to take to get the information on make sure you're talking about the information you want to talk about and putting it together? You know, before you actually started writing.
Nathan Whittacre 06:06
So one of, one of the things that I did kind of a two step process. One of the things I did is like, you know, just brainstorm about the different topics I wanted to discuss in the book, and I just took a notebook out, and I just started brainstorming on main topics, subtopics, around those main topics, and just started writing them out. And a lot of those actually ended up in the book in the end. And they were things that, you know, I'd get questions on for business owners all the time, things that I run into in the industry. And, and that's what got me to, you know, this core idea behind how the book would be laid out. And then when I finally chose a publisher, I sat down with a writing coach, and we developed a detailed plan on what you know, what information in each one of those subsections would be kind of the layout of information that would be in the book, we made some decisions. Like, if you look at the book, there's questionnaires that are in there, you know, self surveys, there's definition sections, and all that came about when we were doing, you know, the book plan. And that helped really, you know, set an outline. So when I started writing, I know, I knew like, Okay, well, this is a chapter I'm going to be writing about this is a topic, and then I could either research on that topic, which I had to do some research on it. Or, you know, I could just start writing and doing what I needed to do. And so that that book plan really helped define the, what I was writing each time I was writing in the book.
Sherry Lipp 07:45
How, you know, you're running a company, too, how much time? Did you have to kind of budget time for it? And you know, make sure you sat down a certain amount of time each day or each month each week?
Nathan Whittacre 07:56
So great question. So I work a lot, obviously, did I have a busy family life and you know, personal life and things like that with other activities. And so, you know, doing something that, you know, really important for me. But it isn't like pressing, you know, nobody's calling me every day and say, Hey, do you write in the book did you write in the book, and whereas with customers or, you know, employees, or whatever it may be, there's a lot of, you know, interaction that's trying to demand my time. And so I found that I had to schedule that time out, I blocked out before the workday started about 45 minutes every day. Sometimes I wasn't able to get to it. But most of the time, I would take that, you know, 15 to 45 minutes, depending on the day, and just wrote for that period of time or did research and sometimes it was just writing a few sentences. Sometimes it was research, sometimes it was a few paragraphs, but it kept the consistency going that I was writing every day. The other thing that really helped is I with my publisher, they set me up with a writing coach that I met with weekly and so when I met with Susanna on Tuesday morning, I knew that I had to have something written for for her to review and press the discus. And so it was like a checkpoint every week that okay, I had to get something done. That's money, I'm paying to have this running coach meet with me it was kind of useless. It was a waste of time. So it really helped having that scheduled and also some accountability to to a coach to get that done and also to bounce ideas off of the ready. Susanna, my writing coach did a great job, answering questions I had, especially you know how to reference materials that I was bringing in from the outside, so research and ideas on layout and topics and, and that she wasn't technical. So as I'm explaining these highly technical things, she bounced back at me and says, I don't understand this that you're trying to run I hate, it doesn't make any sense to me. And so I had to go back and rewrite things to make it more understandable from a non technical standpoint.
Sherry Lipp 10:11
And so and this is kind of more for people who other business owners or experts in their field who might be looking at writing, when you're working with Forbes, they're geared towards people like you writing a book. And that's different than you know, somebody writing a bunch of query letters to a bunch of different publishers trying to get them to buy. So can you explain a little bit about like how that works for somebody like you.
Nathan Whittacre 10:35
So I think there's three ways to publish a book in the industry now. So the first way is, like, what you just mentioned, is you have a manuscript or an idea for a book, and you send it to a bunch of publishers, and somebody might buy your idea or might buy your manuscript and then publish it, that's really hard to do, because there's over a million books a year published, and it's really hard to find a publisher that's willing to take an idea today. And then the second side, you know, kind of the opposite end of the spectrum of that is self publishing. And with companies like Amazon, they make self publishing really easy. You can write your manuscript work with your independent editors. And then it's, you know, print to order, you can publish yourself and, and it's really easy to get a book out there with the tools that are available. Now. I knew myself and I knew that I needed to work with a team. My first thought was, is I could hire you know, an editor or a writing coach through something like Upwork to help me with the process. And I decided not to go with that I decided to go with this kind of middle of the road publisher, Forbes, books and advantage media. They're kind of one of the same company, they they have a really good process that I found, for professionals that are looking to write, you know, nonfiction, very specific books for their industry. And they have a great process. There are other publishing houses out there very similar to them, that have come up over the years, I interviewed several, and I decided to go back to Forbes, Adam, Woody's company, the one that I heard, because I felt like they they really had a very detailed process there their pricing to do it was fair. But to be realistic, I paid for this, I wasn't paid to write the book, you know, that's, that's something that you think about, like, oh, you know, you hear about JK Rowling, you know, having this, you know, big upfront money, you know, check when, when she wrote their books, or her books, or, you know, other authors that are probably getting checks cut to them, like a Simon Sinek or Malcolm Gladwell, you know, they're getting paid upfront, kind of a bonus to start. And then they're paid for the royalties of the book after the fact, with writing a book like mine, and probably most people that are listening to this, it's going to cost you as a business owner, or executive or professional to write the book, you're going to pay for it up front. And the goal isn't really to make money on the book, or the book sells, it's to really, you know, benefit your business and benefit what you're doing inside your business and allow you to, you know, put yourself up there as an expert in the field. And one of the things I heard over and over again, about a book versus, you know, other marketing is if you had somebody a pamphlet or you had somebody a book, what's going to set you aside better as a as a business owner salesperson. And obviously, having a book is much more powerful than having a pamphlet to hand somebody. And you know, we keep books, I mean, you look at the bookshelf behind me, I have you know, a couple of 100 books between a couple of bookshelves that I have back there, of you know, different speakers I've heard over the years, business writers that you know, I've used to develop my company and it really is something I hold on to them you know, and I refer back to it if I remember Oh, I am interested in this topic or researching this topic again, maybe on marketing or business development, I grab a book that I read 10 years ago and you know, like the E Myth book and or whatever it may be, and books are, you know, invaluable from an authority perspective and a marketing perspective and people keep up for a long time. So again, fourth books did a great job I love their process. It isn't cheap to do it by any means. But I think it's it's a good system that they have and there's many others out there I just recommend if you're interested in doing it as interview a few look at reviews of working with a company and and then You know, the team that you're working with is really important. I really enjoyed working with Susanna, my writing coach, she was a great help. Just like anything you do with coaching, you got to make sure that you interact well with the person you're working with.
Sherry Lipp 15:16
And we did have Adam on a previous podcast, so anybody interested can go should probably go check that one out, too, because there's a lot of information about about getting started for you. What did you know, kind of as you were doing this, what went differently in the end, and you kind of anticipated in the beginning?
Nathan Whittacre 15:33
So I'd be the first thing is the timeframe on doing it. I remember my meeting with them. December of 2021, when I signed the agreement with them, or November, December timeframe. And they're like, Well, how long do you think it'll take you and I said, Oh, I can get, you know, get this written, I have the outline, I'll be done with the initial manuscript of February, like two months. I got done with the manuscript a little bit over a year later. So, you know, it was about six times as long as what I originally thought it would be. And, you know, some of it was just life gets in the way, you know, a lot of things different things were happening, business and professional, professionally and personally. But, you know, also, you know, just really refining the topics, I did a lot of research, you know, from different authors getting some different ideas, coming up with the stories that are in the book, and making sure that those related it, it was very time consuming. And but it was very rewarding, because it allowed me to really synthesize what we do as stimulus technologies down on paper. So, I mean, the biggest thing was at the time, I can't, it took a lot longer than I thought it would.
Sherry Lipp 17:02
And so you didn't, you know, you incorporated your personal, you know, your hiking journey, as you know, and metaphorically into the into the book. How did you choose what, you know, kind of how to incorporate those? And did you ever find it difficult to write about your personal experience.
Nathan Whittacre 17:22
So, it was definitely sometimes interesting to relate hiking, or triathlon or flying airplanes, whatever it may be, to technical work, they're very different. The other thing that I tried to do is, you know, relate stories that, that I've experienced in the industry over the years into the book, too. And so, you know, coming up with those ideas for the stories and how they relate was difficult. I brainstormed both with the book planner and the writing coach often about that, and, you know, we discussed, you know, a set of different stories. Some of them made sense, some of them didn't, and so, you know, jettisoned a bunch of the, the ideas for those because they just didn't relate, and I couldn't get them to relate. So it was, it was a difficult process to that. And then the other thing that the coach is I was going through this is, you know, she recommended often it's like, okay, this topic is complicated. You need to tell a story in your industry about this to make it relevant, you know, something that happened to a business owner, something that happened to an employee, or whatever it may be. And so, part of the book was come remembering over 30 years that I've been in the industry remembering different experiences that occurred over the time, that related to the topic that I was writing about, and that was actually fun, because it was reminiscing on things that, you know, happened when we started the company, you know, 28 years ago, or, you know, or, or customers that, you know, we've had for a long time and talking to them, making sure that the stories were okay to include. And so that was that was actually a fun process, but also difficult to relate those things.
Sherry Lipp 19:21
What advice do you have? I mean, obviously, as a business owner, and you know, marketing the company, you write a lot of content, but I don't know if you consider yourself a writer or if or if that's kind of just increased. I know it's increased a lot since I've been with stimulus. As you're creating more content. What advice do you have for somebody who doesn't consider themselves to be a writer but they want to get their their expertise out there?
Nathan Whittacre 19:49
Right. So, from my standpoint, I do enjoy writing. I enjoy creating content and That's it, it's just a time thing that's difficult for me to do it. I credit my junior year English teacher, Sarah Lastly, and I gave her credit in the book for it. I went into her class and thought I knew how to write stuff. And I just remember my first essay that I turned in, came back with, it was an AP class, and I think I got a one out of seven on it, and burst my pride and my bubble, pretty hard. But, you know, over that time, I learned, you know, structure and how to, you know, how to write much better and, and that helped a lot, you know, going back that far, in my mind on how to actually how to write. So, you know, a lot of business owners don't like, like to write, and there are options to do ghost writing. And I, you know, fourth proposed it, they had the option for it. And basically, the way ghostwriting would have worked, which, which I didn't do, but it's definitely an option. And a lot of authors do. Probably the majority of authors use some type of ghost writing. And it's an interview process. So whether it's weekly or just an extended interview, the ghostwriter would sit down and, and ask you a bunch of questions about the topic. And you would just talk and have a conversation. And then from that conversation, they would take, you know, information that you gave them and your ideas and concepts, and put those down on paper, and then you'd review what they wrote, make sure it fits, and then you continue on with the process. So if you're considering writing a book, and writing is scary to you, creating the content is scary. You know, think about working with a ghostwriter. There's great professionals to do it. My writing coach also does ghost writing. You know, there's a Forbes and a bunch of these publishers have ghost writers on staff that really work, you know, different industries, I felt like my topic was very technical. And so finding a ghost writer that could understand and put those technical concepts on paper would be difficult. So you know, in this sense, I felt like I needed to write this on my own. What I wouldn't suggest doing and if you go back, as you mentioned, Sherry, we had Adam, on his podcast, we talked about AI, and chat GPT and these and these AI systems. And there's this temptation, I think now to say, well, I can write a book pretty quick, if I use chat GPT. And I just need to put some concepts in and I know some people that have done that. I worry one about the copyright infringement potential in the future. And Adam and I talk about that. Number two, then it's not really your, your words, you know, it's gonna just spit out a language that, you know, is very structured, it's, it's, it's what it is, you know, from what it's learned over the years, but it's not going to include your stories, it's not going to include your history or knowledge, it's just going to be, you know, a textbook. And that's not interesting. I mean, I might be the only person in the world that actually enjoys reading textbooks. But, but most people don't. And so if you're, if you're just generating a book to, you know, based off of AI, and just to get some information out there and put your name on it. I don't think it's a good idea. And if you talk to publishers, they would highly recommend not doing that too, because it's not an interesting book. And it might not be, you know, legal from a copyright perspective, that's going to have to be resolved in courts over the years. But right now, you know, there's that there's that desire to do it, I highly recommend not going that way. So if you can't write or don't want to write us a ghostwriter, and there could be a lot more personality built into it that way. Yes,
Sherry Lipp 24:01
definitely. And we definitely have some topics on AI I know as somebody is has uploaded into Amazon myself, they now ask you if you have any generative AI in your in your materials, so yeah, it's definitely that's a sudden evolving topic. So And one last question. Do you think you'll write any more books in the future?
Nathan Whittacre 24:23
I do plan on it. I my last conversation with Susanna was about future topics. So there's a few chapters in the book that we've talked about expanding, especially company culture, hybrid workforce, you know, dealing with remote employees and you know, building that culture, it's a remote work. So that's a that's definitely an idea that I'd like to expand on. It might not be a 320 page book like The CEOs digital Survival Guide. But you know that That's a, I think an important topic that a lot of businesses are dealing with. And you see this like whipsaw that's happening in the industry now that, oh, we sent everybody home because of COVID. And now we're doing hybrid. Now we want everybody back to the office. And I think it's a lot of that is because business leaders are struggling on how to manage a workforce that is all over the place. But you know, like our company, we have 75 employees in five different states, I have workforce remote from where I'm at, no matter if they work from home or work in the office. So there's, this is a thing for growing small business that you have to deal with, I think as a, as a business owner. So that's a topic. The other thing is, you know, I, you know, I went through a big change in my life over the last 12 years or so, through exercise and triathlon and marathoning. And, you know, I've learned a lot that, you know, might be interesting for me, it might be a book that I'm the only one that would ever buy, is kind of the journey of you know, how to balance. Maybe that's not the right word, but you know, how to, how to manage all the demands that are placed on us as CEOs and executives inside businesses. And you know, just from my experience what I've done that's been moderately successful. So that's another topic. But yeah, I definitely do. Now you chair you friend, a couple of bucks. Why didn't you know, I know, this was about me. But what you talked about yours a little bit? What have you done?
Sherry Lipp 26:36
So I've written right now written two cookbooks. So there's first special diet as I have Crohn's disease. And yeah, so I went that the total self publish, you know, wrote, My husband edited it, and I uploaded it into Amazon, you know, like he talked about and, and it's a learning process, too. As soon as you as soon as you're done, you're like, I would have done all these things a little bit different. But that's why you read another one. So but I am working on no more of a personal story book, that's, which is kind of intimidating. That's why I was asking about the personal aspect, it can be a little bit like, you're putting it out there, you know. And, but yeah, it's an it's an interesting process as far as, like, the time and, you know, kind of getting that self doubt, and sometimes in there, and, and getting it out and getting good responses is the reward. You know.
Nathan Whittacre 27:34
It's led you on, you know, an interesting point, and it's led you on some avenues that you've spoken at conferences, and had some opportunities that you may not have had if you hadn't been out there, you know, as a published author, you some opportunities you hadn't had before, right?
Sherry Lipp 27:51
Yeah, exactly. And that is, you know, you're right. I mean, the people who become best sellers, especially in the nonfiction world, you know, it's, it's hard to do, but you're getting it out there. So that you have that piece that says, you know, I'm, I'm an expert on this topic. And I, you know, I've put the effort into doing this, I think that's a big, big thing, too, you know, because the means, you know, shows you that you have the passion for what you're doing.
Nathan Whittacre 28:19
Yeah, like a lot of different things, you know, the time that you invest in it, you know, elevates you above, people that have thought about it, and just don't want to put the time in or aren't able to put the time in. I mean, it's somewhat like getting a college degree, you know, just takes a long time to do it. But it shows the dedication, so proud to have the Sherry's are as an author inside the company, too. It's, it's, you know, it's definitely a lot of work. So congratulations on your books. Oh, thank
Sherry Lipp 28:51
you. Yes, and yeah, definitely, I enjoy your personal stories. I haven't finished the book yet. But I think that that just gives it that extra something. So you know, I enjoy the hiking and in the stories you tell in there, so I think from that perspective, I think it makes it very, very readable book, you know, people who are you know, they want to they want to relate, I think people like to relate, so that really helps.
Nathan Whittacre 29:20
Yeah, I doubt there's anybody else in the world that relates to some of the craziness I do in different areas. But, you know, everybody has, I don't know, any business owner or executive or anybody in general that doesn't have some type of hobby out there. And so whether if you're not in the backpacking or you know, triathlons, you have your own passion, whether it's, you know, motorcycle racing, or fishing or whatever it may be, you know, relating those passions to the work that we do, I think is really important. So that was what was fun about it, too.
Sherry Lipp 29:56
Yeah. All right well thank you Nathan and thank you everybody for listenin.
Nathan Whittacre 30:05
Thanks everybody thanks Sherry for the questions
