What better way to launch a new year of blog posts but with three success stories?
My three writing coach clients-turned-authors have several things in common. They’re all in the financial field. A couple of them overcame sizeable challenges that could have prevented them from publishing at all. All three are writing books to help promote their business. And the books are unexpectedly personal and entertaining. Captivating, even.
But that’s where the similarities stop.
Here’s a sneak peek into the first of the three books, published at the start of the year.
John “Huddy” Hudson’s unflinching book 7 Steps to Financial Recovery: The Truth About How to Fix Your Credit focuses on the lessons he learned as a credit repair expert and as someone who needed to dig himself out of a money hole. Make that a money crater.
As he writes in his book:
It seems like every financial situation that my clients bring to me, I’ve had the unfortunate experience—or the unfortunate benefit—of having to struggle through that very challenge. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have someone to catch me before I went super far down that rabbit hole. I got to such a point of financial devastation that I wondered, “How is this ever going to change? What’s going to make the difference?”
I had no roadmap detailing what to do, so I sat there and spun my wheels. No matter how much dust or mud I kicked up, I had to keep going until I eventually figured it out. The fact that I was eventually able to pull myself out of it shows my clients that it can be done. I can also pass on the lessons learned about how to reclaim your financial life that I figured out the hard way.
Correction. I didn’t just learn those lessons the hard way. This process that I went through on my own was pure hell.
“Man, my life sucks,” I would think in those days. “I need this to change.”
Thoughts like that kept me in trouble. I was waiting for something good to happen to me instead of going out and making that happen. I needed to overhaul my perspective about my entire situation. I needed to finally understand and accept that my financial life had become unmanageable. That happened one summer afternoon.
This was not the book Huddy initially set out to write. He had started working with me on a book called Zip Ties and Duct Tape: My Life in Constant Repair, a memoir still in the works that chronicles his long battle with alcoholism. Along the way, we realized we could carve out a chunk of the material into a financial recovery book. So, we pivoted and focused on that since it would help him on the business front.
The resulting book is unlike any financial book you’ve ever read. Huddy’s candid stories—his and his clients’—not only illustrate how low you can go but that with the right mindset and tools, you can resurface and reclaim or redefine your place in the world.
Life, of course, has a way of getting in the way of the best-laid plans, especially when addiction is part of the mix. So, we had a lengthy delay while John struggled to find his way again, a dip and eventual recovery that will surely be chronicled in Zip Ties. The big book, as we call it, already explores the highs and lows of a challenged and challenging life that succeeds despite all obstacles, self-inflicted or not. And we’ve only gotten partway through that one.
By the time Huddy was ready to review the edit I’d done on the credit repair book he had completed at least three years prior, he had reclaimed his sobriety along with his original career as a mortgage broker. Did I mention that in 2006 he was showcased in the Wall Street Journal as one of the top mortgage entrepreneurs in the country aged 30 and under?
So now, with his first book in print, he’s already at work on book #2 that will teach readers—even those already in the business—everything they don’t know about mortgages. And again, unflinching storytelling will be part of the mix. In both cases, readers will walk away having learned as much about themselves as about credit repair and mortgages. Who would have ever thought that a financial book could be a page-turner?
