Episode 116: Best-Selling Ghostwriter Holly Crawshaw Joyner on Building Authority with Books + LinkedIn | What 120+ Ghostwritten Books Reveal About Storytelling
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Your story isn’t too messy, too boring, or too personal to share.
It’s the very thing that sets you apart.
And Holly Crawshaw Joyner has built her entire business helping leaders do exactly that.
Holly’s ghostwritten 120+ books and built a standout brand on LinkedIn by being raw, honest, and far from perfect. She knows what it takes to turn life experience into the kind of authority that makes people stop scrolling, and start listening.
In this episode, Holly joins Stacy to discuss:
The behind-the-scenes lessons from ghostwriting 120+ books (and what actually makes a good one)
How she built her business, The Story Spark, as a single mom during the pandemic
The honesty-over-perfection strategy that made her brand stand out on LinkedIn
Why LinkedIn is still the most underrated platform for introverts + thought leaders
Smart AI hacks to turn posts, podcasts, and raw ideas into publishable content
The real talk on self, hybrid, and traditional publishing (and how to know which path is right for you)
If you’ve ever thought about publishing a book, or finally leveraging LinkedIn to grow your business, this conversation will help you find the courage to get started.
More about Holly:
Holly Crawshaw Joyner is a New York Times-bestselling ghostwriter.
Since entering publishing in 2006, Holly has ghostwritten, edited, and coached well over 1,000 titles. In addition to the NYT Bestseller, other projects Holly has worked on have topped the most prestigious lists in the industry including Amazon Bestseller, Amazon Best New Release, and Amazon Top 100, among others.
She’s written books for all the major publishing houses, including HarperCollins, Penguin, Random House, Baker, and Hachette.
Since 2021, Holly has also been ghostwriting for and coaching clients on LinkedIn, teaching them how to build a brand and grow an engaged audience. In 2024 Holly was named the #1 U.S. LinkedIn creator for Audience Building and Brand Awareness. In 2025 she was listed as one of the Top 20 LinkedIn experts worldwide.
Holly is married to Drew. They live in Atlanta with her three daughters. She is a self-professed cat lady with an addiction to sour candy.
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TRANSCRIPT
Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.
[00:00:00] Stacy Havener: Stories create connection. They're also a catalyst for change. Today's guest, Holly Khaw joiner, founder of Content Consultancy. The Story Spark is a fellow storyteller and a dear friend. She's also the person I turn to when I need help using my words more effectively. Holly is a LinkedIn expert and a ghost writer for books.
[00:00:28] Stacy Havener: She has written over 120 books. She has built a successful personal brand and business on LinkedIn. Today, she spills the story tee and lets us in on the magic of LinkedIn, the nuances of book writing and the power of using your words to change not only your business. But your life. Grab a notebook. If you've ever wanted to write a book or level up your LinkedIn, today is your lucky day.
[00:00:59] Stacy Havener: Let's [00:01:00] dive in with my friend
[00:01:01] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Holly.
[00:01:04] Stacy Havener: Hey, my name is Stacey Haner. I'm obsessed with startups, stories, and sales. Storytelling has fueled my success as a female founder in the Toughest Boys Club, wall Street. I've raised over 8 billion that has led to 30 billion in follow-on assets for investment boutiques, you could say against the odds.
[00:01:24] Stacy Havener: Yeah, understatement. I share stories of the people behind the portfolios while teaching you how to use story to shape outcomes. It's real talk here, money, authenticity, growth, setbacks, sales and marketing are all topics we discuss. Think of this as the capital raising class you wish you had in college mixed with happy hour.
[00:01:49] Stacy Havener: Pull up a seat, grab your notebook, and get ready to be inspired and challenged while you learn. This is the Billion Dollar Backstory podcast.[00:02:00]
[00:02:03] Stacy Havener: Welcome everyone to the Billion Dollar Backstory podcast. I think I secretly started a podcast so I could invite my really cool friends on and introduce you all to them, and that is exactly what's happening today. I have one of my favorite people, a great friend, Holly Joiner on the show today. Do you go by Holly k Haw joiner.
[00:02:25] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: That's a great question. So I got married in March of this year, March of 2025. So when I published books prior to that, when I scaled LinkedIn, prior to that it was Holly Khaw. So what I have done is I am sort of using Holly Khaw Joiner as like a bridge for like a year on all books, all social media platforms.
[00:02:47] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: So we're gonna use it for a year, but legally speaking, yes. Holly Joiner and what a cute last name that, that's my husband. I mean it. It's so cute you're watching on video.
[00:02:55] Stacy Havener: Yeah. It's so cute. As are you and also Wicked Smart. So [00:03:00] we are glad to have you here today. One of my favorite things, one of our favorite shared things is of course, storytelling.
[00:03:08] Stacy Havener: And so the idea of this podcast was to really unpack and get to know the people behind. The portfolio, so to speak, in your case, would be a portfolio of writing in the investment industry, a portfolio of investments. So can we start with that? Like tell us a little bit about your journey. I mean, you sit here as an accomplished writer, LinkedIn expert, all the things.
[00:03:31] Stacy Havener: Did you set out knowing this is exactly what you wanted to be?
[00:03:35] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I always knew I wanted to be a writer. Yeah. I was the kid in kindergarten bringing home that piece of paper that said, when I grow up, I wanna be an, I said an author. Mm. So I'm not sure what it was about me other than I love to tell stories and you can ask my entire family.
[00:03:54] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: That would get me in trouble because I would tell stories as if they were truth. If you follow. [00:04:00] And so I remember having a yellow legal pad when I was little at my grandmother's house. She had like a stack of yellow legal pads. Everybody knows what I'm talking about, right? Of course. Like if your grandmother had a yellow legal pad, it had the red lines.
[00:04:12] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Yes. And she had these really beautiful pens that I have been a pen sort of snob. Mm-hmm. Like since birth, frankly. Mm-hmm. So I would just scribble like lines and then I would take it, and then I would read it as if I had written stories. I remember writing my first book on her typewriter when I was eight years old.
[00:04:31] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Now this book was about a serial killer, so I'm not sure what that says. About 8-year-old Holly. It was like the babysitter was a serial killer. So a lot to unpack there psychologically. But yes, Stacy, I always wanted to be a writer, but I never knew how to make money doing it. So I went to college. Mm-hmm.
[00:04:48] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I got an English degree and I did what a lot of people who aspire to be writers do. And that's, I started, I, I was an English teacher, teacher and I made it for all of one school year. [00:05:00] Teachers are heroes. Um, and so after that, when I was 22, I got my first dollar to write and I have been writing professionally ever since in some capacity.
[00:05:10] Stacy Havener: That is amazing.
[00:05:11] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: The irony is that I swore I've never teach again. And now part of what I do on LinkedIn and I do wanna backtrack to more specifically how I became a post writer. Yeah. And, and a LinkedIn writer. So. When I started this LinkedIn masterclass, it was really outta necessity for the clients that I was ghostwriting for because you can't, and if you're listening and you're not on LinkedIn, basically it's a platform.
[00:05:34] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: A lot of thought leaders are there. You share, you learn. You can get business on there, you can find investors on there. I've helped clients do that. But when I came to LinkedIn, I realized like you can have great content, but unless you're actually engaging and being a participant in the process, then your posts aren't gonna do very well.
[00:05:54] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: So I started this class just out of necessity, and now I am seven classes in, and it is [00:06:00] one of my favorite things that I do, and God is laughing at me and because I swear I would never, ever teach again. But just to backtrack. Yeah, go back. A little bit. Yeah. So grew up knowing I wanted to be a writer, didn't know how to make money doing it.
[00:06:15] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Started writing for very little, very, very little. And I took a few W2 roles during that time that were lengthy from about 2006 until 2020. So during that time, I was just writing everywhere I went. Even if it wasn't my only job there, it was always part of my role. And so I wrote really for free in some of those roles because I was hired to do something else, but I would still find a way to write.
[00:06:43] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And then I got a literary agent around 2010, and I worked with her for many, many years. I'm with a new agent now, but so I, I was writing books, I was writing content in all of my jobs, and then 2020 hit and the world changed. And I don't need to explain the [00:07:00] why behind that. If you lived in 2020, you understand what I'm saying?
[00:07:04] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Everything changed, especially everything about the content industry and publishing. Two very different results for the content creators. It was feast, right? Because everybody was online. That was the only way to exchange information, was digitally for the publishing industry, it was famine because there was supply chain stuff.
[00:07:25] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: People weren't going out and buying books, people weren't doing certain things. The user behavior changed. Buyer behavior changed. And so I was sort of stuck at my job. They came and they were like, listen, um, the majority of their money came from publishing leadership content. And they were like, people are not having conferences.
[00:07:44] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: In person conferences, believe it or not. And like, we have a backlog of content. So you can either take this massive pay cut. Do more work or we can contract you. And so that was 20 20, 20 21. That conversation happened, and that was the year I [00:08:00] decided to sit bet on myself. And I was a single mom. I was $40,000 in consumer debt.
[00:08:07] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I have a screenshot on my LinkedIn. It's a great post to prove it. Yep. Thank you. Really terrified. Never wanted to own a business. Never wanted to build a personal brand. To me that felt very yucky. It felt very influencer. And if you're listening, maybe that resonates with you, but I had no interest in being what I considered a public figure, especially online.
[00:08:29] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: But that's exactly what I ended up doing. Because the truth is you have a personal brand. Yes, you have a personal brand, you have a digital reputation. And the only question. Is, are you going to control that narrative or are you gonna allow other people to fill in the blanks? So, came to LinkedIn in 2020, build out the story, spark a new agent, found me.
[00:08:50] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I've written many, many books since then, but that's sort of the gap between where I sort of got serious about a personal brand. Mm-hmm. About writing. Mm-hmm. [00:09:00] About sharing on LinkedIn 20 20, 20 21. That was a pivot season for me for sure.
[00:09:06] Stacy Havener: Thank you for sharing all of that. And I wanna keep touching back to your backstory as we go, because I want to kind of split if it makes sense.
[00:09:16] Stacy Havener: I think it might, the idea of LinkedIn and its power or sort of, I don't know if you wanna call that shorter form content. Mm-hmm. Versus something like a book, which is much different, much longer form, and you have a unique spot because you do both.
[00:09:34] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: There is a completely natural bridge between the two.
[00:09:37] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Yeah. So I often move from book to LinkedIn work and from LinkedIn work to book. Yeah. With many, many of my clients. And the reason is that in today's publishing climate and culture, you almost have to have some sort of a platform. Yeah. For that book, for you to see an ROI in terms of selling copies. Now, I guess [00:10:00] we're gonna start with books because that's where, where I'm diving in, that's go yeah, dive in.
[00:10:04] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: So if you write a book without a platform, you may not sell a lot of copies, but it will do some things for you. It, it'll give you access to international audiences, it'll give you access to people that you didn't have access to prior. You may get speaking engagements based on that book. You may get webinar invitations to talk about whatever topic you discuss in your book, but it's going to be much more difficult.
[00:10:32] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: To get those types of invitations because the market is just so completely saturated. You can even hire out pr, you can spend a ton of money in marketing, but unless you have a strong personal brand in a unique position, it's very hard to see an ROI on a book, even for some of my clients who have humongous book deals.
[00:10:54] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Right. I, I worked with people who have book deals and then I work with people who don't have any [00:11:00] book deals and the experience is very similar unless. You know, somebody cares. Nobody cares. Right? And so that's why I see this natural bridge of, okay, I've sort of built out all of this LinkedIn content and I understand what resonates with my audience.
[00:11:16] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I'm gonna go away and write about that, and then I'm gonna market it on LinkedIn, or that's just gonna be one of my channels. And then I've had people with a book come to me and say, Hey, my book's not doing great. I really don't know how to get it out there. What should I do? Mm-hmm. And I say, well, you need to come to LinkedIn and you need to build out your content pillars and you need to become well-known and associated with this topic or this area of expertise.
[00:11:38] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And then you can push it out. So ideally you build first and then you write the book. Right. But that's not always how it plays
[00:11:45] Stacy Havener: out. Yeah, I think it's a great point. And what I also want people to take from that, and I wanna spend a lot of time on the book piece and the LinkedIn piece. What I want people to hear in there too is that.
[00:11:55] Stacy Havener: You can take shorter bits of content and roll them up [00:12:00] into something bigger, and you can take a longer piece and break it up into smaller bits. For something like LinkedIn, I think there's a lot of pressure on people put a lot of pressure on themselves when they think about sort of creating any sort of content in that.
[00:12:15] Stacy Havener: It's gonna be such a heavy lift, it's gonna be so much work. But I think you highlighted something really important here, which is we are all creating content in some way, shape, or form, but we're probably not thinking about that content in a repurposed way.
[00:12:32] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And that is such a mistake because first of all, I, I do this in my life, but I am a highly efficient person.
[00:12:40] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I want to ring out every bit of value from literally everything in my life. And that includes content. So let's say I make one video on LinkedIn. If you're not familiar with LinkedIn, you can use several different types of post attachments. A, a visual that go, that goes along with your post. Usually it's a [00:13:00] photo, um, a branded slide that you can make in candor, have somebody make for you.
[00:13:04] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: But the most popular right now. And I just watched a video from LinkedIn's VP of Marketing saying that video has seen a 33% rise since the beginning of the year in use on LinkedIn. So if I create a video for LinkedIn, it might take me 30 minutes to write out the script, throw it in a teleprompter app, and film the video.
[00:13:24] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Then I send it to an editor because I know my strengths and video editing is not one of them. I pay him 50 bucks to edit it, right? So I've invested half an hour and 50 bucks and I use that video everywhere possible. And all of those roads. Point back to LinkedIn. So I'll post it on TikTok, I'll post it on Instagram, and this is with a click of one button because it's pushing to these other sites.
[00:13:50] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I'll post it to YouTube and then obviously I post it on LinkedIn. So I'm using it four different places. And the places that aren't LinkedIn just point people [00:14:00] back to finding me on LinkedIn. I'm not active on any of the other social media websites as as like a LinkedIn figure. I don't really talk about LinkedIn on my personal social media.
[00:14:09] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I'm not a social media guru by any stretch. I have no, I haven't scaled zero other platforms. I wanna make that really clear. 'cause a lot of times you hear people talk about LinkedIn and or Facebook or something and they've scaled to like a billion. Across several platforms. I have not. LinkedIn is really where I've decided to show up because of the data and, and the data supports the idea that LinkedIn is the most professional, efficient, trust building platform to be on.
[00:14:38] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I think the latest numbers are something in like 80% more trustworthy. If you're on LinkedIn and you're posting on LinkedIn businesses, individuals, they're like 80% more trustworthy than if you were to see 'em on TikTok or just meet 'em on the street. Right? And that's a crazy data point. So I used that video a [00:15:00] million different places and over time I have built, I think I counted or I did some sort of math recently.
[00:15:07] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I've, I've posted like over way over a thousand posts and I'm like, that is a lot of posts. How can I sort of maximize that? You can export these posts using different sort of analytic websites. I use SHIELD Analytics. Mm-hmm. Sponsor Me Shield. I love you. They're, and I do love them. They're so great. And this is where AI is our friend.
[00:15:32] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: You hear so much negative Yeah. Feedback regarding ai, but this is where, it's our friend. I've actually thrown it into AI a little bit at a time. Not like all 2000 posts, but I sorted it by my top performing. Mm-hmm. Say hundred posts. And you can throw it into AI and say, Hey, if I were gonna write a book based on all of this content that already exists, what are 10 chapters?
[00:15:54] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: No. And outline those chapters. And then you have a book outline based on stuff [00:16:00] you've already done. And, and more often than that is the opposite. Where people have a book and you can put, upload that book's PDF into chat, GPT and ask it to break that book down into a hundred. LinkedIn SOS amazing now.
[00:16:16] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: This is my forever and always AI warning. You absolutely must edit. Must you must edit. You must edit it. And I know listeners, you've heard this, but I cannot emphasize it enough. I can see your ai, your AI is showing, yeah. It's showing, your AI is showing. I can see it. So, um, just adding the human touch, putting it in your own words, but the legwork Yeah.
[00:16:41] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And the mental sort of that energy leak of having to do all of that thinking and organizing and analysis. It's gone. Yep. Because you have a framework to move from. So I, I have taken LinkedIn post to book and book to LinkedIn posts. Yep.
[00:16:58] Stacy Havener: So [00:17:00] fantastic tips. And I think it really does highlight the idea that like, technology is our friend.
[00:17:06] Stacy Havener: Not our foe, but it's never going to sort of replace the human element of people doing business with people. But that doesn't mean you don't like, you don't have to be a purist, in my opinion, and just never use No, that would be silly. It would be. It would be ridiculous. Okay, so it's not the hill to die on.
[00:17:23] Stacy Havener: Not the hill. It's not the hill. So I wanna pause for a second because mm-hmm. There's this idea in the investment industry that says like, I mean this is all great, Holly and Stacy. Like love that you guys love LinkedIn, love that you like to tell stories. That's awesome. But I'm in the investment industry and that's like not relevant to me either because they think that investors are not on LinkedIn.
[00:17:51] Stacy Havener: I dunno, maybe they're not human or they think that it's like beneath them somehow, or it's too retail or they don't need to be [00:18:00] an influencer. And you and I have talked a lot about this, Holly, that. If you want to grow a business of any kind, it doesn't just happen out of like, you know, the ether. You need a system, you need a funnel, you need an audience.
[00:18:15] Stacy Havener: You have to have, as you use that word platform, where people can actually get to know you. And I would argue that that's as true in the investment industry as it is anywhere. It's just a business phenomenon.
[00:18:30] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: There are really two ways that people used to get business. Word of mouth and happenstance, right?
[00:18:41] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Word of mouth and just luck. Maybe they walked by your building or they saw your billboard or maybe you put a commercial on tv, but like, that's the only two. There were only two ways for the longest time and that was the rise of the big logos and, and huge marketing campaigns and, and [00:19:00] really high level of competition where.
[00:19:02] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Sort of some of the smaller businesses or smaller boutiques, they really didn't have a chance to compete. But that time has been drawing to a close in the rise of personal branding and founder led stories. Mm-hmm. And founder led or CEO led, or you know, fund manager led. Those types of stories are really where I'm seeing a lot of those mid to smaller size, especially in the investment space.
[00:19:29] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Folks really be able to grow. I have worked personally with at least five, I was counting before this call with at least five fund managers on LinkedIn who were raising funds. I had one who was raising hundreds of millions of dollars to buy a series of hotels. Right. And he did a phenomenal job on LinkedIn of telling his story.
[00:19:49] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I'll give you an example. He was looking at this hotel in Spain that was a castle. We were really able to sell the dream way [00:20:00] better than we were able to break down the nuts and bolts. I don't know if anyone listening has ever bought real estate in Spain, but it's bananas that the interest rate is like 2.4%.
[00:20:08] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And I know not everybody listening is in the real estate investment space at all, but it's just interesting. It's like free money, but they make it so hard to get that free money that it's almost like you should just pay cash. So all that to say the story we were able to tell about the family who owned the castle before him mm-hmm.
[00:20:25] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And how he was gonna preserve everyone. Still employed. It was like a fourth generation landscaper who kept the grounds. The chef in the kitchen was like a third generation chef in that kitchen from the same family name in Spain. And just the area itself, the lore. Yeah. Surrounding the area itself. Being able to tell those stories.
[00:20:47] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Yep. Did so much more than sharing the numbers because. Investors are humans. That's right. They are. I mean, if you think about watching [00:21:00] movies, watching tv, reading books, especially the movie industry, those are investments. They have investors or the, you know, production companies investing in the production of this movie in hopes that it will sell and they'll see a return on it, right?
[00:21:16] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Stories sell, they're people invest in stories directly all the time in ways that we probably don't realize as audience members, but. Helping him. His name is Mike. He's a great human being, helping Mike shape these stories around this castle in Spain. I love this. Someone found him. Yeah. They found him through LinkedIn.
[00:21:37] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: It was an older lady, many years into retirement with a huge chunk of money. And she did not want, she actually was not looking for a return. This was a lifestyle investment for her. She wanted to go stay at the castle. She wanted her children to be able to go stay at the castle anytime they wanted. And it was a, you know, she is going to see a return.
[00:21:58] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: They, they have a plan for, um, [00:22:00] like a three year return on that investment for her. But that wasn't even really what, what mattered to her. And that's the thing. We think that numbers are all that matters to people. Mm-hmm. Especially when you're a fund manager and, and that's your world and your life. But those numbers can tell a story if you dig a little bit deeper into them.
[00:22:20] Stacy Havener: So well said. Great example. I love Mike. I love the castle in Spain. I love the lady. Love it all.
[00:22:28] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: She's fantastic. Yeah. I mean, I don't know her. Mike knows her love her, but he told me, yeah. And I'm like, I wanna be in my eighties in investing in castles. How do I get there? That's amazing.
[00:22:40] Stacy Havener: So great. So the point being, I think, and this example brings it to life, that you need an audience.
[00:22:49] Stacy Havener: And there are lots of ways that you could do that. And this is where maybe we come back to the book in a little bit, but LinkedIn is a low cost, low barrier to [00:23:00] entry. You can figure this out. There are people to help you. It is a great professional platform on which to build an audience. And I think if you.
[00:23:12] Stacy Havener: Juxtapose that with some of the other ways that you could build an audience, like going on the speaking circuit or going on the podcast circuit or having a book like that takes a lot. It's a heavy, heavy lift, and I feel like LinkedIn is still a lift, but it's not going to be as labor intensive, cost prohibitive as some of the other ways that you could choose to build an audience.
[00:23:35] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: It's definitely a, but if you think about. OI, if you're just looking strictly at the numbers. Yeah. I pay for LinkedIn Premium because I consider myself a LinkedIn ghost writer and coach. Yeah. That's the only reason I pay for it. They don't push my post because I'm a premium member. It's not connected to that at all.
[00:23:54] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I did just as well reach wise when I didn't pay, but it's 30 bucks a month I think is [00:24:00] around what I pay for LinkedIn and to post is completely free. And if you do hire a ghost writer, it's still going to be fractional. Yeah. When compared to ad spend, I've been doing a lot of research on ads. Oh, interesting.
[00:24:12] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Ad spend lately and where people are putting their ad spend money and Facebook ads where you're paying four bucks a click, which is bananas. And even more for a lead and even more, you know, to close a deal. You're getting in the thousands upon thousands of dollars per month. I think one case study I did, they, which is considered a pretty low budget, $5,000 a month in ad spend.
[00:24:36] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And they had been doing this for over a year through Facebook ads, and they had maybe made $30,000. They had spent way more in ad spend than they had earned back. And what do they have to show for it? Right? 'cause at the end of the day, the beautiful thing about LinkedIn is that it's a digital living, breathing legacy resume.
[00:24:58] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Yeah. It'll live there [00:25:00] forever. What I posted three years ago, you can still go look and see the very beginning of my journey and I am really proud that I built in public and that I can go back and see what I was thinking and feeling, you know, in 2023. Yeah. When I was right in the middle of my scale. But when you're just throwing ads out into the universe, not only are you not helping anyone.
[00:25:21] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: You're not building anything for yourself. And so that's why I challenge ad spend all the time because what do you have to show for at the end of the day? What do you have to show for
[00:25:30] Stacy Havener: it and what and how does anybody connect with you? Nobody. Nobody says Wow. I really feel like I know Holly. 'cause her ad was cool.
[00:25:38] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I have never ran a Facebook ad and I'm not above it. Right. Yeah. Like I'm not above it. But in doing research to make that move, I, I was doing a ton of research and LinkedIn ads too. Yeah. I have a good friend, his name is Gabriel. He, I think it's called Tion and they only do LinkedIn ads and he's the founder and CEO, he lives in Israel.
[00:25:58] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: He is very cool guy. And I, I was [00:26:00] talking to him about spend and I was just like, what is the point when I can get that organic reach for free? Yeah. Just by posting. And you can do all kinds of things with posts on LinkedIn. You can promote them, you can, you know, you could spend a little bit or you can spend a whole lot, but the numbers say that it's probably not worth it.
[00:26:19] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Honestly, right now on LinkedIn, it's probably not worth it to do an ad or to do a promoted post, even if you just spend a little time building beforehand.
[00:26:28] Stacy Havener: So I love this. I wanna transition to book because yeah, let's do it. And, and also because in full disclosure, Holly is helping me with my book, so I feel that you should know that this is, I, I speak from experience in working with her and asking her all these questions personally.
[00:26:46] Stacy Havener: And she's been amazing and, and incredible. I'm so lucky to have her by my side. Thank you. Um, so because a lot of people, especially as they get a little bit more wisdom, we'll say once [00:27:00] say older, more wisdom, they kind of get to this place. They're like, you know, I think I have a book in me, like I've got a book in Oh yeah.
[00:27:05] Stacy Havener: You know this. Yeah. And it gives you a lot of credibility. So having a book, you kind of went through it earlier. It does a lot of things. But I also come back to something you said, which is the world of publishing has changed. And I guess my question to you is, should everybody write a book?
[00:27:23] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: So I have two answers.
[00:27:26] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Okay. I think everybody should write down their story. I just think for legacy sake. Yeah. I have always believed that everybody has a story to share. And I will say I have believed that since my serial killer days of writing at my grandmother's table. Yeah. I've always been nosy. Yeah. I always want to know your story, know the details.
[00:27:47] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I want the tea. Yeah. I think everybody has a story worth telling and I think it's worth, especially with all the tools and and technology we have today, you can write a book as a family legacy, make it 20,000 words, [00:28:00] just a summary of your life. I'm working with a gentleman now, his name is Russ, and he is adorable.
[00:28:04] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I love him. He is in his early eighties. At one point he owned, I think over 300 Arby's franchises. Oh, how cool. He, he's just a fascinating human being. He's exited at multiple seven figures, multiple times in the franchise space, particularly in the fast food or like. They call it fast casual dining space now.
[00:28:24] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Oh yeah. It's getting, getting fancy. Getting fancy. Yeah. We're talking like the difference between McDonald's and like a chicken salad chick. So, okay, there's all, there's all manner of levels of food experiences in this industry, but I'm working on a book for Rust and his goal is simply, he just wants to write a story, right?
[00:28:41] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: He's not trying to get leads from it. He's not trying to, he doesn't have a framework, right? He just wants to share his story and in sharing his story, we are uncovering a lot of mindsets that he had that are unique, a lot of decisions he made that were unexpected to get him to where he is today. And so my answer is [00:29:00] yes, everybody should write down their story.
[00:29:02] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Even if you put it into, you just speak it into your iPhone and then you put it in a transcription service. You use AI to take that transcript just so that your family has it. He really is writing this as a legacy book, so. That's a good example. Uh, Russ is a great example of somebody who's sharing their story without expecting to get anything in return.
[00:29:22] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: However, should everybody write a book and expect to get something from it. My answer to that is I do think it's possible in the right time of your career and life and with the right resources and partners. Here's what I mean by that. If you don't have a couple of hours a week to dedicate to it, you will burn out.
[00:29:46] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: You will lose momentum, and there is so much magic and momentum when it comes to book writing. But if you can either hire out a lot of that or if you can. Put it on the calendar and just stay really dedicated and determined, [00:30:00] and you can turn out a book. What a book gives you is something that so many people are already paying for, which is access, and I mentioned that earlier.
[00:30:07] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: It gives you access to rooms that you'll never enter, access to, countries you'll never enter, and if you can really commit to it, commit to getting it done, to telling the story. And Stacy, you and I talked about this when we were working on your book proposal, is these types of book work best when there is ip.
[00:30:26] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Mm-hmm. Intellectual property, whether that's a framework, a through line, a set of systems, five mindsets, right? Or some big unique idea or position. And maybe you can hire a book coach to help you idea what that is. There's all kinds of help that you can hire. You can hire a book coach. You can hire a book editor.
[00:30:48] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: You can hire a substantive editor. You can hire a copy editor, you can hire a ghost writer. There's all kinds of help at all different price points that you can hire [00:31:00] out to help you get this done. But every book needs a spine. And whether that is a framework, a set of systems, a set of mindsets, some type of checklist, you know, I'm writing a book right now with a couple of matchmakers.
[00:31:11] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: They're the cutest couple on planet Earth Planet, and they're both high achievers. So we wrote a book on how to date as a high achiever, and it really is one of the most fascinating books because of all the neuroscience research that we've done together. But for them it was, okay, we can't just give advice and we can't just give a blueprint because every relationship is different.
[00:31:32] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: So what can we give them? And so we came up with these 12 roles of dating as a high performer or a high achiever. So my advice is to hire out what you can't do on your own or won't do on your own. Mm-hmm. And. When you do that, understand that the, the goal is to figure out what the spine of your book is with this person and to then write the book around that.
[00:31:57] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Because that unique positioning is what gets you in [00:32:00] these rooms and gets you the speaking engagements and gets you the invitations to places because general advice, there is nothing new under the sun, nothing new. The only thing new under the sun, truly, truly is your story and your unique perspective.
[00:32:16] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And, and those two combine to give you a unique position. So should everybody write a book? Yes. With an asterisk? Yeah.
[00:32:26] Stacy Havener: Well I think it's a great point because I do, you know, just even in my own family, when I hear like, you know, my dad talk about wanting to write a book, it's, it is more about the legacy.
[00:32:38] Stacy Havener: It's not really for commercial reasons, right? It's more for legacy. Reasons, and I love that you differentiated that on the commercial side. Oh, go ahead, please.
[00:32:52] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: If you're trying to write a book as a pipeline for book sales to my wallet, yeah. I, I don't wanna [00:33:00] say you're never gonna see that ROI, I would just say you're never going to pay off a mortgage with a book deal or with book sales.
[00:33:09] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: What you're looking for is what comes because of that book. Mm-hmm. Whether it's a new position, a new investor, an invitation. Mm-hmm. Credentialed authority. There is something to be said for someone who has the discipline to actually sit down and know their own thoughts. And instead of being able to talk about lending all day or real estate all day, they have told stories that support their expertise.
[00:33:38] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Those people are given so much more respect within their industry. There's just this innate and inherent respect that we have for people who have written a book. It's sort of like celebrities. Yeah. You just kind of stand in awe and you're like, that is the craziest thing ever. Every single time I finish a book, I can't believe it.
[00:33:55] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I've been doing this 19 years, I've written over 120 books in my career, and [00:34:00] every time I read I'm like, that is the craziest thing I've ever done. Yeah. Because, um, it's incredibly meaningful. It's to write a book, but you have to have commitment because when you lose momentum, when books take two, three years, they end up being stream of conscious and, and disconnected.
[00:34:16] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I really realized this really over the last five years, is that when you can make time, circle a date on your calendar and put your notes to the grindstone and or hire out where needed, those are the books that do the best. Not necessarily, you're not gonna sell a million dollars worth of books unless.
[00:34:33] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: You are James Patterson. Right? You're not, or Kristen Hannah. You're just not. Yeah. But what you might get is a hundred thousand plus in speaking gigs. Yeah. And new investors. And so that's my advice for book writing and, and the brutal truth about ROI On books, people often ask me like, how much money can you make off a book?
[00:34:53] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: It's a really convoluted answer. Yeah. Because the lion's share of the money will not come from somebody picking up your [00:35:00] book off Amazon marketplace. I mean, you're talking like after Amazon's cut, we're talking maybe $5 a book. You have to stack a lot of books up for that to make sense, right. As an income stream.
[00:35:11] Stacy Havener: Such great points. And I don't wanna belabor the book thing, but I can just imagine if I'm listening and this has been on my mind that my next question would be, okay. Got it. Great advice from Holly. So do I self-publish or do I call a publisher? How do you know? Such a great question. Yeah.
[00:35:32] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I get this question almost every day.
[00:35:34] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Yeah. And my answer starts here. I think I have a post coming next week because I think I'm just, I think I do, I batch write my LinkedIn post and they kind of run together in my mind. Um, because I schedule them all at once. I schedule a week or, or two weeks in advance. So my answer is, one, what do you want the book to do?
[00:35:56] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And so if people aren't sure what they want their book to do, my [00:36:00] advice is to, well, don't worry about how you're gonna publish it first. Figure out what you want the book to do. Great advice. My second piece, because it could do a lot of things, right? Yeah. This is a legacy book. This is a credential. This is like a business card.
[00:36:12] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Like the, the biggest, best, most effective business card I'll ever have a book. Um, this is, I really want people to spend money with me. I want them to invest with me, figuring out what it is you want the book to do. Because far too often people come to. This is especially true with people who think they wanna write a business book.
[00:36:30] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: They are disappointed by how little of their actual story winds up in the book. And so it's either a memoir or it's a business book, or it's a 50 50 blend. Like you have to make a decision. You cannot tell your entire live story and have a 10 step framework and expect to keep people engaged. And so you can only tell the parts of the story that lend themselves to the business parts of the story, right?
[00:36:53] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: So when people come to me, they ask what they should do. I get this, I've had this conversation with two clients this [00:37:00] week. There's, there's several paths. One is the traditional path where there's a book proposal, it's sent to publishing houses, and they offer you x amount of dollars for the right to publish your book.
[00:37:15] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: That's one that's the longest where you have the least control, but you have the most support and the most guaranteed money, right? That's the traditional publishing path typically involves some sort of agent representing you to these publishing houses because the larger publishing houses that pay those six plus figure book deal money, like the average bear, yeah.
[00:37:37] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Can't knock on the door, send the email, or drop the manuscript and the big manila envelope and email it to Harper Collins In New York, that does not happen. You almost always have to have an agent representing you and that agent has to agree and then you have to understand they get part of your deal.
[00:37:51] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: So there's a lot of factors in there that's traditional publishing. There's another world of hybrid publishing and this is really a growing [00:38:00] industry among publishing houses and that's, you get no upfront money. They will agree to market your book, even do some design stuff. They have all kinds of different offers.
[00:38:11] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Some will even offer to like have it edited, like we'll pay professional editor to have this edited. We really wanna represent your book, and then you split proceeds with this company and they have a vested interest and you have a vested interest. So you're all in it together. That describes the hybrid publishing model.
[00:38:28] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Then there's, there's two more, so there's really four. Okay, so there's also the pay to publish. The pay to play model. I have seen this work really well, and I have seen this. Become a huge point of debt for people that they're very frustrated about, and that is when you go to a publishing house and you pay them X amount of dollars for them to publish and print and market your book, I've seen people spend anywhere from 10,000 to over a hundred thousand dollars with these types of establishments [00:39:00] to varying degrees of success.
[00:39:01] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: All I can say is that you do get guaranteed book in hand and guaranteed whatever the outline contracts as in terms of marketing, but not all of these places can guarantee that this book is gonna get into certain number of people's hands. So I have vetted several companies myself for clients, and then I've had clients use these companies.
[00:39:24] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: So I have an opinion on who's worth spending money with and who's not. But again, varying degrees of success and varying degrees of control. Sometimes they'll insist. You know, but we have to change this last chapter. We have to change the title, but you have a little more control than you do in, in the traditional deal.
[00:39:40] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And then the fourth and final, and I'm sure there's more that I'm missing, but I would say fourth popular is self-publish. Right? And that is when you, you can truly get on Amazon today, write a book, and as long as you have it with the correct specifications for uploading to [00:40:00] Amazon's KDP app, you can publish a book today if you wanna, and put it on Amazon's marketplace.
[00:40:07] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I, I don't recommend that. Right? I recommend that a professional lay it out and you have professional design wrapped around it so that it's beautiful. But I have also had clients find a lot of, lot of success through self-publishing. I really encourage self-publishing when it's more of a business card book.
[00:40:23] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I write a lot of those, they're like lead generation books. Where you're really just trying to unload a system, unload a mindset, unload your philosophy in one, one book, about 20,000, no more than 30,000 words. I write a good number of those books, and I recommend those be self-published. Because the truth is, is that you're really using them as a business card.
[00:40:44] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Yeah. You're, you're really using them as like a, so people have this respect for you and they understand that you're not, you know, like other people in that industry, whatever industry you represent, this sets you apart and you just have a little [00:41:00] bit more authority and influence. So those are the four that I always talk about.
[00:41:03] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Which ones the best? Depends what you want your book to do. That's always my answer. If, if I were to write a book tomorrow, because I've been in the indu industry so long. For myself, if I were to write a book for Holly, I would try to do the traditional route first, and if that didn't work, I would go to self-publishing.
[00:41:20] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: But I've built a platform over the last four to five years where I feel like I could unload enough books to make it make sense financially for me. But if I were a relative, relatively unknown person and really wanted to like let people know like how I became this investment boutique owner, yeah, I like, I would and I wanted to tell my story of how that happened.
[00:41:42] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I would do it in under 30,000 words and I would. Probably try to get a traditional publisher, but while that happened, because that can take up to two or more years to get your book in your hand, even after the book is done, if you enter into a traditional publishing agreement, you have to get on their list and you have to get [00:42:00] on their calendar.
[00:42:00] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And there's all kinds of barriers involved in that choice to do traditional publishing. But if I were someone who owned a business, I was really proud of my business, really proud of the way we chosen what values we've chosen, the stories represented in getting to where we are. I would write the book or pay to have it written, and then I would probably do either self-publishing, depending if I had a platform built or not, or I would do the hybrid where there's no money exchanged upfront and you just split the proceeds.
[00:42:32] Stacy Havener: It's amazing to me, and not surprising, but it's amazing to me all of the layers. That literally go into anything. Like, you're like, oh yeah, sit down, write a book. Like it'll be great. Write a book. They said it'll be amazing.
[00:42:46] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And then you, you know, and then you, it'll be like raising a baby. That's how it is.
[00:42:52] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: That's what it'll be like. Yeah, you'll raise, it'll feel like you've raised a child. And then when people start reading it, it's like you've sent it out into the world. It's special. And you hope it, you [00:43:00] hope it makes it on its own. Right. But I think that there is something magical in storytelling. It's why we watch movies.
[00:43:09] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: It's why we listen to Christmas music. It's why we. You know, go to bars and, and tell stories of days gone by. It's, it's why we're so, our lives are so narrative driven is because there is absolute magic in stories. Yeah. I agree with you and I believe everybody's story has magic. Stacy, I was talking to you about this before the call started recording, but when I started building on LinkedIn, I existed in the least cool categories that a human being can exist in.
[00:43:41] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I was steeped in debt. I was a cat lady, single mom renting a house for the first time in my life. Sad, isolated. It was not cute. Okay. It was not cute, and I just knew. That I had to share my [00:44:00] story to change my story. Mm ooh. And I, I knew that sharing my story would change what happened next. And so I shared little by little, now share my story.
[00:44:10] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: People assume they're gonna have to talk about their deepest, darkest secret, that they're gonna have to offend people. And you know, I didn't talk about being a single mom until I was two years into my LinkedIn journey. What I really shared upfront were professional wins, professional losses, professional observations, educational content based on my profession.
[00:44:32] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I really just wanted to show up and help people. And that's where I started. It wasn't two years until I actually got super vulnerable. And of course, everybody remembers those vulnerable posts more than the other ones. And I think they're a critical part of a very comprehensive content strategy. But certainly you don't have to start off.
[00:44:52] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Yeah. We start off with those types of stories, but I knew that if I wanted to change the narrative, I absolutely had to start sharing. [00:45:00]
[00:45:00] Stacy Havener: I love that. That's my favorite thing you've said, and you've said a lot of amazing things today, but I love the idea of sharing your story to change it. It's so true. And that idea of owning our story, because if we don't, and you kind of said this at the beginning, it's just like a personal brand.
[00:45:19] Stacy Havener: If we don't own our story, someone does. If it's not us, we have to really sit there and think about, well, whose story am I living right now then? And the idea of taking ownership of it, of sharing it in order to shape it, that is incredibly empowering. And people won't know how scared you were to
[00:45:41] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: share it.
[00:45:42] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: That's true. Like you can, you can be as scared as you wanna be. Right. That is one of the beautiful things of being at a screen and being behind a keyboard, that one of the few beautiful things is that you can share it with shaking hands. Yeah. I, I clicked published on many things that made me nervous.
[00:45:59] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: [00:46:00] Not because I was being offensive, but because I was being vulnerable. Yeah. I was raised pretty poor. I was raised on government assistance. I was raised in a single parent household. I was raised rough. And so when I first started sharing that story, I thought, I'm gonna lose people's respect. I'm gonna lose people's.
[00:46:18] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And the same with being a single parent. I'm gonna lose people's respect. They're gonna think, you know, I'm this, I have this chaotic life as a single mom and I'm desperate. And I, I had all these preconceived notions of what culture. Has sort of painted as a picture of what a single mom is, all those, every time I've been nervous, it's only grown my audience.
[00:46:36] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: That's right. Because so many people resonate and as I have. Fake courage in the moment, right. Because people are like, you're so courageous to share. No, I was scared half to death. But that really is you, the definition of being brave. It's for everyone. And, and like I have clicked, I have had shaking fingers many times when I clicked publish, but it's always paid off.
[00:46:56] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Yeah. Because there is a sense of empowerment when [00:47:00] we're able to share hard things. Hard parts of our story. Yeah. Stories, parts of our story that we're not really proud of. I believe that what we bring into the light, I think in a lot of ways, it loses its power over us. Mm. So any shame, any failure, any secret, any part of ourselves that we're not really proud of, when we bring that into the light, it loses its power to hold us back, to create self-limiting beliefs and to shame us anymore.
[00:47:26] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And that's part of why you share, to change the narrative because it, it sort of empowers you in the way. Where you are drawing people out of isolation because they're saying, oh, I'm not the only one. And then you're saying, yeah, I'm owning this part of my story. Even though I was terrified and embarrassed to share it, I'm owning this part of my story.
[00:47:44] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: So now I feel empowerment. And that empowerment is sort of like this cyclical mm-hmm. Cyclical thing that's passing to our audience and back to us. And it's really a beautiful thing because stories connect us.
[00:47:58] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Undervalue them. And [00:48:00] I work with a lot of people in the finance space for, for example, and you know, having to tell numbers. Yeah. They all wanna talk about very specific, like you need five bajillion dollars to retire while true. I'm not connecting with that. What I would rather hear is a story of a client who had X, Y, and Z happen and then you helped them have what they needed to retire and here's what their life looks like now.
[00:48:25] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And even if it's just one part of that story, that's like an entire client journey. Even it's just one part. Yeah. Like a way you're helping a client write this minute that's so much more powerful than just sharing like a dashboard or a pitch deck. Right. Like that's been done. Our eyes are gonna glaze over.
[00:48:40] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And that's true for investors. It's true for LinkedIn folks. It's true for you at home you, you at home are not clicking Netflix and streaming a dashboard. No. You're streaming story.
[00:48:49] Stacy Havener: Yeah. It's so true. And I think to your point. It's every industry because every industry is comprised of the people who make it [00:49:00] up.
[00:49:00] Stacy Havener: And we lose sight of that human to human connection because we think, oh, well, this is professional, it's business. I wanted to go back to something you said. It really hit home for me, and I think it will really resonate with people in the investment space, which is the idea that LinkedIn can be a safe space, so to speak, for introverts, because I have said that I'm an introvert, which no one ever believes.
[00:49:27] Stacy Havener: And I think what you described was exactly how I felt when I started writing, which was, even though I was telling my story really for the first time, it felt like I had protection like a wall around me a little bit, because I was behind a screen. Yes. So even though it was really difficult to share, there was that one step of removed.
[00:49:53] Stacy Havener: Because it was digital and that is something that helped me and [00:50:00] gave me confidence because even though I was, same as you clicking post with the shaking hand, it wasn't as if I was telling you face-to-face and I was watching your reaction or having to have that face-to-face, very direct conversation about the topic.
[00:50:15] Stacy Havener: And so I think it can be a place that introverts can really thrive, which seems strange.
[00:50:22] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: It's an introverts. It's an introvert's paradise, I think. So almost all of my clients would describe themselves as introverts, because introverts don't love networking events. I mean, they just don't. Right. And it's like an introvert networking opportunity.
[00:50:36] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I have a client, his name is Mark. He's fantastic. He's a financial advisor. Mark is painfully introverted and he only works with people locally. He only works with people with a certain amount of money to invest. So his niche is like this big, but 70% of his leads come from LinkedIn and he has [00:51:00] just worked the system.
[00:51:01] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: He knows how to do sales navigator, he knows how to do, he's very consistent and with his posts, he's always active during golden hour. Like he has just figured it out. And I always use him as an example because you would never expect him to be as shy as he's in person. I've met him in person twice now.
[00:51:17] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: You would never expect him to be as soft spoken or shy because he comes across as so knowledgeable and confident on LinkedIn. But yes, to your point, Stacy, there is safety on like I wouldn't share some of what I've shared on LinkedIn on my personal social media because I would feel a certain way about it because you know.
[00:51:40] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: It's just different. There's something about LinkedIn, it's set apart. It's in a different category of social media. Yes. Ultimately, is it social media? What isn't these days? Right? Yeah. Like truly what isn't, but it just exists in this different category where people really are there to learn and grow and buy.
[00:51:55] Stacy Havener: Yeah. I feel like this is a post. You need to write about [00:52:00] the like which one? The all of them, but about the introversion. Which point? The introversion thing. I do,
[00:52:05] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I do. Gosh, that's a great idea. I'll put that in the notes app. I need to do that.
[00:52:08] Stacy Havener: I think you need to put it in the notes app and also like, because I think there are a lot of people who are in the shadows of LinkedIn and feel very nervous about sharing, but I think this topic is like spot on for, to give those people a little bit of courage.
[00:52:25] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: People aren't paying nearly much as much attention to you as it feels like they might. Yeah. That's how I'll phrase it. They might like your post, leave a quick comment, but until you know, I mean I still think people read my posts and forget, and forget by lunchtime what I posted about 99% of my posts.
[00:52:44] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: People are not thinking about what you're posting nearly as much as you think they are, but if you do share a story, they will remember your name. Yeah.
[00:52:52] Stacy Havener: Yeah. And
[00:52:52] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: that's the only way for them to remember your name is to share some kind of story that makes them feel mm-hmm. Something. I love [00:53:00] that.
[00:53:00] Stacy Havener: You've been fantastic.
[00:53:01] Stacy Havener: I wanna end with some questions. It's funny, I always say, I always say this first question in this little, it's not like fast fire, but it's like fast ish, fire ish. I always say that the first question is sort of like a baby step in, but since you're a writer, gosh, no pressure. I know it's gonna be hard for you to answer this one potentially.
[00:53:22] Stacy Havener: I don't know. Okay. So these questions are designed to let us get to know a little bit more about Holly. Perfect. Okay. First question.
[00:53:30] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: What book inspires you? This is going to sound like such a garbage cliche response, but if I were gut level honest with you, it's the Bible. I knew you were gonna say it. I'm so glad you did it.
[00:53:42] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And I know so many people say that or they feel like they have to say that, but I've been really studying some of the storytelling tactics mm-hmm. Of the writers of the Bible. And the Bible is authored by, in Christianity, we believe it was inspired by the Holy Spirit, but it has many, many [00:54:00] different author authors within its pages.
[00:54:01] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And if you, and if you look at how these authors actually decided to share stories, many of them use very different strategies. Some are very detailed, some are very focused on, like, they wanna tell you side stories and and like give you context. And some only wanna tell like the very bare minimum. So I'm inspired just because number one, it's the bestselling book of all time.
[00:54:24] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: So if you're not curious about why that is like. As a writer, I absolutely have to care why that is. But I am inspired because it has survived despite many, yeah, many, many years. And despite a lot of fallibility with translations and all of those things. But I'm truly inspired by the Bible and the writers in the Bible because it's just stood the test of time.
[00:54:48] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: It has just hung in there. It's a great, you know what I
[00:54:50] Stacy Havener: mean? It's a great way to, to speak about it in a different non-religious capacity. I did take a class in college that was called Bible [00:55:00] as Literature, and it was Exactly, that's interesting. Yeah. And it was exactly about this topic and I learned a ton, so I I would love that.
[00:55:07] Stacy Havener: Yeah. It was a great one and I'm so glad that you shared that on all the levels. Okay, we're gonna go from book to places. What place inspires you?
[00:55:17] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: My home, I'll be honest with you, my home, I have set it up. This is the first house I ever bought as an adult alone. So the first house I bought as an adult, I was married and I bought this when I was single, and I had paid off all that credit card and consumer debt that we talked about earlier.
[00:55:39] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And because of stories, because of LinkedIn, because of my work with books, this house became possible, um, to get approved for a loan as a single woman who is a business owner. Let's talk about that for a minute. 'cause it ain't easy, but I did it. And so when I'm in this house, this is going to sound cheesy again.
[00:55:59] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I look [00:56:00] around me and I think, I cannot believe. This is true for me. And it's not a mansion, you know, by any stretch. It's a 19, yeah, it's a 1992 house and when I bought it, I bought it from the original owners and they had not changed anything. And so room by room, I've renovated the entire thing top to bottom and finished the basement.
[00:56:19] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: And I just look around and I think this is what stories have done. Oh, you know, I see it, I see it in real life around me every day. And it's just a dream. It's, I called it girl gang manner for a really long time, and then my husband, um, moved in and so I can't really call it that anymore, but we call it that behind his back.
[00:56:35] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Let's just put it that way.
[00:56:36] Stacy Havener: Hope you have a little sign made in honor of, um, the original. We do, we do have a girl being the sign. Absolutely. For sure. Okay. Okay. I'm really interested in this one because we're friends. Okay. And I know your musical style, but I don't know what you're gonna say here, which is, let's pretend you're giving a talk in a stadium full of thousand Holly fans and we're gonna cue up a song for you to [00:57:00] walk out to.
[00:57:01] Stacy Havener: What is it gonna be?
[00:57:02] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: What's your walkout anthem? That is so hard. So what song gets me pumped? Yeah. It would have to be something like Naughty by Nature, Beastie Boys. Something grunge from the late nineties. Totally. A hundred percent. I grew up with music as an outlet, like most kids, especially kids who come from, you know, emotional households.
[00:57:32] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I'm not saying like divorced households are all bad. I'm saying like sometimes there's just toxicity. And so a lot of us escape to music because we didn't have the internet as we know it today. Right? Yep. But I would get in my feels listening to music. I remember, this is so funny, this is a side story, but I'm gonna tell it because I'm committed.
[00:57:52] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Good. Yeah. There was this far. Down the street from my house called the Lantern Inn. My friend's dad owned it. [00:58:00] He was an Elvis impersonator. He was an Elvis impersonator. And so he would sing every night at The Lantern Inn and he would invite me all the time to sing. Can I sing? Not a no, no, no, you don't.
[00:58:12] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Like that is not what my, my gift can I carry a tune reasonably. So he would just say, Hey, you should come sing. When I was like 14, 15, I remember singing Strawberry Wine by Dina Carter at the Lantern N with an Elvis impersonator in the audience. And I remember thinking like. This is such a quintessential it's moment.
[00:58:37] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: It's a cornerstone. It's a core memory for me. But no, I grew up on hip hip hop like you did. Um, biggie, all, all of those p soso def those albums. Mm-hmm. I loved them all. But I would have to think of something like Naughty by Nature would, would probably be my first. Yeah. I
[00:58:52] Stacy Havener: like that spin on that for you.
[00:58:53] Stacy Havener: That's a very, that's a very Holly choice. And I am never gonna forget that story about [00:59:00] strawberry wine and the Elvis impersonator at the Lantern Inn. That's a very good one. It
[00:59:04] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: it's write itself a visual. It does. And you know what, I'm gonna connect it to a post now that I've told. So I think you have to the narrative lens, this is the narrative lens.
[00:59:12] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Any little story you have like that people Yeah. Write them down. They're meaningless and mean nothing, but you can connect them to something. That's right. And they become an, an entryway to a larger point that you're trying to make.
[00:59:23] Stacy Havener: So well said. Okay, here we go. This is gonna be an interesting one as well.
[00:59:27] Stacy Havener: What profession, other than your own, would you like to attempt? A hundred percent storm
[00:59:34] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: chaser. I watched Twister as the first, the real, the OG twister with Helen Hunt. Yes. I watched that and I was like, I wanna do that. I wanna chase storms, I wanna be a meteorologist. I wanna chase tornadoes. I've been fascinated by weather my whole life.
[00:59:51] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I'm an old lady. I look at like the Almanac, the Weather Almanac. I am obsessed with the weather. So hundred percent be a storm chaser.
[00:59:59] Stacy Havener: One day my retired, if you're [01:00:00] a meteorologist, I'm going to, you'll be, you'll be my gal. I will tune in every morning if you're gonna give me a weather report. 'cause I know it'll be hilarious.
[01:00:08] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I literally, if this whole writing thing doesn't work out, Stacy, you never know. You never know. Okay. Flip side, what profession would you not like to do? What profession would I not like to do? I think anything in a room where I have no, oh gosh. I need to be careful. The reason I dislike teaching so much was.
[01:00:31] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: The amount of structure and the lack of freedom and independence. So anything where I would have to sit in an office all day. Now do I sit in my office all day? A hundred percent. Like a hundred percent. But it's on my terms.
[01:00:45] Stacy Havener: That's
[01:00:46] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: right. But it's my, on my terms, yes. Frankly, going back to teach in a classroom would be my hellscape.
[01:00:52] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I know. Well, day in, day out, my husband teaches, he's a special ed teacher. He teaches students with, he is a hero, um, [01:01:00] moderate to severe autism. And he comes home, just spent, just rung out. And I'm like, you are a hero. He loves go. He absolutely loves it. A hero. And that just goes to show like we really are wired for, for work.
[01:01:14] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: I agree. In, in spec, in specific type of work because he loves it.
[01:01:18] Stacy Havener: That's so good. Okay, last but not least, and certainly not something that's gonna happen anytime soon, but what do you want people to say about you after you've retired? Or in this case, hung up the pen. Holly loved people. Holly
[01:01:34] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: loved. Well, truly, and I, that sounds, uh, again, very cliche, but I really wanna be remembered as someone who, whether I could help you or not, whether I knew the answer to your question or not, whether you bought for me or not, that really every time we talked, you felt heard and cared about.
[01:01:53] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: Because I truly believe everybody's story matters. I really, I've never had someone tell me their story and I thought, nah, that one doesn't [01:02:00] matter. Like that life story doesn't matter. Never once have I thought that because there is value in our stories. 'cause we all face adversity. And that's one of the powerful sort of effects of sharing your story, is inviting people out of isolation of their own adversity and into the mindset that if they did it, so can I.
[01:02:19] Stacy Havener: So amazing. And as somebody who's been your friend on LinkedIn, your friend in real life, and your client, you were one
[01:02:25] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: of my first LinkedIn friends. Yes, I was. You were one of my very first. Yes. I love that.
[01:02:29] Stacy Havener: And I can tell you, I have always felt heard, and more than that, I feel like you've helped me find my voice.
[01:02:38] Stacy Havener: So thank you. I appreciate you, Tara, and I'm so glad you came on the show. Thank you for, for being here, Holly, and for sharing your amazing wisdom. I loved it. I loved it. You're
[01:02:47] Holly Crawshaw Joyner: a great host. You're a great host. Bye everybody.
[01:02:50] Stacy Havener: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
[01:02:56] Stacy Havener: The information is not an offer, solicitation, or [01:03:00] recommendation of any of the funds, services, or products or to adopt any investment strategy. Investment values may fluctuate and past performance is not a guide to future performance. All opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm.
[01:03:16] Stacy Havener: Manager's appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacey Haven or Haven or Capital Partners.
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