I would say that I'm a survivor of walking paraplegic, which is quite the anomaly. And now I am a self published author of Unbroken Walking on New Grounds. Welcome back to the art of connecting podcast. This is your host here Haydynn Fike back with another episode for you guys. And if you've been listening to the podcast for a little while, you recognize this name, you recognize this person because we've had Marcus on the podcast one time before. And Marcus shot me a text message and let me know the good news that he has finished up his book, which if you listen to the episode over a year ago, now. When that came out, you'll know that we said in that episode, once the book was out, we'll have a follow up. So here we are. Marcus has done it and here he is. How are you doing today? Thanks, man. Yep. There it is. Unbroken walking on new ground. That's awesome. Thank you. Thanks for having me on the show. My pleasure. So can you tell me a little bit about well, we've already had an episode before with Marcus. So if you haven't listened to that episode already, please go back and listen to that episode. And here is amazing story that we got to go through. We got to hear how he's saved many lives in his, in his life. And he also almost lost his life in a pretty crazy and incredible way. I don't think we have to get back into that because if someone wants to listen to that, They can go listen to the other episode. And I really highly encourage that you do that. But Marcus, why don't you go ahead and just reintroduce yourself real fast and tell the guests who you are, if they're listening to this for the first time. So my name is Marcus. Wouldn't want to horseshoe myself into a box, but I would say that I'm a survivor of walking paraplegic, which is quite the anomaly. And now I am a self published author of Unbroken Walking on New Grounds. So I appreciate you having me back on the show. Like I said, and I would like to say happy veterans day and thank all the veterans for their service today. Thank you very much. Absolutely. So why don't you tell us a little bit about the book? Let's roar right into it. What, what is your, what is your book about? I would say that it's an inspirational memoir infused with stoicism and 141 quotes, philosophical quotes from the greatest minds to, to walk this earth. So it weaves the patterns of my life from being paralyzed, how I was paralyzed, what it was like to be paralyzed the challenges in regaining my mobility, the healing paths and modalities I experienced to walk again. And then a little bit, I don't want to give the readers the whole story, but a little some, some, some fun, interesting surprises and karmic energies. in the book to make people think I love it. That's awesome. And so what inspired you to write a book? You know, to be honest, I don't think, you know, and I, and I state this in the book too, it wasn't a matter of me feeling like, Oh, my life is so great. I should write a book. It always seemed to be when I talked to conscientious minds and I shared my story of recovery and saving the people's lives. A lot of doctors, almost every doctor I've ever talked to inside the office would say, Hey, you should write a book. And I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say, Oh, you should write a book. And so it just got to the point where, you know, like, how many times do I have to hear the universe tell me you should write a book? The more Decided, oh, well maybe I should write a book. So that's really, I think it was at the behest and the encouragement of countless, countless people encouraged me to write a book is really the reason why I did it. Not some self-proclaimed. Oh, my life is so great. I should write a book. It was really at the request of many, many people. So obviously you know, my, my podcast is all about the connections that it takes to get to where you want to go in life and business. So let's dive right into that. And can you tell me a little bit about some of the connections that helped you along the way of writing your book? Like what does that process look like for someone who may want to do it themself? And like, who do you get connected to, to get started? You know, I was kind of a self starter on it. The one thing I did was go out and read some forums about how to write a book, because I had no idea on how to write a book. It seemed like the overall concept was just write. Just write. Whatever you feel like writing. If you feel like you have a book in you, and they say everyone, they say everyone does have a book in them, you And if you feel inspired to write a book or if you, you know, the way I would encourage someone is just to do what I did and just start writing, you know, I, I picked through my brain and something that I felt was important to me or a magnanimous experience in my life that helped develop who I am as a, as a person, I would just start writing. Then the book started to take on a life all of its own with this with the infusing of the stoicism and the philosophical contemplations. So where, where are you writing this? Like, are you writing this in a notebook? Are you typing this out? I've always been curious, like when you're writing a book, how, how are you writing this? And I guess everyone's writing style is different, but for you, what did that look like? I started off with Grammarly and then I moved all my files to Word 365. It was a better platform for me to write, and then I would just write every day and save that file. And then the next day, if I felt that story wasn't finished, I'd write on that story. There were some stories that were so difficult to write that I would have to just pick them up. Shelved them, leave them there, go to a, maybe another story that was more uplifting or fun to write. And then when I was in an emotional space to go back to the story that was really difficult, I'd go and work on it. So there were a lot of ebbs and flows to the actual process. As far as, I, I, I would, I've had editors, I've had people review it, I've had encouragement, but I would have to say I was kind of a self starter and just took it upon myself to write the book. And as I was in the process of writing the book and I was out in the world, you know, sometimes people in conversation, hey, what do you do? And I would say, well, you know, I'm writing a book. And it was kind of funny because they would always look at me like, strange, like maybe I don't look like the type of guy that writes a book or something, I don't know. And I would hear a lot of similar retorts, as in, Oh, I've always wanted to write a book, or I should write a book, or I've started writing a book, or But there weren't a lot of, Oh, I wrote a book too. And the more I heard those comments, the more it strengthened my determination to actually be someone who finished writing a book. I've, I've heard of a lot of people that, excuse me, like you mentioned, they they get started on writing a book and then they don't actually finish, you know, it's, they, they, they get going and then all of a sudden it's like, well, I don't really want to put in all the effort that this is going to take. It's. Let's talk about the timeline, because we were talking about this before we got started. How long did this project take you? I've lost track of time, to be quite honest. I would say that it's been a two year process. I feel if my memory serves me correctly, I finished the book in just over a year, but then the editing stage kicked in. That took a few more months. And then I just let the desk settle, settle, and sent it out for friends to review, to see, you know, to get their feedback and what they thought of the book. And they were really encouraging, thought it was a really good book. And then I went through one more editing stage, two more reviews. And then I felt like, okay, now it's time to, to move forward and actually get it published. And that's really becoming, I would say, writing the book was challenging, but the end process after the book is written, I would say is as difficult, if not more difficult to, of, of the process in writing the book. Now this is much, it seems like more fun because the book is done. It's And now, you know, because I went the self publishing route, the responsibility falls on my shoulders as the writer to promote it once again, thank you for having me on the show because this is how self published writers will drive book sales. So publishing is one of those businesses that I understand to be kind of like a cartel, you know, it's like you publish your book with somebody because they can bring you marketing. Most of the time it doesn't even really work from what I understand. And then they take like 80 percent of what you do. So can you talk a little bit about in, in the discovery period of writing a book, like what did it look like to decide self publishing versus going with a publisher? Like how, how did you decide to go that route and what were some of the things that you found in that journey of figuring out what you wanted to do with your book? It's a good question. I did have, A, a publishing company that I would pay to help publish my book, follow me throughout the process, and then they just went blank. I couldn't get ahold of the company. They stopped calling me and that was a little bit of a red flag. There are companies out there that offer assistance and helping. First time writers to get their book published. It just feels to me like you can't really trust them Unfortunately, I don't want to sound negative But when I have talked to other first time publishers, they said well, you know I paid this company and as soon as I paid him I've never heard from him They never got back to me or the process was really slow. Then there are the big publishing houses that don't really take on first time writers. It's not something that they do. They already have an established list of authors who have already been published. So that was the difficult part. Also after two years of going through this process, What I didn't want to do was extend the process even further, get another publishing company involved where I have to constantly go back and forth, back and forth. I have a good friend who published a children's book and he said that after it was written, it took almost a year. Of going back and forth with the publishing company to get the book the way they wanted it. And I just, what, you know, I wrote the book, I, I used AI to, I lost my editor halfway through it. And so then I had to figure that out and I used AI to edit my book, which meant I had to go back almost line by line, paragraph by paragraph. And it took several months of everyday editing and I felt as though I just could not go through that process. Like, you know, my book came in last night and I was reading through it and, you know, I probably released it too soon. There are some errors that need to be fixed with the book. And that's one of the downfalls of self publishing is you don't have, you know, a company. going through every little bit of it. And I've looked at it so many times, it's easy to overlook a mistake because you've seen it so many times. So that is kind of the downfall of self publishing. It's just like when you write a paper, when back in the day, when I was in school, Oh, thank goodness I'm not in that anymore. But when I was in school, I think about like, what, if I would write a paper, I would, I could whip out some papers. I was, I was kind of a paper whiz. I wouldn't cheat, but I would just like, I was really good about just whipping up some BS that created a passing grade for a paper. I don't know why, why that was one of my skills. But what I would do is I would, I would whip something up and then for important papers, I would have my, my family, a family member or a friend that I knew is really good at real estate, like at English. Like I would have, I had, once I had my friend, Lydia look over a presentation that I was about to do to some of my business partners. To me, the presentation was great. It looks perfect. She caught like 25 misspellings or misplaced words or like, edits that needed to be made. I was like, holy crap, like I didn't even see any of this. And so sometimes getting that third person perspective can be so helpful in proofreading something, because you could look at something a hundred times and you just, your brain just doesn't even see it. Someone else does. Yeah, it's interesting how our eyes can become blind to our mistakes, maybe because, you know, for me, I've seen it so many times, or it appears when it's not correct. I was fortunate when I was, I was traveling this summer and I was up in the beautiful little town of Lava Hot Springs, Idaho. And the book, the book was done. And I had a few reviews and I was fortunate to meet A awesome gal, Marguerite, who was the editor for the state of mind and she was kind enough. I did pay her to go through and edit my book one more time and she did find a few more errors and then I corrected those and the manuscript was, was complete. So, but then I went to get it up on Kindle and that was a whole other, whoo, man, what a challenge that is. What, what was challenging about that aspect? Like what was the biggest headache and the hardest part about that? I guess the first one was making the decision to self publish and forgo the, the hope that a good publishing company would pick up my book. So I think that was coming to terms with self publishing. Was the first one. Just navigating the, the Kindle page in itself was very challenging. You know, when it comes down to the book cover, you know, I was having a difficult time with a book cover. Unfortunately, a young man that I mentored jumped on the winning team and he asked if he could design the book cover and he knocked it out in a couple of days. And I just said, you know what? You know, during the process of this book, I felt like I can't allow the, I say, the great to stand in front of the good. And I felt that I had a good product and I liked his design and I went with it, but trying to figure out how to format that image, how to figure out the size of the book, how big everything has to be was very, very challenged. Luckily, I put the word out on Facebook that I needed help and a Facebook friend responded and She was there for me and walked me through the process. She had a a graphic design background. And let me tell you what, and we, in an afternoon, we knocked it out, did a Zoom call, and we went through everything. I have to be really honest, I, I think I'm an intelligent guy. If I had been faced to do that by myself. You know what? I don't think I could have done that. I just don't think I could have done that. And I mean, that's the perfect example of why this show exists, right? Like, one Facebook post can save you hours or days or months of your time. Because there's people out there, there's connections in your network. Even if you have a small little network. Because I hear people all the time, well, Oh, Haydynn, but I don't have the big network that you have. I'm like, I have 1500 followers on Instagram. Like I, I am not out here. Like I'm not Elon Musk. I can't just like call to solve the world's problems. But everyone, everyone has a network. Even if you have 300 people that follow you on social media, you can make a post and there's a pretty high likelihood that one of those 300 people that follow you know somebody or know of somebody that can help you solve your problem. It's pretty incredible how amazing connections, especially using social media can, can really help solve your problems. Exactly. I really, I know this person, we're not very close. I put a call to action on my Facebook page. She responded and you know, she was willing to do it for free. And as we went through the process, As a, you know, as a, a new writer, author, I was so impressed with her ability to navigate this, you know, trench that I couldn't dig myself out of. I actually encouraged her to do a, a YouTube page and let people know that she's available to help them through the process because when I was trying to navigate the Kindle, I was going on YouTube. And looking at different videos of how to get it up on Kindle, but none of them were even close to filling in all the gaps that exist in the process. And she, I ended up paying her. I was like, I can't, I can't allow you to do this for free and I'll be your first paying customer. And yeah, it was a connection that. Really, once again, weeks, days, months, years. I don't know if I could have ever done this. I just don't. It was so intricate. Mm. I just don't think that I, and so I hope she actually makes a video for writers to follow, and she's going to offer Zoom calls to help through that process because even if you sit down and you write and you have a great manuscript and a great product and you do want to self-publish, just that hurdle of getting it on Kindle. And another, another difficult part was, you know, finding the graphic design company to do the cover because there's a lot of restrictions with Amazon do that. So I used my, my, my friend used AI and we just, we knocked it out and got it done. That's awesome. So it's really fascinating to hear you talk about how So in the beginning you were like, yeah, I really just kind of like self started, self published. And as I'm listening to your story, there's a lot of different people that came together to help make this thing a reality. A lot of different connections that bring their skills together and listening to your story, I think it's just such a perfect example of how, like, You don't have to do these things alone. Like you, if you want to make, make a big difference, really, it's hard to do that alone, right? Like it's, it's really hard to make a large impact on the world by yourself. Oh, I would, I would totally, yeah, even inside the book, the healing that I went through, I didn't do the healing by myself. I found great healers that helped me heal. And, you know, I put what I learned from them in the book. And yes, you're right. I, I wrote the book. I had encouragement from all my friends. Just keep going, keep going, keep doing it. And then once it actually got published, you know, so many of my friends said, call me up or text. Congratulations. I'm very proud of you. Way to stick it through because I think people do realize The innate challenges involved in writing a book and actually getting it to the publication stage. Absolutely. Well, it's so exciting to hear that you're able to overcome those challenges because I know some people that have started to write a book and maybe they'll publish it one day, but I know at least from what I've heard, the publishing is the simply most difficult portion of the book. Like anyone can write, anyone can come up with a good idea and write a book about it. I know some people that have actually written some pretty silly books, but the publishing aspect and Amazon has really helped out with this. I don't know if you looked at like Amazon self publishing, like you can, basically they'll, they'll fulfill the book for you. You just design it and create it. And then they, yeah. They do all the order and fulfillment printing everything as it's ordered. But even with that, it's still, there's so many challenges that you have to overcome to be able to put your, put your thoughts into the world in paper form. So I think it's a really, an amazing achievement that you've accomplished here and add another friend that's proud of you and me. Thank you. That's awesome. Well, you know, to be quite honest, you know, Kindle is Amazon. So, Kindle is the format to upload your books onto the platform. So whether it's in the Kindle form or the soft copy or the hardback, Kindle is the way to get your book on Amazon. And then, yes, Amazon does take care of all the all the printing and mailing and everything else So it's you know, it's interesting. I released the book last week Maybe a little too early. It's got some errors in it, but it's maybe like a penny that was meant to draw I think I've sold 18 books And we, you know, I mean, 54 dollars. So I don't, yeah, that's actually a pretty good margin. Most people don't make that much for book. A lot of the people I know, they make two to 3 books. No, that's what I'm saying. I have the 18 books I've made 54 for like gross, not net. Oh, okay. Gotcha. That makes more sense. Yeah. And what you've got to take the cost of production of the book out of the cost. Right, exactly. And the, the cost is pretty high to produce and ship a book. But I hear a lot of people. And they're like, ah, you don't really need books anymore. Who really is reading a book? And like, people are just listening to podcasts and watching Instagram. And I don't know about you, but for me, I don't think you can beat a book. Like I, I don't read books as much as I would like to read. But when I do read a book, I leave that experience feeling much better about myself and much less distracted. If I try to read, for example, I have the Bible app on my phone, right? When I'm in church, I'll read the Bible app and. Even though I'm on Do Not Disturb, there's still the temptation to just be like, Oh, yeah, we'll just swipe up and go over to Facebook real fast. Or, Oh, wait, I have a notification on Instagram. Let me go look at that before I block my phone. And so there's nothing quite like a paper copy of a book to Transform someone's thoughts directly into your mind, right? Because there's no distractions. And when you're reading, you're actively visualizing what you're seeing, right? You're creating a visual rather than just seeing it on a video, which sometimes can be even more powerful than just watching a video. In my opinion. I don't know. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think that, you know, reading books is becoming a lost art, but I think there are still a lot of people out there that like to read books Hopefully they will want to read my book. I did the best that I could to write a informative, interesting book to hold people's attention. And, you know, it's a non fiction book. One of the things that I noticed today, I don't know what chapter it is, but I talk about angel numbers. I ended up writing a 41 story book, because fours and ones are my angel numbers. They, they follow me everywhere. And they, whenever I see them, it's kind of an eye opener to that I'm on the right track, or this is a good place to look. I cannot tell you, Well, I'm about to tell you the extent that they follow. So we were talking and you asked me to book your show. And I, and I got on not thinking much, and I wanted to get the process going. And you had a slot today, Monday. I looked at what Saturday, I just clicked on Monday. I clicked on one o'clock, didn't think much of it. And then today, as I was preparing for the podcast, I looked down. What's today's date? 11, 11. Oh, I just got it. And we're recording at one o'clock and we're recording at one o'clock. So that's five ones in a row, you know, I was like, this is great. This was really, so I, that's how I look at things like as meant to be. This was definitely something that was. supposed to happen, determinism, whatever you want to call it. And I was just like 11, 11. What are the odds? Like I said, I wrote a 41 story book, fours and ones follow me every five ones in today's podcast. Yeah. It's very fascinating when you start paying attention to things like that, you know, cause it's really easy to just go about your life and not think about different signs and things that there are signals of whether we're on the right track or the wrong track. And it's just, it's very fascinating that, that that's something that you notice. I, I don't even think about things like that. You know, I just kind of operate, keep going, keep pushing. And yeah. Maybe one day I'll get more interflective. Yeah. Well, it started actually at a really young age. Back when, you know, I'm 53, so we had home phones. The last four digits of our phone number was 1411. And then we moved when I was in high school and our address was 1141. And that's when I started to notice, I'm like, wait, hold on. That's my address, flipped one number and my phone number. And that's when I started. Noticing these fours and ones in my life and they just follow me everywhere all the time Right up until this moment in my life on 11 11. That's awesome. Well, it's very fascinating. So coming up here on our on our show time, but i'd love for you to talk a little bit about Why someone should pick up your book like what what what is your favorite part about it? And what do you think people are going to get out of this book if they pick it up and read it? Well I, I wrote the book because I was encouraged to write the book. And then I wrote the book and then I was like, well, okay, well maybe it's time to publish the book. No one said that you should write and publish a book. They just really encouraged, encouraged, encouraged me to write a book, which I did. And then I said, all right, well I'll publish it. As an individual who was diagnosed a paraplegic and also diagnosed to never walk again, how I got myself out of the wheelchair through determination, hard work, persistence, and good karma, I think is important for today's world. Because I think a lot of us find, you know, challenges. Some not so great and some very immense and I feel as though I can stand as a positive influence that through the darkest days of my life, through a diagnosis of never walking again, I found a pathway to regaining my mobility and, and, and I would say turning into endless positives I think that's what my book is about. An I enjoy about my book the most is when I was doing research on how to write a book it seemed like there was a c Took on a life all of its own and I couldn't quite comprehend that and in the mornings before I would write I would I would study stoicism and I would Follow some sites that have deep philosophical philosophical contemplations from the greatest of minds and all of a sudden They started to fit. All of a sudden, these quotes that I would read would fit perfectly where I was at at my book. And then, that changed the whole book. Every, every story, every story starts off with a philosophical contemplation from one of the greatest minds to walk this earth. And then, I used the quotes to help guide the reader. Through my story so that it's not just my story, but a story that's infused with an opportunity to look at my experience or even their life. in a different manner. So I think that's one of the things I enjoy most about my book and I hope that people will enjoy too is, you know, they might read something that will change the way they perceive their life or this world in general. A very powerful experience. It was great to see and great to be a part of because I could never Ever imagined when I started writing the book that this is what would have that this would be the book that The finished product is I never could have imagined and that came from somewhere. It didn't come from me. That's right Well, and it's just a reminder to to go back and listen to marcus's episode like go back and listen to The episode we did over a year ago now, I guess just searching and art of connecting to search for his name And go back and take the time to listen to that episode, because I think if you listen to that, you'll understand the importance of the story. Obviously we don't want to repeat the same episode twice. If you understand what happened in Marcus's life and listen to his experiences, he's had, you'll have no question that you want to go and listen, listen to or grab this book to read. I'm excited to get my copy. I'm going to, I'll do it. I'll get one after this. So I'd love to, love to, I'm excited to get to read it. So yeah, if you want to learn lessons from somebody who was told that he'll never walk again and out of sheer determination is a walking, driving, can go upstairs, paraplegic. I mean, I, I, I can't think of a better person to learn from. So super excited that got to have back on and got to catch up on Where you're at, what you have going on. And also with every episode, I always like to tell people if they heard something that inspired them in this today, or maybe someone's thinking about writing a book, where can people get ahold of you if they have questions about either what you've got going on in your life and what's happened with you, or if they want some advice on how to write a book. Well, they're welcome to contact me via my personal email. I would love to help anyone that's inspiring to write a book and help encourage them or guide them. I, you know, I think I went the most simplest route possible and that was the self publishing through Kindle on Amazon. And, you know, there's just so many companies out there that offer these different products and I went to this one webinar and the guy wanted 8, 000, 8, 000 to help edit, publish your book. Like to me, and even if they push it, how do you recoup 8, 000? Like I've sold 18 copies and I, it's up to me to promote it. And thank you once again for having me. But how many copies would I have to sell to make up that? 8, 000. One company wanted 30, 000. So yeah, it's a, it's a fascinating world. Book publishing is, there's a lot of a lot of expenses built into there. I think in, in all, I, I, I think maybe I've spent a couple hundred dollars to publish this book. And is it the greatest book in the world? Was it, I still have, this copy has flaws in it. I probably released it too soon, but I wanted to get it out there. I should've got the author's copy, went through it and fixed some of the issues. I was probably too anxious to get it out there and get moving, but once again, I'm not allowing the great to stand in front of the good and just keep the process moving. And that's what I'm doing right now. So after off the phone, I have a zoom call to go on and fix these issues. errors. And, you know, like I said, maybe it's like a coin that was meant to draw on the originals. Well, and I was going to say this earlier. It just came back to me. Something to think about too, is I was on a, I was on a call with the artist called, his name is John Sofrick. He wrote a book called The Wealthy Gardener. It's one of the, my favorite books I've ever read. Read in my life. And he's writing and he's about to finish up another book. He'll have it published by the beginning of next year. And when you look at authors, very, very rarely, almost never do you hit it out of the park on the first go round, right? A lot of these authors that you know of, like Robert Kiyosaki, like any of the big authors that you read that have big, successful books, a lot of times they publish two, three, four books. Before they get one that goes big and gets on the New York Times bestsellers and all that kind of stuff. So just like when I think of, you were mentioning how difficult all these things were to do the first go around. I think if you publish a book the second time, it would be quite a bit easier. Right. And the third time would be even easier because of the learned lessons. The question is, you know, do I want to elaborate on what's in this book? Do I want to spend another year of my life getting up every morning and spending hours in front of my computer? I don't have an English degree. So, you know, I fought this, you know, tooth and nail along the way to figure it out as I went along. I hope that people find my book and my intention is to spread healing in the world. I feel that my book has that capacity to do it. I didn't enter into this process in my life to become New York Times bestseller. I engaged in this project because, once again, so many people encouraged me to write a book. And then once I began to write the book, I feel when We set goals for ourselves that we should reach them. I set a goal to write a book and that's what I did. So I achieved my goal. Am I setting another goal to be a New York times bestseller? I'm not, I'm, I'm going to do my best to promote the book. And I hope that the book takes off. But at this point I've achieved the goal that I had set for myself and I achieved writing a book that many people requested that I do. So I feel fulfilled at this point, just by having this in my hand. That's right. It's in more people's hands. Fantastic. But it's not, I think it's important, you know, to once we set a goal to achieve that goal and I have achieved that goal, whatever comes after this is what the universe will allow, but I have to be proud. And. grateful and thankful that friends helped me and the book came to fruition. That's amazing. So if people want to get in contact with you, you mentioned what, what is your email for, for people to contact you if they have any questions? Well, I have my direct email, which is fine. It's a hero the number four and the word all at gmail. com, a hero4all@gmail.com. And that's also my website, ahero4all.org Perfect. So if you guys liked what you heard today, go check that out. Also search the book on Amazon. What's the title of the book one more time for people, if they want to go and grab it? Unbroken walking on new ground. Amazing. Well, Marcus, thank you so much for coming on the show today. And hopefully we'll get to see in Chattanooga again sometime soon. Thanks for having me. Cheers. My pleasure.