Ep. 322: How This Writer Created A Profitable Business Through Ghostwriting with Stacy Ennis
In this episode, I speak with Stacy Ennis who is a best-selling author, coach, and speaker on a mission to help leaders clarify their ideas and harness their unique story to make an impact.
Her background includes ghostwriting for a Nobel Prize winner in medicine and leading as executive editor of a national publication that reached around 11 million readers.
She’s also the host of Beyond Better, a podcast that explores how to create a business and life you love. She currently lives with her family in Portugal, where she enjoys cliffside trail runs and weekends at the beach.
Listen on to find out how Stacy has turned writing into a profitable business.
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Transcription:
Debbie:
Hey everyone. Thank you so much for being here. I’m really excited to speak with my guest today. I am here with Stacy. Hi, Stacy. How are you?
Stacy:
Hi, Debbie. I’m great. I’m so excited about our discussion today.
Debbie:
Thank you so much for being here. Can you tell us about you and why you live an offbeat life?
Stacy:
Yeah, so I am a location independent entrepreneur. I coach authors who are writing their books, specifically non-fiction books and have a team that does ghostwriting. So we usually work with founders, c-level executives who are launching thought leadership platforms in those, with those projects. I live in Portugal. This is our fourth country that we’ve lived in outside of the US and I think I’m a little different than maybe what somebody would think of as a nomad in that we really kind of move and anchor ourselves in the place that we move to, and really do end up doing a lot of travel within the country that we live in. And I also have two young children. So it really changes a lot about how we live this location, independent life.
Debbie:
And you came about where you are now starting this business in kind of like a longer way, right? Because you did a lot of different things. How did you get started, Stacy? What made you decide to become a nomad? To travel the world, but also start a business that allows you to be more location independent?
Stacy:
So I never planned to do this. This was not in my life vision at all until I met my husband in college. Obviously he was my crush and then boyfriend and then fiance and then husband. And he had just done that like typical college guy thing of backpacking around Southeast Asia for six weeks. And I lived in Idaho and really hadn’t done much traveling. I thought it was so cool. I just was so like enamored with him and the travels that he’d done, and we fell in love pretty quickly. And it was very dramatic because he had this plan of moving away after he graduated college that like just within a few months he wanted to move to South Korea. That’s, that was kind of his plan to go there and teach English. And so through us falling in love and everything, he decided to pursue his master’s degree to stay longer.
But he made me promise that at the end of that we would go together, we would move abroad together. And so we ended up moving to the Dominican Republic after I finished my bachelor’s degree. And this was a really important experience for a couple of reasons. One is just getting out of Idaho and having this totally new experience and a completely different place really changed me so much. I totally transformed as a person, still had my values, but like really kind of my mind opened up and I think I just, I just became a better person I think through that experience and subsequent travels. But the other part of it was I had a really terrible boss, like really, really terrible at my school that I taught at. And then subsequently when we moved to Vietnam after that, I had another really terrible boss.
And both of those experiences, I remember leaving my second kind of position in Vietnam one day after the head of the school had yelled at me for getting coffee, for leaving to get some coffee. And I remember thinking like, I will never work for somebody again. Like, I cannot do this anymore. I need to have my own business. And so I left teaching. I ended up starting a business, trying to be a travel writer that didn’t pan out. And I’ll give like the quick overview and we can dig in wherever you want, Debbie. But I worked in, the magazine world for a while. I helped found a regional magazine in the northwest and then eventually, went to graduate school to get my master’s degree in writing and editing and was eventually hired on as executive editor of Sam’s Club magazine. So we had a readership of 11 million readers. And through that work I started ghostwriting for a Nobel Prize winner in medicine. And then that kind of pivoted into ghostwriting books. And then that eventually pivoted into the work I do today that I already shared about.
Debbie:
Well, there’s definitely a lot to dig into there, Stacy. You have, I feel like you’ve lived a thousand lives already since, you know, you started this whole process and I love that it really wasn’t in your radar all of this, and it kind of just happened and life leads you in so many like different directions. So when you first met your husband, crush and boyfriend, at the time, were you in school to be a teacher? Is that initially what you wanted to do?
Stacy:
I had a, no, I was studying writing. I had a bachelor’s in writing and a minor in visual arts, but I had done the thing that a lot of people do like change my degree a bunch of times. I had gone into graphic design and then back to writing and then marketing and then back to writing. No, I never thought I would be a teacher. And interestingly, was hired into the job in the Dominican Republic with not one day of teacher training, no classes that I’d done, I’d never taught a day in my life. And I was actually running the high school language arts, like the whole high school, during an accreditation year. And so I had to create all the curriculum maps. I didn’t even know what that was. I mean, it was a huge challenge going from like this baby coming out of my bachelor’s into, you know, suddenly running a high school language arts program in another country.
Debbie:
Yeah. And that must have been a bit intimidating, especially for somebody who wasn’t traveled. And as you had mentioned, you didn’t really have that, you know, and then your husband kind of opened up that entire world for you, which is pretty incredible when you meet someone like that, right? And you never know what’s gonna happen to you. So how did those first moments of moving and traveling felt like for you? Was it exciting? Was it nerve wracking?
Stacy:
You know, I was really excited about the move and I think I was a little naive, to be honest. Like looking back, the Dominican Republic was, Dominican Republic was an incredible place. Like I had so many great experiences there. And when we lived there, the World Health Organization came out with a list of the most dangerous countries in the world for foreigners. And it was number one because of the mortality rate. So, you know, just coming from this like very safe, little bubble that I came from, and then I’d never really gone anywhere. And then suddenly moving to this brand new country and, and having this totally new job, I was working like, you know, 60, 70 hours a week trying to just like function. It was a lot. And I had so many cool life experiences and really grew and pushed myself.
And I think also developed courage because I was a pretty timid person before I moved. Like, as an example, I always think about this when I think about like in Idaho, I would always just at a crosswalk across like, even if there’s no cars coming and I’m waiting for that like walk sign to come up, I would wait there for the entire waiting time. Even if I could have crossed the street, I never would’ve crossed. And then we moved to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and I had to like frogger my way across to get to town market. You know, like these experiences that I got to have traveling, I completely changed. And really like this courageous side of myself that I’m really grateful that I’ve been able to develop.
Debbie:
Yeah, and I think that’s one of the best things about travel is you do end up growing as a person. And I think that’s one of the biggest things that really reminds us of how human we are. And we also get to really appreciate the different cultures, the way people live. And when you go back home, you become a completely different person. You see things hopefully, in a different way. Obviously not everyone is the same. How did that change you when you went back and I think you mentioned you went back to get your master’s after, is that, is that correct?
Stacy:
Yeah, I did. I went back from Vietnam. We moved to Idaho for a few months and then on to Cincinnati where I did my master’s degree at the University of Ohio, or sorry, university of Cincinnati. They’re very different, it’s very different schools. Let me not confuse them. You know, I won’t, I’m not gonna, I don’t think this is the platform to get into like my specific politics, but my politics changed drastically. My sense of humanity changed, my empathy for the world changed. I really opened up and I started to consider things from other people’s points of view and question things that I had been told my whole life. And I think that side of myself, like I’m so grateful because I look back on the person that I was before I started this journey and this life that I have.
And I was a really like, honestly close-minded person. I thought I knew what I knew and, but it was all fed to me from someone else. And being in all of these different cultures, surrounding myself with all these different people who have totally different viewpoints from each other, from me, it’s really forced me to go inward and really confront my deeply held beliefs. Beliefs and like find the humanity in how I approach situations. And I am so, I’m just so glad that I’ve been pushed, like I’ve been in those situations that have pushed me to develop that.
Debbie:
Yeah, and it also seems like it allowed you to really figure out what you wanted to do and where it would lead you because you knew that teaching wasn’t it? Like you knew that being, working for somebody else, wasn’t it? And then you went back to focus on writing. So let’s get to that because you went to get your education with it. You got your master’s, you looked at different niches, you worked for different types of companies and wrote different types of things. What made you to decide to get into ghostwriting and then officially starting your business? Because you did travel writing, you also did, ghostwriting for a different niche. Was it in like health? What kind of niches did you go into before you finally settled on where you are?
Stacy:
I spent quite a long time working in the health and science space, and that was supported as well. My graduate program, I had a graduate assistantship at a scientific journal, so I was kind of immersed in that in my assistantship. And for anybody who’s not familiar with that, with an assistantship, they give you a stipend, they pay for your tuition and you get cheap health insurance. So, t’s not enough to live on. But that’s what I, that’s what I got for my program. And then working with Sam’s Club that magazine was a healthy living, healthy lifestyle magazine. And as executive editor there, I wrote half of the content, about half of the content for the magazine, but there were different people that I was writing each piece for. So imagine like switching voice between like all of these different, like, you know, maybe 10 different articles that I would write for 10 different people in one publication and needing them to sound different.
That experience was a great pivot point for me to really recognize a skill that I had developed, which is the skill of listening really well, studying really well, and then being able to hone someone else’s voice and sometimes even help somebody develop their voice. Because a lot of times when people wanna create something in writing, but they’re not a writer, they don’t even know what their writing voice is. And so really I learned a lot about that through just like being thrust into this role where I suddenly had to create all of this content and create it for other people, but I will say, I know that magazine was a pretty big role, like a pretty massive job and just to back up so that it feels a little more accessible to somebody who’s, you know, maybe just starting out for me it was like just getting in and being a very action focused person.
So really having a bias toward action, seeking out opportunities, putting my name in the hat for things, saying yes to things and then trying different projects until I found what really fit for me. Like the thing that I felt was really deeply resonant for a while, that was health and wellness. And then I ended up just kind of naturally ended up working with a lot of lead people in leadership positions. And so today I really niche in business leadership. We do a lot of social equity projects, personal development, and we still do science and wellness as well through the team.
Debbie:
Yeah. And without going through all of that motion and figuring those things out, you wouldn’t be where you are today. So I think, I love that you are able to really pivot and figure out where you belong. And now you have a whole business. Now, how did it get from you working at Sam’s Club, being a travel writer for a short stint to now owning your business? How did you get to that point?
Stacy:
It’s interesting because even as I was like just telling you my reply to your last question, I was thinking like, “Oh, but that just sounds like I just hopped from here to there.”, it’s just so not how it was, you know, and I like to tell this story, especially for anybody who’s in that dreaming phase or maybe in their, they’re in that early building phase. I read this book when I was a teacher and just dreaming about starting my business. It’s called the Well Fed Writer. I don’t even know if it’s in print anymore, but back when I read it, it was the best book I could find on starting a business as a writer. And that book had this goal, like set a goal essentially of making $60,000. So that was my target point. It was like, replace my income and then my big goal is $60,000.
And here’s where I think this, this is something super important that I wish that I had been aware of early on. I started with a pretty, like, I would say like modest goal. And I, it took me a long time to realize that that modest goal did not have to be where I stopped. And I wish that I had gone into it with a more abundant, open mindset. I think I would be where I am today a lot faster if I had like, allowed myself to dream really big. The way that I got here was through that. It was through, you know, I was a solopreneur for the first eight or so years of my business. I’ve been in business for 14 years now. I had an assistant for maybe like a couple of those years, but very part-time. And then I had kids and I realized that I needed to be able to earn money without just sitting at my desk all the time.
And I was also working a lot. And I wanted that to change. I had a couple of experiences with, well two, ’cause I have two kids when they were born, I really wasn’t able to take maternity leave to speak of, I think I took three weeks off with each child. And my second child was an emergency c-section. And I was literally back on my computer the day after I got home from the hospital because I had a project that was due and it was tied to an installment payment that was like a make or break for our family. So I had to get it done with my newborn son sleeping on my chest and get that out so I could invoice. That was not a fun place to be. And so I started to open up my mindset to something beyond this kind of, I think, very specific place that I had allowed myself to dream.
And really to think about like, what life do I want for me, the most precious thing in my life is time and it’s rest and like time with my family. So then I had to think about like, well, how do I solve for that? How do I get to that place? And so I’ve slowly built my team over time. I’ve invested in coaching, you know, I’ve like done all the things to learn how to grow beyond myself, and that’s really where the business is today. But it’s, I’m still in in progress. You know, I’m not, I’m not to my dreams yet, but I’m very much firmly like on the path where I wanna go.
Debbie:
Yeah. And when you are in that growth mode, it is really also hard to kind of let go of the reins right to somebody else because it’s your baby. You wanna make sure that everything is always perfect and you’re doing the right thing. And I think that’s one of the things I always see with a lot of entrepreneurs. And I’ve seen that with myself too. It’s hard to delegate the work when you know, you are like, “Oh my gosh, this is how I do it. Can somebody else do it the way I I do it?”, how did you get to the point, Stacy? Where you finally were like, “Okay, I cannot do this on my own, I need to start hiring.”. And then once you got into that mentality, how do you find good people? Because that’s also another thing that’s pretty hard to do.
Stacy:
Yeah, it is really tough. All of those things that you said, I really struggled in the beginning to delegate and I really, I didn’t delegate enough things. And then the other thing is that I think we sometimes start in the wrong places. So especially for women listening to this, we’re fed at least in the US, I can’t speak to all cultures, but we’re fed this message that we need to be all things. And so actually I think the most important place I started outsourcing was personal tasks and items like housekeeping, like laundry, like, you know, landscaping, like those kind of things. And I think that’s an easy place to start ’cause most people don’t even like those things anyway. So it’s easier to let go of those and free up some space and time.
But one thing that I have learned is that when you do find the right people, they actually do way better than you will ever do. Just as an example, today there’s this amazing woman on my team and I recently was able to move her into a full marketing role. We replaced her, her admin duties that she’d been holding onto since she’d started. And I asked her to complete some, some I needed some numbers, um, for some tracking that I was doing, and I was expecting an email back with the numbers that I asked for. But instead she put together this very detailed spreadsheet with a nuanced breakdown of each of the bigger numbers that I had asked for and came up with a new system for tracking so that I would always have visibility. I mean, these kind of things that I just would never have time for or energy for or even like, probably the, the care to do it, but it is important, those types of things.
I’ve learned that a lot of people are better at things than I am. Like what ego to think that I’m just the best at all the things. And then the other thing that I’ll have to, I have to answer your question about people, because that has been a struggle. And one thing I have learned is that when somebody is not working, it’s so much better to end that working relationship quickly and amicably and wish each other well. But after some failed hires, I now have a really detailed hiring process. It’s multi-steps and I also include a project in the hiring process. So I put together two small projects that are demonstrative of the thing that I’ll need in that particular role. And so this is like after we’ve done a video interview, if they’re local, most of my team is remote, but if they’re local, an in-person interview, a longer one, I’ve checked references, like all of the things and I’m pretty close to ready to hire, then I have them do a project for me. And that has been one of the most illuminating hiring steps because number one, if they knock it out of the park, I feel pretty confident that they really want this job and they are gonna knock it out the park. And the other, the other part of it too is that I can actually see their real work. That has been a really important piece and it’s allowed me to find really amazing, I have like truly the best team. They’re so awesome. They’re so great.
Debbie:
And also when you are hiring somebody, sometimes they look really great on paper, but when you do that next process of looking at the actual work, it does really tell the truth of whether or not they are capable of doing what you’re asking them to do. So I think that’s such a great way of reviewing somebody’s work and seeing if you also fit together as well.
Stacy:
Yeah, it is, it’s such a great way to tell. And to your point, I have made hires where the person seemed perfect on paper, like, how could I ask for a better fit? And then it just turned out that, you know, our, our team is very entrepreneurial, so everybody that’s on the team like owns their role. Like it’s a business. It’s their own, like their own business, mini business that they’re managing within the, within the team. And so somebody that comes in and needs a lot of things like given to them or like really broken down for them in, you know, in detail when it’s something that they should be able to like go after and project plan and, you know, create on their own for our team structure, I learned that like even the best person on paper maybe isn’t going to be the best fit for us long term because they don’t have that entrepreneurial spirit. So I’ve been learning along the way as we’ve, you know, grown the team and I’m also learning how to run a team. I’ve never done this before, you know.
Debbie:
Yeah. And that’s a hard thing, especially when there’s different personalities and you’re remote, so it’s not like you can meet up somewhere and just talk it over. But I think there’s a lot more also like flexibility. And I think a lot more people are happier when they’re remote and they can either stay at home with their family or they can travel like you’re doing, Stacy, so let’s get to the part where you and your family are able to do this. Obviously you’re making income with your business and you’re able to take your family everywhere with you. Is there a part of you that feels like, “Okay, I need to find a place to settle down longer…”, I know you’ve been in Portugal for a while now, right? Do you see yourself staying there or do you see yourself taking your family in other locations?
Stacy:
I think we’ll be in Portugal for a while. We’ve been here for four years. And I think I should also mention, I think this is an important piece, my husband stays home with our kids and this is something that has enabled me to do all of the things that I’m doing. We have a very, our family life is like kind of everything. And he’s very invested in all of the things that we do as a family and really building this life together. I didn’t really talk about this in much detail yet, but we did live in Thailand before this as a family. And I think I got a little bit exhausted from living there. And when we, ’cause we did a lot of travel while we lived there, we, you know, we traveled around Thailand plus we went to Vietnam.
We went to Singapore, my husband went to Malaysia and by the time we moved here and Covid hit shortly after. I think we’re just really appreciating being in a place that is ours. And we’re very connected to the community here. We live in a little beach town where I pretty much can’t go anywhere without running into somebody, you know? And it’s just a very different kind of life than, it’s a much simpler life than I kind of expected that I would end up in. I, as a kid, I always dreamed of moving to New York and like living in the city, and now I live in this like very small town, you know, but we’re happy. And so I’m kind of, I’m open to whatever life holds for us right now that’s here, but I have always lived by advice that a mentor gave to me, which is, you make a choice and then you make another one. And so I always have feel that freedom to make a different choice if this doesn’t align for us at some point down the road.
Debbie:
Well, and it’s also really great because you chose this for yourself. It wasn’t something that you felt like you had to do. And this is where you and your family are, and I love that your husband is a stay-at-home Dad, because I also truly feel like children need a lot of guidance, especially when they’re first growing. So whether it’s from the mom or the dad, I think that’s such a crucial part of growth, you know, for children, especially if you’re taking them to different locations, in the beginning you need that support and guidance and familiarity with your parents, you know? So I think that’s pretty incredible that you guys have been able to do that.
Stacy:
Yeah, thank you. It’s definitely been a learning experience. I’m sure you and many listeners can relate to this, that when you are living a life that you haven’t had a blueprint for, nobody – nobody handed us a blueprint for. Like husband stays home and you move to multiple countries like no. No example of what that looks like, but to your point, you know, that that idea that we have chosen this, it makes me feel so anchored every single day. I’ve chosen the work that I do. I love my work. I wake up happy every day. I feel gratitude every single day for the work that I get to do. And on that earlier, you know, advice that I got, you make a choice and then you make another one. We had a moment when we were living in Thailand before we moved to Portugal, where things were going really badly in Thailand.
I will, I mean that could be a whole podcast episode, but one day my husband and I were sitting on the couch and we had another hospital visit. This was the core of our issues, was just multiple hospitalizations from getting sick. And we looked at each other and I think I was the one that said, you know, we chose to move here, we can choose to move somewhere else. And it was just so freeing to just have that complete freedom, you know, it’s a beautiful way to live a life, I think.
Debbie:
Yeah. And it’s great when you can choose to do a different trajectory with your life. And I think, I don’t know about you, Stacy, as I get older, that seems so much more important to kind of take reins with what you’re doing instead of like letting things happen. Because you do have a lot of control with where your life will lead you. And there are a lot of things that can take us to a place where we’re just like, “Oh my gosh, this is horrible.”, or it’s just not where you wanted it to be. But then you can also think, “Hey, I can do something about it.”, and that does give you a lot of, I guess, freedom in a way, if you just take that and go with it. But there’s, I understand there’s also a lot of fear that comes with it, right? The fear of the unknown. Like, “Okay, if I do X, Y, and Z what’s going to happen?”, and like they say, it’s better to to know like the evil that you know than the one that you don’t, I guess. But you always have to take a chance somehow, right? Otherwise it’s gonna stay stagnant or you’re gonna stay where you are and you’re gonna still hate your life anyways. You may as well do something different about it.
Stacy:
I love that orientation to the world, Debbie. And it made me think about, totally not related to location independence or travel or anything, but I had a personal situation recently that was just like tearing me up with worry. You know, what if this, what if that, oh my gosh, what if this happens? And it turned out like literally none of those things came to pass. And I think sometimes it can be really easy back to that conversation on courage earlier, it can be easy to sit in the fear versus like being open to the possibility ahead of you. Most of the time, all the worst things that you’ve imagined will not happen. Usually that’s not what happens.
Debbie:
Yeah, it all happens in your head though. You turn all of these scenarios like, “Oh my gosh, this is gonna happen. It’s gonna be the end of the world. I’m not gonna be able to do X, Y, and Z.”, and then in a way I am like, “Is it good when you do that?”, because when it doesn’t happen or it’s not as bad, you’re like, “Oh, thank God it didn’t happen that way.”, I am like, “Hmm…”.
Stacy:
Yeah, you live out the worst case scenario in your head and then the best case scenario happens.
Debbie:
Better! Exactly, or even if it’s not the best case, it’s not as bad as what you thought it was going to be.
Stacy:
Yes. Oh, so get that. It’s definitely happened to me many times.
Debbie:
I know! I think it happens all the time, especially when you’re in that mode, right? So thank you so much, Stacy, for being here with us. Before we say goodbye to you, let’s move forward to about 30 to 40 years from now. And you’re looking back at your life, what legacy would you like to leave and what do you wanna be remembered for?
Stacy:
Oh, so I am 38, so in 40 years. Wow. That’s kind of crazy to think about, well my dream is to write books until basically I die. Like I wanna be, like, my goal is to live to 111. So in 40 years I still have lots of time. I wanna be remembered for putting meaningful words into the world. That’s – my life is books. I’m working on a book right now actually on building location independence for your family. And I just see many more works like that that I wanna contribute to the world before my time on this planet is up and hopefully uplift some people along the way.
Debbie:
That is incredible and I love that you’ve been building that for yourself. So I can’t even imagine what it’s gonna look like 30, 40, 50 to 111 years old for you, Stacy, which is pretty incredible. We’re gonna be rooting for that for sure.
Stacy:
Yes. That is the goal. That’s the goal.
Debbie:
So, if our listeners wanna learn more about you, where can they find you?
Stacy:
Well, they can find my podcast, Beyond Better. I talk all about some of the topics that we talk talked about today, but also writing, publishing. I have a lot of really amazing people on that podcast, and it’s a true joy. I love producing that. My website’s stacyennis.com and I’m on Instagram @stacyennis, Stacy with A-Y, Stacy Ennis.
Debbie:
Perfect. Thank you so much, Stacy. We really appreciate you.
Stacy:
Thank you, Debbie.
Listen to Stacy’s extended interview to find out how to create a steady income as a full time writer.
What you’ll find:
In this extended interview, Stacy talks about creating a steady income as a full time writer!
