Frank Zaccari with Life Altering Events

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Houston, Texas. It’s time for Houston Business Radio. Now, here’s your host.

Trisha Stetzel: Hello, Houston. Trisha Stetzel here bringing you another episode of Houston Business Radio. Really excited about the guests that I have on with me today. Mr. Frank Zaccari, CEO of Life Altering Events. He’s a five time best selling and two time award winning author. Frank has penned nine impactful books and co-founded the Trust Process Book marketing program, propelling numerous authors to success. He’s a passionate mentor, conducting workshops at institutions like Arizona State University and University of California Entrepreneurship Academy, and guiding veterans through the Veterans Treatment Court. Frank, welcome to the show.

Frank Zaccari: Trisha, thank you. It’s always a pleasure to be with you.

Trisha Stetzel: I’m really excited about our conversation today. So the first thing that I want to draw out, Frank, is you’re in California and I’ve invited you to be on Houston Business Radio. And you and I have a background together through the Houston Regional Veterans Chamber of Commerce. And thank you so much for all you give to that organization. And you’ve also got some other Houston ties. I want to just give one plug. Thank you, Frank, for allowing so many of us to be authors in this best selling book. It was an amazing experience. So let’s talk about Frank’s ties to Houston first.

Frank Zaccari: Sure, be happy to. I love Houston. I used to come to Houston in my high tech life many years ago and spent a lot of time there. Um, then I was went back to Houston again when the, uh, when the housing meltdown occurred and Houston was becoming almost like a ghost town or even was leaving, it was a disaster. But but what I love about the people of Houston and I love about the organization, is that they they said, we’re not going to let this define us. And the city has come back and the whole community, the whole area has come back and has brought businesses back in, and it’s got a very positive attitude and positive approach to life. And then it started partnering with people like the Houston Regional Veterans Chamber of Commerce, because what I saw with Houston is they started to look around. It says, all right, what do we have a lot of? Okay. We have a lot of oil and gas and we have a lot of veterans. Okay. So how now do we take this big block of veterans that we have that are living in the Houston area, the community, and bring them into the fold because these are the people. These are the kind of people you want to own businesses and be part and be employees. Yeah, that was the CEO for several years. Everybody wants loyalty and persistency and a leadership and willingness to work around and find obstacle around obstacles and get that way. And I look at Houston and that’s what I see. I see a city who finds a way around. Whatever the problem is, it will find a way.

Trisha Stetzel: Yeah, absolutely. And just to note, we have the highest concentration in the nation of veterans. Uh, second highest, excuse me, of veterans in the greater Houston area. And we’re number one for female veterans in the nation here in the greater Houston area. So you’re absolutely right. There is a huge market to be served here when it comes to our veterans and how we can help them. And for those of you who are only listening and are not watching the video, the plug that I was giving was on this beautiful book that Frank afforded many of us from the chamber and otherwise, but veterans to coauthor business secrets from the battlefield to the boardroom. And for most of us, Frank, it was our first time to go through that process. And I know that you have built a business around helping people with that. So would you just give us an overview of a short overview of your background to get started, and then we’ll take a deeper dive?

Frank Zaccari: There. Sure. Very thumbnail sketches that grew up in Western New York in the Buffalo area, and I was the only ladder guy I ever won was the military lottery, and my draft number was ten. So, okay, that pretty much made a lot of decisions to things were done. They were deciding. Um, I enlisted in the Air Force rather than going into the Army. I was during the Vietnam War. And so I was a medic in the military near the end of the war. I didn’t I was not combat medic, but I was in the Air Force during that period of time. When I got out and went back to school and I got into the high tech world, I don’t know how or why, but I did, and I thought, well, I’ll stay in high tech for a couple of years. I my degree is in finance. I’ll go back into the finance world. And 27 years later, I was a CEO of two companies up in Seattle, and it was still in high tech. All right, which I loved, I loved we had a domestic situation change and I became a single father with my two young daughters. And so getting out of high tech was necessary because I was traveling too much and had to be a full time father. I took over an insurance agency which which I tell everybody, if you come from high tech, proactive industry and you go to insurance reactive industry, it’s like dying and going to hell if you’re a type A personality like God.

Frank Zaccari: But it was a means to an end, a means to an end. I had to get my daughters through school to get them into their first, what they call grown up jobs, which we did, and they both did them very, very well. Uh, I, uh, got married again at in my 60s. And so my wife had a house in San Diego, which is where I am now. And then I have a house in Scottsdale, Arizona. So we basically go between the two quite frequently. Uh, we the book thing for sure, just it nothing was planned. I didn’t plan any of this. Um, I was going through counseling after the divorce, and one of the counselor said, Frank, you need you need to journal and write this down. No chance. Don’t write this down. I’m living it. Well, I want to write it down and memorable. So, um, one of my daughters said, yeah, dad, do it. So I do stream of consciousness. I’ve never been trained as a writer, never had not just stream of consciousness. Write down, write down, and then go back and start it to starting to make sense a little bit. And I found out that cannabis, who became my publisher and we put the book out, um, and the first book was not it was a good book, but it didn’t what I was doing.

Frank Zaccari: Right. Right. So I did five of those that way not knowing what I was doing, what, five books? And then I said, okay, I’m going nowhere. Stop, this isn’t working. And then Cat cannabis calls me back and I’m driving to Phoenix and I’m in the middle of the desert. And she says, you got to write again. You’re too good. And I said, okay, I’m tired. I don’t want to do this anymore. So I said, let me get off the freeway. So I’m sitting in a Dunkin Donuts in Goodyear, Arizona, and it’s 110 degrees. And she’s saying, Frank, we’re going to do a series. We’re going to do a series of books in the Business Secrets series. Okay. And the first one was going to be about business things you don’t see coming. And so that one went to number one, and we figured it out, and that my partner Melissa Van Hoss and me, at least we figured out how to market and promote books. Right? So book goes to number one and the second, uh, cat comes back to me. She says, Frank, people say they got their business under control, but the personal life isn’t very good. And we need to write about relationship issues because you’re a master at failed relationships. Thanks, Cat. Not a nice.

Trisha Stetzel: Compliment.

Frank Zaccari: There’s a second book and it went. Yeah, yeah, that one went to number one. And then we had, um, your life could be going good, but you get stuck, and that’s just the way it is. Everybody gets stuck. So that was a third book. Then I wanted to do the fourth one with veterans. I’ve always wanted to do this, and David Weaver and you and your group are so gracious to step up and say, yeah, let’s be part of this. And what we wanted to show. And this is not just for veterans, it’s for anybody. Everything’s a transition. Every transition is difficult. So what are you going to do and what is your goals and how do you connect and how do you reach out and find people. And that was what it was all about. And we talked to veterans. They all say, oh, I can’t write. And my story is boring. And so as we did with, uh, with this one, we sent questions and said, here, fill these out. We’ll fine tune it with you for you. And what was amazing was, as we were going through, we 1919 contributing authors, and as we were going through it, the women, their stories were so much better. They were so much more in depth. There was so much more emotion. There was so much more detail. And it made a huge difference when the guys were good that the guys were, yes, I’m there, did this, and they’re pretty much, you know, to the point.

Frank Zaccari: Yeah. But uh, but but the lady, the women veterans, we had a mom, a military mother, and then we had a woman who, uh, um, flew the troops over. She was a flight attendant, flew troops over to to Vietnam. And we got her perspective on what it was like, uh, interacting with military so that the thing that that I found in doing this book and the thing that I find. And every time I go to Houston and meet with you and your team is there’s this there’s this resiliency. Okay, we’re going to not just do okay. Here’s something just for veterans okay. That’s wonderful. There’s 45,000 entities that deal with veterans. But you go to the other side and you go into the Houston community and you say, okay Houston, we’ve got these people. You got great employees or great businesses here. And what do you need and how do we make it better for you, as opposed to what I see in some veteran groups that come out and say, look, we served you and now you owe us. Okay. Well, then what? He owes you anything? No one owes you a thing. So what do you bring? What value? And when? When I read your story and Carlene and, uh. And LaToya, uh, Westbrook. The story was this is the value that I have. This is how you take all those skills that you’ve developed and you translate it because the world is changing radically.

Frank Zaccari: I interviewed a futurist named, uh, doctor, um, Edward Hess from the University of Virginia at the Darden School. And he told me, he said, Frank, children entering kindergarten today, right now, today, 65% of them are going to work in a career that doesn’t exist today. It doesn’t exist. Wow. And I said, well, that’s pretty intense. And he said, look over, look over history, the industrial revolution, those jobs didn’t exist. And you went to the automation that didn’t exist. And the tech world. He says. So it’s in a constantly evolving thing. So finding your value and finding your skills and how do your skills translate? And I hear this all the time, particularly the veterans. You know, I get ready to go. And you know what? I don’t have any skill. Yeah you do. Yes you do. But let’s sit down. And when you do a great job with working with veterans and working with the community, here’s what they bring to the party. Here’s the value proposition. Now, doesn’t this make sense in your business? And if you have a business, doesn’t it make sense to say, look, this is what this is what I can bring and you have to have value. Just can’t be I serve. So help me out here. It’s got to be I have value build what it is and you guys do a great job.

Trisha Stetzel: Thank you I appreciate that. I love the mission of this particular chamber because it’s not just about networking. It really is about identifying all of those amazing veterans out there who have opened a business. And you’ve you’ve heard my story, John Cleese. Many of us spent years as business owners without ever identifying as a veteran, because we didn’t think we needed to. Uh, I can do it myself. You and I talked about this on your show, right? Uh, those five words. I can do it myself. I don’t need a handout. And that’s really not the message here. The message is we need to know who you are, because we may need you to help the next guy or gal who’s opening a business come out and mentor them. And that’s really important to me, right? We all have something, something of value to give back to the community. And I think that’s really important. Well, I want to circle back around, Frank, when I first introduced you, um, I talked about trust the Process book marketing program. I’d love for you to talk more about that so that our audience can really understand the work that you’re doing with people there.

Frank Zaccari: Be happy to. Uh, my partner is Melissa Vanasse, and she lives in Washington, DC, and she was on my show and she had written a book, and we started talking about, what are you doing and how are you marketing? And so she had a lot of this process already figured out. And I said, well, let’s collaborate because I think we could productize this. Okay. So then we tried it on ourselves first we did it on ourselves and our books went to number one. I said, okay, we might have something here. And then we started looking at, well, what are what are the things that are preventing it? And there’s a there’s a ton of myths in the publishing world. Authors. All they want to do is get the book done. Okay, you’re writing a book. I just want it done because it drives you crazy. So you got it done. Now what do I do? I put it on Amazon. Everybody’s going to go buy it. Okay, that don’t work like that. 11,000 books are released every single day in the United States. 11,000? Okay. How are you going to stand out? What are you going to do different? And so what we did with our program and Melissa and I is that we, we meet with the other first potential author and say, number one, why do you want to do this? Okay.

Frank Zaccari: If you want to do a legacy book for your grandchildren, then okay, probably not the right people for it. But if you want to write a book that’s going to enhance the value of what you’re doing, help your business, open up speaking engagements, webinars, workshops, and all of those kinds of things, then let’s fuck. And then it comes down to consistency and continuity. Because the first thing that every author thinks is, oh, my publisher, because they tell you this, my publisher is going to market my book. No they’re not. Publishers publish. They don’t market. That’s it. Okay. Now they might put out a press release that nobody reads, but they’re not going to market your book. Okay. Now it’s up to you. And then they’ll say, okay, well, um, I was told I should have a watch party, and so I’m going to get this big party, this big event at this hotel or whatever. And I said, how many people said they’re going to come? 150. How many people actually show up? Ten. Six. Four. Doesn’t matter. So you’re spending all this time and energy when you could be sending out a consistent and a message? Something better than that, right? So we we create a whole campaign. We do the campaign. We create the content working with the author, and then we send it to them. We say, here, post this on this day at this time.

Frank Zaccari: All right. So the first step is who are you author and why should anybody care. And we say it nicer than that obviously. But here’s what the skill sets are. So we spent a period of time putting out posts about this author is then we go into the launch process. Okay, now you know who the author is. Here’s this book that’s coming. And this is why it’s important I know who she is or he is. This is the book. This is what we’ve been prepping you for on this day. Go buy it. Then we’re going through a whole long sequence. So we have a social media campaign, we have an email campaign. We have a live video campaign. We have people on on my show and other people’s shows, uh, during the course of this thing. And the net net is release day is the magic. And you drive everybody to buy the book on that day, right. Mhm. And we’ve now had 13 in a row. 13 consecutive titles have gone to bestseller, 11 went to number one, five have won awards. So we’re thinking okay I think we’ve got this kind of figured out. Yeah. Now it’s a matter of sitting down with the authors and we do a real hard screen to fish. We say. We say no more than we say yes.

Frank Zaccari: Okay. And if it’s a you want to use it as an evergreen tool for business or for your life or for something along those lines, are you willing to be coached? Right. Because when you write a book, everybody and their brother and their uncle’s cousin is an expert. Of course. Oh, you should do this and you should do that, and I get a kick out of it. And I did a talk at the Military Info Influencers conference in Las Vegas about this. And I said to to the people there, I said, who are the smartest parents in the world, smartest parents in the world. And they went, what? And I said, people with no children. They are the smartest parents in the world because they’ve never done it. But they can tell you what to do, but they’ve never done it. It’s the same with the book. Okay, so you can write a book, you have an editor, you can have editors to do it, and then you got to market it. So one of my third book hit Number one, I get a call from a big distribution house. They actually called me and they said, why aren’t you using us? And I said, okay, what do you bring to the party? They said, we’re going to put your book in Walmart. We’re going to put your book in, uh, target, and we’re going to put your book in bookstores.

Frank Zaccari: And I said, how are you going to do that? And he said, well, we got this giant online catalog. And I said, like the old yellow Pages, remember the old yellow pages? Yeah. And I said, so I’m one line in a big giant book. Right. And they said, well, yeah. And I said, they’re going to buy 10,000 copies of my book off of this one line. And they said, no, no, Frank, Frank, Frank, what you do is you create the demand for it. And then when you are driving. 8 to 10,000 sales, then we’ll put all our muscle behind it. And I said, if I can get 10,000 by myself, I don’t need you. Right. I’ve already figured it out. So that’s what we’re doing with Trusted Process. So authors are out there and you want to write a book and people say, what would I write? You write about something, you know. Okay. You start with something, you know, and everybody has a story. And this is what we head into with the veteran, right? You have a story, and there’s somebody out there who’s going to probably thousands of people are going through what you are going through or what you went through. And that story, that book, could be the thing that triggers them to continue going forward or gives them hope.

Frank Zaccari: I’m speaking at the veteran, uh, the VA Department of Defense Veterans Suicide Conference in, uh, in one month in Portland, Oregon. And that’s what this is. That’s what this am I talking about, publishing the book. We’re talking about the connection portion of it is that your story matters and your story can help somebody else, right? Help them move forward. And then it comes. And it comes down to, well, I don’t know how to write what we can do. We got people could do that. We got people who can help you write it. We have editors. We have people from the graphics. The whole thing is we tell the author, if you can do if you can cut and paste, we can run the campaign for you. And are you willing to listen? Big thing because are you willing to listen and take direction and say, here it is. And one person told me, Frank, you know, if you post something in three times a week or four times a week, you’re you’re annoying people. And I said, okay, you’ve heard of Coca Cola. You’ve heard of McDonald’s. How many times do you see ads for them? Every day. Multiple times a day. And when I was at the Military Influencers Conference conference in Las Vegas, there was a group that was involved in the second Top Gun movie where they were involved in the production side from the military side.

Frank Zaccari: Yeah. And so I said to them, how far in advance did you start working on promoting that movie? Everyone knew it was coming. Everyone knew the first one. Everybody knew Tom cruise. Seven and a half months before the release, they started marketing the movie. So consistency and continuity of the message is so important, and that’s what we excel at in. Melissa is a master at it, and we create this and say on this day, at this time, post it. Now why is that important? Because social media, if we’re using the social media part, social media if you don’t get a response, not a click, not a yes or a statement or a comment, if you don’t get a comment within the first 15 to 30 minutes, that post goes away. Have you ever seen a post and you say nobody saw that? What did he go and you can’t find it? Well, nobody responded, so therefore the algorithm pushes it out. It’s gone. So we know what it’s going to be posted. We comment on it, we share it. We send it to our networks. And that’s how you start that that spider approach that goes through. And then it comes down to you then touch your your key people that you can send emails to and say, hey, I’m doing this.

Frank Zaccari: Can you help me out? And then why video? Why video is critical because now you’re telling your story. And as you and I said before we started filming here, sometimes you can get a little long winded like I’m doing right now, but on those videos we call them minute and 30s no more, and we write the script for them. Okay, now you can tune it up to make it sound more like you, but right. 30s. First person we did it with with timer stopwatch. And so when you hit a minute 30s, I said stop, stop. We didn’t get to the point yet, and I said, exactly. You didn’t get to the point. Get to the point. Do it now. Here. Say this. Yeah. And then leave them wanting more. Right. Okay. What is this? And there’s something about it. And we create an author page, one page author sheet for the author. Okay. And then when we want to go to interviews or other certain things, we have them send that out. And then we have an award winning, uh, journalist. And if the author wants to have a news article, not a press release, no one reads press releases, news article. Okay. Publications are lazy. And if you send them an article that’s already done and they have space or it fits.

Speaker4: It.

Frank Zaccari: They’ll plug it in. So the last two that we did were picked up by 117 and 171 different publications, including Bloomberg, USA today, New York Times, etc. because they they don’t want to pay for content and they don’t want to pay for journalists anymore. So if you send them something that’s.

Speaker4: Already.

Frank Zaccari: Done, they may just pop it in and then we’ll do virtual book tours. If the author wants to do that, where we get, um, if they call themselves book geeks, right. We’ve done enough of these where we’ll say, look, the book is about this. I don’t want somebody who does zombies talking about a family or relationship book, somebody who does that. Like when we did the battlefield book, we had veterans write, do veterans read it and commented about it? And and the beauty is when you reach out and you ask people that are friends or you build a relationship or help, they will help you. Does everybody says, how can I help? How can I help? But we never tell them how, right? No, I can do it your typical way. You said before. I’ll figure it out, right?

Speaker4: Yeah, I’ll.

Frank Zaccari: Just.

Speaker4: Do that.

Frank Zaccari: You’re not going to figure it out by yourself. These people are willing to help. Tell them. Do this for me, please.

Speaker4: Well, I mean, it works.

Frank Zaccari: And so far, so good.

Trisha Stetzel: I’ve seen part of this process work live with the the book that we put together together. Uh, and using that process where we reached out, you fed us everything we needed. Here’s an email template. Send this out by email, put it out on social. And I had so many people interested because I was engaging with them, saying that I had written my story in this book, and so many people reached back out to me and said, I bought the book and it was amazing. And so I know we didn’t use the whole process around this particular book, but we used parts of it, and I know that it works, and I think it’s really important to have somebody like you, uh, on your side if you’re going to write a book because you’re right. You write a book, and then what? You don’t know how to get through the rest of the process. And that’s what you guys have built out and I think is so amazing. So, frank, as we close up, can you share the name of your show where people can find it and how they might reach out and contact you? I know you’re also on social, so if you want to give those channels as well.

Speaker4: We, uh.

Frank Zaccari: We have a web. My website is Frank Zuccari. Com we have a new one coming out. Authors trust the process.com. It’s not done yet, but it’ll be done soon. Uh, I’m on LinkedIn. I’m on Facebook. I’m easy to find. Linkedin usually is the best place. I get a lot of emails. Frank Zachary at gmail.com. I keep everything simple because I’m old and I can’t remember all the passwords and logins.

Speaker4: Yep. So it’s like yeah, absolutely. There’s just too many. Yeah. Uh.

Frank Zaccari: Call me (916) 718-5517. Um, I’m easy to find, and, uh, we’re very open to have a conversation, uh, with our new site trustee. Uh, authors trust the process. There’ll be, uh, information where people can fill out what it is they’re trying to do or what they want to do, and then we’ll set up a time to meet with them.

Trisha Stetzel: Wonderful. Frank, thanks so much for being with me today. This is so much fun. And we may have to have you back to talk about some other things.

Speaker4: Okay. Anytime.

Frank Zaccari: Happy to do it. Oh.

Trisha Stetzel: Well thank you I appreciate it. And that’s all the time we have for today’s show. Join us next time for another exciting episode of Houston Business Radio. Until then, stay tuned, stay inspired, and keep thriving in the Houston business community.