Are you ready for an open discussion with the best of the best and the best of what's next? Welcome to the Tony DUrso Show. Join in on a great conversation today with some of the world's great influencers as they showcase great advice and techniques that made them the game changers they are today. Now here's Tony DUrso.

Tony:

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Tony:

Welcome. I'm your host Tony DUrso. I interview some of the most successful people in the world, and I thank you for joining us. The show is dedicated to helping you turn your vision into reality, and here are some successful entrepreneurs who provide insights and guidance you can use to move along your vision path. Listen to my shows at tonydurso.com, or go to your favorite podcast platform such as Apple podcasts and search for Tony D-U-R-S-O. Today's show is about amplifying your DIY dreams with C.B and Dan Hoffman. Let's see what we can learn today. At the end of this interview, I'm going to do a summary recap of what we went over, so stay tuned for that. C.B. Hoffmann and Dan Hoffmann have created and self-published 6 faith-based books, 3 audiobooks, an audio-drama podcast, Fashion Assassin Podcast, and a short film about a fashion designer who is blackmailed into being an assassin, ultimately finding her way to repentance, forgiveness, and salvation. It's really cool. Here we go. Hi, C.B and Dan. Welcome to the Tony DUrso Show. It is such an honor to have you guys on. Welcome.

C.B:

Thank you. It's an honor that you invited us. Yes.

Tony:

And the pleasure is all mine, C.B. You are a high school teacher for many, many years, and I know you did a university tour for a while. You would have liked me because I graduated Summa Cum Laude from La Verne University in California. Yeah, that was quite an achievement. Most people don't know what that is. It's straight A’s in all classes, college and university. It was a lot of work, but I really like to get everything out of what I study. You wouldn't necessarily have liked me as a teenager in high school, because I think it's just too hard to just sit there and study as a teenager. You just got too much energy going.

C.B:

And as an English teacher, it was hard to try to make English seem like a different course each year. I mean, you guys have it for 12 years. Dan: And everyone has a cell phone now, so that's extra distracting.

Tony:

And speaking of English, it was my number one best class.

C.B:

I can tell because you're very well spoken.

Tony:

Well, thank you. Thank you very much. Well, you know, I'm very interested in also Dan, you are an expert photographer, videographer. You are a designer. You have really excelled so much. So this is quite something. This is a great package to talk about writing and producing and everything. So I'm really excited about this. Dan: Thank you. I don't know. Expert seems a little bit lofty. I would say I'm maybe accomplished. You always have more to learn.

Tony:

I agree. And Dan, you are humble and I like that. Well, I want to follow your journey to success and introduce you to our audience and let's say C.B, ladies first. Let's start with you. How did it all start? What's your backstory?

C.B:

It started with a dream. It started with a dream. I got the beginning and ending lines in my own handwriting on a legal pad and the beginning line "She was accustomed to coming here. She was an assassin", and then the ending line said, "and she fell into the arms of God." Dan: Wait, hold on. C.B. You have to say the first line with all the gravitas it deserves to have.

C.B:

You do it. Dan: "She was accustomed to coming here. She was an assassin embroiled in a sultry web of blackmail and deceit." Okay. Go ahead.

C.B:

Okay.

Tony:

Oh, I like that. Tell us more. And then what? Dan: Your career? Her very soul, if she still had one".

C.B:

He's got it memorized.

Tony:

And by the way, what caught my eye for everyone in the audience, this is totally PG-rated. There's no sex. There's no cursing. Hey, doesn't that make it for boring?

C.B:

No, because I'm the action writer. Dan: Not if the content is good.

C.B:

Yeah. I like action, and I tried to develop the characters to fit the action, but there is romance. There's definitely romance. There's just no hopping in bed with each other. Dan: There's all intrigue and murder.

C.B:

And Tony, I always said, you know, I taught over 4,000 kids and I didn't want any of them to ever read something I wrote and me be ashamed that I wasn't .... my walk and my talk must line up. I don't want to be a hypocrite. So yeah. So it's …

Tony:

I like that. I liked that, C.B. You are honorable.

C.B:

Thank you. Except for the assassinations, you know?

Tony:

Oh, well. We'll skip that part. You know, no sex, but kills a lot of people. Dan: Exactly. I don't think writing a sex scene with your mom would really work out. Let's move on. There's romance and they get married. I won't say anything too much.

C.B:

It's a trilogy. So things heat up.

Tony:

Well, we're going to... I have so many comments and questions ask about what we just went over, but I'm going to stay focused on one thing here. C.B, we have got you as a writer, an author. I would like to know how did you come about the vision for your current success? When and where and how did it all come together for you?

C.B:

Well, it started with the dream and I wrote and wrote all the time I was teaching. I felt torn between wanting to teach and wanting to write, and I think it's good to let Dan tell you. It was Dan. All right. I'll tell you what happened. I got a publisher and I signed a contract and then two weeks after I signed it, she contacted me and said, I'm no longer in remission with my MS. I have to sell my publication business and I can't find anybody to buy it. I'm going to have to release you from your contract. And I got really.... I mean, I was just really, really decimated with that and I thought, you know, I just don't want to write anymore. And then two months later after this, Dan called and I'll let him cut it here. Dan: And also Tony, she had always been submitting it to agents and to publishers and they would always write back. It was very well written. It was interesting, there were no spelling or grammatical errors. It just doesn't meet our marketing needs at this time. And we came to find out that less than 1% of first-time authors ever get a book deal. It's kind of like a band getting a record deal. You have to have like five albums. You have to be touring the country. And then someone's like, okay, we'll give you a record deal. I just had seen C.B submitting these year-after-year, and it would always come back, Hey, it's really cool. It's just not the right time or whatever. I had just graduated from school, graphic design school in New York, and I asked her what had happened with the book and she said, Oh, it's done. And I said, what do you mean it's done? And she said, Oh, you know, I'm just going to take a break forever. And then I said, well, let me hear it. And that's when she gave me that first line, and I was like, okay, okay. I tried to convince her to read it and she didn't even want to read it. And I said, just go get it. I was walking home from work and she went and got it. And so that first line went to the first paragraph, the first page. Before you knew it, she had read the whole first chapter and I was like, wow, this is really cool. So I fell in love with the content and I was thinking, man, I have to get attached to this so she doesn't submit it to some publisher and then they get to design the cover and somebody else gets to make the movie and I'm sitting here like, Hmm, man. My mom had this really awesome thing and I kind of just didn't get involved, so I didn't want that to happen. So, we just started looking at ways we could do it ourselves, and you're talking 2008. So Kindle version 1 is like 400 bucks. And you're like, okay, you can read books on that and it's $400, I just don't know. 1 then about six months, or I don't remember if it was later that same year or the next year, but I started seeing ads for the iPad version 1 and I was thinking, Oh my gosh and the price was less, and I just remember thinking, I don't know what to do with it, but I want one. And so I took a class at NYU on how to create E-Pubs. Well, actually it was just on digital publishing so it was more for like people in the industry, but I learned that the name of the file that you create is called an ePub and that you can use Adobe InDesign to do it. That was a program that I used every day as a graphic designer, and so I was like, okay, cool. So, I have the program, I have the content, we just have to figure out how to make the ePub and then figure out who to send it to so that people can buy it. So that's kind of where the to-do things started, the whole do-it-yourself thing. And we thought, okay, we're going to need a cover. We're going to need all this stuff. So we just started making a list that quickly became five pages long, and it's funny, cause we've checked off five pages worth of stuff, but it's still five pages long. So it's kind of like a never ending to-do list.

C.B:

Time out! My turn. I would raise my hand but you can't see me, so... What I think is really, really cool about the whole thing is that I had laid the whole book to rest, and my future as a writer. But since then, I have six books written and the first book became a trilogy because of Dan. But what I think is really cool is that Dan revived the whole thing, and it was Dan who started becoming my content editor right there that first night when he asked me to read it to him. He started saying, Oh, no, you can't say anything about a taxi. Dan: It's old school.

C.B:

It's a ride-share. You can't say anything about film. No, everything's on disc. So he didn't change the story, but he changed a lot of the content, updated it, technology wise and so forth so that became interesting. And then just working together became interesting. We've gone from the books to now we are doing our audio drama podcast. I'm loving it. I retired from teaching three years ago, but Oh my gosh, I'm going to be so bored, but I'm not bored because I had learned in Garage Band how to do the tracks and the technology for putting in sound effects and music, and just mastering all of that, and I'm finding it fascinating. I think this whole thing is really fascinating to be a part of, and it was because of Dan.

Tony:

Thank you, Dan.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead, the chat continues about amplifying your DIY dreams with C.B and Dan Hoffman, but first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment

Tony:

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Tony:

All right. We're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is about amplifying your DIY dreams with C.B and Dan Hoffman. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. They're doing it all on their own, from writing and editing the books, designing book covers, producing the eBooks, to recording and producing audio books, shooting and editing video, marketing and promotion. and so much more. All right. And now back to the chat with C.B and Dan.

Tony:

And for our audience, if you're going to engage in any kind of podcast, video or audio, the Macs seem to have the edge on this because it comes with Garage Band, which C.B mentioned. I use it as well and it is just so convenient to edit or tweak or do anything that's just baby simple, and there's no additional software to buy so it's a bonus.

C.B:

Yeah. Baby simple.... Dan: Or you can go to the Mac store five times a day, like C.B did for the first year.

C.B:

I used to go there frequently. People used to wonder what I was doing Dan: She walks in, and they are like hey C.B. Someone will be with you in a second.

Tony:

Wow. What's the purpose for what you do? You've kind of stumbled together and put together this amazing business because it seems like you do everything for the author. Dan: Yeah. The whole purpose is all of the content has an underlying message of repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation, and that's the whole goal and everything is a nod back to God. And so we feel like this is our passion and our purpose.

C.B:

And you know, it is not back to God, but it's also about difficult father/daughter relationships and the importance of reconciling those relationships. Dan: And real people making real mistakes, and dealing with it. You know, C.B also has a degree in psych and she taught psych for a while, so she really likes to get to some nitty-gritty.

Tony:

You know what I find interesting? You are mother and son. You're not adopted and I'm not trying to be very facetious. The reason I say that is you're the only person Dan, that I can think of in my entire history that calls his mother something other than Mom. It's like she's this other lady. So who's Mom? Dan: Yeah. It's funny. So, my dad now is our studio production manager and he's our PA so I call him John sometimes too. So I told my brother we're doing an interview with C.B and John, and my brother's like, you mean Mom and Dad? I was like, yeah.

Tony:

Oh wait, Dan. You're not calling him JH? Dan: Right. I could. I'll be like, John, get Beyoncé’s people on the phone. And he's like, what?

C.B:

One reason why he started calling me C.B is because that's my author name, and because I had difficulty seeing myself after teaching. I've had difficulty transitioning into seeing myself as a real author and he wanted to encourage me to do that and so he just started calling me C.B. Dan: I actually get mad when she introduces herself as Carolyn.

C.B:

Yeah. Dan: Come on, man.

C.B:

Yeah. He gets really angry with me.

Tony:

Oh, I want to edit that out. We like the mystique here. You're C.B. Dan: Yeah. But it's so people are like C.B and yeah, it's my author name. It's such a great conversation starter. So it's like, and then here's a card. We have this podcast, six bucks, you know.

C.B:

Dan even makes the business cards and the covers. Dan: Yeah. C.B doesn't have a choice.

C.B:

Well, yeah, but I like his work. Every cover, if you go to www.cbhoffmann.com and that's Hoffman with two fs and two ns, everything you see there, Dan did graphically. Dan did that. And if you scroll down to the very bottom of our website, you will see a link to YouTube and Dan directed... Dan: A little two-minute short film.

C.B:

The first action scene and the first chapter of the first book.

Tony:

I'm going to watch that. Does it have the model that you have on the cover right now? Dan: She's in New York. She was a friend from church. And I shot that back in 2008.

C.B:

But it's got a real live highway patrolman in it. Dan: This one's starring my wife. We got my wife to play Alexis. So yeah, she's not a red head, but she's a female close to me, so I didn't have a choice.

C.B:

We were on a strict budget. We had no money to pay anybody. Dan: It has two actors, and it's a voice-over from C.B. We had one hour to shoot this thing in a local church and we took an hour and a half. And then there's also some continuity problems because we filmed the interior first and then shot the outside, and so you can notice the way it starts it is a little dark.

C.B:

Yeah, but it's not bad for a first effort. Dan: And then you go inside the church and you can tell it's probably a little lighter, but anyway.

C.B:

I'll tell you truly when that officer walked into the church with his gun drawn and his flashlight scanning everywhere, it scared something out of me. I can tell you that. Dan: My wife got below the pews. The focus is a little soft in some places, but it's a good student effort.

Tony:

I'm going to check that out as soon as we're done with this interview, and we're learning here how to amplify your DIY dreams with C.B and Dan Hoffman, and you can find them at www.cbhoffmann.com, and I'm going to spell that. C as in Charlie, B as in Bravo, H-O-F-F-M-A-N-N. It's the German spelling, Hoffmann - 2 fs, 2 ns. www.cbhoffmann.com

C.B:

Thank you. Dan: Thanks. And if you do go there, I hope you're not allergic to animated Gifs because I'm completely obsessed. When you go to this website, everything is moving. I hope it's not too circus-y but when I look at the still image versus an animated image of Alexa shooting the gun right at you, you just have to go with the animated one. I liked the movement.

C.B:

Yeah, he definitely does.

Tony:

We'll check it out. All right, guys, let's get into your vision path here. And I think right off the bat, one of the first things we've talked a little bit about this, and maybe you said everything that there is to say about it, but I would like to know what's it like to write and self-publish and work together with family? It's just very interesting. I know that you're all very spiritual. We've talked about God several times here, and is that phrase right? You say a nod to God. I'm not familiar with that. Is that what that phrase is?

C.B:

Dan just made that up. Dan: Yeah.

Tony:

I like that! A nod to God. Dan: I had kind of been thinking about that because the book title on all the books is set in black letter, which is kind of a nod to the Gutenberg Bible, the first book ever printed. So that's why the titles are set in black letter, and so they are all like the message of forgiveness, reconciliation and repentance.

C.B:

Actually, the title of the first book Consuming Fire is one of God's titles. Dan: Yeah. God is a consuming fire. And it gets down into people kind of knowing the way, getting really far away from the way and coming back, and relationships going really wrong and then coming back together.

Tony:

I like that Dan, and I don't mean to interject, but we're talking about a female assassin that doesn't have sex or curse, but she kills people.

C.B:

But you see Tony, she's being blackmailed. Dan: Yeah, she is being blackmailed. She's actually a fashion designer.

C.B:

And not only that, but her dad was a preacher.

Tony:

Oh, and she's forced to kill people? Dan: Yeah.

C.B:

Well, she thinks that she is protecting her family's legacy and her dad who was a preacher. She thinks she's protecting his legacy because of the fact that he went a little bit wrong in the middle there. She thought he was dead and this assassin has her believing that he's still ...

Tony:

Well, don't give away the story, please.

C.B:

Yeah, I know. And he's going to spill the beans. So she acquiesced to doing ... Dan: Yeah. So the nemesis chooses her because her father had been training her to be an Olympic sharpshooter. That was his dream and so she was always going along with it and she was handy with the guns, and so that was just kind of like her side thing, her little Olympics kind of hobby, but what she really wanted to do was fashion design. So yeah, it all comes to a head when she's telling him she's going to Paris instead of to the Olympics, and that's where everything takes off.

C.B:

Then this guy who's blackmailing her happened to see her running away from their home that was on fire the night that she believed her parents to have died. So he's threatening to ruin her celebrity status by bringing the police on her tail.

Tony:

That's very interesting. And by the way, for the audience, if you go to www.C.B.cbhoffmann.com, you can find out more about the book. You can see the book. You can purchase the book directly from the site, right? Dan: There are links there. We don't sell it directly because it's all through Amazon, iTunes and Barnes and Noble, but we're also on Audible and you can buy audio books on Amazon. We have the print books are print-on-demand through Amazon. The eBooks are available with the big three and then the audio books are available, Audible and iTunes.

C.B:

It's the audible books that I recorded. I recorded the trilogy for Audible.com and those recordings are what made the audio drama podcast come into being, because Tony, you can picture Garage Band. And I had all the narration and the first track and then had to pull out the sections where somebody was speaking and set up tracks for my two sons and husband to do their parts. And I'll say their parts, because believe it or not, they are in the book. I have a character named Daniel Gauther and that's for Dan sitting right here. And I have a character named Mark Truman, and that's for Mark, our younger son. And then John Meredith, the police chief is John, my husband. And so they did their parts and that's, you know, having already recorded on audible is what made it something that was possible. Dan: Yeah. And we subscribe to a stock library so we were able to get all sorts of sound effects and music and a car tire, screeching gunshots, people screaming, the whole bit.

C.B:

That was to learn how to do that. Dan: The podcast is called Fashion Assassin podcast.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead, the chat continues about amplifying your DIY dreams with C.B and Dan Hoffmann, but first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

Tony:

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Tony:

All right. We're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is about amplifying your DIY dreams with C.B and Dan Hoffmann. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that all. And now back to the chat with C.B and Dan. We're talking to our audience here about how to amplify their DIY dream. So, let's get into some DIY projects and let's start and give some tips and advice and takeaways to the audience. How can they turn your dreams into DIY projects? Dan: Ooh, that's a very broad topic, so I'm going to let C.B. start with the book writing and publishing.

C.B:

I would say a very important thing for any writer is not to give up. Be determined and if you decide that it's better for you, maybe you don't want somebody to edit what you've written or whatever your reason may be, if it's better for you to do an eBook, then you need to find somebody who's going to help you do that and give you instructions on how to do that. Of course, Dan learned how to do it and did that for us. And if you need an editor though, maybe you could check with local universities and so forth, for them to recommend someone to do your editing. Dan: But before you submit it to anybody, get it copyrighted, even in a rough form so that as it changes, you don't get ripped off, cause if it's filed with www.copyright.gov, then you're good to go.

C.B:

Yeah. And don't go to any other copyright website. It better be .gov or you can't really trust it. Dan: Yeah, and get all sorts of proofreading. Get friends to read it and get people, everybody you know. Find a confidante, find someone that you trust. Just go back and forth, back and forth. I mean, how many times did we revise your first book, Consuming Fire?

C.B:

Well, I revised it 14 times before you came on board. Dan: And then we did it about seven.

C.B:

I don't know. So yeah, at least a few, I know that. Dan: But that was the first book. And now most of the other books are much quicker.

C.B:

Oh yeah.

Tony:

I'm going to throw in a tip here. As you probably know, I am a nonfiction author. I've written a couple of books, Amazon best seller and so forth. I've also written some fiction books in the past and I've produced one. I found out then at the time that an author cannot go both ways, nonfiction and fiction, because I'm told - I don't know that's it's true, but I'm told - that people don't take you seriously when you write a nonfiction work. So I stopped and suspended all my fiction works and I'll probably issue them later as a ... what's the word called? As another name I may or may not, but you know, we'll see. Dan: A pen name.

Tony:

A pen name or something like that. But the one thing, when we did write a book, we wrote a trilogy called The Good, Bad, and Gold. We're going to change the name and it's going to go out without my name and stuff. But the one thing, and you've already mentioned this and alluded to this C.B. that I wanted to accentuate on that is that when you're working out characters, you give them a personality. Like when we worked out the characters in our book, everyone had a total profile. What's the person like, how they spoke, how they wrote, what they liked We had such personalities written for each person that when it came time to write the story about the various people, it just flowed cause we just went into that person's profile and became that person.

C.B:

They become alive.

Tony:

And for you, you've got one as Dan, one as Mark, one as your husband. So I can see how that helps lend itself to writing the story. Dan: Yeah, and it's interesting though. When I'm like, Mom, I would never say that. And she's like, it's not you. It's your character. And I'm like, but it's going to be a movie some day and people are going to be like, would you do that? And I get to be like, no, it's the character, not me.

C.B:

It was interesting as they started doing their voice-overs for the podcast, they started taking on a connection with their character and letting me know how they would say that. I mean, sometimes Dan would stop and say, well that's how you have them saying it in your narration, but that's not how I would say it. And I'm like, okay, do it how you would say it.

Tony:

All right. Now we've got the book, we've got the characters. We've got writing the book. There's more to talk about writing the books though.

C.B:

Oh yeah.

Tony:

You know, but we can find that. We can YouTube it; we can search. There are all sorts of good advice on how to write a book, but I want to get into some of the other DIY types, such as photography techniques.

C.B:

You know, we started a do-it-yourself manual. We haven't finished it yet, but there are sections of it on... I have a whole section... Dan: There is a section.

C.B:

I have a section on writing right now that's up on our website and it's free if somebody wanted to download it, and we do intend to take our tips and have them available for interested people to check out. Dan: The one that we have ready to go, it's at www.cbhoffmann.com (with two F's and two N's).com and then just put /how to. So there's one PDF on there and it's about writing, but for photography, my love of photography started in New York City and I was going to graphic design school and one of the professors is like, you just got to get your own SLR camera and learn how to use it so you can shoot some of your own ads, and then as you guys get better at Photoshop, then you can make stuff look better and better and better. And so I got the camera and was just practicing, practicing, and we'd go to BNH in New York and talk to the photo desk guys. And so I got a tripod. I think the biggest breakthrough for me in photography was the tripod, cause I would go up to the roof of our building in New York at night and then I would just leave the aperture the same and just change the shutter speed and just focus on some buildings and shoot anywhere from half a second to a full second to two seconds to three seconds to four seconds, and then you really get a feel for how much light is coming into the camera. Then you're like, okay, I kind of understand shutter speed and because it's on a tripod, it's not moving so nothing's going to be blurry. So you're like, okay, cool. And then you start playing around with the aperture and like a 2.8, that's super focused on the eye, but the rest of the face is starting to get a little soft, up by the edge of the hair or whatever if you're shooting a portrait and then you're like, okay, so if I'm shooting a landscape, I might want to be more like F-11. So then you just start to learn how the camera the basics work. And the cameras today are much more like computers. It's like 50 pages of menus and a gazillion settings you have to get right and everything, but as long as you have the aperture or the shutter and the ISO rate, that's a great place to start. And then just start looking at the rules of composition, the rule of thirds and look at all the best photos that you like, whether it's like bird photography and start digging into what their settings are. All that stuff is available now. You just do a search for it and go to YouTube and search photography technique. I mean, you can spend a lifetime watching that stuff. I really like photography. It's a cool thing. And another thing is light. It's all about the light. So, if you're shooting landscapes or outdoors, make sure you're shooting in the morning when the light is nice and soft or at sunset, right after the sun goes below the horizon. There's that 20 minutes of the golden hour, golden time, and those are when the best shots are. Everything in National Geographic is either sunrise or sunset. There's nothing when the sun is up at noon and it's casting harsh shadows on the face. And if you're shooting a person, try to find a tree somewhere. Try to get some soft light on the face cause those harsh shadows are just bad.

Tony:

That is so true. Dan, I used to be a little photographer/novice way back when. That's actually how my wife and I met 26 years ago. That was our first date, going out and shooting photos. Back then, it was just a SLR. We did not have a tripod. That was what was wrong, but we just went out for a long time. It's just so much fun. Let's just call it the old fashioned with the aperture, the setting, playing with the dials and speed, and it was just so much fun to just see, oh, that's how you take the shot. It was just so much fun. Dan: Was that back on film cameras so you had to wait and get the film developed and see if it was any good?

Tony:

Exactly. You would never know. It would be like a week. Did it come out good? And then it was like, Oh, this came out bad. Well then you have to remember how did I shoot this one that came out so bad? So it's all changed, but it is just so much fun. Dan: Yeah. Cool, man.

C.B:

I want to ask Tony a question just for a moment. Another take on writing. And since you're also a writer, Tony, did you find that you started developing more as a writer with each additional book?

Tony:

Oh, there's no doubt about it. My first book that I ever wrote was a science fiction book, never published, called The Princess of Chicon and the reason I never published that book, it was a hundred-page novel or novella ... it could have been filled out. The reason I never published it is within about literally a year after I wrote it completed it, I was looking for publishers, one of the scenes in the book came out in one of the Star Wars episodes, and I thought this is horrible. And then a year or two or three later, I forget exactly when - a car came out with the name of my heroine, her name and exact spelling, which I thought was very unique. And I thought people are going to just think I copied other people, and I just stopped writing and I have never published it.

C.B:

Well, with our main character being named Alexa, we came up with that name long before they came up with the Alexa.

Tony:

I believe you, C.B. I believe you. Dan: I want to be able to say Alexa, play Alexa.

C.B:

I asked you for a reason because I thought with the first book I thought, Oh gee, I don't know. This is how high a level this is written on. I don't know, but with each additional book, I did develop to a higher standard and level. And I just want to tell people who like to write - don't give up. If you don't think your first book is all that great, write the next one anyway. Do it and find out what you can do.

Tony:

This is the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Just ahead, the chat continues about amplifying your DIY dreams with C.B. and Dan Hoffman, but first it's time for us to take a short break. See you back here in just a moment.

Tony:

When I was 19, the world had typewriters and telex machines. The internet didn't exist or any of the devices that you use today. I got a job in corporate America as a typist/proofreader. Now I didn't know how to type, and I know what you're asking - what was he thinking, right? Well, I went to the library and I got a typing book and I learned how to type - fast - and I was taught many proofreading skills. I got so good at proofreading that I could just glance at something and find the typos, and to this day I find typos in magazines, on TV, in books, on billboards. You name it, I find them. And this is why we need Grammarly® today. The typos are so rampant that you probably get immune to them, but they're out there. For family emails, that's okay, but for your blogs, your social media, your books, your company materials and so forth, the typo can mean the difference between closing that deal or having your prospect go to a competitor. It really can make the difference. This is serious i you're serious about your business. That's why I endorse Grammarly® and there's so much more. Check this out. Whether you're communicating with your team online or working on a project, Grammarly® is the digital writing tool. You can always rely on to get your message across clearly and effectively. Grammarly® works across multiple platforms, including Gmail, Google docs, and Slack. And there's more to writing well than catching spelling mistakes. Grammarly® can help you write confidently no matter where you are. Grammarly® is the digital writing assistant that helps more than 20 million people put their best words forward. And hey, signing up for a Grammarly® account is free and gives you real time spelling and grammar checks as you write. It works where you work so you can communicate with clarity and confidence on every platform. You want deeper insights on your writing? Grammarly® premium gives you advanced feedback on tone, word, choice, punctuation, and more. I use Grammarly® because it's so fast - faster than me, that's casual or faster than I, that's formal. I use Grammarly® premium to go through my next book to assist me, not only in finding typos after my rewrites, but to help me fine tune the very specific and exact style for my book. The customizable feature is super brilliant. I can set it to help make my writing formal, casual or anything in between. You get tailored writing instructions based on your goals and audience. You can set the tone, establish the intent, and there's so much more. I love it. Okay, guys. Get 20% off Grammarly® premium when you sign up at grammarly.com/D-U-R-S-O. That's 20% off Grammarly® premium at grammarly.com/D-U-R-S-O. Let's spell that out. G-R-A-M-M-A-R-L-Y.com/D-U-R-S-O. Grammarly.com/DUrso. Grammarly.com/DUrso. All right, guys. Check it up, sign up and tell me how much you love it. You're listening to the Tony DUrso Show with special VIP guests. Now back to Tony and his guest.

Tony:

All right. We're back on the Tony DUrso Show where you can learn from the wisdom and success of others to help you move on your vision path. Let's see what we can learn today. Today's show is about amplifying your DIY dreams with C.B. and Dan Hoffman. At the end of this interview, I'll give you a summary of what I got out of this, and I'll share some pointers with you. Stay tuned for that. C.B. resides in Orlando with her husband, John. They have two sons, Dan - coauthor, an art director and photographer who resided in New York City for 12 years, and Mark, a computer tech with a BS in computer science, residing in Sanford, Florida. Their faith is a driving force behind the major themes in their books. And now back to the chat with C.B. and Dan. Dan: And Tony, I think if you wrote a scene that ended up in Star Wars, to me that's confirmation that you're doing it right, so don't stop at that.

Tony:

Well, people are going think that I copied, and why did you write a book? Dan: You have to change that one.

Tony:

Well, yeah. Actually, believe it or not since I went into nonfiction more, I find every time I write I've developed my own style. It's not like turning in a paper or anything in university which is a whole different style of writing, which you're very familiar with and the students in my audience are familiar with. I write slightly more personal, more blogger style, but yet a polished style so I do have some... What's it called? Dangling...? Dan: Participles.

Tony:

Dangling participles. I just can't seem to get rid of them, Dan. It's in my speech from growing up in Chicago and I leave it in because for bloggers it's okay, so I kind of write in that style. Dan: Yeah.

C.B:

You know, to tell the truth, to some extent having those in there, a lot of readers can identify. Dan: Give us an example of a dangling participle, either of you guys, cause I'm....

C.B:

Well, what do you do the most that you don't like, Tony?

Tony:

What do I do the most?

C.B:

With dangling participles. Give us an example of a sentence that has one.

Tony:

It's the way I speak. I speak with dangling participles a lot of the time. It's where you have, let's say a preposition at the end like of or about.

C.B:

It's like people saying, where are you going to. Well, you don't need "to". Just where are you going? Try to take the participle at the end and turn it into a question mark, if you're asking a question.

Tony:

No, it's the way I think, C.B. I dangle. What can I say?

C.B:

But that's more relatable for a lot of people because we kind of mutilate the King's English in America.

Tony:

And then there's the first person and the second person and the third person in the same paragraph. Well, I solved that with nonfiction writing. I make very simple - and I have changed over the years - when I write, I try very hard. Just one or two sentences, that's the paragraph. The next one, there's a lot of white space. I've learned. Back then, when I read books, it was a whole page was one paragraph. You don't do that anymore, even in fiction. You can't. People will throw the book. So it's got to have white space. It's got to be in burst of concepts. So I've just had to develop a lot of that. Dan: Especially on the web. Two sentences is a paragraph, sometimes one.

Tony:

Yes, exactly. Let's move along on the DIY stuff here and let's give some tips to our audience on, for example, you've had to set up a sound studio. We talked about Garage Band, which comes from really well with .... What about the rest? Dan: So I was still in New York and we had turned the first book into the eBook, and I said, C.B., people don't have time to sit down. I'm always on the train, and I would be calling her on the way home from work and she'd be reading and we'd be collaborating while I was walking. And I said, people are always on the move. People are always in the car or train commuting or at the gym or walking. And I said, audio is going to become a big thing because audio year-over-year I think is up about 30%. I have to check those numbers, so I said, we have to do that. So I went back to BNH and I said, okay, this is what we want to do. We want pretty good stuff, but we don't want to break the bank because you could spend a grand on a microphone, or more. So we went in there and said, Oh, this is what I need from my mom. And they said, okay, all right. I think you could do an AKG 220 mike. That was about 200 bucks back then. And then you need the little cable; we got the little road boom arm, a little filter, the little pop filter and it all plugs into a PreSonus® audio box I-1 with two inputs and then that goes to a headphone jack because we each have a set of headphones. So we got the whole kit for a couple hundred bucks, and then with C.B. going to the Apple store and befriending some musicians and stuff, we were able to get this thing hooked up and finally to a good point where we can use it. And she's now recorded three audio books on all this stuff.

C.B:

And Dan designed and John helped him put up a soundboard. Dan: Oh, it's like a diffuser behind the wall. Yeah. It's, it's basically like little chopped blocks of woods that we hot glued to a big board so that it breaks up the sound, so it doesn't just bounce against the flat wall.

C.B:

We found a little bit of outside noise. We're in Florida; there's a lot of birds. We even have cranes that come walking by and squawking loudly and so forth. So what we wound up doing was putting a sheet of plywood up on the outside of the window to try to diffuse the noise. And then what was that we put on the inside of the window? Dan: Some foam.

C.B:

Some foam. Yeah. Dan: You can't see out the window anymore, but it's much more quiet.

Tony:

Guys, I got one last question here. We've covered a lot of ground. We've covered some great resources to share with our audience throughout this show. And by the way, I used to call my audience visionaries, and my wife was saying that that's just kind of passé. You don't go and say people are visionaries anymore, so we're going to call my audience the Success Squad and see how that plays. We've shared some resources with our Success Squad, and what we like to know, you guys are very successful. You've done so well. What personal habits contribute to your vision success? Dan: Oh my gosh. First of all, I want to know if you copyrighted that Success Squad?

C.B:

You should, yeah.

Tony:

Well, I've announced it on my show, so that's a start, but it'll be copyrighted soon enough before this airs. Dan: Good.

C.B:

First of all, work with each other, and if you get angry or you have a bad session, then forgive each other right away and get back to it. Don't let anything get in the way of your progress. Dan: Yeah. And you know, one of the biggest lessons I learned in graphic design school was to keep pushing yourself because you kind of want to just get the project done and move on to the next and you want to turn stuff out. But if it really matters, you got to take that extra time to make sure that it's really perfect, because nobody is going to look at a book cover or something and think, wow, I bet he spent a lot of time on this. They're just going to figure out if they like it or don't like it within three seconds.

C.B:

We set up two dry erase boards with our goals. What have we accomplished? What do we need to accomplish? And try to keep the goals reasonable and not be expecting more than we could possibly do. Dan: Yeah. And just constant activity. If you're really passionate about it, you won't have a hard time finding time to work on it. Usually what would happen is we would be working on it so much that other stuff would get neglected. So, it's just trying to find a balance and just stay passionate about it and believe in it. I think having someone to help you with it is big. Now we have my wife helping with social media and we got John on board and Mark helps out with a lot of stuff, so now we have a nice full crew go in and it makes a big difference because some things you want to do. The business part is always the hard part. If you just want to write, but then you got to get out and tell people about it and you got to go promote it and you have to do all the "un-fun" stuff. So that's the hard part.

Tony:

I'm going to throw in one last question. There's five of you. There's five here and you're all working and you've built this incredible empire. Do you ever have what's it called? Your offline, no business, just family only time? Dan: We did on Christmas. We went to Disney World. That's about it.

C.B:

Yeah, we went to see the Star Wars. Dan: Movie.

C.B:

Attraction that they set up. Dan: We squeeze it in. We squeeze it in here and there.

Tony:

All right. Once again, we learned how to amplify your DIY dreams with C.B. and Dan Hoffmann, and you can find them at www.cbhoffmann.com. That's C-B-H-O-F-F-M-A-N-N.com, and if you put /how to, you can get some cool DIY downloads, courtesy of C.B. and Dan. Guys, I just had an absolute blast. I barely touched the questions that I wanted. I got the next round of assassinations here. I guess we have to bring you back for some updates.

C.B:

Well, do. We love talking with you. Dan: When is your next season, or how often do you get guests back on?

Tony:

Probably once. I would say once a year-ish. Dan: In our calendar for this day 2021, we'll be back on Tony DUrso.

Tony:

Hit me up later on this year, when you've got a good update and we'll start building and seeing what we can do. Dan: Awesome.

C.B:

That's fantastic.

Tony:

Thank you guys. Once again, I really had a blast. I loved it. Dan: Thank you.

C.B:

We did too. Thank you.

Tony:

Hey, Success Squad. Thanks for hanging out with me while I featured some elite entrepreneurs who took their vision to reality. I hope this was as inspiring for you as it was for me to do this interview. I learned so much about the inner depths of doing audio books and writing books and the covers. And I know I've done some of it, but I haven't done it all myself before. These guys took it all to a whole other level and they became super successful at it. So many great insights. So how did you like it? We talked about amplifying your DIY dreams with C.B. and Dan Hoffmann. For C.B., it started with a dream. She got the beginning and ending lines for her book. From there, she just needed to fill it all in. Then she got a publishing contract, but after her publisher got sick and had to cancel the contract, C.B. felt it was over. Her son, Dan rejuvenated the project and the rest is history. The takeaway here is that when you get bad news or even a cancellation on something of importance, this is when you need to refresh on your vision and your purpose. This is when you need your mentor the most, or a partner or someone who can help guide you. You wouldn't be driving cars now if Ford gave up after the first few failures and he had a ton of them in working out the V-8 engine, for example - a ton. Check it out. When something threatens your dream, remember this, and don't give up, even if it seems you have nowhere to turn. This point is where classics are born. From there, C.B. and Dan went to a multiple of books, audio books, podcasts, and so forth. Impressive! That's the power of having the right mentor or partner. I spoke about my fiction book story earlier, and as I've now made my final decision, here's how it's all going to play out. I'm reissuing the trilogy with a better fitting name that is more accurate, and I'm keeping my name on the book. There are some minor adjustments in this book from the earlier release title of The Good, Bad and Gold. If you read that one, you should read this updated edition before going on to book 2. The new book series is called Ironman of Atlantis. Book one is The Pursuit; book two is Dark Horizons. You'll find the manuscript editions show up on my homepage TonyD-U-R-S-O.com at some point in the not too distant future. And maybe once I'm done getting those out, I may revisit publishing The Princess of Chicon with a historical note of what happened and why I never published it. We'll see. There's so much I got out of this interview. What did you get? I'd love to know how you use this information to help you in your business or career. Feel free to reach out to me. Okay, guys, now grab hold of your vision. Decide you're either going to start something great or take it to the next level. You have to decide first. It always starts with a decision and you can get my Vision Map to help you along the process. The free eBook is at TonyD-U-R-S-O.com, and you can pick up the audio version and the training class too. Highly recommended! I created my empire in just a few years. That's all it took. I had the Vision Map as my guide. You could do it too. Let's help you move on your journey to success. And if you have any Apple device or access to Apple podcasts, please look up my name, Tony D-U-R-S-O and subscribe to my show. A kind review there will get you tremendous appreciation back in return. Thanks, and remember - just take action. Success awaits those who persevere and remain steadfast despite the odds. Sow good seeds, do good deeds and join me on the next episode of the Tony DUrso Show. We hope you've enjoyed this week's edition of the Tony DUrso Show with his key influencers. Be sure to tune in again next Friday at 5:00 PM Eastern time, 2:00 PM. Pacific time on the Voice America Influencers Channel.