What better topic for a podcast just days before Halloween? We talk with Ghostwriter, Jeff Wuorio. Jeff has planned his life almost from the get-go. His early career took him from college days in Maine, through Colorado to Oregon where he wrote for Money magazine and other outlets. Fatherhood was an epiphany that caused him to decide to be more present in his children's lives, and move back to Maine. Twenty-five plus years later, Jeff left the business of writing articles and moved into books. While he has written a few of his own, he delights in ghost writing and hopes to continue well into the future. Listen to Jeff tell his story and talk about writing other people's stories. Learn more about Changing The Rules, the podcast, at www.theluckiestpeopleintheworld.com
Reach Jeff Wuorio at jeffwuorio.com
TRANSCRIPT
Diane Dayton 0:03
This is Changing the Rules. A podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted by KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world.
KC Dempster 0:14
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Changing the Rules. I'm KC Dempster, and I'm here with my co host Ray Loewe in beautiful downtown Woodbury, New Jersey. And we're bringing you a show called Changing the Rules because we believe that the luckiest people in the world change the rules to fit the life they want to live. And one of the ways that they decide what they want in their life is by constantly exploring new things. And that's why we're bringing interesting people with interesting lives to our podcast to expose our listeners and luckiest people in the world to new ideas and new people. So good morning, Ray.
Ray Loewe 0:53
The morning, I'm here I'm almost awake even. So anyway, this is going to be an interesting day because Jeff Wuorio, our guest today is a person who always used to interview us. All right, Jeff. Jeff, we met years ago when he was working for Money magazine. And we were talking at that time about college and how to pay for college. And so Jeff, are you there?Say Hi,
Jeff Wuorio 1:21
I am indeed.
Ray Loewe 1:22
Hi. Okay. Well, let you say more in a couple minutes. But, but we met Jeff, way back when Jeff was in the process of thinking about college at that time, he's since put his kids through college. And now the subject has changed. And Jeff is certainly one of these luckiest guys in the world. Okay, because he certainly has designed his own life the way he wants to design it. And he comes up with some other traits too. I think that he's committed to using his talents regardless of what his age is going to be. He has this knack for following what's fascinating and motivating to him. And he gets enlivened by talking to interesting people. And he's very definitely one of the luckiest people in the world. So Jeff, welcome to Changing the Rules.
Jeff Wuorio 2:17
And thank you for having me
Ray Loewe 2:19
and and Jeff, you're sitting where? today, let's make everybody jealous.
Jeff Wuorio 2:25
Okay, I'm sitting in beautiful downtown, such as it is Buxton Maine, which is about 10 miles from the Atlantic eight miles from Portland and 15 miles or so from Sebago lake. So it's a it's a nice little part of the world.
KC Dempster 2:43
Have you had snow yet?
Jeff Wuorio 2:46
We are supposed to get snow Friday. Oh, my first.
KC Dempster 2:50
Yeah, my sympathies.
Ray Loewe 2:53
Oh, come on snow. in Maine is beautiful.
Jeff Wuorio 2:58
Yeah. And like I say, if it knows, you're taking by surprise or upset when you move here, you really were not paying attention.
KC Dempster 3:05
Indeed, indeed. Just snow is always beautiful for the first 24 hours. That's my opinion. And then after that I want it gone.
Ray Loewe 3:15
So let's talk about your adventure here. Because you've been in Maine now for about how long in your life? How many years?
Jeff Wuorio 3:24
Well, I went to school here, then moved around a fair amount when my children were in both my children who were born in Oregon when I was living out there, and we moved back here, I would say 25 some years ago, give or take a year or so. But that would be a rough estimate. So we've been, you know, at three years of college 25 years living here 28 all tolled?
Ray Loewe 3:50
Wow. Okay, so you made a conscious decision to do this and, and you're one of the very few people that I know that actually made this decision early in life because you had a plan. Okay, so I think you were telling us earlier that you wanted your children to grow up in Maine. And so tell us a little bit about this decision that you made and how you implemented it, because I met you when you were doing Money Magazine stuff and now you got a different life and and we'll get into that different life but talk a little bit about how you consciously made the decision to move move to Maine.
Jeff Wuorio 4:28
Well, it almost follows a script to a certain extent. When I graduated from school, I worked briefly here in Maine for a couple of years and then events did what they did, and I left Maine and of course being the wise 24 some year old but I wasn't saying I'm never coming back here. And and I was fortunate to live in a number of places I lived in Colorado lived in Oregon. But you know, as I grew older and had we had the children You really begin to think about, you know, where, where you'd really like to have them grow up and what your priorities are. And so I talked to my wife and I said, you know, just, I really have this idea that you'd be much happier back in Maine, we were living in a large city, and you know, all the pluses and cons to large city. And we just decided, you know what, let's go. So we, you know, moved, you know, I think my son was two, I think my daughter, his daughter was even one yet. So, it was a long car ride from Oregon to here, needless to say, so. But it has worked out beautifully. Because working from home, I was able to see my kids grow up. And, and they became so accustomed to, you know, dad being there sort of thing that was a wonderful, and, you know, unusual experience, given that a lot of you parents really don't see that much of their children that their careers, keep them away from the house. And a quick story about that, when we were moving back here, we stopped at a park in I think, somewhere up in upper New York State, for lunch, you know, we were eating and my son, being a three year old, immediately hooked up with another three year old boys up at the park, and they were running in good time. And all of a sudden, by Sunday, he turned to him and he said, Hey, where's your dad? And this kid looked at him like he had 10 heads. He said, what do you mean, where's my dad? Yeah, where's your dad? And he said, Well, he said, work, of course. And right, then I was struck by the fact that Nathan did not know anything else. In terms of the fact that he thought all fathers were at home. All fathers were there to make grilled cheese sandwiches upon demand kind of thing. And, and it was, it was really an epiphany for me, that I valued in that, you know, his experience was out of the ordinary, but so meaningful and so wonderful to him. And to me, that really stuck struck, it really stuck out when some other child said, You know, I have no idea what you're talking about, What do you mean, you lose your dad kind of thing in the middle of the day? So we've been here for 28 years, it's worked out beautifully. And no one knows no, we'll stay for a while longer.
KC Dempster 7:25
I think you had to set some ground rules though when you were working from home, didn't you say?
Jeff Wuorio 7:30
Oh, yeah. Initially, they thought it was kind of like carte blanche of Okay, that can be talking to Mr. Ray Loewe on the phone, interviewing him about scholarships, and how to search out, you know, bargains for college, and they could just march into my office. And usually, with some form of focused intent upon me to do something. And so eventually, we worked out a system where I read somewhere else, somebody had done this, and I have this great idea that, you know, I posted a notepad and a pen outside my office door. And then I sat them both down, that's it, okay. unless somebody's arm is just dangling by a thread, because they just been severed by a chainsaw, or there's a huge mushroom cloud in the distance, do not bother me, write it down, we'll cover it later. And they, and they learn and they and they adopted that, that very readily. So it all worked out very nicely. Because you know, at first it was a little rough. And I said, you know, you just can't keep coming in here and doing this, you know, the, what dad does? puts the clothes on your back, food on the table roof over your head. So kind of honor that dynamic a little bit.
Ray Loewe 8:47
Okay, so we hear from a lot of people about the problem of they don't have enough time to spend with their kids, they're working too hard. They're there, they're working for somebody else here add their time is not their own. And here, you made a conscious decision. And I get the feeling that the decision was lifestyle first and professional second, but that didn't stop your professional career. Is that pretty young, pretty true?
Jeff Wuorio 9:16
Fairly true. For the most part, yeah, I never lost sight of my profession or my professional goals. But there was definitely an element of you know, it's not all or nothing one way or the other. I really did not want to have that kind of out of balance kind of arrangement. So eventually, what happened was, I was doing freelance work with various publications Money, included things like that, and out of the blue. Somebody said, Have you ever ghostwritten the book? And I said, Well, no, no really ghost written a couple of books on my own, but that never ghost written a book. And they said, Well, we have this client is coming in. He's working for with john Wiley and associates in New York. And we'd like you to meet him and see if he could probably do this. And I think you know, but the heck, I'll try everything once. And we did the book, it worked out beautifully. And I began to think that more and more, I wanted to be a ghostwriter. Because for a number of reasons. First of all, I always like the book length size projects, because you can really immerse yourself in the material and really get into into some very, very significant issues. And I did is because like that kind of depth, and also to is that by ghostwriting, I've been fortunate to meet some absolutely remarkable people, some of the smartest people I've ever met some of the most talented people I've ever met some of the most provocative people I've ever met. And just just the proximity of that of capturing their voices in their books by ghostwriting has just been such an enormous experience for me, just like I say, and I really mean this, I probably learned something new every day. And I don't know many jobs where you can really honestly say that, so I became a full time ghostwriter about 25 some years ago. And right now I'm working on my 29th book, most of which is been ghostwritten. And it's been an absolute blast. If nothing else, but proximity to great minds and great thoughts. And all I have to keep saying to myself with some of these people, I remember once interviewing a Nobel Prize winner, and I kept saying Wuorio, just anything stupid. I mean, just once. And this guy, he was the sweetest guy, he wouldn't have said, you know, he's never said anything about, Oh, that's a dumb question or anything like that. But just being that close to those, those kind of minds and feel and feeling the wheels turning was just so rewarding and so uplifting, that it's been a great ride.
Ray Loewe 12:06
Okay, so you you list on your website, you and I get a kick out of this. You have ghostwriter down there, but you have manuscript mechanic down there. That sounds ominous. Now Do you still write freelance articles for places are you pretty much all in the ghost writing business at this point?
Jeff Wuorio 12:24
It's all it's all booked length now. You know, given the dynamics of the industry, freelancing for sure the pieces is getting tougher and tougher. And, you know, fortunately, I've gotten to that point in my career where, you know, one or two projects, and the finances take care of themselves, which is nice. So, and again, I prefer it I like the idea of really, those deep dives into topics that you know, shorter pieces don't often afford you the opportunity to do so. So it's it's pretty much book length work for the ghostwriting clients right now,
KC Dempster 13:03
what were a couple of the more interesting topics that you've worked on.
Jeff Wuorio 13:09
Well, there Boy, that's like saying, which one is your favorite children?
KC Dempster 13:15
Well, whichever ones in the room is what that is.
Jeff Wuorio 13:20
Yeah, or, or is writing on the piece of paper somewhere that it's posted outside the door? Well, I go through the book for an NFL quarterback came out just recently, which was absolutely fascinating about his upbringing and his, his development as a person as well as an athlete, which was absolutely amazing. Several years ago, I did a piece for a futurist, or rather a book for a futurist, where he teaches a very, very pragmatic empirical system for anticipating future events. Which I won't go into detail now. But if you read the book, you say, Wow, this isn't peering into the crystal ball kind of thing. There's a really a rhyme and method to, to understanding this. So I've worked with business people, I've worked with athletes, I'm now negotiating a new contract, to write a memoir for a chef who counts himself among Wolfgang Puck protegees. So that would be that'll be a lot of fun. And again, too just it's, it's wonderful to be able to take on a number of topics because basically, I consider myself sort of like the reader is sort of like this blank slate. If somebody comes to me with a book idea, or you know, let's say the chef is going to be talking about some very involved cooking things that I don't understand. It's helpful for me not to know a whole lot about that because in conveying that I tried To make it clear that, you know, you know, not everyone understands what this is. And the challenge means that if I understand it, we can convey that clarity to the reader. So. And at the end, I, oh, I learned something that I hadn't known before. And as I said, it's been the landscape changes every day. And that's fun for me. There's, there's very little routine and a lot of ways, which is nice.
Ray Loewe 15:27
Ya know, what, what fascinates me is your thinking here, because you plan this more than most. I mean, it's, it's got to be hard for somebody to sit down and say, Well, I'm going to move to Maine, and I'm going to make my career blossom the way I wanted to do that. And yet, this is what you've largely done. Okay. Give us some of the thinking in there. What are some of the the the times when you were concerned, maybe that you made the right decision? What are some of the guidelines that you would give to other people who might want to do this? Because I think you're dealing you're living kind of an idyllic life. I mean, you're obviously one of the luckiest people in the world here. And it's because you've set the ground rules the way you want them, you didn't put up with other people's rules here, you made them work for you. So what are some of your thinking?
Jeff Wuorio 16:20
Well, one thing that I learned, that I would urge others to do is that if there's a significant transition that they would like to make, say, either a different career or a different location, especially if it's a location where you've never lived, have a fallback, and give it a trial period, six months to be probably a year or so just to get your feet wet, because the experience versus the planning, you know, often don't come to meet at the same point. And it's really important to have that, you know, that safety valve as it were of, Okay, I can always go back to doing this, or we can always move back to where we were that kind of thing. But, you know, I guess one thing that we did was to say, okay, not only in terms of just monitoring our own personal satisfaction, happiness, all four of us to say, okay, in a year or two, you know, I'd like our income to be x, that kind of thing. And again, if that doesn't work out, we can we can tackle that then. But it was a benchmark for financial security, to to know, okay, this is our goal in terms of the finances of doing this. And the other thing that I made clear on are really emphasized was to keep the lines of communication open amongst the family, and say, Okay, how is this going? How are you? You know, how are you comfortable? Are you making friends? How's school? How's your new job Judy, my wife, that kind of thing, because I didn't want to have sort of this burning? Why did we ever leave Oregon, had a great job, a great home, I had all these friends, things like that. But I wanted to elicit you know, that kind of feedback, just to make sure that nobody was hiding, and an unpleasant reaction or feedback that they didn't want to share. But were nonetheless experiencing it. So those were basically all we really had in mind. We were fortunate in that, you know, we did move back to a place where I had a semblance of having lived here before, albeit in college, which is not exactly the real world. But you know, at least a sense of logistics of where things were, and things of that nature, which made it easier to so that might be another one too, is that you get to get to know the place a bit before you make a decision in terms of proximity to you know, the quality of schools, proximity to health care, public transportation, things like that. And as you know, as we get older, you know, my wife and I think about those things more much more so than we did, you know, 20-30 years ago, but just just the lay of the land is good to know. So you you have a sense of where things are even if you're brand new, and and be sure to I guess the other thing that we did this is a Be sure to enjoy the experience and don't expect it all to go smoothly. That was I was gonna say, Is there gonna be some bumps in the road here, you know? And per KC's comment about snow. I remember the first year that we were here when the children who are native Oregonians had never seen snow before. It was thrilling and they first come down and then by then by February, we're all doing our jack nicholson impressions
Ray Loewe 19:58
Okay, so so You know, congratulations on achieving what many, many people would love to do, but you're not done yet. Because Where are you going? Okay. Do you see an end to this? I mean, you know, is there an end to ghostwriting? Or is this something you do for the rest of your life? With no time limit?
Jeff Wuorio 20:20
I'm not sure yet, I guess, if it ever starts to strike me as if the spark isn't there anymore in terms of my engagement to the material and the enjoyment of meeting these people, it's not so much financial, it's more experiential in terms of is does it still feel special to do this kind of thing. And right now, it still does. And I don't foresee that changing immediately in the short term future. So and, and I'm person who needs to work, I know that for a fact, I'm my father's son in the you know, sitting on the rock sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch for me, I'll start having extended conversations with the dog pretty soon as I do
KC Dempster 21:09
Thant might not be so bad.
Ray Loewe 21:13
There's one other comment that you made. And and you said that there are a lot of people that have stories to tell the know it
Jeff Wuorio 21:25
very much. So the biggest problem as it goes, but it's interesting to meet certain people, and you start to categorize them, there are people who, it's just a pure vanity project in terms of this is a story that the world has been clinging to, it's thumbs hanging from a window waiting to hear kind of vanity to you know, somebody who's more defined. And so Jeff, I think I have something to share and things like that. But the biggest problem is somebody who says, I think I have a story, but I'm not sure if it's going to be interesting or not. And inevitably, when I talk to these people, even if they don't write a book, they knew like, but yes, you have more to share and say, than perhaps give yourself credit for because it's not surprising, because when we look at ourselves, it's so insular, in terms of, you know, what we're, how self aware we are, as it were. And, you know, I think a lot of people have a lot more to saying that, you know, it might take a book, it might might take an article, it might take a short story, things like that. But I think people have a lot more to share. And I think you know, it's healthier for everyone's, the more we share,
Ray Loewe 22:44
and and when you can't figure out how to get it done. That's when you call somebody like Jeff, and, Jeff, give us your website. We're gonna post this in our meeting notes. We're just about out of time over here. But how do people reach you?
Jeff Wuorio 22:59
Well, they can reach me at my website is www dot Jeff Wuorio jeffwuorio.com. And there, you can send me an email. And there's a telephone number and everything like that. And I'll look forward to hearing from somebody who, if nothing else, I love to talk about people's ideas, and turn into a project and meet more interesting people.
Ray Loewe 23:26
And Jeff, you are one of the luckiest people in the world. And thank you so much for sharing your experience with us and our, our listeners. And it's time to go so Casey, what's gonna happen next week?
KC Dempster 23:38
Oh, we have we're going to be talking with an amazing woman who has again another fascinating story to tell. So tune in, and have a great week.
Ray Loewe 23:48
And Thanks, Jeff, and thanks for listening to us.
Diane Dayton 23:52
Thank you for listening to Changing the Rules, a podcast designed to help you make your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on Changing the Rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.