Read and Write with Natasha
This podcast discusses writing life, reviews books, and interviews authors and industry professionals.
Read and Write with Natasha
Doctor-Turned-Author on Suicide and Gen Z's Mental Health Crisis
Join us for a conversation with Dr. Josh McConkey, best-selling author, emergency physician, and military leader.
Hear how his dual roles have shaped his views on addressing Gen Z's mental health challenges, exacerbated by social media pressures.
Dr. McConkey shares insights from his military and medical career on preparing Gen Z for success, emphasizing community involvement and volunteerism to foster resilient leaders.
We also explore his transition from emergency medicine to authorship with his book Be The Weight Behind The Spear, tackling topics like children’s social media use, parental controls, and the nuances of hybrid publishing.
This episode offers a comprehensive look at the digital age's influence on leadership, mental health, and publishing.
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Don't be afraid to fail. You know, failure is not a bad thing if you learn from it. If you continue to fail at the same thing over and over, that's a definition of stupidity. But if you're learning and you're making those changes, there's nothing wrong with going out there and failing.
Speaker 2:Hi friends, this is Read and Write with Natasha podcast. My name is Natasha Tynes and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel I talk about the writing life, review books and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journey, the journey. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha. I have with me today Dr Josh McConkie, who's a best-selling author, emergency physician and military leader with over 22 years of service. He's a devoted father and advocate for leadership. His book Be the Weight Behind the Spear inspires Americans to support the nation's future leaders, reflecting his dedication to community education and family. So, dr Josh, so happy to have you with me here today and thank you for joining me. And so, dr Josh, the first question for me is about your book Be the Weight Behind the Spear. What is the meaning behind the title and what is the book exactly about?
Speaker 1:Well, natasha, first off, thanks for having me on the show, the title of the book. I worked with some special operators in the past. You know the tip of the spear when you talk about individuals. They were, you know, jumping out of helicopters rescuing the Thai children in the cave systems in 2018. Do you remember those kids that were trapped in that cave?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember, yeah, yeah, In Chile.
Speaker 1:It was in Thailand. It was in Thailand.
Speaker 2:Oh, in Thailand, yeah, yeah. That's true, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I can't do those things. I save lives. I don't take them, I'm a doctor but I can be the weight behind the spear. So the title of the book really comes from the best resource that we have in this country. That's our people, coaches, teachers, volunteers and families. That's the weight behind the spear of all of our heroes. You know police officers, firefighters, first responders, you know military. So I want more Americans to engage their communities and starting right in your own community. You know, be the weight behind the spear is my call to action for Americans.
Speaker 2:So how did your work as a physician influence? Or you worked at the ER, correct, correct. How did that influence your book or influence your life in?
Speaker 1:general and your writings. So as an emergency physician, I'm an adrenaline junkie number one, so that's why I chose emergency medicine. A lot of the trauma, a lot of the military things that I've done international medicine as well. But after doing this job for 20, gosh, 20 years, 22 years now I have just seen in the last several years, an increase in mental health crisis in this country.
Speaker 1:So particularly the younger generation of Americans, where I see so much anxiety and depression and seeing more suicides, it gets to you. I mean when you sit down with a family and you have to tell them that their loved one, their son, their daughter, their parent, you know, has died, it really rips your heart out and I decided that I needed to do more. So I mean I can save a lot of lives in the emergency department. I can't save everybody, but I need to get involved more and try to prevent these issues before they become this problem. So getting involved and writing the book it's really attacking the problem that I see in America with the mental health crisis and we need to build this generation up.
Speaker 2:So why do you think this generation I'm assuming it's the Gen Z generation why do you think they suffer from a mental health crisis, as opposed, let's say to I don't know, baby boomers or Gen Xers, or what was the shift?
Speaker 1:So I think the biggest shift that you've seen is this is the generation that has not ever lived a life without an iPhone, without instantaneous information at their fingertips, and that that connectedness that they have with social media, that's out there. Just 24, seven, they, they just have lived a much different world than you know. Like my generation, I'm 47. I'm not an old guy by any means but you. But I was not raised on social media and I didn't have an iPhone for the longest time. I didn't have a cell phone until boy it. I mean they text, it's all. You know FaceTime, you know Facebook, you know Twitter and X and just their form of communication.
Speaker 1:I just noticed, as a military commander as well, I've got a lot of these 18 to 25-year-old individuals and they just the basic communication skills have kind of lacked, just because they've kind of grown up in a different environment.
Speaker 1:And then you take COVID, right. So you just take two to three years that are really critical in their development, right, Like middle school, high school, you know early college, and you just shut them out of society. So you shut them out of their schools, you shut them out of their churches and they already had some of these communication problems anyways. You just compounded that exponentially during COVID. And so now this is the group of individuals that are out there in college looking for work, joining the workforce, that just lack some really basic communication skills and resiliency. So they, you know, I don't want to bash on this generation, they've got lots of positives as well. But, boy, I tell you as an emergency doctor, what I see in the ER and then what I see as a commander for these kids, it's, it's a. There's definitely a problem that needs to be addressed, and that was really the whole purpose of writing the book.
Speaker 2:So there's a you.
Speaker 2:You know I'm a mom of two Gen Zs I've got three, I've got three, so they get a lot of slack as well and criticism for not having good work ethics as opposed to, let's say, gen Xers and others. Do you agree with that? Like every time, I hear that when somebody hires a Gen Z, they always ask for a mental health day. They get triggered easy. I'm just the messenger here, don't shoot me, so they just get triggered easily. All of that, and do you agree with this statement? Or is it the older generation just being jealous of the younger generation?
Speaker 1:Well, you know, it's always the older generations are hey, back in my day, yeah, exactly yeah. But there is definitely a tendency, and as a business owner I've seen it as well. You know they quit in a moment's notice. They don't deal well with any stressful. Well, I won't say any, they just they don't deal as well with stressful situations. They lack resiliency.
Speaker 1:And when you sit them down and you talk to them, I literally had a front desk secretary who had something kind of pop up and she's like hey, I'm going to quit, I need to go do this or this. And I talked to her and say, hey, listen, you know, just as a professional, can you give us at least a two week notice? You know, just just, let us give us two week notice, we need to find a replacement for you. And she's like well, I don't know, I think I just want to quit today. Well, if you do that, I can't give you a letter of reference. Oh, that's okay, I probably wouldn't anyway.
Speaker 1:So she, she bails, and then six months later she comes back and asks for her job back and I, you know, I said, well, number one, I can't give you a letter of recommendation for some other jobs she was looking at. I mean we, you couldn't even give us two week notice. It was really unprofessional. And then she asked for a job back and just pretend like it was there was no problem at all. I listen, you didn't even give us a two week notice, like no, I'm not going to give you your job back. So it's very unique. It's a unique challenge for business owners and leaders and just community members teachers as well. My wife's a teacher, my mom and my aunt were teachers as well. Just retired, and this generation we've got some work to do.
Speaker 2:So are you worried? I mean, this is the generation that's going to be. You know, the new leaders, the new CEOs, the new presidents. This is the generation that's going to be. You know, the new leaders, the new CEOs, the new presidents. How bleak is the future.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm so yeah, I'm so concerned that I wrote a book. You know it's been the first book that I've written and you know, as a commander and as an emergency doctor, I have plenty of things to keep me busy. But I felt strongly enough about this that I wrote a book and I've diagnosed the problem and here's the prescription to treat it. So I'm trying.
Speaker 2:What is the prescription to treat it?
Speaker 1:Getting involved as early as possible, so it can mean something different for everybody. Like everybody has special gifts, all right. Some people just love animals. Go volunteer at the animal shelter. That animal can become an emotional support animal for somebody. Some people love music. Get out there and share your music with your world. Music can be very powerful.
Speaker 1:The arts for me I coached, so I did literally t-ball and some baseball when my kids when they were growing up, and then coached so I did literally a tee ball and some baseball when my kids when they were growing up, and then coached soccer as well. Or or volunteer in your schools or your churches. There's so many different nonprofit organizations out there as well. You know I've I've started a nonprofit organization that wait behind the spear foundation. You know, trying to take this book to the next level and get out there for community action, promote volunteerism and really right now we're helping.
Speaker 1:Western North Carolina had a lot of destruction from Hurricane Helene. There's so many opportunities to get out there. Everybody has something to give. So that's how you start. The business leaders, the more business leaders that I've talked with. This is your problem, whether you know it or not, and most of them know it by now. You're hiring these kids, you're working with these kids, you're trying to train this generation Getting involved when they're younger just like coaching a baseball team or soccer and just instill some of these skills before they get to you. You're much better off the earlier you start.
Speaker 2:So you're saying, by them volunteering or doing community work, they would be prepared for the real world. Is that where you're going?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely so, the more that you can teach accountability and ownership and just resiliency. There is a tendency in some of the parents in the younger generations here you've heard of the helicopter parents and they're just hovering all the time. And now you see more lawnmower parents, where it doesn't do the child any good by removing every obstacle in their path. That doesn't help them. That in fact hurts them, because they don't know how to overcome those obstacles later in life when you're not there to mow that lawn in front of them.
Speaker 1:I've got three kids of my own, so my oldest will be 14 here in January. I've got twin 12-year-olds and I'm not a perfect parent by any means, but I know we're working the best that we can to try to prepare our children for success and letting them make some mistakes just very simple things. So if you have children or you're part of a family everyone has a family make that time to just sit down and have some family dinner. Sounds real easy, sounds real simple. Just find that time a couple of times a week, three, four days a week just sit down, have family dinner. Slow things down.
Speaker 1:It lets your kids know that number one, that they're important enough for you to take that time and then you ask them about their day, simple things like what went well, what didn't go well. You know, could you have made some different decisions in that day to and it would have affected the outcome? You know that's how they learn. They have to make those mistakes but they know they can come home and they can talk with their parents and in a very caring environment. It helps promote their own independence. It builds, you know, their personal well-being, like who they are as a person, and it helps build confidence for them to go out there and tackle some things. And you know, don't be afraid to fail. You know, failure is not a bad thing if you learn from it. If you continue to fail at the same thing over and over, that's a definition of stupidity. But if you're learning and you're making those changes, there's nothing wrong with going out there and failing.
Speaker 2:And how would that make them more resilient?
Speaker 1:So learning how to when you've made recognize, when you've made mistakes or when you you. You can't control everyone around you. You can only control yourself. There's just kind of some mean nasty people out there.
Speaker 1:My business in 2018, I owned a freestanding emergency department and the CEO was just a very, very not nice individual. We hired a forensic accountant. We found a bunch of money that he was embezzling. He was just doing all kinds of bottom line. He did lots and lots of nasty things. I lost $5 million and I take ownership of that.
Speaker 1:Hey, listen, I didn't vet him enough. Don't get into business with people that you don't trust 100%. And then the big lesson was don't be a minority shareholder in Texas unless you really trust your business partner. So he was a majority shareholder, tried to bankrupt us. He did a lot of mean, nasty, nasty things. But you know, if I didn't have some resiliency skills and, like my family, my faith and friends and I, just all I cared about was money I would have been in a really bad situation there. But you have to learn how to overcome things and life is not a happy, shiny place. You know. I've served in the military as well. I've seen a lot of horrible, terrible things death and destruction and it took me a while to recover after I served in Iraq. It was really hard, but those resiliency skills are very, very important and you don't know how to respond to those situations unless you've had other situations to compare that to. So if you don't give your children any adversity and let them make mistakes, a lot of them are going to crumble.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I'm not sure if you heard about what? There's this news last week so Australia banned social media use for people under 16, I think, and so they just signed this into law. So anybody in Australia who's under 16 cannot use into law. So anybody who's in Australia who's under 16 cannot use social media.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we lived in Australia. We were there in 2020, 2021. We lived where we are, in Adelaide. So I still have a lot of friends and colleagues down there. And the American Academy of Pediatrics is very clear Social media use for children below 16 is very detrimental to their development, just when every little ping, every ding, the brain isn't really set up to deal with that type of dopamine stimulation. So, under age 16, for sure, some even raising that age to 18. Now, I'm not a real big fan of federal government intervention, kind of telling parents how they should or shouldn't be parenting. I think that's probably better left to parents to make that decision. My kids don't have social media and they will not be having social media probably until they're out of the house. We'll probably expose them some, but just some of ours so they understand it. But it's not really safe for their development. But I don't know if the best answer is having the governments make that decision for you. That's some parental decisions, you know.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I'm going to just play the devil's advocate and talk from the perspective of the kids. So the kids? These days, they don't talk via text. Most of them send DMs via Snapchat or Instagram. So, even if they're not on social media, this is how they interact. So if we cut all social media from some of them, if we cut all social media from some of them, aren't you worried that they might feel isolated from the rest of their friends' community? Because this is how they plan their outings, this is how they interact, this is how, while in the past I grew up in the 80s we used to go play outside, and this is how they have these conversations via DMs, via Snapchat, via whatever. So isolating them from this kind of social interaction, would it also have an effect on them?
Speaker 1:Because we're kind of rejecting the communications tool of the day. That is certainly a great point and I know I've talked with my pediatrician for our of the day by. Yeah, yeah, you know that that is a certainly a great point and I know I've talked with my pediatrician, you know, for for our children about those yeah, and so that sense of connectedness, I mean that's their, their perception, is their reality right yeah so the big question would be how do you, what do you define a social media correct?
Speaker 1:I mean, is, is, is, is the cell phone and and FaceTime? Is that social media? Now, I mean so whatever they're using to communicate with one another. I mean, does that fall under the realm of whatever law they set in Australia? I don't know, I haven't physically read that law yet. You know, when you isolate them completely, you know that's only being able to further exacerbate the anxiety, the depression and those mental health issues. So you need to have. It's different than my generation, but that's their generation's communication tool. So I don't know if you can lump some of those just communication tools into social media. Where do you draw?
Speaker 2:the line.
Speaker 1:That's why when governments get involved and start doing things like that, well, who's defining it and who's making that decision? Yeah I would much rather that be the parent than you know some federal administrator somewhere yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that's like because for our kids we have like certain restrictions on their phone, you know time. Yeah, we do the time out, you know, the app, yeah, the time out, all of that, and everyone's why they ask for like more time, and we either either have to.
Speaker 1:Our kids at 4.30 are just like just waiting, Like just the clock is ticking, Like oh, it's 4.30. You know we can start talking with our friends and things again, but we've been. We just got off of Thanksgiving break so they had the overload of the iPad, so it's time to get back to school.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. I mean, these are one of the things that I, like I, I grapple with is is is the same discussion we have about AI and we're scared of AI, but at the same thing is, you know, when electricity was invented, people were scared of electricity. Like, there's this, this story of a president, us president I forgot his name he was too scared to turn off, uh, to turn on and off the lights to do that, because they the worry of being, um, electrocuted, right? So I think it's, it's a line that we have to like tread carefully whether to ban it completely and then kind of isolate them completely from the social interaction, the social growth and also the dangers that come with it. As parents and educators, how do you think we should maneuver this kind of tricky situation?
Speaker 1:Yeah, those are just questions that are best answered by the parent. I don't generally want the federal government telling me much of anything. I'm not a big fan of the federal government telling people what to do.
Speaker 2:All right, yep, north Carolina, of course, all right. So, okay, so the book. How did you publish the book? What was your publishing journey like?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had started from zero, knew absolutely nothing, and used Wisdom House Publishers. They're a hybrid publishing company in Chapel Hill and so they kind of walked me through that, but it was kind of self-publishing slash hybrid publishing on that and then they just put the marketing and boy the editing and then just with the marketing and boy the editing, I had a lot to learn. I'm a good writer, I could always be better, but the editors did a fantastic job so I had two great editors for that book. So just learning that process, yeah, it was a very cool learning process.
Speaker 2:How long did it take you to finish the book and what was your writing routine like?
Speaker 1:So it took me about a year and a half, you know, from start to finish, and then editing after that. And for me I travel a lot for work as an emergency physician. So when I travel was the time where I would be writing the most. At home things are pretty hectic. During the day, I mean when the kids are at school, I can certainly get some things done. I'm working on a screenplay and I have some ideas on some children's books right now but it's hard to get things done when I'm at home. There's just too much to do. So a lot of my work was done on the road. So I traveled for the military, I traveled as an emergency physician and I did most of my writing when it was kind of quiet and by myself. I felt that was my best writing.
Speaker 2:And so what are you working on? You mentioned a screenplay. Can you tell us a bit about it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I have a fun screenplay right now. I don't want to talk too much about it, trying to keep that under wraps. And then with the children's book, I'm working on turning this book into a children's book series. You know how do you talk with children about integrity and accountability and leadership. Well, we're going to kind of break them down. Each of those will get their own book and we'll talk about it. You know, get some fun illustrations and you know, I think that there's a good market out there for that. I think a lot of parents really struggle on how they teach some of those you know simple, you know skills to their kids and, uh, hopefully, this is this is something that will help and and what made you decide to become an author?
Speaker 2:I mean, you're a doctor, you serve in the army. How did you kind of switch your mindset to become an author? What was the trigger?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean the trigger is seeing the anxiety, the depression, the suicide. As a military commander. These kids are really struggling. I felt that writing a book and getting some ideas out there as a start, doing nothing was not an option. So just going to work every day and pretending like everything's okay and watching another suicide and just doing the same thing over and over was not the answer. So what can I do different or what can I do to help contribute to fixing this problem? And that's why I wrote the book. So I just had a long talk with my wife and you know she's she definitely has all the great ideas and you know, just doing nothing was not an option. So this is this is me doing something.
Speaker 2:What is the root cause of suicide and is the suicide you're talking about mostly among Gen Zs or in general?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and unfortunately it hits all walks of life, all socioeconomic status, all ages Gosh. When you see it in some younger kids you see a lot of suicidal ideations. You know kids that come in. I've had a few. I don't think I haven't personally seen one younger than about 13 or 14, but it's it's. It's terrible, you know it's.
Speaker 1:There's a stigma attached with mental health that that's unnecessary. I mean it's just like any other disease process. It doesn't matter how big you are or strong you are or you're a special forces operator and you have just your toughest nails with mental and physical capabilities above anyone else on the planet. They still have suicides. Everybody has a breaking point. Life happens, things happen. I mean you lose a loved one or a spouse, or there's a car accident or a drunk driver kills somebody that you love. Everybody has a breaking point. It doesn't matter how much money you make or where you come from. So it's really important to address those issues and talk about it and let people know what those resources are.
Speaker 1:I take a tremendous amount of pride as an emergency physician, being that stopgap. People come in when they're at their wit's end and they don't know what to do. You know I take a lot of pride in being part of that safety net. You know, for the country and I've worked overseas as well Australia, new Zealand. I even have, I have, an Irish medical license. You know I haven't worked in Ireland yet, but you know it's, it's, it's. It's a terrible disease and I've seen, unfortunately, just what I do as a career. I see a lot of it, so I see people kind of in their worst moments and try to help where I can.
Speaker 2:So among younger kids, is online bullying, or bullying at school, one of the main reasons for suicide. I mean, that's at least what I've been reading.
Speaker 1:You would. Definitely the online bullying and then that social media. You know there's lots of positives to it, but that's definitely one of the negatives. When I was a kid growing up, to bully somebody you had to walk up to them, punch them in the nose, ask them for their lunch money. Now they can be bullied 24-7.
Speaker 1:And when you say, when I've said, you know, perception is a reality for these kids, that's all they know, you know. So in that generation that's been raised with that, that's their reality, that's their world, and for me it's like, hey, it's some Yahoo online. It doesn't mean anything. Well, for them it does, and it's just they can't get away from it. And then more kids pile in on it.
Speaker 1:And I've seen and my wife's a teacher and administrator in school now and you'll see how, how easy someone can just try to make someone's life hell. You know, just online you get a couple of kids band them together and you know kids can be be pretty mean. You know, uh, you know, when I was a kid, you know you're making fun of people that have different disabilities or come from different walks of life, and I grew up in a really rural small town, I mean now they can just jump online and just you know what you see. All these twitter trolls like these people that post just horrific things online. I can't imagine anybody would walk up to someone's face and say that, but if you're online and you start typing on a keyboard, like people say the most horrific things, like my goodness so yeah that's, that's their reality.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned that they're like the positive aspect or attributes of Gen Z, or their strengths. What are their strengths and what makes them different than other generation? And if they want to play to their strengths, what makes them different?
Speaker 1:Embracing technology.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:You know All these new changes. This is what they've grown up with and known, and there's a chapter in my book that I titled Confidence of Youth. And what youth brings to the table is you get these 40 and 50-year-old executives and business leaders tend to be a little bit stuck in their ways, and who you are as a person and who you are as a leader is really predicated upon the last 20 or 30 years of your life, right? You can't just kind of change how you think at that age, and so when you have someone these young when you take the US space race is the example I used so in the 1960s the average age in mission control for NASA, the team that put man on the moon was 27 years old.
Speaker 1:That's mind boggling, I mean, today you have some engineers at least in their 30s, if not their 40s, but they can tackle tasks that they don't know can't be done. So you give me a task at 47 years old and I've probably seen that fail a couple of times and I'm going to be jaded by that. You sometimes lose that objectivity where a younger generation, they don't know that they're not supposed to be able to do it, and so the biases aren't there Sometimes that lack of that fear of failure? You know they just jump right into it. So that's a very positive thing and that type of thought process literally put man on the moon. It was like a bunch of 27-year-old kids in mission control. That was the average age. It's mind-boggling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what's the average age now at NASA?
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't know, I'm going to venture to guess it's higher than 27. I'm going to take a guess. I bet it's in the 30s.
Speaker 2:Oh okay, Interesting what?
Speaker 1:caused the shift, do you think? Oh, just well, you know, in the 1960s, I mean, nasa was very new. I mean there wasn't anybody that could have been in space engineering for more than a couple of years, right, so everything was very new. And there was a gentleman named Steve Bales who was basically an engineer that manned the computer systems, and computers were extremely new. I mean, we have more computing power in our phones that we hold in our hands today than put man on the moon in those projects. So you know, the technology didn't exist for anybody older than that to have any experience with it whatsoever, and so obviously we're now we're like 50, 60 years past that time now. So I would imagine it's probably a much more aged population that has that experience. But the 1960s nobody had it, just these young kids coming straight out of college. So that probably had a lot to do with it.
Speaker 2:Okay, I want to go back to the book. What was the reaction that you got from the book after you published it?
Speaker 1:It's been a very positive reaction. I've been very pleasantly surprised because you really put your heart and soul into something and you want to make a difference. I mean, nobody spends a whole year and a half of their life to write a book just for the fun of it. I'm sure there are there's some very artistic people out there, but I was doing it with a purpose and you throw it out there and you hope people care and they have.
Speaker 1:So there's been several awards already independent press, nonfiction writers association. Um, there's a New York city big book award. Um, it's, it's been a very, um, a very positive response. It's now, you know, award-winning bestselling. You know it was an Amazon bestseller hit number one. So I I've been very fortunate, I feel very blessed and it's something I really believed in and put a lot of time into it and it feels very good that people have cared. So I've been approached by a lot of people that have read the book at a lot of events, have done some book signings and they've talked with their kids or they've had their kids read it and, yeah, I've been very, very happy.
Speaker 2:Congrats. So how did you market the book? What is your best marketing advice for someone who wants to publish a book?
Speaker 1:And yeah, yeah, so that's something else that I learned, almost completely on my own and using some of the resources. So you know you can always start off with Facebook and Instagram. I've had a lot more success with Amazon, so using their advertising resources. And then IngramSpark, who is the printer for the book.
Speaker 1:So IngramSpark has some great resources. So I started doing and had the best results as far as sales with using the IngramSpark. And they do Facebook and Google advertising that goes through there. They have like three or four different services. They do some mailers and some emails. You know Kirkus Reviews had done some through there as well. So there's lots of different avenues to go through. You know, being very careful, though there's as soon as you put a book out there's a lot of almost predatory, you know services out there you can tell they're just being money grabs. So those services I had the best results with.
Speaker 2:Did you hire anyone to help you with the marketing?
Speaker 1:I did. There was a couple of individuals I hired after going to a book fair. That was very helpful. So there's a book camp that's put out every year Gabby Olczak I'll put a shout out for them. Ted and Gabby Olczak did a great job and I knew nothing about any of the marketing until I'd gone to that book camp. So if people want to Google that, that was a great course where I just kind of learned about the whole process, learned how to do an audio book as well. So we got the audiobook out with acx and uh, and now we have uh, we've got the ebook and the audiobook. So, yeah, so it was a learning process, though I mean, like I'm a doctor, you know I'm not uh, I was never an author, so it was a first-time author. There was, there was lost alert great.
Speaker 2:So for anyone who's listening or watching, how can they reach you if they want to buy your book? Get in touch with you. How can they reach you If they want to buy your book? Get in touch with you.
Speaker 1:How can they reach you. Yeah, books available on Amazon, barnes and Noble, the audio book, anywhere you can buy books. It's on there. And specifically, you can go to my website, weightbehindthespearcom, so W-E-I-G-H-T. Weightbehindthespearcom.
Speaker 2:Great. Well, thank you so much, dr Josh, for joining us today and for anyone who's listening or watching. Thank you for joining us for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha and until we meet again.
Speaker 1:Natasha, thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 2:Thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, natasha Tynes. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time. Happy reading, happy writing.
