Episode description

Jess Lahey can talk about so many things so brilliantly that interviewing her felt a bit like walking through an outlet mall: so many choices and they all look so good!

But really, here's what you need to know: She's a former New York Times columnist and current Atlantic contributor, podcaster and New York Times bestselling author of The Gift of Failure whose new book, The Addiction Inoculation, is the one that the world has been clamoring for. It addresses the question on pretty much every parent's mind at one time or another: how do I prevent my kid from becoming an addict?

Lahey addresses this issue from her own perspective (as a sober woman from an alcoholic family who's taught high schoolers in recovery) but with a reporter's brilliance (coupled with scientific and medical knowledge, with some help, she acknowledges, from her in-house researcher, her husband Dr. Tim Lahey). In short, she's the perfect person to have penned this book and she couldn't have penned it at a more perfect time.

She's also, it turns out, the perfect person to talk to about building a business from a book—particularly if that business includes speaking, podcasting and newsletter writing. She's got tips aplenty for how to get speaking gigs, be booked on huge podcasts and have celebrities endorse your work. But—trigger warning—you'll never again think, "Oh, look how lucky that writer got, I bet it was easy for her." In other words, a sh*tload of work goes into these "lucky breaks," and Jess breaks down every single one.

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