$uccess, an interview with Bill and Mary Staton
Bill and Mary Staton, founders of The Staton Institute®, are interviewed by the Charlotte Observer, (March 2004) about their book, Worry-Free Family Finances.
Couple say their two writing styles made for better book
Bill and Mary Staton of Charlotte started work on a book aimed at demystifying family finance three years ago. Bill is a certified financial advisor. Since 1990, Mary Staton has been editing her husband's financial newsletter, which he started writing in 1985. Last fall, the Statons' book, "Worry-Free Family Finances," was published by The McGraw-Hill Cos. Inc. The Statons recently spoke with Observer writer Amy Baldwin.
Bill: Mary and I talked about rather than writing a normal financial book, why don't we boil it down to as few words as possible. We came up with: Save more. Give more. Invest wisely.
Mary: I have a journalism background. He's more of a storyteller and I am more of a news writer. So, we do have different styles of writing, but we are very compatible. We just kind of had to blend our styles while working on the book. He would write stuff and I would edit it. I would write things and he would look at it. The biggest challenge was getting organized. We had so much stuff.
Bill: It was sloppy.
Mary: The first envelope we sent off to the publisher I'm surprised they didn't just say, "Eek, forget it." We just thought it was pretty well organized but we discovered it wasn't. So we did a lot of rewriting.
Bill: People are so busy today. There's so much information, and they're inundated with stuff about finances. We just wanted to make something that was simple, that you could pick up and read a short chapter and get something out of it.
Mary: Most people are intimidated by money. The turning point in (publishing) the book was first of all having a great literary agent. (One of Bill's clients, Jim Cathcart, who's a professional speaker and author of "The Acorn Principle" and "Relationship Selling," introduced the Statons to California-based agent Margaret McBride. McBride was the agent behind "The One Minute Manager," which has been on bestseller lists since it first came out in 1983.)
People have asked me: "How did you do it?" I say: "If I had written it would probably would have been much shorter, like 90 pages or something." But Bill has such a different writing style, and people love stories. Let me tell you, they love stories, and that's how you make it richer.
Bill: It is a better book, because of us, as opposed to if she had done it on her own or if I had done it on my own.
