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What’s the story you can’t stop telling? Fran and Bethany are here to help you write, sell, and launch it.
Literary agent Bethany Saltman and bookstore owner Fran Hauser—also both critically acclaimed authors—host Bookbound, the podcast for non-fiction writers who want to learn how to transform their ideas, expertise, and obsessions into successful books and publishing deals. Fran and Bethany interview accomplished authors who share the strategies and surprises behind their bookbound journeys. These how-I-did-it conversations will inspire listeners to claim their own “author-ity” mindset and turn the story they can’t stop telling into a book the world needs to read.
To connect with the hosts and more, go to www.bookboundpodcast.com/
[00:00:00] Erin Nance, MD: What is it about you that makes you genuine, that makes you authentic? No one is going to be doing these brand deals or run out with these people who have millions of followers. This is the rise of the micro influencer. I think if we lean more into that about what makes us authentic, what makes us unique, what makes us genuine, that’s really the future of content.
[00:00:23] Bethany Saltman: Hi, I’m Bethany
[00:00:24] Bethany Saltman: Saltman, a literary agent and award-winning author. And I’m Fran Hauser, a bestselling author and independent bookstore owner. And this is the BookBound podcast. On this podcast, we talk to women writers about
[00:00:38] Bethany Saltman: Their nonfiction books, but instead of talking about what their book is about, refocus on the process of getting their book into the world.
[00:00:46] Bethany Saltman: These how I Did it, conversations will help you pitch your big idea, write killer proposals, find the right agent and publisher, and live an amazing bookBound life.
[00:01:01] Bethany Saltman: Dr. Erin Nance is a board certified orthopedic surgeon, bestselling author, and founder of Feel Better. The first clinician led social media app for credible accessible health information. Her memoir, little Misdiagnosed became an instant bestseller, and she’s a top 1% TikTok creator, known as at Little Misdiagnosed, where she shares viral educational content about healthcare. She also co-hosts the Medical Detectives a podcast that unpacks real life medical mysteries. As a physician creator and tech founder, Dr. Nance is redefining how patients engage with medicine. In our conversation with Erin, we explored the shift from an attention economy to an authenticity economy and what that means for your book. She also shared how she built a TikTok platform with over 200 million views, her grassroots marketing approach, and why she chose to write her book as a memoir in essays. We know you’re going to love this episode. Hey, Erin, welcome to the BookBound podcast.
[00:02:07] Erin Nance, MD: Thank you guys so much for having me on. I’m thrilled to chat.
[00:02:11] Bethany Saltman: Yay. Yay. We’re so excited. So we’d like to start by asking everybody the same basic question. We know that you started on TikTok. How did you know, or when did you know that this work that you were doing was a book and not just a TikTok or your personal obsession?
[00:02:30] Erin Nance, MD: Well, I tried to write a book years ago, and I always knew I had this fantastic story, which was that story of my first day of work. And I had never told it from my perspective. I had told the story of how my brother was injured thousands of times, but I had never told it from, well, it was actually my first day of work and what happened. I had to abandon work and go see him. So I knew it was just a really interesting, engaging, heartwarming, heart tugging story, but I didn’t know the right medium to tell it. I guess that’s the best way to think about it. And I had written down that story as a chapter and I found a person who I did not know her. She did not know me, and I sent her this chapter and I said, would you mind just reading this and tell me if it sucks?
[00:03:31] Erin Nance, MD: I go, you will not hurt my feelings, just so I know. And she got back to me and she said that she loved it. And so then I wrote another chapter. She loved that chapter too, but I didn’t really know where to go with it, so I just stopped. And it wasn’t until years later when I decided to have a presence on TikTok and start making it more about storytelling that I said, I’d like to tell that story online. And so I asked my brother permission to share it online because it so intimately involves his story as well. He told me to go for it. I always tell everybody he’s a big ham. So he was all for it. And then that story was instantly viral with almost 3 million views. So that was the beginning of I thought, okay, people are really interested in hearing these medical stories, but how do I make that a book?
[00:04:29] Bethany Saltman: Great question. So what did you do to figure that out? What were your next steps?
[00:04:34] Erin Nance, MD: So I think this is where probably my journey may be a little bit different than most people who are interested in writing a book in that I was really recruited first to write this book because I had developed such a large and loyal audience, and I knew that there was a hunger and an interest for these stories. So I was approached to write the book, and having a ton of followers does not mean you’re going to be able to write a great book. And so I had to go through the same, write the proposal, the big 70 page proposal that most nonfiction authors will write. When it came to I had a particularly viral month, I said, okay, guys, I’m in the New York Post. I’m all over. I’m never going to be hotter than I am right now. We have to go out with the proposal. And that’s when we sent it out to the publishers and it went to auction and everything.
[00:05:35] Fran Hauser: So Erin, who originally reached out to you with the idea to write the book? Was it an agent or was it…
[00:05:42] Erin Nance, MD: The first person to reach out to me was a ghostwriter. And so I got a message from a ghostwriter who said, hey, I’m a ghostwriter and I help people write books who are either professionals or who have large followers. At the time, I said, if you worked in the first Trump administration and you wrote a tell-all, this ghostwriter wrote that book. So they said, I’m sure you have a lot of literary friends. I said, I do not have any literary friends, but I do have one really big literary friend. And so I asked my friend, who is Jenny Jackson, who is the author of Pineapple Street. Our kids are very close. We belong to a club together in Florida. And I just reached out to her and I said, hey, is this a thing? Is this a thing where ghostwriters contact you and then they write books for you? And she said, well, yes, that does happen, but you are a storyteller, right? You don’t need a ghostwriter. You have the content. So she said, I’m going to send your TikTok channel to a few agents and we’ll see what happens. And then the next day, I had three agents contact me, and then I interviewed those three agents and I went with Molly Glick at CAA.
[00:07:02] Fran Hauser: Amazing. So it started with this random email that you got, I’m assuming from this ghostwriter?
[00:07:09] Erin Nance, MD: Yep.
[00:07:10] Fran Hauser: Okay. So I love this. And I also love that you then did the double check where you’re like, wait, I do have a friend who is an author and who knows what she’s doing. So let me check with her.
[00:07:21] Erin Nance, MD: Yes. Because I had no clue about how any of this works. Again, I’m going back to I wrote a couple chapters. Someone told me they thought it was good. That was it. That was all of the background I had in publishing.
[00:07:35] Bethany Saltman: Can we return to that for a second? So curious, who was that person that you didn’t know and she didn’t know you? Whatever you feel like sharing. I think our listeners would be curious.
[00:07:45] Erin Nance, MD: So I am part of a mom group, which I think is originally how I first met Fran. And during COVID, when they had their very first back in-person event, we did a coworking meeting at Luminary, which is a great space where women can get together and cowork and just meet one another. And we ran around the table and we had to say an intention out loud, I’m going to start my bakery. I am going to be the doctor on TV. And so I said, I’m going to write a book. And I said it out loud. And so after we went through this circle, I asked one of the other women in the circle, I said, hey, would you mind being my test reader for this book that I want to write?
[00:08:35] Bethany Saltman: I love that. She wasn’t a publishing person, she was just a person.
[00:08:38] Erin Nance, MD: No, she was just a person.
[00:08:39] Bethany Saltman: That’s so good. I love that. Because first of all, your intention is really important and inspiring. And secondly, I like the idea that you just put yourself out there because a lot of times people are afraid to pressure test the idea in the beginning because they’re afraid they’ll get scared off or whatever. But I think it’s so important to just be bold and ask people what they think. And it really does matter what a rando thinks. You might not think it does, but it does.
[00:09:09] Erin Nance, MD: I mean, that is TikTok in general.
[00:09:11] Bethany Saltman: Exactly.
[00:09:11] Erin Nance, MD: It is. You need the courage to post, and then you have to understand that it’s just made up of randos. Okay. Now, those randos may become your followers and your online friends, even a community support system, and you can build a relationship, but they all start off as randos.
[00:09:32] Bethany Saltman: Yeah. Can you tell us a little bit about your TikTok journey, just what that was like and how you started?
[00:09:39] Erin Nance, MD: I started on social media very intentionally. So I never want to give off the sense that like, oh, I just posted one day and I had a million followers. That’s not how it works. So up until I would say three years ago, I had an Instagram account that maybe I would post a picture of my daughter’s birthday or if I went out to dinner. But that was the extent of me being on social media. And I started a media company three years ago. I first focused on television. I made a pilot. This is all coming full circle because I just filmed a pilot with TLC on Friday.
[00:10:14] Bethany Saltman: Amazing. Congratulations.
[00:10:15] Erin Nance, MD: Thank you. But three years ago, I said, I want to create a medical reality TV show. That was a game show. And so I got all these influencers together. We filmed what’s called a treatment. It was the best weekend of my life. We produced the treatment and we sent it out to production companies one week before the writer strike three years ago. So it was completely dead on arrival. I mean, timing, circumstances completely out of my control, but I was just like, oh my God, I just put all this time, energy, money into this project. And that same friend, Jenny Jackson, her husband was a producer, and he said, listen, we’re all taking our cues from social media. Everyone is proving themselves on social media first. So if you have an idea, test it on social media and then see where it goes.
[00:11:25] Erin Nance, MD: So I didn’t know how that worked—just testing an idea on social media. That didn’t make any sense to me. So I read this book by a gentleman, his name is Brendan Kane. He wrote a book called A Million Followers in 30 Days. And I really appreciated that book because it was all about the data analytics behind the posting and how you could replicate certain structures to posts that you knew you would reverse engineer the virality. You knew this post would resonate because you had done your research to know, okay, this is a topic that people care about, that people want to engage with. So that’s when I started my first channel called The Hand Doctor, and I learned—I would say I cut my teeth in making viral videos. And that account itself was very successful. It probably has well over 30 million views, 20,000 followers. But it was a direct message from a follower where I solved her medical mystery over TikTok. That is when I started the Little Misdiagnosed account. And that is where things really took off like a rocket ship. But this is all to say that you can learn how to have a presence on social media. That is very overwhelming and daunting to a lot of people, and they don’t know where to start.
[00:12:35] Bethany Saltman: And I love that you started with—and this is such a theme for the podcast we just did—I mean, it’s so trite, but start where you are. You were the hand doctor, and then you did that. It was good. And then you hit an inflection point where—and you couldn’t have predicted that—had you not really just gone the distance with the hand doctor and then something fresh appeared.
[00:12:57] Erin Nance, MD: Absolutely. And it’s like cliché to say, they’re not failures, they’re redirections. But I would have never gotten to Little Misdiagnosed had I not done those cringey “day in the life” videos—“come with me,” all of the things. And the real change was, as I said, that channel was by metrics successful, but it was also exhausting because I was watching so much content so that I could know what the trends were and be relevant and all of that. And I told the team at Hook Point, I said, I don’t want to follow the trend. I want to be the trend. And it was just like a total mind shift change, and that’s when I created Little Misdiagnosed.
[00:13:45] Fran Hauser: I love it. I know. I love it so much. So with Molly Glick, your agent, how important was your TikTok platform to her, both from the standpoint of the followers—you have close to a million followers on TikTok—but also the fact that you had tested all of this content and you kind of had a sense of what was working and what wasn’t. So how did she think—what role did TikTok play in her getting excited about this book idea?
[00:14:15] Erin Nance, MD: For me, that really was my differentiator. That was my bargaining chip. And it wasn’t—now listen, just because you have a million followers on TikTok does not mean you’re going to get a million books sold. And I think this is probably one of the hardest things that agents and publishing companies are learning, because you see some people like Wishbone Kitchen absolutely crushing it, who I would say her followers are correlating into book sales, and then other people where they may love watching your TikTok for free, but that doesn’t mean that they’re going to buy a $30 book. So I think for me, yes, having the following was validating. The fact that my content was already stories—so people know me, they expect to hear a story. So that wasn’t such a far reach. Wishbone Kitchen—she does cooking, so it makes sense that she made a cook. It may be a different thing if I wrote a political thriller. My million followers are probably not going to read a political thriller. But for me, the hardest part for me is just letting the people who already follow me know that I even have a book—that this book exists and that it exists for them. One hundred percent. That was in all of our pitches to the publishing companies. And at the time, I only had a hundred thousand followers.
[00:15:49] Fran Hauser: Right, because your videos went so viral.
[00:15:52] Erin Nance, MD: Correct.
[00:15:53] Fran Hauser: Very, very quickly.
[00:15:54] Erin Nance, MD: So that was the difference. And I think the timing—timing is everything in most things in life. I had spent six months writing this proposal. So I had these conversations in maybe—or maybe less than—maybe three or four months. But I had these conversations in June. We spent all summer coming up with a proposal to the point where I didn’t even know if I was technically signed by CAA. To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever signed anything. And I was just like, am I with them? Are we doing this? But she kept commenting on the drafts, the proposals. I was like, I guess this is going out. And then when I became super, super viral in October with that first “31”—“First 31” series—the most commonly misdiagnosed conditions in women—when that was going, I was getting a million views every day. I said, we have to bring this out now, because I had so much…
[00:16:52] Bethany Saltman: Just…
[00:16:53] Erin Nance, MD: Kind of organic press and visibility, and I was never hotter than I was then.
[00:16:58] Bethany Saltman: That was smart. So how did it go, going out with the proposal?
[00:17:02] Erin Nance, MD: Molly took it out to a bunch of different publishers. We ended up having two who were competing against one another, but then this was kind of the sad part—it was because they were two imprints within the same division, so they’re not allowed to upsell each other in the auction. But we did kind of go back and forth, and it was a funny situation because okay, I am new to this whole thing. I do not know what the publishing process is. I have no idea. Molly goes, “Alright, it’s going to be on a Thursday at noon. We’re going to submit this, and then I’m going to give you a call five minutes later, and then we’re going to hear the proposals, and then we have 30 minutes to accept, and then we’re going to be done.” I was like, wow. Okay. So I was playing tennis in a clinic and I said, “Okay guys, at noon I have to leave because I’m going to get this magical phone call. It’s going to change my life.” And it’s exactly how it happened. I got a call in the middle of the tennis match. I walked off to the restroom, I read the proposals, I called the agent, we went through the proposals and we made a choice, and then that was it.
[00:18:16] Fran Hauser: So you had the bids, so you were actually reading the bids?
[00:18:18] Bethany Saltman: Yes. Okay. Well, so that’s really interesting for our readers. So here you are with millions of followers, and you went out to a bunch of publishers and you ended up with two offers.
[00:18:29] Erin Nance, MD: Correct.
[00:18:29] Bethany Saltman: So I just want to really point that out to our listeners. We talk a lot about platform because a lot of the people on our show have these very illustrious platforms, and it’s all about how are you kind of managing expectations. And there are different kinds of books. So even in a case like yours where you’re going out—as it would be called—a major submission, and so people are going to respond really quickly and it’s going to be that kind of a thing, but you still only had two bids and they were in the same house, so they couldn’t have an auction. You could have someone with not that kind of a following, not that kind of a platform, and you have an auction, because the stakes are different. So it’s like a very different scenario for different kinds of authors. I’m so glad that you got a great deal, I’m sure. I just want to make sure that our listeners understand that there’s so many ways to go about it depending on the book and depending on the audience and the reach.
[00:19:26] Erin Nance, MD: Yes. And this book technically is a memoir, so it’s different. Memoir versus self-help versus fiction. So we ended up talking with Day Street and William Morrow. Day Street only specializes in celebrity memoirs and hand surgeon adjacent celebrity memoirs, I’ll call it. And then William Morrow, which is the largest imprint of HarperCollins. So it was interesting to hear the pros and cons of going between the two imprints as well.
[00:20:05] Bethany Saltman: Hey there, BookBound friends. If you’re a fan of this podcast, you’ve definitely heard us talk about the agony and the ecstasy of the nonfiction book proposal. Yes, proposals are challenging, and yes, they can take a while. But we truly believe that for nonfiction writers, mastering the art of the book proposal—and we really do think it’s an art—isn’t just necessary to land a book deal. It’s one of the best ways to become the expert of your own topic and to sharpen your craft. That’s why Fran and I wrote our ebook. It’s called BookBound: A Tried and True Method for Turning Your Great Idea Into a Standout Book Proposal. It’s available now at bookboundpodcast.com/ebook for just $19.99. So if you’re serious about your idea but not quite ready to invest in coaching or courses, this is the perfect place to start. Download our ebook today and take the first real step toward writing the book only you can write.
[00:21:02] Fran Hauser: Erin, did you always know that you wanted it to be this collection of essays? Was that always the plan?
[00:21:10] Erin Nance, MD: I think I knew that my stories were really engaging and people loved listening to them, and I knew that for the people who love listening to the TikToks, they would really also love a more in-depth version of these stories. But just to have 20 stories, I don’t think really would’ve cut it, right? So we had to build it as—we’re going to have this chronological arc that is the six years of my training, and then have it also be, I would say, lesson-based, right? What was the point of sharing this story? And that was really the hardest part about the editing process—was before I ever wrote a word—was to decide what are the chapters going to be. As you said, I had been A/B testing stories for two years at this point. I knew exactly what stories people wanted to hear. Although part of the contract was 50% of the material had to be new. So that changed the direction of my TikTok because I no longer told personal stories—I had to save it for the book. So that changed a little bit. My focus was on my platform as well. But that was the hardest part—was deciding just because this is a viral story doesn’t mean it’s going to make a great chapter.
[00:22:38] Erin Nance, MD: And that’s where my editor, Anna Monte, did such a great job at really giving me the feedback to say, “I don’t think there’s enough meat on the bones for this to be a good chapter.” And then sometimes I’d try and have three stories in a chapter and connect them some way, and some of those worked, some of those—they didn’t make the cut. That was the hardest part, I think, was creating the outline.
[00:23:02] Fran Hauser: And you didn’t have a ghostwriter?
[00:23:04] Erin Nance, MD: No, I wrote every word.
[00:23:06] Fran Hauser: Yeah. You’re a great writer. I mean, the writing—it’s so engaging. Yeah, I really enjoyed it.
[00:23:11] Erin Nance, MD: Well, I really appreciate you saying that. And coming from people who read books every day—it really means a lot. I wrote it as I say it, really. On my TikTok, when I’m doing my story on TikTok, I’m always imagining this story really on television.
[00:23:30] Erin Nance, MD: That’s kind of how I always pictured these stories, and that’s how I think the writing also—how I always have in mind is that, how would this look or sound on TV? Because that was also part of my whole media—I wanted to have a television show. So that’s how I wrote it. Talking about how things go quickly—I got a call out of the blue on, it was Columbus Day, from an unknown number in California. And this woman said, “You don’t know me, but I am a film agent at CAA, and I’d like to take your proposal to film.” I said, “Knock your socks off. I don’t know the difference or whatnot.” And then the next day, she calls me back and she says, “Oh, Ron Howard loves it. J.J. Abrams loves it. Jerry Bruckheimer loves it.”
[00:24:23] Erin Nance, MD: “I’ve got the original showrunners from ER, from Friday Night Lights.” And so then I’m having calls with all these Hollywood people saying, “I love your work.” “You love my work? What happened?” So yeah, the whole option for film was also a complete surprise to me and kind of unknown, but that was a much longer process and an ongoing process, but was very flattering. I really had no idea where it would go.
[00:24:57] Fran Hauser: What an adventure. Seriously. It’s so incredible. You’re a doctor—I mean, you’re a surgeon. So how do you split your time? How do you think about—you’re a surgeon, and now you have this media and entertainment company because you’re doing the podcast, TikTok, the book, now there’s going to be a show. How do you think about that and what role does each of these two things serve you in your life? How are they of service to you?
[00:25:28] Erin Nance, MD: It’s a great question and a question I get frequently about how I split my time. In the end, they are all synergistic and serving the greater purpose, which is me helping people. That’s why I became a doctor in the first place. I have always had my own practice. The last chapter in the book talks about how I was fired before I was hired, so people know that I started my own practice for that reason. When I first started the practice, I was like, “This is great flexibility because I’m a new mom and I want to be able to go to my daughter’s mommy and me music class. I don’t want to be on call on Christmas.” That was the benefit of having my own practice.
[00:26:24] Erin Nance, MD: Then, as things progressed and my daughter was in school, I said, “Well now, what do I use this flexibility for?” And so that’s what I used it for. That’s when I started the media projects. I started being the doctor on TV, talking about all the different things. Then I myself became sick, or developed an autoimmune disorder. So I had cut my practice hours even more significantly. To this day, I still see patients one day a week. That is my Wednesday. Do not schedule me a call. Do not book me for anything. That is my patient day. And then I put my podcast late at night. And then all of the other days—I have to just silo my time. These are days for business calls. These are days for creating content. And to be honest, it’s not about creating the time, because the time exists. It’s about prioritizing the time—what gets the priority?
[00:27:52] Erin Nance, MD: And listen—my Tuesday 6:00 PM tennis class with my girlfriends—that is a priority. I’m not taking calls. I’m not doing industry events on Tuesday nights. I walk my daughter to school every morning. Don’t book me an eight o’clock call. I’m not doing that. I’m very strict on how I take control of my time, because that was the whole point—to have, be your own business. If you don’t protect yourself, no one’s going to protect it for you.
[00:28:10] Fran Hauser: Boundaries. Great advice. So actually, one question I want to ask you—this is so tactical—but I just realized this morning, I was going through your book again. There are no blurbs in your book. There’s no endorsements. And so I’m curious—was that an intentional decision on your part?
[00:28:27] Erin Nance, MD: I wouldn’t necessarily say it was a decision, but my—well, Carrie Thornton, who is the head of Day Street—she just picked out this passage and she said, “I love this passage so much. I think that this is more important than someone else commenting on how great this book is. This is why this book is so great. And if this doesn’t say it, I don’t think anyone else could say it any better.” So that was the whole thing. I didn’t question it. I didn’t ask for blurbs or anything. She just said, “This is the best part of this book.”
[00:28:47] Fran Hauser: And I love it. It’s about how—the passage is about how the most powerful drug is hope. And it’s such a beautiful passage. I love that you went in this direction. It was refreshing. It felt different. I looked at the back cover and I was like, I’ve read every single word. Versus the blurbs, where you might just skim. So I just thought it was so cool that you did this, and I wanted to bring it up with our listeners—that there are different approaches. I know we always talk about this cookie-cutter, like, “this is the template,” “this is the model,” but you can also think differently. Just think outside the box. I love that you did that.
[00:29:26] Erin Nance, MD: I think it’s part of also a larger shift, just where content is going—where, let’s say the last five years was about the attention economy and the visibility economy and the influencer economy. Now we are in the authenticity economy.
[00:29:45] Erin Nance, MD: Okay, so what is it about you that makes you genuine, that makes you authentic? And that’s why no one is going to be doing these brand deals or run out with these people who have millions of followers. This is the rise of the micro influencer. Alright. I think if we lean more into that—about what makes us authentic, what makes us unique, what makes us genuine—that’s really the future of content.
[00:30:11] Fran Hauser: And so with that in mind, how’s the marketing going?
[00:30:14] Erin Nance, MD: So for me—and this is something that I have heard from many authors—is that it all falls to you. Everything, all the work, falls to you. So I knew that going into things, but even for me, it is hard. It is hard to create content, especially when my content is not about selling books or promoting books or talking about books.
[00:30:38] Erin Nance, MD: So I found that to be very challenging in order to get the same reach of my content when it’s not my normal content. Obviously, HarperCollins—they can try to do promotion, but that’s not going to work. I can tell you right now. It’s about what comes from you. And people want to know why they should read this book from you or from readers. That’s the most important thing, right? The UGC element—that’s most important. So yeah, I had a list of 50 of just people who were my followers who we sent the book out to. They started forming their own chronic illness book club meetings. And that’s I think really how things started to grow. Because I did have one super viral video, which came from one of the chapters.
[00:31:43] Erin Nance, MD: And I—I have to pat myself on the back to be able to get a viral video about a book, when that is not my normal content. But I knew what I was doing, because I am a professional at this point—content creator. But I made a post about a patient of mine who fell from eight stories from a construction site, and he ran away from the ER because he was an undocumented worker and he was worried about being deported. And I told this story about how I tracked him down, and I ended up admitting him to the hospital as a John Doe so we could protect his identity as much as we could. And this was all going on—so this happened 10 years ago—but just three weeks ago was when all of the riots in LA were happening.
[00:32:32] Erin Nance, MD: So it was very timely. It was an authentic and genuine story. It came from my book, and it wasn’t about me trying to be a hero. It was about me trying to show that I’m a human and I just care about my patients. So it wasn’t a book promotional video, but it was from the book. It was a true story. And that video outperformed all the hundred other videos that I made trying to promote the book in some way.
[00:33:00] Bethany Saltman: That’s so good. It was from the book and it was from the heart. And I love what you’re saying—that the authenticity economy is really what it’s all about.
[00:33:10] Erin Nance, MD: And that is applicable to everyone in any field.
[00:33:14] Bethany Saltman: So what’s your bottom line advice for people who may not have the platform that you have going into this but want to take from their wisdom and their expertise and write a book? What would be the first thing they should do?
[00:33:31] Erin Nance, MD: Well, the first thing they should do is just start putting yourself out there. I tell people that TikTok is the best place to start. Number one, if you’re someone who’s my age, no one is on TikTok. So that’s a great place to start. And then the other reason is that it is the fastest, cheapest, easiest way to gain virality and kind of test your ideas. So if you think that your novel about dragons and ice skaters is going to work, there’s no better place than to test that out on TikTok. And you don’t know until you put it out there. I had in my head for so long—wow, I think that story of my first day of work is really interesting. I didn’t know until I told it to that one person. I got that confirmation from one person and I was like, wow, that was really meaningful. And to be honest, that was more meaningful than the 3 million people who watched it on TikTok. There are different forms of validation.
[00:34:33] Fran Hauser: Just get started. And it’s free A/B testing. I mean, at the end of the day, that’s what it is. You test things, you see what sticks, and you decide what you want to go deeper into. And it is also—it’s interesting, I’m thinking about with my first book, The Myth of the Nice Girl, that was in 2018 that came out. I wrote a blog post—I think it was in 2016, a blog post, that was the thing back then. It was like blogs. And that blog post—I wrote it for Forbes, and it went viral. And it helped me to validate that there was a need for this book. And it’s—that story about that blog post ended up opening my proposal, my book proposal. So we are really fortunate that we have these digital platforms where we can test content and we can test ideas all day long.
[00:35:46] Fran Hauser: Erin, I love this conversation so much, and we’re so grateful to you for showing up authentically and with vulnerability and what worked for you, what didn’t work for you. We’re so grateful. So is TikTok the best way for our listeners to connect with you? I feel like you’re doing more on Instagram now too?
[00:36:03] Erin Nance, MD: TikTok is the best place to see me. But to engage with me, probably Instagram—because I have less followers there, I’m able to see more kind of messaging. But this is a lesson to people—learn from my mistake. When I first started my TikTok, I could only have the capacity to really manage the one platform. And so I was just killing it on TikTok. I mean, millions—I’m close to 200 million views at this point. And then I had all of my friends say, “My parents love watching you.” I go, “Your parents love watching me? They’re not watching me on TikTok.” “No, they were watching me on Facebook,” from all of these pirated accounts that had reached hundreds of thousands of followers.
[00:37:03] Erin Nance, MD: So there are accounts of me on Facebook, on YouTube, on Instagram. So they look legit. And what was going on was when I was working with my social media team and we would try and repost my videos, and they would get four views on Instagram. And I go, “How could this video be seen by a million people on TikTok and four people on Instagram?” It’s because people had already uploaded that video, and I was in essence copying my own content.
[00:37:41] Fran Hauser: So the algorithm doesn’t like that.
[00:37:43] Erin Nance, MD: Correct. So I would say at the minimum, you need to establish one homogeneous channel. And there are tools now that exist that—they just automatically pop them on. Choose the three: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. Be consistent. Pick it. Upload everything in real time to all the platforms. In essence, it’s just kind of free advertising for me at this point. But my greater concern is—I’m a physician and I don’t want people thinking that they’re interacting with me as a physician when I don’t know who these people are who own these accounts.
[00:38:03] Fran Hauser: What is your Instagram handle?
[00:38:05] Erin Nance, MD: My Instagram handle is @drerinnance—all one word, like “doctor” spelled out. And I splurged for the blue checkmark on Instagram, so that is me.
[00:38:16] Erin Nance, MD: I wish I could do the same on the other platforms. And for pretty much any physician in general, should have some sort of verification.
[00:38:20] Fran Hauser: Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much, Erin.
[00:38:25] Erin Nance, MD: Thank you!
[00:38:26] Fran Hauser: And I want everybody to read your book. It’s so good.
[00:38:29] Bethany Saltman: It’s so good.
[00:38:31] Erin Nance, MD: Oh, thank you so much. Yes—if you want a laugh and a cry at the same time, this book is for you.
[00:38:36] Fran Hauser: That’s exactly it. Laugh and cry at the same time. You nailed it.
[00:38:39] Erin Nance, MD: Thanks, Erin.
[00:38:40] Fran Hauser: Thanks, Erin. Bye.