Hear Us Roar: How Telling Your Story Can Change the World – An Interview with Karen Weaver

Have you ever felt a deep calling to write a book but didn’t know where to start?

Meet Karen Weaver, a visionary author, publisher, and coach whose journey embodies the transformative power of storytelling. From her Irish Catholic upbringing to a life-changing spiritual awakening, Karen has navigated profound personal challenges, including PTSD and the grief of a double miscarriage. Through writing, she found healing and purpose, eventually authoring over 40 books and founding multiple publishing companies. Her passion for helping others share their stories led to the creation of Hear Us Roar, a powerful anthology and documentary series amplifying diverse voices. With a heart for service and a mission to awaken the potential within you, Karen has dedicated her life to guiding aspiring authors through the journey of writing, publishing, and sharing their truth with the world.

In this episode, Karen shares invaluable insights on committing to the writing process, overcoming self-doubt, and understanding the publishing industry. She dives into the differences between self-publishing, hybrid publishing, and traditional publishing, offering guidance on how to navigate the journey with clarity and confidence. Beyond books, Karen is also a Napoleon Hill Institute coach, helping individuals harness the principles of Think and Grow Rich to transform their mindset and achieve their goals. Whether you feel called to write a book, seek guidance in stepping into your purpose, or simply love hearing stories of resilience and success, this conversation will inspire you to take action and embrace the power of your own story.

What advice would you give to someone who feels they should write a book but isn’t sure where to start?

Karen Weaver: Well, I was that person one day, David, and the main thing I had to do was make a choice, just decide and commit to it, and then dedicate some time to writing. Because if you don’t have time to write, how are you supposed to write a book?

The biggest thing, especially for a nonfiction book, is your content page. If you work on your framework, then you will feel prepared for the book-writing journey, because within us all, we have the story, we have the content. So, you already have it within you. You just need to action it and get it out there.

So just go for it, commit to it, and get writing. 

Where did you grow up, and where do you live now?

Karen Weaver: Well, I grew up in Ireland. I love Ireland. I am there for a good portion of the year even now, but I have been living the past 17 years in Australia with my family. I moved here with two boys and we now have two boys and four girls. So we everything turned pink when we came to Australia and it’s beautiful. I’m very blessed to live my heart’s in two lands. 

Two very different places. That is for sure. 

Karen Weaver: We’re cooking here in a heat wave at the moment and everyone’s freezing in Ireland so there we go. 

How did you awaken to consciousness, mindfulness, and spirituality? Was faith or spirituality a part of your early life?

Karen Weaver: I grew up an Irish Catholic. I went to school, I just went through the motions. We had religion class and all the stuff, but I never really got to the core, the love, the energy, the source kind of energy. It was just something we had to do. Religion class was boring, is what we felt. But when I went through my own awakening, which kind of came out of, I suppose, I’ve always been connected to source, just in my own way, that’s one of the things awakening made me realize. Because I would always have conversations with God—oh, please guide me through this, or whatever—but it would be personal, it wouldn’t be going to mass and doing it there, kind of thing. Our household was not very religious, but we did get christened, communions, and confirmations. We went to all the weddings and all the things. So, we embraced the celebration, I suppose, of our culture and our faith.

I went through a dark time in life, David, and I went through PTSD. That lasted for about 14 months. I was lucky that I had worked in mental health for four years, so I understood what was happening to me, even though I didn’t like it. So, I call it my cocoon period. I went inwards, did the work, and I was blessed to be able to come out.

My awakening—whenever you’ve got PTSD, you don’t feel emotion—so how are you supposed to attract beautiful things into your life? But I did the work and then I endured a double miscarriage, and that broke my heart. But one of the things that it did was it helped me to start feeling again, start dreaming again, and start wishing for things. Because I wished for nothing more than to have another baby. After that loss, you just want that void to be filled.

I was blessed, and straight away we got pregnant again with my daughter, and then life just took a turn. My thoughts were very positive, just everything started to happen right. You know, whenever you’ve gone through a dark period and then there’s so much light and goodness and wonderful things, you’re going to embrace that and run with it.

Then I realized all of these beautiful wisdoms were coming to me, all of these beautiful things were coming to me. I wasn’t a writer. I did aspire to be a writer, but I wasn’t a writer. I wasn’t very good at English at school. It was the audacity of me to even consider it. There were no writers in my family. But I had this calling to share these wisdoms with the world. So, I was in Ireland when this all happened, and then we moved to Australia that very year as well. So, as I said, everything happened this year—all the good things—and so we moved in September. I was 35 weeks pregnant with my daughter. I waddled my way here, and just all of these things were coming, all of these wisdoms, all of these epiphanies, all of these realizations, and I couldn’t keep it within me. I had to share them.

I started writing down “mindful musings,” as I called them, and I started sharing them on a website. This was called Building Beautiful Bonds. That was before Facebook, and I was having a profound connection with people. People were really resonating, and these articles were being picked up by magazines, like Universal Mind Magazine. One of them I wrote was called Love is the Answer, and that was picked up well. It was just like, wow, I’m on to something here. I’m resonating, I’m getting to the hearts and minds of people, and I’m making a difference.

So, words became very powerful to me. So a very big part of my awakening was writing and connecting with the hearts of people. That’s a long-winded answer to your question.

Was there a specific mentor, author, speaker, course, or experience that helped you during your recovery from PTSD?

Karen Weaver: I suppose I got really curious. And please bear with me, because I had just immigrated to a new country, and I was having my third child. I was very much home-based, but I did have limited internet access, so I would go in because I needed to feed this curiosity. I was definitely on a journey.

I remember I watched The Secret and I also came across Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life. Definitely, the community I was in, in Building Beautiful Bonds, there were a few hundred women, and it was just the most beautiful community. This is where all of this information was coming from, and I really resonated with it.

Then, I did Dr. Joe Vitale’s Advanced Law of Attraction practitioner training. I said, “I’m going to have some fun with this. I’m not going to tell anybody that I’ve done it and I’ve achieved it. I’m just going to have fun with it and see what I can manifest in my life.” And so I started to do that, and it was just wonderful.

I’m a great believer that we’re given these opportunities and gifts, not just to keep them to ourselves. We’re supposed to share our findings and what we discover with others so that they can possibly awaken to their own potential as well. My mission in life is to help others awaken to their potential through this power of story. That is just what I get up for every single day. And I have been doing this now for 14 years, 15 this year. I love it because it changes lives. It changes lives.

What led to the transition from writing a blog to publishing your first book in 2010? How did that shift happen?

Karen Weaver: I wrote the book during NaNoWriMo, which is National Novel Writing Month, in 2010. That’s when I wrote the book. I published it in 2012. It was published there. 2011 was the journey.

I had an epiphany about my double miscarriage. I never had the answer my heart longed for about why me. I had had two healthy boys. Why did I lose these babies? Why? It just broke my heart. Doctors were like, “Come on, Karen, this happened. Come on, let’s.” And my heart just couldn’t accept that.

Then I was watching The View, and Whoopi Goldberg was on. There was a reality TV couple who had come on to The View, and they had endured a miscarriage. It was very public because it was on the show. The woman of the partnership was still very distraught about it. When it was brought up, I remember Whoopi Goldberg turning her back to the camera, looking this woman in the eye, and saying, “I am going to tell you something that I tell all of my friends that this happens to. This was a visitor that came to visit you, to ask you to get onto the right path in life, and when you do, your gift will come.”

Well, David, I still get goosebumps now whenever I say that. It was like I was being hit with a lightning bolt. I realized that is why I was so stuck in PTSD and couldn’t get out of it. This came to help me shift and back up to life again. And it did.

I took action straight away, and my gift came. I got pregnant straight away with my daughter. I saw all of these things play out in my mind. It was two days before NaNoWriMo started, and I didn’t even know it existed. Then it came onto my radar, and I thought, “I wrote a blog. It wasn’t enough. How am I going to get this message out into the world?”

At the time, my fourth child was four weeks old. I thought, “Surely, the audacity of me to even think about writing a novel—a 50,000-word novel—when I have all these babies to take care of.” But I said to myself, I have to do this.

So I told my husband at the time, “You don’t have a wife for a month. I will love our babies, but I am going to write 1,667 words every day for a month, and I’m going to write this story.”

I didn’t know what was going to come. I quickly wrote down 20 possible chapter ideas. But this story wrote itself. I just showed up and wrote 1,667 words every single day. I had broken keys on my keyboard, and I wasn’t computer literate at the time. But there was such a will, such a passion to share this story.

I created a realm called the waiting zone. Messengers would come from it down to Earth and visit five women. It was fictional, but my story was interwoven into it. It’s a very special book. So, yeah. 

Out of the 40 books you’ve written, is there one that holds a special place in your heart, and why?

Karen Weaver: Definitely, The Visitor. I just love that book so much because it was such a big part of me—or it still is. It had its 10th anniversary a few years ago. It was before its time, and people who read it have profound shifts, and it really helps with grief.

What came to channel through me in that book is a gift to the world. I went on to write two more books in that series. It just came to me. So, whenever something comes to you, it’s a gift for us to share.

That book was definitely the one because it was also the catalyst into publishing for me, where I was able to help other people tell their stories.

How did you transition from being a writer to a publisher?

Karen Weaver: I just want to preface this with my studies are in humanities. I have a diploma in humanities. So it’s all about people, it’s all about story for me. Coming from Ireland, stories are very much at the root of everything, because if someone needed to be healed or educated or whatever it is inspired, people would come around. Someone would have a cousin who would know somebody, or someone down the part, they’d come along and have a cup of tea and share stories, and that’s how we would learn and that’s how we would connect.

Stories are so powerful for me. But the transition was I published the book with a self-publishing company, and it wasn’t the best experience. It was just all about emptying my bank account. And I ended up with this book and I didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t have a clue. I just had this book. I was a mom at home, I didn’t have a big audience. I just didn’t know what to do with it. How am I going to get this book out into the world?

And then somebody asked me a question and they said, “Karen, could you help me publish my book?” And I actually probably can because I had learned so much. The self-publishing journey was like a crash course in publishing and I asked so many questions, and it really ignited something within me because for words to be turned into a book, that process just absolutely fascinated me. And I learned everything so fast because I was so interested.

Then, I did some research and I found out that the print and distribution channel that my publisher had used opened up an office that very month in Melbourne, and so I made a sacred promise that if I applied and was accepted as a publisher with them, that I would show up and share stories with the world. And so I believe in serendipity, sacred promise

Obviously, I was accepted and I’ve been on the journey since. So it’s so special to be able to do that. It’s an honor. I don’t just publish books, I join people on the journey because it is a self-development journey. Writing, publishing, and getting your book out into the world is a big journey.

How did you transition from helping one person publish their book to opening the gates for more? Did you target a specific audience, or did you try to reach anyone and everyone? How did you start attracting people who wanted your help?

Karen Weaver: I don’t do things small, David, I’m a big thinker. After doing Joe Vitale’s course, I was like, all right, I’m going to build a million dollar press. So that I can serve authors, and serve stories into the world that these stories that may never have been told had I not shown up for them or had they not come to me?

How do you do that? You take the next step. So an opportunity came and there was like this subscription thing called iKoala that shared deals with their audience, and then people would buy the deal and they would earn a commission or whatever. And this iKoala deal came up. It was very cost-effective, like we were doing it for practically nothing, but it was creating cash flow for the business and we had a lot of authors come into there and I was all about the books and the stories and getting things sorted.

That’s where we started, and so it was anybody who wanted our help, we helped. One of the first books that we did was, and we funded this ourselves, but it was for a guy who ran an African orphanage. It was called Prickle in a Dream, and so he had been an orphan himself and then he grew up and built an orphanage. And so the joys of technology, and he found his way to us and submitted his story, and so we helped him publish his book as well. So, that was one of the first ones.

That’s always a fond memory that comes up. But the passion and desire I just had, this burning desire just to get this out into the world, get stories out into the world. So we did that. And we were learning publishing. We invested in one of the high-tech packages of Adobe. In those days, you had to get a disc and they posted it to you and you put it into your computer. You couldn’t just download a subscription online. It wasn’t like that at that time, and it just grew.

Every next step was revealed to us along the way, and the goal of reaching the 1 million happened in 7 years, and I thought it would take 25 years. So, it was beautiful.

Why did you decide to have three publishing companies or imprints instead of just one? What’s the reasoning behind that choice?

Karen Weaver: So they’re each their own entity, so their own companies. Within Serenity Press, we’ve got a folklore division imprint, we’ve got a children’s division imprint, and then we’ve got the Duchess Serenity Collection imprint. So Serenity Press is for children’s books and also folklore. So that’s the genre, the audience for that, and that’s the audience we build there.

Then KMD Books was born. It definitely came alive during COVID because a lot of business owners showed up to write their books during COVID and things like that. So KMD Books is for thought leaders and business books. All of that nonfiction, but definitely with the story connection interwoven into it. And we’ve also just recently branched out into cookbooks because there’s a demand in that. So it’s wonderful. And a lot of anthologies. Anthologies became our super fuel and helped a lot of business owners set up their own anthologies and become really successful. So it’s all about stories because the collective is very powerful in a book.

Then MMH Press is my own passion project. That’s where I publish my own books. And we have an amazing author in there who writes fantasy. She’s so prolific, like she’s written millions and published millions of words, and so she writes some fantasy. Then we have a crime writer as well, and then poetry writers. So it’s just that platform for someone to come into authorship, get some books published, build up a bit of a repertoire, and then go out into the bigger publishers. So it really works beautifully.

Can you explain the different types of publishing, like self-publishing, vanity presses, and traditional publishing companies? How are those different?

Karen Weaver: I love giving clarity to this. It is confusing. So self-publishing is where, and there’s lots of opportunities in self-publishing. Whenever I started out 15 years ago, compared to now, the whole landscape of that has changed. It’s so much more. There are so many success stories in self-publishing. The big thing about self-publishing is producing an industry-standard book. Don’t cut back on cover design, don’t cut back on editing. Editing is such an important part of the process. The best of authors get edited, and then you can use different types of platforms as a self-published author to get out there. Kindle Direct Publishing is very much about getting your book out into the world. IngramSpark as well. You can go and check those out and do it all yourself.

Then you’ve got what I call hybrid publishing, and some people call it vanity press, where you hire someone like me to represent you. We have connections, we’ve built up a database of connections and stores. With self-publishing, you can’t really get into bookstores. You need a distributor. So we have our external distributor that brings books to bookstores and things like that. So you would be hiring us to represent you. But we are selective, and it has to be genre-based. We really look at the story. Yes, we can work with a story, but we look at the author that we’re bringing on, to see their potential and whether they’ve got a positive attitude. Because it’s going to take that to get through the process of writing, publishing, and getting your book out into the world.

Then you’ve got traditional publishing, which is like the big five or the bigger publishers. You can pitch, usually through an agent, to one of them. If you get through, it’s a very lengthy process. You will be pitched through an agent to a publisher, and if they offer you a contract, then they take on your book, and you kind of lose control over it. But they will then represent you and can get your book out there more as well. And it’s always a wonderful thing for people. It helps you build up an audience that way as well.

With hybrid publishing, there’s an investment from the author. What services do you offer in return, especially in terms of marketing? How does it compare to publishing through platforms like Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), which offers paperback, hardback, and Kindle options?

Karen Weaver: Well, the journey whenever you’re going in blind and you don’t know where to put your energies. And one of the things that I always ask an author, whenever I have my initial conversation with them, is what is the dream, what is the goal, what is the north star that you want to achieve? And then you work towards that. The production and all of that will be the same and happen. But what is it that you want to achieve? What are we going to focus our energy on making happen? And then we put a plan in place for that.

If some people want to be, in Australia it’s called Big W, like Big W shelves, it’s kind of like Walmart shelves. They want their books in store and/or Barnes and Noble and all of those types of things. Yes, well then that’s what we navigate that for. Other people want their book to be picked up by influencers or to have an omnipresence around their book launch time. So that’s where we would connect them with opportunities that aligned with that, and usually we would invest in it for them. It would be part of their package.

We would customize a package that would have this podcast because we have our connections and then recommend it. And it’s always to the audience that is aligned with the book. There’s no point in just going and showing up everywhere if the audience isn’t aligned. You’re just wasting your time and their time, and that’s very important. But we have worked very hard to build up. We’re able to take on a book and guide someone through the process, and we have had lots of authors come on. We’ve guided them through the process and then they have the skills then to go because there are more than one books in a person. They then have the skills to go on and learn and build upon that and find their own way.

There’s nothing more wonderful than an author who embodies their authorship and is so connected to the book and just takes the baton and runs with it. Like it’s just. I smile when I sit back and look at some of my authors who are out there killing it and just going out there and getting opportunities. But for that, because we build confidence. Where we’ve got someone’s back, they always know that we’re there behind them to support them at any step of the journey. And that, I think, I’ve seen is a difference between self-publishing and hybrid publishing, where you’ve got an author or a publisher representing you as well.

Why is the cover so important in a book’s success, even though every part—interior, editing, marketing, and content—matters? Can you give a pep talk on the power of a great cover?

Karen Weaver: Well, they say don’t judge a book by its cover, but a book is always judged by its cover, because quality speaks volumes. You really want to talk to your market, your target market, through the cover, David. I cannot stress how important it is and, like I quite often for my own books personally, I will revive the covers on the books every five years because it gives them a new life into the market and the audience, because things change a lot.

So a cover is what will connect with your audience. You don’t have marketing if you don’t have a good cover, because you can do all the marketing in the world, but if your cover doesn’t look high quality, as if it connects with the reader, then you may as well save your marketing budget. Really, because it’s one of the things I would never compromise on is a good cover.

The designer has studied book covers. You’re paying for all of that research they’ve done. You’re paying not just for the design. They know what sells to your genre. So they know their stuff, and it’s so worth it. 

Can you explain how Duchess Serenity Press came about and what it’s all about?

Karen Weaver: Oh, the story about the story. I love it. So, Duchess Serenity Press is where I have partnered with the Duchess of York to publish her children’s books and also YA we broached right into as well.

A few years ago, 2018-19, this is all my power of knowing stuff that I write about and things like that. So I happened to see the Duchess at one of my friend’s events and it was being streamed on Facebook. I would never ordinarily be watching things on Facebook at that time. I think it was in Ireland at the time, in my parents’ house, and I happened to see that she was hosting this event for my friend. My thought train was, “Oh, there’s the Duchess of York. She used to write Budgie the Little Helicopter. My son loved Budgie the Little Helicopter. I wonder, would she like to do a book for Serenity Press?”

I just actioned that thought train straight away and I googled who was her agent and I got in contact with her literary agent and must have written the best contact form submission ever and I always wish I had a copy of that, but I don’t.

Two weeks later, I got an email from the Duchess’s business manager saying, “Hello, Karen, thank you for your email. We would love to talk to you. Are you available on this day at this time?” And of course, you just say yes. Even though it was the worst time ever, because I was on holidays with five of my kids on my own. And Mary was three and she’s just like full on. There’s no quietness in the background whenever Mary’s on it. So, I just went, “Yes, sure, no problem.”

That day came and the whole day was spent trying to get Mary asleep for 5 pm, which was the call in Australia, and 10 am in the UK. And they messaged and said, “Can we meet 45 minutes earlier?” And I was like, “No, but yes,” and I just got on the phone and I said, “Hey, please ignore any background noise. I’m on holidays with my kids, but I can’t wait to talk,” and I think that was endearing for them as well.

Anyway, from that step, we talked. They sent me two books that had been illustrated already and that they wanted to get out there. So we worked on those first two books. It was a really positive and great process. Then we ended up signing a 22-book deal and now I work with the Duchess in Duchess Serenity Press and we have so many creative projects.

The Duchess just came out to Australia on her Australian Tour at the beginning of November and that was just like the reception that she got and those queues of people—like we didn’t expect it. She made sure that she signed every single book for every single person that came out to meet her, and she was amazing. So, yeah, beautiful

What are the biggest challenges first-time authors face when coming to you, and what advice would you give them to overcome those challenges?

Karen Weaver: Really not knowing where to put their energy, because authors will get overwhelmed with the process. There’s so many things to learn. So if you’re doing this yourself, allow yourself to be guided each step of the way. Don’t think of the whole picture, think of each step and master each step along the way and learn.

Know you’re going to make mistakes, but it’s okay, it’s all a learning process, okay? And so I have authors come to me after going through that process and just realize that being guided, I suppose, and helped is beneficial. So, most authors come to me because they just don’t know the process or what they do. And I was like, well, you’re going to learn with me, because I don’t just publish your book. I’m going to teach you the ins and outs of it so that you, whenever, you’re going to understand the process as well.

Because that’s empowering for an author to know what’s going on behind the scenes. I’m an open book, ask me any question, because every single author will ask different questions along the way. I could do most asked questions, but every single author has different priorities, different things that they want to experience. So I just give them that personal touch; it is so important.

So, there are a lot of unknowns whenever you step into authorship. So it is by leading and trusting and having faith in the process and that you will be guided every step of the way. And there’s no one size fits all. Yes, there’s production things, all those, the editing process, the typesetting process. All of those things still have to be done.

But the authorship journey you will be guided on, and there’s no one size fits all, but there is. I promise you that whenever you publish your first book, it will open doors that you never even knew were there, and that’s the exciting part of it. So, focus as much as you can on the positives, and the challenges are there to help you grow and learn more about it.

So don’t give up, just keep going. Perseverance.

Can you tell us about the Hear Us Roar anthology series? What’s the vision behind it, how many books are involved, and how does the film fit into the project?

Karen Weaver: This project came roaring into my life two years ago, and I happened to actually stumble across a pre-made book cover that had a lion’s face on it. And you know, a pre-made book cover, just as something just hits you, you’ll just buy it because they’re not very expensive. I bought it and I had it in my inbox.

Then all of a sudden, I had been helping so many business owners with their anthologies, and I thought, do you know what? I’m going to serve my authors and bring them all together into an anthology. We’re going to market it and we’re going to celebrate this book but also their own books as well, make it all visible. So I did a call out for Hear Us Roar Lion Editions, on Courage and Perseverance, and it was filled in two weeks with 34 people. And I was like, wow, and any bit of energy I put into this book, it just was unbelievable the results we were getting.

I went ahead with that project, and then all of a sudden, it became very clear. It was like there’s more books in this series, and over one weekend, we created all eight book covers, with all different animals on the front and each one with a different theme, and set out on a quest to fill them up.

And then it came to me: we’re going to do a docu-film. We’re going to interview everybody in the book, because I had been part of Moms Rising, which is a Think and Grow Rich movie, and I had been filmed for that at a castle retreat that I host. And so, I knew the process, and I was just like video and words, so powerful, just so powerful. It’s like a match made in heaven.

So I started to explore that. And then I set up my own Apple TV channel to put the docu-films on. So I travel around Australia and the world. Wherever I am at an event, I will host a launch and filming day for the series.

But what I have discovered, David, is, we have 160 people as part of the project right now, and it brings everybody together in different locations. It’s really good for visibility. We get professional photographs done, we have a videographer there. It’s so high vibe and wonderful.

But the thing that I didn’t expect and what came out of it is the connection that everyone has under this umbrella of Hear Us Roar, and so it’s growing. We’re bringing in speaking opportunities now. We’re bringing in a leadership circle. It’s all just growing into this huge thing that started with one book. It’s just beautiful. Very powerful. The power of story in motion is that Hear Us Roar series.

There are still opportunities to participate in the series.  Is that correct? 

Karen Weaver: Absolutely. We would love for you, if this calls to you, to come ahead and reach out to me. Just come and check out Hear Us Roar on Facebook. We have a nice group in there and just come and check it out. Yes, absolutely, we have four more books to fill, and so, yes, there’s lots of opportunities.

For someone unfamiliar with an anthology, what does it mean that there are four more books to fill? What opportunities does this offer for people?

Karen Weaver: The opportunities are that if you resonate with the theme and the book, then you request to be part of it. An anthology is a collective of authors all coming together, writing around two and a half thousand words on the theme, and then everyone just being celebrated and marketed and all of that visibility together. It’s a very connected experience. And because we’ve got each individual book, which is like each individual family as it is, but we also have the collective umbrella of everyone being part of it. It doesn’t matter if we’re launching Lion, people from Lioness, Puma, and all of those different Black Panthers and all those will still come, and it’s all a celebratory experience because they’re part of the Hear Us Roar book and docu-film series.

Can you talk about your role as a Napoleon Hill Institute coach? What can you offer people, and how can you help them in their life and career? 

Karen Weaver: Yes, as if I don’t have enough going on, David. Napoleon Hill Institute really called to me because, after reading Think and Grow Rich a few years ago, I discovered that I have been living the Think and Grow Rich principles for so much of my life, especially in the years where I’ve been achieving things. I was unconsciously doing it and that was probably lent to the fact that this book, Think and Grow Rich, was published in 1937 by Napoleon Hill, who was given a task by Andrew Carnegie to interview 500 of America’s highest paying people, and he would introduce them to him. But he wasn’t going to pay him to do it and it was going to take him 25 years to do it. Now most people would have said no, but Andrew Carnegie gave Napoleon Hill, like I think, 30 seconds to say yes. And Napoleon Hill did say yes.

And he went on this quest and had the most amazing experiences and was introduced to all of the big, like the Henry Fords and all of the, some of the Presidents, all of the people who had. And Andrew Carnegie himself started with nothing. He had nothing, and then he was one of the biggest. He had so much accumulated wealth by the time he passed away. But he was very much about charity and about giving to people, so it was just beautiful. So he counseled Napoleon Hill and shared with him the secret, and they came together with this formula and over those 25 years, these 13 principles were born.

Well, actually, those 17 principles in the Law of Success, which is a much thicker book than Think and Grow Rich, but that was stopped from being published. So then Think and Grow Rich was born itself. And what I love about Think and Grow Rich is it shares stories. It talks about the story about Edwin C. Barnes, who just jumps on a freight train and wanted to be Thomas Edison’s partner, and he was dressed like a tramp, but, as he says, he was dressed like a tramp, but he came in with a mindset of a king.

He came in and just approached and said this is going to happen, I’m just letting you know and I’m willing to do whatever it takes and he worked his way from the bottom up and was there when his opportunity came to step into partnership with Thomas Edison. So there’s so many inspiring stories that all have such profound, teachable moments in them. And I realized a connection between the Think and Grow Rich principles and the book that I had been writing, which is Master Gifts: Permission to Live Without Fear and on Purpose.

And I had lived each one of my master gifts, one a year, for seven years, and so there’s mindfulness, knowing all of those things. And there’s seven of them, so I did a year of each and the year of intention was my million-dollar year and I called it the miracle of intent. So I wrote and published one of those books every single year for seven years and the journey, like you can see the journey in my writing of myself evolving, and then I put them all together in one book called Master Gifts and then I realized the identification with intention is actually the first principle, which is desire.

You know you have to get very clear on what it is you want. Once you get clear on what it is you want, everything and commit to it, everything else will fall into place. So my book is much a softer read, but many of the greats, like Tony Robbins, like Oprah, lots of the great people have read Think and Grow Rich as the foundation of their learnings, and then they have taken that and made their own out of it, their own empires, but all with the intention of serving others and helping them master themselves. And that’s what’s beautiful.

And Napoleon Hill has written many, many books, and the last book that he wrote because he started to get spiritual at the end. He wasn’t spiritual. He wrote Think and Grow Rich with Peace of Mind, which is a really, really great read, and it was published in 1970 and he died that year, so it was just yeah, it’s really profound.

So why NHI? Well, my purpose on earth is to help people awaken from their slumber, because too many people are walking around asleep to their potential in the world, I believe. So, being part of NHI, and hosting the self-discipline camp, which is also like a self-mastery camp, which disrupts the norm and gets people thinking bigger and wider and getting results really quickly and seeing changes in their life instantly, with just one power hour a day.

We start our day on this, so I get up and I lead this camp. When we do, we’ll do a meditation that really opens up your heart, ready for receiving and you can receive guidance. You’ve also got to do your gratitudes. You write down your definite chief aim. You really hone into it, and I was running this camp for a few weeks and the results people were getting were just like blowing my mind.

It’s such a beautiful way to start the day like I see my life so much brighter and it changes the lens for you and you start to see opportunities, you start to experience inspired thoughts, and that’s before you even move into the mentorship program and move into coaching and all of those things. So I’m training to be a coach for them so that I can go in and serve and help people to reach their full potential because we need more people in the world seeing the light within themselves and being the best version of themselves.

We need to focus. All the answers are within and then we can lean outwards for the support to make it happen. It’s so important. Amazing.

What’s the best path for someone who wants to get involved with the Napoleon Hill Institute and the program you’re talking about?

Karen Weaver: You can reach out to me or any of the Napoleon Hill Institute coaches, or just go to NapoleonHillInstitute.com and there’s lots of amazing free content there. If you want to read Think and Grow Rich, let me just share this. This is the original book. Look at my bookmark. It’s a $10 note I was gifted. Yeah, there’s so much gold in here. But you can actually download a free version to read straight away on NapoleonHillInstitute.com under free resources. 

Can you tell us about the Moms Rising film? What is it about, and how can people watch it?

Karen Weaver: Think and Grow Rich: The Legacy was the first movie, so it’s very much based on this book. Then the producer, Scott Cervine—who’s amazing—decided to focus on the Thomas Edison story. When Thomas Edison was at school, he was sent home because they said he was unteachable, that he was dumb and couldn’t be taught. His mother read the letter but didn’t reveal the harsh words. Instead, she said, “This boy is too smart for school. We need you to teach him yourself.” The whole movie stems from the essence of that story.

So, there are lots of us moms from all over the world who’ve come in and been part of this movie. There’s a premiere this year, but you can’t really see it yet. It has been launched in Africa and in the Czech Republic, and now it’s coming around the rest of the world. We’ll be bringing it to Australia for some premieres, but there are going to be premieres everywhere, and then we’ll share the link. For now, you can’t watch it yet, but it’s amazing. I’ve seen it, I’ve watched it—it’s really good, and I got a few good little scenes in it. So, yeah, I’m happy.

What’s the best way for people to reach out to you if they have a book idea, want to join the Hear Us Roar anthology, or need coaching?

Karen Weaver: Well, I’m pretty active on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. You can get me there, or just go to my website and submit through the contact form, and we will follow up with you. I’ve got my most perfect EA— I manifested her, and I’m just smiling because, you know, whenever you’ve got that missing thing in your life. So, yeah, I get to stay in my genius zone now of creation and storytelling. 

Karen, you embody and exude a heart of service to the world because you want to see people awaken through the power of story. It’s so clear, it’s so beautiful, and thank you so much for the ways that you’re making a difference in our world. Really appreciate it. 

Karen Weaver: Thank you so much for saying that and sharing that, David, and for the opportunity to reach your viewers. Because it’s all about story. It’s all about coming together and sharing our stories, which may ignite something within someone, like that spark, and make a real difference in their lives. Then everyone around them benefits. It’s a ripple effect. So, you took the first step by giving me the platform to come and share it. So, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.