From Careers to Calling: Keith and Vanessa's Entrepreneurial Leap

Join us on this episode of Liftoff Journeys as we dive into the inspiring story of Keith and Vanessa Bell, a dynamic couple who transitioned from traditional careers to successful entrepreneurs. 

Discover how they turned their passion for storytelling into a thriving business, helping others become published authors. From professional careers, to their initial steps into real estate and now the creation of Blank Page to Author, Keith and Vanessa share their journey, challenges, and the innovative approach that sets them apart. 

Tune in for an uplifting conversation about faith, resilience, and the power of writing your own story. And, stay tuned for Jeanniey's announcement. 

Looking to write your own book? Get started here!

Transcript

All right, welcome back to Lift Off Journeys, the podcast where we go behind the scenes with today's most inspiring leaders and innovators. Today, I am joined by a powerhouse couple, partners in life and in business, and that is so amazing. They created Blank Page Author, a company that helps people turn their stories into books. And they use a little bit of AI, but we're gonna get into that later.

More importantly, I'm super curious on how they started to work together and came up with this idea. So we're going to dive into how they built their company, what it's like running it together. Are they ready to kill each other yet? Or is it going really well? How they help everybody finally become authors. And, you know, we'll see where it goes. So let's start at the beginning. Welcome to the show, both of you.

Thank you. Thank you, Jeannie. It's awesome.

Yes, it's awesome. I'm excited.

Speaker 3 (01:05.013)
So before we get into how it all started, why don't you both introduce yourself to the audience? I'm sure they would love to know who you both are, where you from.

You go first, Sunny.

All right, well, my name is Keith Bell. I'm originally from New Orleans, Louisiana, but I'm now in Atlanta, Georgia. And I'm here by way of Hurricane Katrina. So that's her old another story. But I love it here in Georgia has been a whole world of opportunities that I'm looking forward to exploring and things that have happened for me. So that's me. And this is where I also met my lovely wife, Vanessa Bell. Go ahead.

Yeah, I'm Vanessa. I am we met at church, actually. That's how we started back in 2014. I like to tell people we have a love story where we just, you know, I was there at a church event. He was there and I was in bright yellow and everybody else was in red. So I felt like God was saying, hey, this is your woman. Like she came like ready. She's shining bright. But I like to tell people that when we met, we started talking and we've never stopped.

so that's us. have three kids. we have a 15 year old, a six year old and a one year old. And our backgrounds are different. I have a science background. I started in forensics and, my husband, has an IT background and he's been in IT for over 15 years. And I was in forensic for over a little bit over five years. And, we became entrepreneurs and left the nine to five world behind.

Speaker 3 (02:35.342)
Well, I love it. You left the nine to five so that you could be from one in the morning until midnight. And then after. Yeah, love it when people say that they left the nine to five to work like twice as hard. So so that's awesome. So you met you've got these careers that have absolutely nothing to do with publishing books and being an author. So I got to ask, you know.

Yes.

That's my sister.

Speaker 3 (03:03.822)
What in the world made you two look at each other and say, that's it, let's ditch our jobs, let's start something new. Was it COVID, was it something with your kids or did you both always dream about having your own businesses and so one night over a glass of wine or something else you decided how to make this happen?

man, I don't know how much time you have, but I'll try to get it in. So first of all, entrepreneurship is something that's been introduced to Vanessa initially and she pushed it off. For me, it was something I always knew I wanted to go after. I always had that feeling of like there's something more out there. So that I would say was the like the origin, the initial spark. Fast forward and she has the timeline better. So I will not quote you timeline, but fast forward.

Our first entrepreneurial venture was actually real estate. We actually Airbnb'd our own house. And we actually still do to this day. And it was a little scary, but also awesome, you know?

Yeah, it was our introduction into just entrepreneurship. Like we had built our house from the ground up back in 2020 during COVID. And we decided he came to me, he was just like, hey, let's dabble in real estate. had gotten been to a couple of real estate conferences and stuff. And we were just like, hey, this is the thing we want to do. We are thinking, like he said, he's always been geared towards entrepreneurship. God actually spoke to me at 22 years old telling me, hey,

I want you to go into entrepreneurship. And I was just like, no, that's not for me. That's too hard. I don't want to do that. I'm cool with the nine to five because I can go to a job and then go home. So I, I fought that for a long time, but once, you know, over the years after being married, him talking to me about, we should start a business. Hey, we should start a business and what that looks like. It finally wore me down during the pandemic. And, you know, we found out about real estate investing and we decided, Hey, why not jump in? And our first investment was, Hey, let's.

Speaker 1 (05:04.206)
You know, we've been hearing about Airbnb. So we decided, Hey, you know what, let's try it with our own personal home, because if it can work here, we can do it, you know, elsewhere and stuff. And so that's kind of how we initially got started into a entrepreneurship. And eventually, you know, we flipped a few houses and everything like that and stuff happened with that. I really say the best thing is not your story. Yeah. It's not for the week. We had some learning opportunities that, um, you know, we learned from things and then, um,

We eventually got into a blank page to author. That's another story, like how we even started that. So that's kind of how we got into entrepreneurship.

Right, so I totally have to sidetrack talk about the Airbnb thing. you build a house like your dream house and you decided that you're going to actually Airbnb it. Did you so you moved out then? No.

So I love this because you don't know how often we get asked. Yeah, you know your house. How did you do it? What do you think in like there's so much that went into it, but

The thought was, and I'll tell you from my perspective, the thought was initially everybody, people we knew and of course on social media Airbnb was like blowing up and stuff like that. So it was a curiosity there, but then it was like, we don't want to just go and risk and buy like rent some apartment or buy something that we don't live in. And this thing flops and we're left with a mortgage or rent. So that's what the idea of trying our own house came about. Now,

Speaker 2 (06:33.134)
I had no idea how I'm like the idea guy. So I come with 10 every day. But then, you know, Lord spoke to Vanessa on the how not let you share exactly when he spoke to you, what made it possible for us to do.

So I will say when he brought the idea to me in my head, I was just like, that sounds crazy because it took us six months to build our house and there is no way we were living with his parents. I'm just like, I'm not going back there. I'm not moving my stuff back there and we're gonna do something like this. Cause in my heart I was like, this is a great idea. But my head was just like, how are we gonna do this? It doesn't make sense. And I was just like, look, if we can find a way where I don't have to move my stuff, then I'm for it. And so.

I think I was cooking one day in the kitchen and an idea dropped into my head. like to say God downloaded it into my brain where he was just like, your closets. So we were able to start Airbnb in our house, but, keep all of our stuff in the house. We have, when I say we have a ton of closets in our house, it's a five bedroom, bed, over 3,500 square foot house. So we have lots of space. So we were able to store our stuff and we got a couple of dressers. Actually we got furniture on like other people paying for it.

So that was another thing that interested me because I'm just like, we just bought this house and we want to buy furniture, but I don't want to have to pay for it. So I ended up, I'm just like, okay, let's go out and get the furniture and stuff like that. And we're going to have other people pay for it. And so that's kind of how it all started. Like it, it, we started out with a few bumps, but once we learned how to do it, it's, it's been golden. It's been like extra income and just, it works. And I will say that this is not our dream home.

That's another reason why I can rent it out because this is not final destination. I got an elevator in me. I want to house with elevator where, when my parents come, you know, our parents that they, if they don't want to climb the stairs, they can just take the elevator. So that's another reason why it's so easy to rent it out because it's just like this, have goals and this is accomplishing a goal and stuff.

Speaker 3 (08:26.986)
that's so smart. Okay. So that makes much more sense to me because Vince and I are in our forever house dream destination. But right before we bought it, the people that owned it started renting it out. Stupid amount of money. I can't even tell you how much and I can't bring myself to do it. Like the thought of me

thinking about people in my bed and like just random life things that normally happen that if it's your kids or your family, you're like no big deal. But if someone's person is just like stick on my couch, like I just, I cannot, but that's, I think that's because it's my final destination. Like this is our home that I love. If I had a piece of

property that I invested in, think it'd be much more easier. So thank you. That cleared that one up. All right, back to your story. so, so, okay. So you decided to become entrepreneurs. It's a very cool, something that you've wanted to do. You found a way to make it happen. And now you've got this new initiative around helping people become published authors. So talk a little bit about how you decided to do exactly what you're doing right now.

All right, well, it started in 2021. That was the idea, the catalyst, if you will. In 2021, I was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer. Vanessa knows the specific name. But I am strong on my faith. I believe in God. And I just stood on what he said to me, which was, you're going to live and not die.

I had just had a cousin that passed away from a different type of cancer and he took a whole different mental route and just he's no longer with us. So I say that to say as I was going through my treatment, my infusion nurse actually noticed my, she called it positive attitude. She didn't know my religious stance or faith stance, but she said, yeah, you're so positive. You should write a book. And I was like, I've never written a book. like, first of all,

Speaker 2 (10:35.608)
To be honest, and I tell everybody is I don't write, I barely read unless it's technical reading. This is the reader over here. So when she said that it was like, yeah, that's nice. And I'll keep going. But she said the book would be impactful to speak to specifically young black men because there's a lot that get cancer. And soon as they hear the word cancer, they instantly think death sentence. So that was the seed.

Fast forward to 2024, the beginning of 2024. We went to a business slash networking conference.

Yeah, it was a business conference we went to and we ended up meeting some people that have our same last name Our last name is Bell and so they ended up getting seated at the same table with us And we just we all clicked and so we ended up having a discussion and stuff and we formed this group and they were just like hey Let's keep in touch. They actually live in Texas and they decided hey We should all write books because we had we would talk about somehow we got on the topic of book writing And then we we decided okay

we're all going to write books this year because I had been trying to write a book for like 10 years. And he was so, hey, you should write a book. And then the other two, you know, that was something they wanted to do. And so we decided, okay. And they gave us like some tips like, all you got to do is have an outline. And I'm just like, and he made outlining so simple because in high school for me, I'm just like, I hated outlines. I'm just like, it's hard. I don't know what to do with this. They like, this is a, it's ridiculous, but he made it simple.

And I love simplicity. So when I hear something that seems complex in my mind become simple, was, I was all for it.

Speaker 2 (12:11.31)
Yep. that guy in the group, bless his heart. He did make it look simple. And I started again, because I was like, this book idea come again. And I started trying to start because I was like, I got to get a head start on all of them who are excited about books, who actually know something about writing or reading. And me, I'm going to be behind the curve. So fast forward to the end of 2024. My son, our son had a project.

was a research project and he picked the topic. His teacher basically didn't like the topic. We met with his teacher.

She said it was trash. Yeah. She was just like, you can do better than this. And then when she found out we have an IT in forensic, you know, science background as parents, she was like, what are you doing? Leverage your parents. You can come up with a group, a better idea. So

So came home that evening and I had my idea. was like, let me try this AI thing. So I went to the computer. was like, I told my son, said, I have an idea. And this is really the kind of the thing that differentiates our program. I had this idea. I was like, let me not ask it to give you a topic. Let me ask it to ask you questions to figure out.

what it is you're interested in researching and writing about. So I asked him to give me these research questions and I told my son, said, answer this honestly so that way I can get the feedback and see if this really works. So after he went through it, it came back that he wanted to research or do a research paper on a project on improving solar panels. I was like, how in the world would I have known that? We would have never went down that path. Never.

Speaker 2 (13:56.118)
You know, and it was, it was just such an amazing feeling. Like he felt good cause it was like, okay, this is something I'm really interested in. We felt good as parents. It was like, okay, this, this helps. And I think his teacher felt good as well because he had something that she thought was, was really good. So that actually started the concept like, maybe I can use this for the book. And hence that's what started the program. So I took that same concept of the questionnaire.

and I sat with it and I wrote my manuscript, no lie, in 24 hours.

No, no, no, I don't believe that.

24 hours, yes.

I had because, and this is one of the things we talk about. It's like the information is in all of us. Everyone has a book in them and for the audience, they have a message. You have a life experience. It's already there, but guess what? You may not know how to get it out. How does she say it? She's been trying to write for 10 years. know so many people. We've met so many people. I've been trying to write for 10, 20, 15 years, but guess what? You don't have to think about how to organize it and everything like that.

Speaker 2 (15:07.976)
we pull it out of you. And so that story got pulled out of me. I was able to just dump, dump, dump, answer all the questions. And before you know it, I had a manuscript, but I did not know if it was good. That was the thing. I was like, I did a thing. And literally that was what I said. I said, and I gave it to Vanessa, I said, babe, I did a thing. You read, let me know what you think. And what did you think?

So I read it and the first thing I thought was it was good. Like, and I'm not a person that will fluff my husband up. If it's trash, I'll tell him it's trash. And I read it and I like to tell people, you know, when we tell this story of how we got started in this business, I like to tell people that chapter seven is one of my favorite chapters because it was about me. And not that it was like him beefing me up. It was, I didn't know I had this much impact on you.

during your cancer journey. I didn't know I did all of this stuff for you, you know, and the way it was described, like what I was doing, just like, wow, I did all this? I'm like, man, and it made me cry because it was just, it was very impactful. It was very engaging. Like through the whole book, I couldn't put it down. It took me like, I want to say about an hour and a half to read the whole thing. And it was so good. It kept me engaged. And I was just like, man, this is it. Like, and just the way how, had to tell people with his book.

It doesn't just apply to cancer. It applies to your everyday life because it's about a mindset that you have to have in order when life's challenges hits you, how are you going to respond? Exactly. And so it was so good. So yeah, it was good. It was good.

What so what's the name of the book you're like leaving me on a cliffhanger here you're talking about this amazing book. What is it called?

Speaker 1 (16:48.574)
So the book is called Cancel Cancer Culture. That's the name of the book. Awesome. Cancer Culture.

And did AI help you write the title too?

No, the title actually came from the wife in the group that we the of the last names the Yeah, she actually she's amazing with coming up with like hooks and names and she just does it off the top of his So I was we was talking and I was dumping the idea that when we were talking about books And she was like you should call it cancel cancer culture. Yeah

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:21.582)
Yeah, because you know, they're in this in a society that we're in now that there are people all about cancelling other people. Yeah, the cancel culture. And so, you know, with cancer, you got to cancel that culture like with your mind. You can't let it like get you down. You hear cancer, then automatically you're thinking I'm going to die. No, you got to cancel that thing. Like it shouldn't be in your life. It shouldn't run you to the ground. Like your thoughts will lead you to death faster than the disease will.

That is true. So true.

That's how we got the name.

Yeah, and it has pictures in there, like we put pictures of me going through the treatment. Well, you see my weight, which I wanted people to see. I'm 6'2". I had got down to 159 pounds. So I was like this. And it's one thing to say it, but then when you flipping the pages in the book and you actually see it, that's another thing that has an impact. And it's one of my favorite pictures in there where Vanessa was kind of insistent in a good way of going to the beach.

She was like, we should go to the beach. I'm like this big and at the beach and we have, you know, a picture in there. We at the beach and you really get to see how small I was, but I'm smiling. I'm happy. I'm in good spirits. And we truly believe that was God helping me get through the, not only get through it, but being healed of it and, just walking down the path. And literally I had six treatments of chemo after the first one, the pain that I had, that's what really started at all. was pain.

Speaker 2 (18:46.894)
the pain was gone

Yeah, he could barely walk, but then he had that first treatment and all of a sudden he got his strength back. He could hold our daughter again because he couldn't even hold her. She was about like 20 pounds. Yeah, 20, 25 pounds and couldn't hold her. But after that first treatment, when I tell you the pain was gone, there was nothing there. Like, barely walk. And after that treatment, done. And was so.

Yeah, so the company has to be your calling now. It has to be, right? This is what you're getting.

Yeah, you got it. so so when so Vanessa jumped on board after she read my manuscript and she was like, we got to get this published. She had me published in two weeks. I'm talking about it was for edited, formatted and published. So we did that. And we were like, at the same time, I told her, and this is the little words I heard inside, you have to teach this. said, God's telling me we have to teach this. Now, have we taught anything before? No.

I'll tell it, tell it.

Speaker 2 (19:44.022)
I said, but my IT background, I've worked with people. I've trained people with different things. So I'm like, man, we can do this. We can do this. And plus I was like, like what you said, it felt like we're being called to do it. So what we did, we put it out there and just to see how many people started coming. And we had a lot of people. So to date we started and now to date we're 16 books in and we started December of.

The end of last year and to date we're 16 books in with all kinds of stories that vary people of different backgrounds, but all who felt called to write what it is that they needed to write, but didn't have an avenue to write it.

Yeah, and I will say like when he told me about what he like when I saw what he did I had already I was pregnant in 2024 and we had our daughter in April and so I had already started my manuscript and stuff. I was 58 pages in single space to my own book, right? But I didn't like the direction it was going. I felt like I was on a tangent and I didn't like that. I wanted to be clear and so

So I'll unbutton.

Speaker 1 (20:53.012)
And so when he gave me this process, let me tell you the same framework that we had built for our clients. I took, I threw that main script out. was just like, there's a better way to do something. I'm all about work smart, hard. And I'm just like, this is working smart. And so I was able to, I didn't do my main script in 24 hours. I did mine for seven days because you know, I have, you know, I have other responsibilities. have our kids and you know, the businesses that, know, the other stuff that we're doing.

And so I was just like, I was able to get it done in seven days and work alongside our first group of clients and stuff.

Yeah, because we were teaching and she was writing at the same time.

And I was doing the framework that we had created and stuff, because it was just like, when he told me, like, God said, hey, we should teach this. I'm just like, I ain't no teacher. You know, I don't want to do it. Like what? And I was apprehensive because I'm just like, we don't have everything planned. I'm a planner. So I'm just like, there's nothing here. All we have is, you know, what you did and how we going to build this out. I had so many questions, but I realized in entrepreneurship, you learn along the way. So we had a framework. I'm just like, okay, we can work with this framework and I can write my book and improve on what it is that we're doing.

And so that's what I did. Yeah, she good. yeah, the name of my book is No More Shame. So I dealt with a lot of shame, a lot of guilt over the past decisions that I made. And my book is all about finding freedom in Christ. And so I had four abortions and stuff like that, and that held me down. just like, don't need to, you when I learned about God's grace, I'm just like, man, there was freedom in that. And you know, God was just like, hey, I want you to write this. So I wrote that. man, that's a,

Speaker 2 (21:59.938)
I was able to

Speaker 1 (22:27.08)
Some of the women that have read my book, I didn't even know was impactful until one lady, she was just like, I cried. She was like, I cried. I said, you cried? I said, for real? You know, the way like I was able, like he said, the method that we teach our clients, was able to pull everything out. It was already inside of me. All I had to do was just answer questions and we tell our clients, if you can answer questions, you can write a book with our program.

amazing because I wrote a book so many years ago. don't even want to talk about how many years ago it was. And it was called Email Marketing An Hour A Day because it was the beginning of email marketing. And it was probably

the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. And I had a co-author, but you had to follow this process and you had to think about things and organize it. And you didn't know what you didn't know and you didn't know what to say. And it was really, really, really hard. So I've always thought about writing another book and then I'm like, no, I'm not that crazy, but you're making it so easy. So impactful. It's amazing.

And I want to add to that. One of the things is with personality. So I'm a creative. What I mean by that is, like I said, I have 10 ideas a day. Keeping me focused a lot of times is challenging. Like she says, I'm a great starter and she's the finisher. So I mention that because there's people out there like me and there's people out there like her, and we both can use this process to write books, which is amazing because

If you know anything about a starter, I know you probably know some starters, we'll get started with something and man, there's a project that's left over from years ago and we're like, yeah, we'll get back to it. But this process kept us engaged, both of us, you know, and the term writer's block doesn't even exist because the way the process does, it keeps pulling at you and keeps making you excited by what you, you know, the new things you either thought about or might have not have thought about.

Speaker 2 (24:33.964)
regarding your subject, your message, what you're trying to write. So I love seeing that. We call it the light bulb moment. When people are going through and they experience it, it's like, once you feel it, you don't turn off. You're like.

creativity comes on. Like you just you get so many different ideas. And like you say, he's a great starter. I had a I had a hard time like starting stuff. So I would start, you know, my book, would take me forever to start my book. But once I got going, I got going. Yes. But my problem was I can go on a tangent. I don't want to go on a tangent. I want to be clear. Like when I'm speaking to people, I like to make things very simple, very relatable and understandable. That's my personality. And I'm just like, I don't want my book to be all over the place. Like that's not me.

So when he came to me with this, I'm just like, snap, I was able to start, you know, really quickly and I didn't have to like wait for an idea to come in, like inspiration. I didn't have to wait for that. Like it helped. I didn't have, I didn't have none of that. So I love our process.

Yeah, well, I do too. And I think it's so brilliant to start asking questions to figure out what you should even be writing about. You know, it's so obvious, but probably not a lot of people.

Think about things that way. And the whole beginning world of prompt engineering is so, so like early days, but I am convinced that you've got to understand how to do the right prompts in order to get the right results. So I think it's fascinating what you're doing. I love your whole journey of how you got to where you are today. And I'm super excited to watch and see where this goes. This is really great.

Speaker 2 (26:09.402)
yeah, no, it's awesome. I'm telling you, should, I mean, you should try it. It's something that really gets people engaged and going. And I'm telling you, once you get it going, you're not going to be able to stop. And guess what? We not only give you the, like you do this one time and you're done, you learn a skill that you can apply to however many books you want to write. So.

Yeah, and so one, you should write a book because you said you got another book in you so you can quit us and do it. Right, because I mean, he's written two books. I've written two books. I've written the nonfiction, but I've also written a fiction book. It's called The Weight of Worth, having people understand who they are. Because if you don't understand who you are, you cannot walk in your purpose without understanding who you are, period.

Hey. Yes.

He

Speaker 3 (26:58.286)
do this right here. We're gonna do it on the podcast. I'm gonna write a book. I'm gonna follow your process. We're gonna see how it goes. We're gonna test this out. And then I don't know in what a week, a month, two months time and in a little while after the books up and out, then I'm gonna have you come back maybe on the TV show, we could talk about the book there. Yeah, actually see if anybody reads it. That's crazy. That's crazy.

First you convinced me that maybe I should Airbnb the house and now you're trying to convince me to read the book. We can't talk much longer. Otherwise you're going to be getting me to buy a boat and then there's going to be like an island and I don't know. My husband will be happy, but we'll see. Let's start with the book. Let's start with the book. The best crazy.

Yeah.

No

Well, you two are just so charismatic and so inspiring. And it's very, very cool. you know, and I have to say, I've got five kids, we're in a blended family. So we have five kids between the two of us and they're all.

Speaker 3 (28:06.656)
adults and we tell them all the time you can't stress. I mean, I say you can't stress because then you get wrinkles, but you you can't stress because there is a plan. You just have to open yourself up to what the plan is. And that seems to be how the two of you have lived your life. And I think it's so awesome. Thank you so much for sharing your story on Lift Off Journeys.

Thank you for having us. This is awesome.