Interview With Financial Education Author Dr. Stacker

  

 

 

1. What inspired you to write this book?

The spark came from a conversation with my little sister. She is intelligent, hardworking, and had access to plenty of financial information, including me, but she still struggled to consistently do the things she already knew she should be doing.

 

That conversation forced me to ask a different question. Instead of asking, “What do people need to know about money?” I began asking, “What keeps good, capable people from doing what they already know?”

 

My sister lit the match, but my wife and daughter fueled the fire.

I wanted to create the kind of practical financial guide I wish I had 30 years ago—a book that addresses the beliefs, emotions, habits, identity, and expectations that determine whether financial advice ever becomes consistent behavior. Information is important, but implementation is how financial lives actually change.

 

My wife and daughter made the work deeply personal. I was not just writing a book about money; I was leaving them a wealth-building instruction manual. I wanted to create something that could help the people I love become more confident, capable, and intentional with their financial lives.

 

That is what ultimately inspired this book: one conversation revealed the problem, and my family gave me the reason to keep writing until I had created something that could genuinely help solve it.

 

2. What exactly is it about — and who is it written for?

Most investing books teach people what to do. This book focuses on and addresses why so many people struggle to do it consistently.

 

The formula for building wealth is not especially complicated: spend less than you earn, save consistently, and invest over time. The challenge is turning that information into behavior that survives stress, setbacks, emotions, and everyday life. That is what this book is really about.

It combines beginner-friendly investing fundamentals with stories, practical tools, and simple frameworks that help readers understand how their beliefs, habits, identity, and financial systems affect their results. The goal is not merely to help someone choose an investment. It is to help them become the type of person who can build wealth consistently.

 

The book is written for hardworking people who want to improve their financial lives but feel stuck between knowing and doing. They may understand that they should save more, reduce debt, or start investing, but they have struggled to create a system they can actually follow. It is especially for beginners who want clear financial education without jargon, shame, hype, or the assumption that they already know how everything works.

 

At its core, this is a book for people who are tired of starting over and are ready to build a stronger financial foundation from the ground up.

 

3. What do you hope readers will get out of reading your book?

More than anything, I want readers to finish the book believing that building wealth is possible for them.

 

Too many people see the word impossible and forget that, with one small shift, it becomes I’m possible. Wealth is not reserved for financial experts, high earners, or people who started with every advantage. It is usually built through a few important decisions repeated consistently over time.

 

I want readers to gain practical knowledge about saving, investing, managing risk, and building a financial system, but I also want them to understand themselves better. I want them to recognize the beliefs, emotions, habits, and expectations that may have kept them from applying what they already know.

 

Most importantly, I want them to leave with greater financial self-trust. I want readers to be able to say, “I understand what to do, I have a system that fits my life, and I am capable of following through.” The real goal isn’t simply to know more about money, it’s to become more confident, capable, and consistent in the way you handle it.

 

4. How did you decide on your book’s title and cover design?

That part was actually easy. Before I wrote a single word, I knew I needed a powerful metaphor that would make the wealth-building process easier for beginners to understand and remember. Growing a garden was the natural choice because building wealth works in much the same way.

 

You begin by preparing the soil, then you plant seeds, create a system for watering and caring for them, protect what you are growing through difficult seasons, and patiently allow time to produce the fruit. You cannot plant a seed on Monday and become angry when there is no harvest by Friday. Wealth also requires patience, attention, consistency, and trust in the process.

 

That metaphor led directly to the subtitle, Planting Seeds & Growing Riches, and it shaped the entire structure of the book. The title, Beginner’s Guide to Growing Wealth and Investing, makes the promise clear: this is an approachable starting point for people who want to understand investing and build wealth from the ground up.

 

The cover design followed the same idea. I wanted it to feel hopeful, accessible, and connected to growth—not like a technical textbook or another book promising overnight riches. The imagery of seeds, roots, and growth reflects the central lesson of the book: wealth does not suddenly appear. It is planted through small decisions, nurtured through consistent systems, and grown over time.

 

5. What advice or words of wisdom do you have for fellow writers – other than run!?

Whether you sell 100 copies or 100 million copies, write the book as though it will be read by 100 million people. And not for the reason you might think.

 

Ask yourself this: if you knew with absolute certainty that 100 million people were waiting to read your book, how long would you allow F.U.D. (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) to keep you from finishing it? Probably not very long.

 

Do not let F.U.D. delay your dream. If your dream is to write the book, then write the dang book. Do not overthink it. Do not wait until you feel completely qualified. Do not let the pursuit of perfection become an excuse for never getting it done.

 

Not to be morbid, but I often think about how many dreams die with people simply because they never acted on them or never finished what they started. Do not let your unwritten book become one of your life’s regrets. The book does not have to be perfect. It has to be written.

You can revise a completed manuscript. You cannot revise a dream that never made it onto the page.

 

While I was writing, my son would sing a line from Hamilton to me: “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?” My answer was simple: because I am. Time is my most precious asset, and I refuse to waste it leaving important work unfinished. My dream will not die with me. It’s in my book.

 

6. What trends in the book world do you see -- and where do you think the book publishing industry is heading? 

I’m living one of the biggest changes in publishing. Authors no longer need permission from a few major publishing houses to share their ideas. Independent writers can now publish, distribute, and build direct relationships with readers on their own terms.

 

As the industry becomes more digital, publishing will become even more accessible, but also more crowded. That will make authentic voice, lived experience, and real connection more valuable. And ironically, I think the more digital the world becomes, the more some readers will return to physical books. Certain stories and ideas are simply experienced differently when you can hold them in your hands.

 

7. Were there experiences in your personal life or career that came in handy when writing this book? 

 

Going broke. Losing it all. That came in pretty handy.

 

I started with $5,000 and built a multimillion-dollar real estate portfolio, then lost it. The collapse did more than damage my finances. It broke me, and I stayed down for nearly a decade.

 

What is interesting is that when I finally rebuilt, I did it using much of the same financial information I had known ten years earlier. The information had not changed. I had to change.

I had to become more intentional, self-aware, and capable of consistently doing what I already knew needed to be done. That experience taught me that financial transformation is not just about learning more. It is about becoming someone different.

 

My career also shaped the book. I have spent nearly 30 years as an educator, counselor, and college administrator helping people learn, change, and work through difficult transitions. That taught me that information alone rarely changes behavior.

 

This book sits at the intersection of those two experiences. Losing everything taught me what had to change, and my career taught me how to explain that process in a way ordinary people can understand, follow, and use.

 

8. How would you describe your writing style? Which writers or books is your writing similar to? 

I would describe my writing style as conversational, story-driven, and practical. I write the way I teach: like a professor who is willing to explain the lesson, a coach who will challenge you, and an uncle who wants to make sure you do not repeat his mistakes.

 

I use metaphors, personal stories, humor, and simple frameworks to make financial ideas easier to understand and remember. I never want readers to feel as though they need a finance degree or a decoder ring to follow along, and I never want them to feel talked down to or shamed for what they do not know or what they have done with money.

 

My work shares some similarities with Morgan Housel’s The Psychology of Money because of its focus on behavior and storytelling, and with James Clear’s Atomic Habits because it connects small, consistent actions to larger outcomes. But my approach is specifically focused on helping beginners build a financial identity and operating system that makes investing and wealth building easier to sustain.

 

The goal is for readers to feel like someone is sitting across the table from them, telling the truth, making the complicated simple, and helping them believe they can actually do this.

 

9. What challenges did you overcome in the writing of this book?

At first, I had no idea how much actually went into writing and publishing a book. Writing the manuscript is only one part of the process. There are edits, revisions, formatting, cover decisions, publishing choices, marketing, and a hundred other details nobody really warns you about. It can be overwhelming.

 

But honestly, the biggest challenge was me.

 

I had to get out of my own way. I had to learn how to deal with that little voice in my head that kept saying, “Who are you to think you can write a book?” “What are you doing?” “You are not an author.” “You are an imposter.”

 

Imposter syndrome is real. It shows up when you are trying to do something new, meaningful, or bigger than what you have done before. The mistake is believing that the voice has to disappear before you can move forward. It does not. I had to keep writing while the doubt was still talking. I had to stop treating fear like evidence and stop letting uncertainty make decisions for me.

 

For me, so much of life is about mind over matter: If you do not let it live in your mind, it does not matter.

 

The challenge is was refusing to let fear, uncertainty, doubt, and perfectionism keep me from finishing what I started.

 

10. If people can buy or read one book this week or month, why should it be yours?

You buy it because most financial books assume the problem is that you do not know enough. My book starts with a different question: what if you already know many of the right things to do, but you have never been shown how to do them consistently?  It is not just financial education, it’s a personal transformation journey through a financial framework.

 

You may already know you should save more, invest regularly, reduce unnecessary spending, and plan for the future. The challenge is getting your beliefs, decisions, habits, and financial systems aligned well enough for that knowledge to become behavior. That is what makes this book different.

 

About The Author: Dr. Stacker, also known as Doc Stacker, Ph.D., is the founder of Stackers University, launched in 2022 to provide the financial education the school system did not. He teaches like a professor, challenges like a coach, speaks like a counselor, and keeps it real like a wise uncle while helping people break free from the Working Poor Cycle and build wealth on purpose. Starting with just $5,000, he built a multimillion-dollar real estate portfolio, lost it all, and later rebuilt by transforming his mindset, emotions, identity, and financial systems. With nearly three decades in higher education as a professor and administrator, a Master’s in Counseling, and a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership, Dr. Stacker blends behavioral finance, psychology, practical investing, and lived experience to help people change how they think, decide, and act with money.  Please see: www.stackersuniversity.com

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For the past three decades, Brian Feinblum has helped thousands of authors. He formed his own book publicity firm in 2020. Prior to that, for 21 years as the head of marketing for the nation’s largest book publicity firm, and as the director of publicity at two independent presses, Brian has worked with many first-time, self-published, authors of all genres, right along with best-selling authors and celebrities such as: Dr. Ruth, Mark Victor Hansen, Joseph Finder, Katherine Spurway, Neil Rackham, Harvey Mackay, Ken Blanchard, Stephen Covey, Warren Adler, Cindy Adams, Todd Duncan, Susan RoAne, John C. Maxwell, Jeff Foxworthy, Seth Godin, and Henry Winkler.

 

His writings are often featured in The Writer and IBPA’s The Independent (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/whats-needed-to-promote-a-book-successfully) and (https://pubspot.ibpa-online.org/article/10-things-my-dog-taught-me-about-marketing-books). He was recently interviewed by the IBPA: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0BhO9m8jbs

 

He hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America several years ago, and has spoken at ASJA, three times at BookCAMP, Independent Book Publishers Association, Sarah Lawrence College, Nonfiction Writers Association, Cape Cod Writers Association, Willamette (Portland) Writers Association, APEX, five times at Morgan James Publishing Red Carpet, and Connecticut Authors and Publishers Association. He served as a judge for the 2024 IBPA Book Awards.

 

His letters-to-the-editor have been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, NY Daily News, Newsday, The Journal News (Westchester) and The Washington Post. His first published book was The Florida Homeowner, Condo, & Co-Op Association Handbook.  It was featured in The Sun Sentinel and Miami Herald.

 

Born and raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester with his wife, two kids, and Ferris, a black lab rescue dog, and El Chapo, a pug rescue dog.

 

You can connect with him at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfeinblum/ or https://www.facebook.com/brian.feinblum