An NFL player changed an author's life. He's still adjusting to overnight success.

Jim Murphy hadn't been able to pay off his mortgage or credit cards in January until an NFL playoff broadcast showed a player reading his book while on the sideline. Sales skyrocketed, and nine months later, we check in with him to ask how his life changed.

Several years ago, Jim Murphy typed out a note on his phone that he would look at and repeat every day.

I’m a New York Times best-selling author.

Since his book "Inner Excellence" was published in 2009, that affirmation had yet to come true. But if his sales were low, his confidence wasn’t. The book had earned clients for his business coaching athletes, from professional golfers to Olympians, by using such affirmations of visualizing success. When Murphy got the publishing rights back to "Inner Excellence" from his original publisher in 2018, he rewrote a new edition and published it himself.

“I had an amazing life,” Murphy told NBC News. “It just wasn’t a super-well-known life.”

All that changed in January.