Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Michael Hanrahan on how reading and writing will change your life

Episode Date: August 8, 2020

There have been many rewards that have come into my life and business from writing and publishing, and it wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for today’s guest, Michael Hanrahan. In my humble opinion, and from personal experience, I can confidently say that Michael is the undisputed guru of all things writing, books and publishing in Australia.  He’s successfully published many hundreds of books over his 20 years plus in the industry.  With experience in all areas of publishing, from editing to printing to ebooks and bookshop distribution, Michael started his own publishing house over six years ago to concentrate on helping small business owners like myself publish our books. This has now evolved into Publish Central. Publish Central is the leading provider of non-fiction self-publishing services in Australia, with a focus on high-quality books that help you stand out from your competitors, set you up as the experts in your field, and help you promote your businesses to a wider audience.Michael has been featured on radio and podcasts, in magazines and in The Huffington Post, and has written a book and a practical guide on how to self-publish, called Stand Out, which is a must read if your looking to write and publish your own book – and I encourage you to do so.  Michael’s also a regular presenter at the annual Small Press Network conference and co-founder of the Australian Business Book Awards, of which I was humbled to win two awards last year. Michael is a great down to earth and a cracking bloke, so I know you’re really going to enjoy this engaging and inspiring conversation with Michael Hanrahan. Get Invested is the podcast dedicated to time poor professionals who want to work less and live more. Join Bushy Martin, one of Australia’s top 10 property specialists, as he and his influential guests share know-how on the ways investing in property can unlock the life you always dreamed about and secure your financial future. Remember to subscribe on your favourite podcast player, and if you're enjoying the show please leave us a review. Find out more about Get Invested here https://bushymartin.com.au/get-invested-podcast/  Want to connect with Bushy? Get in touch here https://bushymartin.com.au/contact/  This show is produced by Apiro Media - http://apiropodcasts.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

One of the best things you can do to learn about writing is to read a book. So if I read a book by, you know, Jonathan Franzen, I'm learning from Jonathan Franzen about how to write. So it's still something to this day that I'm learning about. Welcome to the Get Invested podcast, where we share great conversations with experts from all walks of life to uncover their secret know-how and where they invest their time, their skills, and their money, and the benefits that this has created. you see the truth is that everyone invests every minute every day we're investing our time our skills our energy and our money in something some of us are investing consciously some

unconsciously sometimes for good sometimes for bad sometimes for no impact get invested will help you to start living by design not by default i'm going to help you to make it happen not let it happen. You'll hear the top tips on how you can live with conscious intent so that you can live more, work less, and leave a living legacy by investing now. Listen to the show to discover the top tips on how to get started, make the most of your investment journey, and ultimately to be living your dream, not someone else's. More episodes can be found on iTunes or at bushymartin.com.au forward slash getinvested. Thanks for listening, and now let's get invested. Hi, friend-in-fighters.

When was the last time that you sat down and read a book? Now, I'm not talking about scrolling absentmindedly through social media posts or flicking through the pages of a magazine or the newspaper. I'm talking about diving deep into a really good book. And what about writing? When was the last time you wrote something? I don't mean an email or a work paper. I mean really writing something about your deepest thoughts, your beliefs and your feelings.

My bet is that for most of you, reading something deep or writing something meaningful was a long time ago, or at best, a few hours on your last holiday. And I know that you've got good reasons. You're too busy, you don't have the time, and even if you could find the time, you're just too exhausted to write or read just for the pleasure of it. Now, we all want to live an amazing life. We want to have happy and healthy relationships. We want to have fulfilling careers and lives full of meaning.

We want to be financially independent so that we can do what we want, when we want, with who we want. We're clear on what we want to achieve in life. However, very few of us know how to achieve it. As a result, you may be constantly searching for ways to achieve your lifestyle goals, but you're frustrated that you're never making enough progress. But here's the good news. Achieving the life of your dreams, health, love, career, happiness, etc.,

doesn't have to be that complicated. And it doesn't have to take forever. In fact, we can achieve the life of our dreams faster by following the examples of the successful. How? Put simply, start by investing in reading more. Now, I'm sure you've all heard the saying that an investment in knowledge pays the best interest. Well, this all starts with reading.

According to Vincent Carlos' blog on why reading is the habit of highly successful people, when the world's best living investor Warren Buffett was being interviewed about his secret to success, he pointed to a stack of books in his office and he said, Read 500 pages like this every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will. Now, early in his career, Buffett read 800 pages a day.

And even now, at the age of 89, he still reads for about 8 hours a day. and he's not the only one. In an interview with the New York Times, Bill Gates shared that he reads about 50 books a year and apparently Gates takes reading vacations for two weeks at a time. Elon Musk says that he taught himself physics as well as rocket science

simply by reading a lot of books. And Oprah Winfrey has referred to reading as her path to personal freedom. It's one of the reasons she started her own book club, where she talks about her favourite books. And here's the interesting thing. These examples aren't the exceptions. If you look at leading CEOs around the world, they read an average of one book a week. That's 52 books a year.

Now imagine how much more knowledgeable you'd be if you read one book a week for the next 10 years. and increased knowledge leads to better insight which is the precursor of better choices and actions. If you read the right books, you couldn't help but be healthier, happier and financially more successful. This is something that all highly successful people know that if they get the right book in their hands first,

the rest will naturally flow. Reading is and has always been The Habit of the Highly Successful But successful people don't just read anything or everything. According to Thomas Cawley, author of the book Rich Habits, The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals, he found that successful people are highly selective about what types of books they read.

Cawley says that rich people read for self-improvement and education, while less well-off people read for entertainment, if they read at all. Why? Because successful people see investing in books as a gateway to knowledge and continuous learning. As a result, they tend to read books that are going to help them challenge and grow their minds and improve their lives. And if you're not continuously learning anything of value, how do you expect your life to change? The simple fact is that you can't stay at your current level of knowledge and expect your life to improve.

so working for eight hours or more a day and then coming home and watching netflix or reading harry potter for entertainment probably isn't going to help you much the alternative is to read books that are going to help you grow in the areas of your life that you want to improve in as examples if you want to learn how to manifest your ideal lifestyle have a read of dr joe dispenser's book Becoming Supernatural. It's a cracker. If you want to have happier and healthier relationships, read The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. And if you want to be financially independent, start by reading The Richest Man in Babylon by George Classen. Or, and here's my shameless self-promotion, get yourself a copy of my book, The Freedom Formula. Now, whatever it is that you

want to achieve in life, there's an endless supply of books that you can get invested in to teach you and instruct you on how to do it. It's time to increase your reading. Now, I can hear you say, yeah, that's all well and good, Bushy, but when am I going to find the extra time to do that? How am I going to be able to read a book a week? Well, you may be surprised to hear that it's a lot easier than you think. To read a book a week that really gets you engaged, you need to read about 30 pages a day, which equates to around 45 minutes depending on how quickly you read. And this isn't that difficult. Here's how I do it.

I start by searching for good topics of interest on YouTube, and I have a listen to some presentations by good authors or good YouTube book summaries. The Productivity Game by Nathan Lorenzen does some great 10-minute book summaries. And they even email you a PDF of the key points from that book. And I generally do this in the morning when I'm getting ready, exercising, in the shower, or doing chores. This quickly gives me a good indication of the author and the book content. I'll also search topics of interest on the Blinkist app, that's B-L-I-N-K-I-S-T, which gives you awesome audio condensed versions and summaries of books.

These are both really good ways to search for topics, authors and books of interest and then get all the juice on a book very quickly and easily If an author or book really captures my attention I then download free sample chapters of the book on my Kindle e-reader that goes absolutely everywhere with me If the free sample chapters engage me and I like what I'm reading I buy and download it from Amazon or Goodreads now i've currently got a library of over 300 awesome books in the palm of my hand that i

can read anywhere anytime with a book to suit every mood and occasion and because i'm a mood reader i've generally got between two to four books on the go at the same time one will be a fiction novel for pure escapism that gives wings to my creative imagination as my mind visualizes new times places and faces and the others will be a mix of non-fiction personal development books across the full spectrum of self health and wealth then whenever i can grab a few moments and minutes during the day to read a few pages like when i'm standing in line at the coffee shop or the post office or at the supermarket when i'm having a coffee break when i'm in waiting rooms or waiting for a meeting and yes when i'm doing my business in today's version of the man cave

allow the toilet, much to my wife's disgust. Now, I also read and relax for 10 to 15 minutes when I climb into bed at the end of the day, and there's no better way to drift off to sleep and to prime your subconscious to process new ways of thinking. And if I really love what I'm reading, I'll get a copy of the hardcover version so I can highlight key passages and make notes. You can also listen to audio books on Audible or other apps while you're driving, jogging, going for a walk or doing housework. And apparently nearly 30% of us are auditory learners. Now, I'm a very visual learner, so reading books works really well for me, as seeing the words seems to help embed them deeper in my mind and imagination. And diagrams and illustrations work even better.

So regardless of what's happening throughout your day, still moments to read at least 30 pages a day. You'll be surprised how much this adds up day after day, week after week, month after month. And you'll be surprised how your mind and your knowledge expands and your thinking changes, allowing you to make better informed choices. And remember that your reading needs to be highly enjoyable. So if you're not enjoying a book you're reading, give it away. Don't feel like you have to finish every single book you start. It's always better to read books that sincerely interest you rather than waste weeks trying to force yourself to read through a book just because you feel that you should. Now, by coming up with a combination of reading

approaches that suits your style and schedule, you can easily get through a book a week without much effort. So I challenge you to start. And for all of you who accept the challenge and start reading a book, I'll give you a free copy of my book, Get Invested. If you jump on our website at www.knowhowproperty.com.au, hit the get in touch button, fill in your details and in the briefly tell us what you need box, just write, I'm getting invested in reading with the name of the book and the author's name for the book that you are reading. I guarantee you'll start to see the world differently by taking this step. More than anything else, the information you'll learn from reading the right books will be a key to helping you to start living the way

you want to live. And to reinforce the rewards from reading, socio-economist and author Randall Bell's book, Me, We, Do, Be, The Four Cornerstones of Success, confirms that those who read seven or more books per year are 122% more likely to be successful as opposed to those who never read or only read one to three books. Yep, you heard that right. That's 122% more likely to be successful. And this is what I really love about reading. You can go anywhere in the world

and your mind can travel to the past or the future. You can feel, see, hear anything at all just by reading and letting your imagination fly. Reading is the best way to relax and acquire information because it exercises the brain and builds your brain's muscles. And that's not all. Reading is also dramatically correlated with improved creativity,

better memory, increased vocabulary, better communication, stronger analytical thinking, improved focus and concentration, greater relaxation, reduced stress, increased levels of happiness and even greater longevity. So if you want to live the long life of your dreams, health, love, career, happiness, etc., then follow in the footsteps of the world's most successful people, pick up a book, and start reading.

Reading is where your tree of knowledge and your lifetime learning begins. And if you really want to take things to the next level, then you need to transform and translate what you learn from reading and start writing. When I was a kid, I wanted to become a successful architect and an entrepreneur. I always had a pen and a pad in my hand, I was one of those nerds who was always taking copious notes and writing everything down. I instinctively seemed to know that writing everything down helped me to clarify my understanding of things

and the way I then remembered and communicated them and the way I could then create things in new, exciting and engaging ways. I developed written acronyms for everything because it was the easiest way for me and everyone else to remember key things and I'm still doing it. and I can still remember my acronym for the first 20 elements of the periodic table in our year nine chemistry class over 45 years ago. It goes like this, H.E. Libby Bickenhoff, Nina Miguel Sipscharka. That got me through chemistry. Now, what I didn't realise then is how much personal gratification I got and continue to get from writing.

Like Faisal Hoek expressed in his Business Insider blog on how writing makes him more successful, for me, writing has become one of my happy habits that has helped me to connect better with my purpose, my world and myself. When I started writing, I was motivated by our business needs, but over the years, as I've dived deeper and deeper into writing, the greatest satisfaction comes from writing from my heart, from challenging and defining my beliefs and my thoughts. In this regard, I can really relate to Anne Frank's writings where she once said, I can shake off everything as I write.

My sorrows disappear. My courage is reborn. I've discovered that writing is a way to find inspiration for yourself and for others. And just like you don't have to be a chef to cook for yourself, you don't have to be a professional writer to get the benefits of writing. and don't just take my word for it many successful people are secretly regular writers again warren buffett had described writing as a key way of refining his thoughts and as we now know he's a man who reads and thinks a lot richard branson once said my most

essential possession is a standard size school notebook which he uses for regular writing Bill Gates has described writing as a way to sit down and re-evaluate his thoughts during the day And Tim Ferriss, Tony Robbins and Oprah are all regular writers For all of them, writing has just become another tool for thinking, expression and encouraging creativity As the great shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis once said Always carry a notebook, write everything down This is a million-dollar lesson they don't teach you in business school. So let me share some of the things writing has done and continues to do for me.

It helps me cultivate my authentic self. Writing helps you to understand who you are, what you want to be, and how you want to fit into the world. When you write about your thoughts and feelings, it can propel you to explore your inner self, your journey, your struggles, your inspirations, and your purpose. As you let your words flow out of your head and your heart, unedited, it can take you to those seldom searched places where you can boldly ask questions like, why you're on the path that you're on? Is this what I really want?

Do you like where you're going? Our unhappiness often stems from not knowing where we're heading. Through writing, it's easy to explore who you are and where you want to take your journey next. It's a way to revisit the past, connect with the present, and draw a map for the future. writing also reduces your stress and improves your peace of mind life by definition sooner or later involves some level of pain suffering and disappointment accepting and growing through our pain and our problems as part of our personal growth this is anything but easy like any other skill learning to suffer well requires conscious practice and learning in this regard i found

writing is very therapeutic for coping with my struggles it allows me to turn my anger fear and disappointment into inspiration for both myself and my readers. It serves as stress relief when you turn the negative into positive by finally expressing what you feel deep down inside. Writing helps me to live in the moment, to learn from the bad times and keep an eye on the bigger picture. It has made me calm, collective and much more resilient. Writing also creates and instills rewarding rituals, happy habits and daily disciplines. Mastering an authentic craft comes from uncompromising regular practice. Developing the discipline to practice the same thing over and over again requires ritualistic hard work. In addition

to my writings, playing piano every day, doing my 7 minute workout challenge and my manifesting meditations are the non-negotiable important big rocks that go into every day and the remaining sand of life just fills in the gaps. These rewarding rituals teach us to be disciplined, deliberate and meditative. Creating these rewarding rituals for your daily life provides a path to practice mastery with positive energy and regular writing. In order to write each week, as I've just done in preparing this podcast intro, as well as my weekly Bush Bite Facebook Lives and other media articles, I'm forced to read a great deal and go down a multitude of rabbit holes. I constantly have to learn, unlearn and relearn. This forces me to turn

off the noise, exercise both my analytical and my creative side, and constantly approach subjects and topics with a new beginner's mind and a reinvigorated childlike curiosity. And here's the big one. Writing also clarifies and reaffirms your intentions. Our life's direction results from our intention, what we call living by design, not by default. It's our spiritual will, something that drives us to do what seems impossible. Intention nurtures us with hope in our darkest moments, enables us to dream of better days, and resides in a place where we're destined to find our fulfillment. Writing our thoughts helps us to intend to go somewhere meaningful and to make a difference. As I said before, using

affirmations and choosing positive thoughts helps us in our quest to manifest our dreams and our desires. Writing allows us to consciously put these positive reaffirmations on paper to visualize our future destiny. The ability to visualize our dreams creates a mindset that makes our ambitions possible. Understanding exactly what we want is the foundation for our success. To give you a good example of this, of dreaming in decades while doing in days, let me share the diary of my ideal day from my book, The Freedom Formula. It's the vision that I wrote what I wanted my life to look like in 10 years. And I wrote this in April 2015, when my wife Sonia and I were on holiday in Bali, just before we launched the know-how evolution of our business. At the time, we were still living

in our humble abode of our house in the suburban scrub at Aldinga Beach. Sonia was still running our property management business and I was still working hard driving our finance breaking business. There were no books and no podcast. Now it's titled A Perfect Day in the Life of Bushy and it goes like this. I wake into the sound of birds surrounded by nature and I look out at the long range uninterrupted natural view from the top of the hill down the valley to the plains and the water in the distance. I feel totally rested and at peace, serene, cool, calm and collected and completely satisfied. I embrace and snuggle into Sonia feeling close, connected and intimate. I feel safe, secure and relaxed without any

stress, just positive pressure. I feel I have lots of time to do everything I enjoy. I'm fit, flexible and healthy and I can do anything I want physically and mentally. I have a fantastic memory and can recall facts, figures and details easily. Sonia feels loved and secure and we both love our relationship and our life and we laugh often and loud. I spring out of bed looking forward to the day ahead. I greet our smiling Samoyed rescue dogs and shower them with affection. I retreat to our meditation studio where I give gratitude and affirmations while soaking in the long range view as I watch the sunrise. After stretching I work out in our gym and then slip into the pool and swim some laps followed by a stretch down to keep fit. I'm loving the fact

that I'm still actively playing field hockey on the weekends. A quick shower and then Sonia and I take the dogs for a walk while our live-in housekeeper sets the fire and makes breakfast with organic produce grown on our property which is totally self-sufficient. Our homestead is minimalist with strong bold natural materials and curved floor to ceiling retractable glass so the inside and outside merge beneath broad outdoor living verandas and courtyards with landscaping and running water creating ceaseless wonder and feelings of peace and tranquility. After a brisk walk, we return to feed the dogs

and enjoy a luxurious breakfast while reading with peaceful music playing in the background. I'll then spend two hours in the studio retreat catching it with business performance reports, regional leader updates, weekly leader Skype sessions and business forecast trends. the dogs are lounging around the retreat while the open fire burns warmly and can come and go inside and outside at their leisure after a half hour break playing guitar or piano and singing

followed by a light lunch i'll then spend two to four hours working on my latest book keynote presentation or stage hosting event blog video message social media posts and our golden smile life with paws abandoned and forgotten souls program that brings together old and abandoned pets with the forgotten elderly to eliminate pet euthanasia. I finish the working day with important phone calls or meetings. Twice a week, I have lunchtime meetings with key people at our Reflections Retreat. I give monthly keynote speeches all over the world on living by design through home ownership by smart property investment funding solutions from richly rewarding relationships based

on my Wealth by Stealth series that highlights and funds our Golden Smiles Life with Paws programs. I have a national team of healthy wealth home ownership funding strategists who enable clients identified through my integrated icon industry attraction campaigns. An hour before the sun goes down, Sonia and I take the dogs for another walk and then I practice hockey for half an hour during season or have another swim and stretching session. We enjoy a light healthy dinner watching the sunset from the balcony and after dinner I practice singing or playing an instrument before reading around the fire

with Sonia and the dogs with music playing in the background. We enjoy a bath before retiring to bed early. For three months of the year, we travel, incorporating a mix of four- to six-week journeys that combine one-month healthy wealth-by-stealth strategy courses on a cruise or a retreat destination, along with house-sitting writing retreats with the dogs in places like France or the UK.

Our healthy, wealthy, live-by-design brand and incorporates a fashion style guide, health, fitness, and eating programs. That's it. Has that got you thinking? This ideal day brings together the top-down vision of your future with a bottom-up view of how each and every day looks and feels. And what is really interesting and exciting about this is that most of all of this has already come true for me in just five years.

so if you write nothing else make sure you write down your ideal future day from the moment you wake up to the minute you shut your eyes at night in vivid detail with a focus on how you're feeling at each and every point read this out loud to yourself at least once a week record it under voice memos on your mobile phone and listen to it daily i listen to mine regularly when i'm having a shower. Yeah, sad I know, but the results have been incredible. This alone will activate your magnifying magnet compass and keep you focused, energised and committed to realising your dream life. Now, the other benefit of writing is that it also inspires and influences others. Over the years, I've noticed that truly successful people are able to inspire

and influence others, and they do this through their writings. Inspiration can't happen without clear communication, and writings and books help you to do this. When you write from the heart, it not only enhances your communication skills, it allows you to connect with your audience on an emotional level. This is also useful in daily communication such as emails and social media posts, and your writings can ultimately improve your verbal communications with honesty, humility and clarity. So in summary, writing has allowed me to find myself and create myself when I was looking for other answers. But most importantly, again like Anne Frank, it allows me to build courage consistently to pursue my dreams.

I hope that you're going to take the time to find your voice using your writing as a tool to help you get there. So what are you waiting for? Start reading and start writing. And who knows, like me, you might just find yourself writing your own book. And writing my book has been both the most challenging but also the most cathartic and most rewarding thing that I've ever done. It's fair to say that becoming a published author has helped build our profile, promote our business and make us stand out from the crowd. And all of the other game changing rewards that have flowed into our lives and our business as a result of writing and publishing my books wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for today's guest, Michael Hanrahan.

In my humble opinion, and from personal experience, I can confidently say that Michael is the undisputed guru of all things writing books and publishing in Australia. He's successfully published many hundreds of books over his 20 years plus in the industry. With experience in all areas of publishing from editing to printing to e-books and bookshop distribution, Michael started his own publishing house over six years ago to concentrate on helping small business owners like myself publish our books. This has now evolved into Publish Central. Publish Central is the leading provider of non-fiction self-publishing services in Australia with a focus on high-quality books that help you to stand out from your competitors,

set you up as experts in your field, and help you to promote your business to a wider audience. michael's been featured on radio and podcasts and magazines and in the huffington post and has written a book and a practical guide on how to self-publish called stand out which is a must read if you're looking to write and publish your own book i encourage you to do that michael's also a regular presenter at the annual small press network conference and he's a co-founder of the australian business book awards which i was humbled to win two awards last year Michael's a great down-to-earth and an absolute cracking bloke.

So I know you're really going to enjoy this engaging and inspiring conversation with Michael Hanrahan. Welcome back, Freedom Fighters. Now, I've often said that investing in writing my book has been both the hardest thing, but by far the best thing that I've ever done. And it's not without its challenges. And I've got to say that there were times that I felt that climbing Mount Everest would probably have been easier. But our lifestyle and our business has grown to a different level since writing and publishing it. And none of this would have happened if it wasn't for the massive support and the incredible orchestration of today's guest, Michael Hanrahan. So welcome and let's get invested, Michael.

Thanks for having me, Bushy. Great to be here. Yeah, thanks, mate. I've been wanting to have a chat to you for ages, given the, I guess, invisible and hidden skills that you bring to the table, mate, that not too many people appreciate in its full extent, having been through the pain and the pleasure of writing a book, mate. But without me second-guessing all of that, can I get you to start off, for the listeners who don't know who you are and what you do, to give us a bit of a rundown on all of that and then talk a little bit about why you do what you do. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm the founder and director of publishing at Publish Central. So we are a self-publishing company. We specialize in what we call self-publishing for small business.

So we help business authors like yourself self-publish their books. A book is a fantastic tool to help people build their profile and promote their business. So we take care of all aspects. So we're what we call a one-stop shop. So we take care of everything. People come to us with a Word file and have a book in their hand three months later. So that's us in a nutshell. The reason I do what I do is I love helping people share their knowledge and their stories.

So, you know, everybody, I don't quite agree with the saying that everybody's got a book in them. Most people do. but um you know we love helping people get their knowledge and their skills out there and you know sharing this information so many people have all sorts of knowledge that other people want and need and they you know book's just a great way to get that out there yeah awesome mate i mean the this the multiplicity of skills that you bring to the table is quite incredible i having been through the exercise with you a couple of times now where you're you're both an orchestra leader but also a psychologist and a coach and you name it all wrapped into one

but mate to get those skills i'd love you to take us through your journey so far and go back as far as you'd like to if you don't mind and talk us through you know what you invested your time your energy and your money in and what did you learn from it what were some of the challenges and the the pitfalls along that road that got you to what you're doing today yeah of course well if i go back all the way my father was actually a writer so um i've been around this stuff i remember you know some of my earliest memories as a kid are going to book launches and that kind of thing so i've always been around this stuff so that's that's probably my my very very early starting point um so i then i was always interested in in writing and editing

um i started my first professional writing gig ever was when i was 15 years old um so i was writing a chapter for a book about sport in melbourne um so that was very exciting um it ended up how did that come about mate that's pretty interesting how did that come about at the tender age of 15 it was actually something my dad was working on so he got asked to write this chapter for a book and um i i was a bit of a sports nut specifically a basketball nut and so he asked me to write the sports section um it turned out my bit actually got cut so it actually He never made it into print, but that chapter went in, my bit got cut. So that was my very first ever, I still got paid, my first ever paid writing gig.

From there, I started, or my next kind of professional writing experience was I started writing book reviews for a few different book magazines, so Australian Book Review and things like that. So that was from about the age of 17. I then went to university and did a writing and editing degree. I went into it with the intention of hopefully becoming a full-time writer. Came out of it knowing that that's an extremely difficult thing to do, to make a living at. And I actually also, when I was doing the course, I really enjoyed the editing side of the course.

So I actually came out of it and started applying for editing jobs. I got my first editing job at a small company called Writebooks. The job was so perfectly tailored for me. my my sister when i showed her the ad literally said um the ad should just say we're looking for michael um so you know job ads have like you know 15 criteria and you think i'll i match 12 of those i'll apply i pretty much nailed all 15 and i i got the job so that was my my first publishing job um i was there for about three and a half years um that company then got taken over so it was a very small publishing company um there was about sort of five or six of us including the guys down

warehouse packing the books and uh we i was actually very keen to get experience at a larger publishing company so a small publishing company is great for learning all the ropes but then there's kind of nowhere to go um so i was keen to you know have a career in publishing and so um but while i was looking around for other jobs uh the company where i was working actually got taken over by john wiley and sons so um i i stayed there and you know went from working from a small company to a large company without actually having to change jobs um so i got the role of managing editor at john wiley and sons um i was there for three and a half years um again was kind of ready to move on and was looking around next thing to do um i applied for a job at penguin um which was

in a very similar role to the role i was in at wiley um went went for the interview um disliked the interview so much that i called my partner anna from the foyer of penguin and said i'm going to go and start my own business yeah wow okay tell me what you what did you dislike about the interview that that caused that strong reaction at that point um well one of the reasons um one of the one of the issues i had with working at wiley and anyone who's worked in a big company you'll know all this is all the kind of corporate type of rubbish you spend all your time doing and you know you waste all your time in meetings and just you know it's it's you know none of it's or not nearly enough of it's just about producing really good books.

There's all sorts of other, you know, the amount of time you spend in your day is not about producing books. It's all about doing all sorts of other stuff as well. So I got frustrated with all that kind of corporate side of things. And when I went for the job interview at Penguin, I could tell just from the interview that it was going to be exactly the same working there. So I had been tossing up.

It had always been my plan to go out on my own. It was just a question of when. And doing that job interview at Penguin made me decide now's the time to go and do that mate i want to rewind a little bit uh if we can uh because you know obviously at a very young age there's a passion for writing and i understand you're immersed in that because your your good father uh was i guess living and breathing the the author lifestyle which would have been a massive guess here and i'd love to expand on this but all odd hours uh late nights early mornings, locked in a room full of books. Can you describe the environment that you were in

and how that led you to have that very early passion and clearly some skill in writing from an early age? Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, obviously, books were a massive thing in our lives growing up, me and my two sisters. So, my dad, he was a writer. His main thing was book reviews which is how i got into it but he also wrote for the age um you know he wrote he wrote and published three different books wrote for all sorts of magazines that kind of thing um he was the editor of a few magazines as well so our environment growing up was a house just absolutely overflowing with books like dad would literally build homemade shelves above the you know the toilet door to fit in all the books kind of thing so we just had books everywhere and and i'll never

forget when i was a kid um you know coming home and saying okay i've got i've got an assignment on world war ii and he would he would disappear for 20 minutes and come back with like 12 fantastic books on world war ii so you know not only did he have all of these books but he knew knew every single book in the house and you you know knew what the topics were and what you needed and that kind of thing so i always thought that was just super cool when i was a kid um another thing i remember is uh back back in the days before email um and even even fax machines he used to um often run into the age at like two in the morning to to file something for the um you know for the age for the next day and sometimes if i happened to be up when i was you know 15 or

whatever it was he'd actually drive me at two in the morning with him uh to the age in swanston street and things like that so um all sorts of cool memories like that um he he never had a nine to five job so i i didn't know what a nine to five job was when i was a kid i i thought everybody's dad locked themselves in a study at a typewriter so um he would he would work all sorts of hours he'd just you know being being a writer that you know you don't really have to have normal hours so he'd just write whenever it suited him you know he'd often you know sleep during the day and write at night just just you know whatever worked for him at the time yeah yeah awesome and And your talent for writing, because it is quite a skill,

is that something that came naturally to you or something that you sort of worked at progressively with guidance and encouragement from your dad? Or how did that come about? Definitely both. So I definitely think I've got a little bit of a bent for it. It's something you have a bit of a natural talent for. And obviously, dad was a professional writer,

so it's not that surprising that I've got a bit of that. but you can definitely you know it's a skill like anything else you can definitely learn it as well and you know i i did a writing and editing degree and i certainly learned a lot about writing then and i still you know i'm still learning about it one of the best things you can do to learn about writing is to read a book so if i read a book by you know jonathan franzen i'm learning from jonathan franzen about how to write so it's still something to this day that i'm learning about Yeah, exactly. Just nothing better than immersing yourself in a book.

But I'll come back to that subject shortly. Okay, so you got to Penguin and that was the trigger that said, right, I'm out of here. You can shove this corporate gig. I'm going to do my own thing. Pretty much. Yeah. Talk to us about the journey from there because that would have had its challenges itself in the early days, I'm sure. Yeah, it absolutely did.

So I was very fortunate that I had a very good relationship with the people I worked with at Wiley. my boss from the small publishing company uh was still my boss uh when when we got taken over by wiley and so i'd known her for years we're actually you know um quite close so i i did the right thing you know tried to do the right thing by her and told her that i was going to leave in three months so obviously i didn't have to give them three months notice but i i told them that and i trusted that you know that she would still treat me fairly which she totally did um so i wanted to give them as much notice as possible to plan for me being gone um but the the upside of that which i didn't expect was they pretty much factored me into their schedule um for after i'd left so i i left um i

left wiley with like three or four months worth of work lined up contracting straight back to wiley so um so that was a very very good way to um to go out on my own um we also again you know um these stroke strokes of luck you get in life we also had an absolute best-selling book uh right before i left literally in the months before i left and so i got paid a decent bonus from that which covered my my freelance setup costs as well so i was actually actually quite fortunate in in my first few months so then um so i mean in terms of kind of setting up a business at this at the start i was really just a freelance editor is basically what you'd call me um so i did a little bit of self-publishing a little bit of writing but mostly it was just editing um for about four

or five years i probably 70 of my work was still john wiley and sons um and you know i just pick up other work here and there um so i did that for probably in that kind of mode about six or seven years um the the challenges are always the the obvious things um i've been thinking about this before the session today but she said you would talk about this sort of thing and and i distinctly remember a few total freak out moments as you know pretty much everyone has when you're doing something like this of you know planning for it and setting up and then suddenly sitting there and thinking i just got offered a job at penguin what on earth am i doing going out of my own you know it's just nerve-wracking it doesn't matter how confident you are it doesn't matter

you know you've got the skills and like i said i got a nice bit of money before i left so that helped yeah it's still a nerve-wracking thing to do so that was definitely a challenge um that the other thing that factored into me doing that was i had been doing a lot of freelance work on the side anyway so i'd kind of reached a point where i was like well i'm getting you know this amount of work freelance without doing anything if i go out on my own and really start pushing it surely i'll be able to get that up to full time so yeah you know that certainly helped as well but yeah it's a nerve-wracking thing to do um you know i think that i don't think i had any specific big challenges starting up other than, like I say, the usual of it's hard and it's scary

and that kind of same sort of thing that everybody goes through. Yeah, okay. I mean, the financial chasm is often when you're sort of jumping off the cliff from a regular income into the dribs and drabs and the big gaps between paydays when you're doing yourself. It sounds like, as you say, you sort of had a bit of a soft landing there with the bonus on the bestselling book and the ongoing contract work that you're doing with Wiley. beyond that i mean that would have started to evaporate at some point uh were you sort of

then at a stage financially where you you had enough consistency in the work you're doing that it didn't matter or were there were some days when you were sort of uh sharing out the baked beans out of the last can in the pantry we we did have a bit of a challenging patch so so what happened so like i mentioned um i kind of uh you know did a lot of work back to wiley um you know like six or seven years and that was just the work would just land in my inbox i didn't even have to do anything so i was booked up sort of three or four months in advance wow so that that whole period there was you know just you know kind of just purely in terms of financially there was there was no no problems at all we were motoring along you know without any problems but then uh

what happened completely out of the blue was i started to notice the emails from wiley kind of stopped coming and you know i was like hang on now i'm booked up two months now i'm booked up for one month and of course i rang them up and said what's going on and um they said we've started outsourcing our book production to india without telling me about it so um i have i have no problem with the decision that's their business decision that's absolutely fine but you know the typical corporate thing again typical corporate behavior they they didn't tell their key freelancers about her at least they certainly didn't tell me so um so obviously that kind of had a few alarm bells going off all of a sudden so that was actually when i um uh looked into well actually when i um

kind of heard about the um the course that you're very familiar with bushy the kpi course and um so that actually came along at the perfect time in my life by coincidence so i had um i had two people i know and and trust very much uh within a week tell me how good kpi was and you should check it out so i was at this point where my wily work had dried up so i didn't have no work but my main client had certainly dried up and um so it was a little bit of a turning point so i was you know thinking about what to do next and and this like say this kpi course cropped up and so i looked into it i'm often very skeptical that kind of thing because so many of those things are just rubbish um but i i went along they had a free session so i went along to their uh the free

one i thought oh this actually looks pretty good then they had uh they had a breakfast like just by coincidence like two days later so um uh mike reed who you know bushy um mike um you know mike invited me along said hey we've got a break in a couple days come along so the more i got to know about this course uh the more i thought hey this is perfect for me yeah so because like say that the kpi course is all about you know finding your direction and you know building your products and all that kind of thing um the other factor for that was one of the things they teach you in kpi is to publish a book so i thought um well if i go along and do this course i think it was about ten thousand dollars at the time something so if i go along and do this course i'm fairly certain

we'll get at least a couple of clients out of it which will pay the the ten thousand dollar you know cost for the course so pretty low risk thing to do um we so i went and did the course we wrote a wave of kpi books for about four years after that but absolutely inundated so um that's uh But, yeah, that was probably the only point where I'd say we had, you know, sort of concerns about where we were going in the future. But, yeah, through a combination of, you know, sort of, you know, luck and good timing, that sorted itself out. And that sort of led through to initially Michael Henrahan Publishing

and now more recently into Publish Central. Talk to us about, you know, the full scope of what your group is now doing, mate. Yeah, absolutely. So the transition of that was Michael Hanna and publishing that took off really quickly, like that largely on the back of just doing KPI books. We knew that couldn't last forever. We were just, you know, a part of it was just being in the right place at the right time. So we started planning for what to do after that. and what we did was we basically took all the lessons we learned in three or four years of running public sorry running michael hannan publishing and we basically turned that into publish central so publish central is basically all the lessons i learned in three or four years and we basically almost started the business again so new brand new website um you know we've got some new partnerships all that kind of thing so we now initially when michael hannan publishing

started it was literally just me um in a you know um glorified freelance editing role almost when i started um i very quickly realized like say took off really quickly that we're going to need more help um my partner anna um who again you know bushy um she was at the time actually looking to wind down her business she'd been a photographer for almost 10 years it was just a bit tired of it um so she came into the business she actually also has a publishing background we met at Wiley years ago. So she came into the business, so that fitted perfectly. We'd always planned to work together in some shape or form,

so that fit together really well. Then, again, just to keep up with the demand, we added our senior editor, Charlotte, who's absolutely fantastic. Again, who I knew from my Wiley days. Yes, you know her well. Oh, mate, your team is awesome. Yeah, I could wax lyrical here for half an hour talking about yourself and Anna and Charlotte and what you did to transform a pig's ear

into a silk purse, mate, as far as my book was concerned without a shadow of doubt. So awesome team. Talking about Anna, mate, because Sonia and I also work in the business together and, you know, a lot of people shake their head and go, oh, I could never do that. What's the secret to the success of yourself and Anna working together and how important do you think that partnership is to the success

that you continue to enjoy? Well, I'll answer the second bit first. The importance part is extremely important. So from a work point of view, she's just awesome at what she does. So that's really good for the business. She fits into exactly the space I needed her to fit into when things started to get busy. She's doing the things she likes. So she likes being the behind-the-scenes person.

She manages the printing and the e-books and all that kind of thing. So from that point of view, she's really important from the work side of things. um from a personal point of view obviously it's really really important to have that side sorted out when you're working together um so we i mean it's it's the oldest cliche in the book but it's still true you know you've got to talk about everything so we you know we talk about where we're at with the business we have uh we have rules where you know there's times we're not allowed to talk about business um so you know like if we're walking the dog and things like that's like just no business and occasionally you know if one of us starts to talk about business

the other one would say look i don't want to talk about that right now and you say absolutely that's that's the end of the conversation so you know we all you know even when you work together you all need time to take a break from work so that's kind of very important um the other thing that helps us a lot is we're both uh quite independent people away from work so um you know uh we've you both got our own things we like to do out of work and obviously we do heaps things together and spend heaps of time together but we also you know do heaps of things apart and spend heaps of time well not heaps of time but spend time apart doing our own thing so um you know so that all helps as well so the fact that we're you know together nine to five during the day um you know i might

be off playing basketball in the evening or something like that so you know it helps break things up but or you know she might you know she has a regular friend she has a friday morning coffee with that kind of thing so you know being able to if you're working together being able to do your own things outside of work i think is very important yeah really healthy i think mate because it keeps injecting something fresh into the relationship without a doubt it's the same reason i play piano and still run around making a nuisance of myself on the hockey pitch exactly the same reasons mate i mean things are coming together really well for you would would you say that you're actually living your dream lifestyle now or how would that differ from

what you sort of envisage as your ultimate ideal lifestyle mate can you sort of paint a picture for us yeah yeah it's a really interesting question so the answer is um loving where we are right now enjoy every day you know get up excited about what i'm doing um but not quite aiming at the dream not not quite reaching the dream dream lifestyle yet so in terms of where anna and i working towards. My plan is to get to the point where I don't have to work. So obviously, I'm fairly certain I will still keep working, but I do want to get to the point where I just feel like I don't have to work and I can spend more time doing other things I want to do. But in terms of where we are right now, I'm absolutely loving where we are right now and certainly very excited

about what we're doing for sure. Yeah, and the don't have to work is the key bit because the mental pressure that disappears when when you're in that position i i can't even put a value on it actually yeah tell me about what when you don't have to work what what else will you do differently what comes into the picture um yeah so certainly um i like i'm sure i will still work i think i would end up more of a um you know kind of consulting you know advising coaching kind of role so guiding people through the process rather than actually doing the work myself and that stops i don't enjoy doing the work uh myself so i still do i still do editing i still do a bit of typesetting but that's the kind of the next goal is to not be doing that um then that

also leave time for you know like a lot of editors i've got a whole draw full of novel ideas that i want to get to one day um they also started when i was about 15 with my try hard isaac asimov novels but um so um yeah so certainly that and just things like exactly like you mentioned like your hobbies bushy so things you know um you know i i play guitar i wish i had a lot more time to do that so i could i could sound less bad um go um you know just just go for a motorbike ride go hang out with the family that kind of thing so for me the ideal would probably more more be like you know working kind of three three and a half days a week and then just having a bit more time to do other things so i did i did have one patch in my life where i was consistently working four days a

week and having three days off and the change that makes it's only one day but the change that makes to your lifestyle is amazing yeah and so that last that worked for me for about a year and that was just absolutely fantastic yeah just like the air out of the balloon doesn't it just sort of mean you've sort of more energized and you've you've got more headspace yeah yeah so in terms of moving towards that uh you know most people uh generally tend to invest in their work and they focus on their income, but I've seen those who achieve that sort of freedom that you're talking about, invest in growth assets that include their business, obviously, but also potentially shares, super, property.

What's in your head as to what's going to contribute to funding that lifestyle ultimately so that you can choose when and how you want to work? Yeah, well, certainly the business is obviously a big part of that. So we've kind of spent the last couple of years putting everything in place with published central so we actually put quite a bit of money into the website it's actually a pretty high-end website uh you know there's a lot going on on the back end of it our plan is to really build it out over the next few years um we've set up a youtube channel we've got you know we've really consolidated our social media so you know that's obviously all both time and money investment uh with the

longer term plan being obviously for that to both get us some to get some income for us um in the shorter term but then also with the plan for an eventual business sale so that was one of the reasons behind the name change was to get my name out of the name of the business um so you know in in three four five years time we are you know the plan is to get to it get to a point where we can sell the business so that's the business investment side of things um we do also i i manage a kind of a family portfolio that we have um so we've got two investment properties um uh it's kind of split evenly over two investment properties as share portfolio and cash holdings. So, all of those are planned with the longer-term time horizon for me and my sisters, basically. So,

that's none of that. We don't dip into that at all in the short term. That's all very much part of our longer-term planning. Yeah, okay. So, is that something that you've inherited that you continue to manage or is that something you got together with your and said, right, let's put this together and get a mix of property shares and cash? How did that come about? Mostly an inheritance, yes. So from my grandparents or from our grandparents about seven or eight years ago. So that's now – it's all kind of my job to manage that.

So we don't – I mean, when I say manage it, we actually don't do too much to it. We just keep an eye on it and occasionally make adjustments to it. but that's all looked after in terms of the longer-term planning. So I don't want to go into any detail here, but I'm assuming there's probably a family trust that this is attached to that you're sort of managing ongoing. Is that how it's sort of structured? Because it's interesting that your sisters remain in it.

Quite often the family exercise can present its own challenges as the dynamics of people's lifestyles start to change over time. How does that come together? Yeah, no, that's exactly what it is. So that's what some of it is anyway. There's a few other things in there. But, yeah, that's part of the structure. So we're fortunate that me and my sisters and my mum, my dad's no longer around.

He died a number of years ago. But me and my sisters are very close. And, look, obviously, you can never guarantee you're never going to have problems. But, you know, I don't foresee us having any issues. We all kind of know where we're at. We've talked about it all there. You know, I'm far from an expert, but I know more about this stuff than they do. so it's kind of in my hands to look after it

and I just, you know, tell them what we're doing and most of the time they say, yeah, that's fine. So, yeah, I can certainly, I mean, obviously, you hear horrendous stories about this kind of stuff but, you know, we don't have too many concerns about that. That's awesome, mate. And I guess if your sisters and yourself have decided this is our do not touch money,

we're just going to let this do its thing and grow over time to give us the comfort of a nest egg that's going to fund your ongoing lifestyle at some point in the future. That's a perfect fit. Yeah, it works for all of us. None of us have any sort of immediate financial concerns. So, I mean, it's there if we did, but none of us have day-to-day pressures that we need to access that.

And you know I'm going to ask this question because I've got the property bent. The properties that sit in that portfolio, what are they, mate? Are they rental properties? Are they properties that your family were living in that have become rental properties? What's the background on those? One of each. So one of them is an apartment Anna and I bought about eight or nine years ago. And so it was an apartment in East Hawthorne.

And when we moved out of that apartment and moved into our current place, we kept the apartment and that's now rented out. So that's how that one came about. And then the second property is an investment property we bought in Ballarat about three or four years ago. So we contacted an investment advisor, a property expert, and told her how much money we had to invest. And she said, bang for your buck at the moment. She said Ballarat's the place to be. So, yeah, so we purchased a place in Ballarat. I reckon I know who that is.

Is she a fellow KPI? Probably. Yeah. And a good decision, by the way. Regional areas of the state are going to continue to perform very well, particularly given the impetus that COVID is pushing people further away and further out, then that's going to perform extremely well. So well done.

That's awesome. Okay. I sort of went off on a little bit of a tangent there. I'd sort of like to come back now to the heart and soul of what you love doing and has become a growing love and a passion for me, and that is the science and the art of writing, Michael. I guess the obvious question I'm going to ask you around that to start with is why would someone write?

When we live in a world that's covered in noise from social media, from stuff in our earbuds like this podcast, to videos, to there's a thousand different ways of getting your information, why why would someone still take the time to sit down and write well i books are still doing really really well so i mean that's the first it's um you know kind of like the the story that you know when when everybody had a video in their house they said movies will be dead and all that kind of thing and that didn't happen everybody thinks everything that comes along is is going to kill the previous thing and it doesn't always books are books have certainly that sales trended down

for a few years over the last three or four years, but they've actually ticked up again a little bit before, you know, before the latest lockdowns and everything, which have hurt everything. But, you know, books are actually in roaring good health in terms of sales and that kind of thing. In terms of the authors we work with, so like we've talked about, you know,

we specialize in self-publishing for small business. The authors we work with, the book is actually a marketing tool to help them build their business. So it's all about, you know, building your profile. you know you've had all of this firsthand bushy so getting you know getting tv experience exposure which you've had i'm getting on podcasts getting magazine articles all that kind of thing um they're all the sorts of things you can get from writing a book for your business so

um in terms of that area of publishing it's actually you know i mean as i've said we've been flat out and growing for four or five years so that area of publishing is is absolutely going great guns yeah yeah no question about it and and you sort of touched on the the second question i was going to dig into and that's you know firstly why write but then why write a book uh yeah you certainly uh started to dig in to that as well and i guess it's it's the interesting thing i can certainly say from my own perspective that uh you know when i've first got on board with kpi and and you're challenged to write a book by the infamous Andrew Griffiths. Your first question in your head is, well,

why would anyone want to read a book that I'd written? I can't possibly know anything that's interesting enough for people to read. What's your response to people when they sort of come up with that initial reaction? Yeah, we hear that all the time. So the first – we kind of get two reactions, and Andrew and I talk about this all the time. Two common reactions are, number one, what have I got to say? And number two, who would want to read it?

So my response to that is always, if that's genuinely true, if you genuinely don't have things people want to say and you're writing a book for your business, you've got bigger problems than thinking about writing a book. So it's anybody who has been running a business for a couple of years can write a book that people will want to read. so it's so easy to get caught up in you know like so for me it's publishing obviously every day I'm talking to editors I'm talking to designers I'm talking to printers and you just get immersed in it and you think all this is just you know you kind of almost assume that everybody knows this

stuff no one's interested in it but then I'll go out for dinner and I'll sit down next to someone who says you know what do you do and I tell them and they say oh my god I want to write a book and they you know they chew your ear for three hours because they want to learn all about it So it's very easy to kind of forget how much people want to hear the information that you've got. So like I say, anybody who's been in business for even just a couple of years, and even if you're just remotely good at what you're doing, you know, you've got enough knowledge to write a book, and there are people out there who want to read it. Yeah, I 100% agree. And I think one of the hidden things for me, Michael, was that in sitting down and going through the exercise, and as you remember, it probably took me longer than most because my bloody perfectionism gets in the way. But I found it a very cathartic experience, but also I came out at the other end of it communicating far more clearly with much more, you know, a lot more clarity around what I said and how I said it than ever did before writing the book.

So in terms of actually getting the message out there, not only in terms of the leverage it gave us with press exposure and all of the stuff that flowed from that, but just being able to talk to people about what we do in a much clearer fashion that they got interested in and engaged in was a benefit that I hadn't actually contemplated. Do you see that a lot in other authors in a similar fashion? Yeah, we absolutely do. It's actually a very good hidden benefit of writing a book. And I actually went through that myself. So I wrote a book about how to self-publish a book. And before I did it, we actually sat down and formalized what we do into the steps so that I could then go and write about it. So that made us sit down and look at everything we were doing in the business just so I could write the book.

So, yeah, we do see that happen all the time. You've got to sit down and think really clearly about what you're doing and how you're going to explain it to people. So it's a great way for you to get your own introspection on what you're doing. Yeah, 100% agree. So if someone says, okay, well, perhaps I'm either in a business that I can do or I've got an important role within a business that I think there's a message here that I've got some unique experience that I'd like to share with others, where do they start, mate? I mean, you know this process like an orchestra leader, as I've already said, but to coach someone through the exercise from the initial seed of an idea through to the end, can you just take us on that journey? Yeah, absolutely. So it's actually not that complicated.

So the thing to do is actually start at the other end. So you've got to be able to answer the question, two questions to start off with. Why are you writing the book and who's going to read it? so you've got to answer those questions before you've even sat down and thought well what am i going to write about because you can't decide what you're going to write about if you don't if you don't know who your readers are going to be so if you're writing a book for your business um you know sit down and have a think about well what's one of the most common problems our our customers have what's uh you know what information do we get asked over and over and over again

uh you know what sort of information do we know people really need um so that's kind of a really really good starting point um then uh i often suggest starting uh once you've done that first step you come up with your book kind of a general board topic is actually just do a bit of a brainstorm so um you know you should be able to like if you said to me okay do a brainstorm on how to publish a book i could write down 200 things you know without thinking about it so any you know again any person who's been doing something for a couple of years should be able to do that um that then becomes your kind of starting point for what should be going in your book um obviously this is just the real real quick version of how to do this no it's good then then

the next step is to go through and pick out what you think the key topics are from that area uh from from those uh topics from those subjects you've written down so you know you should be able to go through and pick out a eight to ten topics so for me you know okay well i could write down a hundred things about publishing what's the main things people need to know well they need to know editing you know design printing amazon that kind of thing so pick out the really key topics that becomes your contents list for your book so you need about sort of seven eight ten of those and that forms the start of your your contents list now that might change later that's not set in stone um the next thing you want to do then is you should be able to fill in that contents list

with all the other topics that you've written down so have a look at what you've written down um so see where they fit into your contents list and before long you'll have a you know a list of kind of, you know, seven, eight, nine topics with another list of seven or eight or nine subheadings underneath that, that's, you know, suddenly you're already starting to get a contest list for your book. And then if you're writing, say, a 30,000 word book, then it just becomes filling each of those in with, you know, 300, 400 words, rather than thinking, oh, I've got to sit down and write 30,000 words, where do I start? Suddenly, you've just got a whole lot of little topics that you have to write about. Now, there's obviously a lot more to it than that, and it's more involved than

But that's kind of the Cliff's Notes version of it. Yeah, and absolutely spot on. You're sort of breaking down the elephant into mouthfuls that sort of follow the skeleton of the elephant, if you like, so that it tips away and turns the mountain that's in your mind into a series of molehills that progressively get you to the end, which is exactly how I ended up doing it. And just some of the suggestions that I got from yourself

and the infamous A.G. that I thought were really useful where I actually had photos of the ideal person that I knew that is the sort of person that I want to be communicating to and I had them sitting in front of me so that I was actually talking to them as I was writing and I just found that it made the situation much more real and much more tangible in the way I wrote in a language that I thought would be more engaging to them.

Is that something that's fairly common? It is. Yeah, that's a great idea. And certainly that's one of Andrew's very good suggestions as well. So, yeah, we encourage authors to do that. It's all about, you know, as I mentioned, if you don't know who you're writing for, how do you know what you should be putting in your book? So going that next step of literally kind of having a picture and, you know,

kind of key characteristics of them can be a very good idea while you're writing. Yeah, I've heard mixed views around the idea of, well, write how you talk, and I didn't end up doing that, but what's your view around that? Um, yeah, that's, that's a very interesting one. Um, I kind of half agree with that. So your, your book should, um, it should reflect your personality. Um, and you can write a book kind of in a conversational tone. So I think that's, that's kind of more rather than putting it as right how you talk, um, which is how somehow, you know, some people often express it like that. Um, I don't agree with it so much when you put it like that. Um, but writing in a sort of a conversational tone can work really well for some people um the the reason that can work for for

people is some people simply find it hard to to get started and they don't know you know never written a book before we work with first timers all the time so um you know it's just a good way to start so you know um like you say bushy stick a stick a photo next to your computer of um you know the kind of person who you think you're writing for and pretend you're just sitting there explaining it to them so you know writing like that can definitely work for some people for sure yeah okay so it's sort of you're starting to put this thing together you've got the skeleton you're belting your way through you you come up with this uh shoebox word document that that sort of overflowing at the seams and bursting a thousand directions so what what's the next step from there

mate yeah so very good question the first thing to realize is that is where you should be that's what a first draft is like um you know my first draft was a mess you know everybody's first draft is a mess. You know, people, when you go in to buy a book in the bookstore, you've never seen the first draft. You don't know that it was a mess. So you think that's how it was written. It definitely wasn't. So don't be at all concerned if your first draft is a mess. It's a lot better to have 30,000 messy words down than 5,000 words that you're still slaving over. So once you've gotten to that point of 30,000 messy words, your next step is, it depends how confident you are your writing, your next step is usually to go back and do a second draft. So simply go back

through and tidy it up. So, you know, like I say, first drafts are often messy. So go back through it. You will no doubt move a few things around, make some additions, make some deletions, that kind of thing. So go through it again. And then you might be at that point, if you're happy with it enough, if it's kind of starting to take shape, that might be the point where you start talking to an editor who will be able to take you the rest of the way. So we have some authors who get there after their second draft. We have some authors who go through four or five drafts. You know, it's really up to you and kind of, you know,

each author, what their writing style is like. Yeah, I think I ended up doing three edits with Charlotte and I've got to say, you know, I talk about the pig's ear and the silk purse. That's where the magic happened with the editor. That was, editing isn't proofreading. It's really taking someone who knows what they're doing and understands what the reader wants to read

and how they want to read it and the shape-shifting that Charlotte and your team put together for me, it just blew my hair back when it's a really worthwhile part of the process and something that if someone's serious about writing a book, don't shortcut that part of the process because that will make or break the quality of the read at the end of the day, I believe.

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right, Bushy. People do not realise what editors do. they that you know the often the common misconception is you just kind of fix the spelling and put the commas in the right place and the author does all the work um i i've worked on books that i've edited honestly should have had a name on them rather than the author's name yeah so don't feel as an author that at the end of the second draft or the end of the third draft as the author it's your job to make it perfect it's absolutely not um it's your as the author you're the expert in what you do so bushy you're the expert in property um we're the experts in

books so your that your job is to put together the information our job is to turn into an awesome book with you so don't feel that you it's your responsibility as the author to to make it all you know shiny and brand spanking new that's that's what you do with your editor yeah as i say what i loved about that process uh you know she she would say right well we're going to take this bit out and we're going to put it here we're going to shift this over there and and just the flow that came out of that that process in terms of the readability was quite remarkable actually so yeah yeah a bit of rearranging is a very common part of the editing process yeah really worthwhile and it's you get so close to the you know the it's the old can't see the

wood for the trees exercise when you're up to the eyeballs and when you've got fresh eyes on it like that uh just a magic part of the process so you've you've got you've got it edited you've been through two or three edits uh where do we go from there mate yeah so so the next step uh after the editing is design so um there's two design stages so there's the cover design and the interior design we often start on the cover design actually right at the start of the process that's so that the author gets the cover early in the process and you can start putting it on social media using it to promote your book all that kind of thing um the design process starts towards the end of the editing um so i mean the way we work is we have conversations and obviously

we went through this process in a lot of detail with you Bushy you had had some really strong ideas of how you wanted your book to look which is fantastic you're very polite you're very polite Michael it's your podcast Bushy you have to be so um so you know some authors come to us and and honestly say I've got no idea you guys do it which is fine um some authors come to us with very clear ideas about they want and again what they want and they're designed again that's absolutely fine as well so what we do is we have that you know basically consultation you'd call it with the author we then go away and do some different interior designs for the author to look at and then we go back and forth with them until they're happy with the design and the cover goes

through the same process and then we format the book for them so we've been talking about a 30,000 word book which is you know typical length for these sorts of books so the design would usually take about two weeks to complete the whole layout and a 30,000 word book might come to about 160 180 pages um we then send it back to the author to read again so this is kind of like you were talking about the next editing stage so we send it back to the authors to read again they usually make a few more changes at that point um send it back to us again uh we take in their changes and um that's kind of the end of the interior design stage and then then it's into the the hard act of getting the the things actually published uh which is a very rewarding there's

nothing better than opening that first box of books uh and seeing the baby actually uh ready to be baptized it's yeah it's quite a thrilling exercise and you must while there's a i guess the thing that uh i'd say to the listeners is uh would really encourage you if if you've got some niche expertise or you've been in a business for a few years uh there's no greater process and no greater leverage that you can add to your business in terms of credibility and opportunity than writing a book uh really encourage you doing it and yes you will need to sweat some blood sweat and tears to make that happen but worth every second of it and the the other thing i would say on this is that don't shortcut the process by trying to reinvent the wheel yourself it was almost revelational

for me to be lucky enough to get yourself and your team to assist me in in creating that baby and I don't think anyone really understands the depth and level of work that needs to be done and you know a big part of that I think for you Michael is it's actually managing the author so you know you're probably a bit like a movie producer I reckon where you've got the egos of the author you're trying to you're sort of you're trying to train a wild horse and at the same time producer couldn't book out the other end of it uh i take my hat off to you mate yeah thanks that's definitely part of it we we sometimes think we should add counseling services to our quotes it's it's you know it is a nerve-wracking experience you know it's um you know putting

your book out there okay you're doing it for your business of course you know the authors we work with but it's still a very personal thing to do and people do get you know they get nervous about it they they get attached to what they've written so they've been working on it for you know three months six months even 12 months some authors so it is you know it's very personal it's very important to them especially for first-time authors um you know we do often have to really give the author some encouragement to to get the book through those last steps and get it off to the printer so it's you know which i which i fully understand obviously it's easy for me to say to them the book is really good don't worry people are going to love it um and but then it's their

book they've never never done it before so i yeah there are definitely some nerves involved for sure well i think it's also uh you're bearing your soul and that's that's often a very vulnerable position to put yourself in and uh you know you've put heart and soul into you're not really sure how people are going to react to it so uh i can see why people start to get the speed wobbles towards the end it's like oh hold on i'm getting very close now where i actually have to to put my goalies on the line and put it out there for people to criticize me on am i ready for that yeah there's there's absolutely that element to it for sure yeah well mate um really interesting process uh how did in the in the world that we're sort of now moving into with uh ebooks and audio

books how do you see that sort of integrating with uh the process and what do you believe is the the value of perhaps turning a hard copy book into audio book on ebook fashion is that is that something that you cover these days yeah absolutely we do so um yeah it's certainly that's evolved a lot in the last few years so you know sort of 10 years ago um there were basically two standard book formats there was hardback and paperback you know from from the point of view of a publisher um then along came ebooks again kind of like what we talked about before everybody said our ebooks are going to kill print books and you know everybody for a while was a little bit nervous but of course they didn't um ebooks had a really big spike for a while um the ceo of sony

who started up sony started up their own bookstore infamously said um ebooks are going to kill print books in the next three years um the sony ebook store went out of business about two years after that um so uh print books uh definitely are not dead um so they they've actually settled into um You know, most publishers kind of consider the three formats for your book now are e-book, print book and sorry, e-book, paperback book and hardback book. So not every book does all of those, but they're the three different options just starting to creep in now as kind of being considered a standard part of the process is audio books. So before long, I think the standard four options are going to be audio book, e-book, paperback and hardback. so um we we now are pretty much at the point where you where we're saying to authors you kind of have to do an audio book these days um two years ago we didn't um you know two years ago like yeah

they're just starting to get popular um these days they're getting more and more popular you know everybody's used to listening to podcasts these days um you know we're all so busy everybody's always you know doing a million things at once so audio books are definitely increasing in popularity and pretty much at the point where you really should do one. E-books are non-negotiable. You have to do an e-book these days. You haven't properly published your book if you haven't done an e-book these days for most authors.

Occasionally, there's a reason not to. Like if you've got a really complicated layout or something like that, it might not work so well as an e-book. But, yeah, pretty much all of the authors we work with do an e-book. Yeah, no, awesome, mate. It's pretty exciting. I guess the good part of what you're doing is with these sort of alternative mechanisms and mediums

to communicate the book, it's creating a lot more excitement and opportunity for Publish Central as well, I'm guessing. Yeah, it definitely is. It's, you know, we've actually just recently, given the new environment that we're all in, created an e-book only package for our authors. So we deliberately didn't do that until the last year, until what's going on now.

Because the sort of authors we work with who are publishing a book for their business, it's very, very important to have the print version of the book because you can, you know, you can hand it out at meetings. You can literally hold it up at a conference. I've seen you on TV, Bushy, with your book literally sitting on the counter in the middle of you and the person interviewing you. So, yeah, so obviously you can't do that with an e-book. But that was before, you know, COVID-19. Now we're all living in a different world. um just having an e-book is now a viable option because you know so many things are moving online uh you know digital the digital world obviously it's been much more important over the last you

know five or ten years and it's absolutely even more so now with what's going on so um yeah definitely the environment's changed and that's changed how people are seeing e-books and audio books right now as well yeah that any anything else on the horizon that you think is going to come into into your world uh that budding authors or existing authors need to be aware of over and above what we discussed there mate um the the major thing uh the major issue we've been helping our authors with lately is it's not nearly as big as the um audiobooks and ebooks but it's online book launches so um that's definitely something to get your head around i think uh you know obviously none of us know what's going on right now in terms of longer term but it'll be a little

while before you're allowed to get more than just a few people in a room in a lot of places so um online book launches are definitely something that we've been doing a lot of work on lately and giving our authors information about that so that's kind of another thing that's changed recently yeah awesome mate uh been a great conversation around that subject and i guess any final words around that in relation to anyone that's listening at the moment that either might have been contemplating it or thought, well, no, that's, yeah, it's a nice thing to do, but I never get around to it? What words of encouragement would you give them? Yeah, so we talk to authors all the time or, you know, budding authors who are considering

writing a book and just can't, you know, quite find the, you know, the kind of the time and the energy and the motivation or that kind of thing to do it or they're having the uncertainties we talked about. The simple answer is, like we've talked about, you just have to be an expert in your area, you don't have to be an expert writer. So people sometimes say, well, I've never written a book before. That's fine. You don't have to. So, you know, just get down and start writing and get the help you need. So there's people out there, you know, a lot of people like us, people like Andrew Griffiths, all sorts of good services out there who can help you with your book. So don't let that deter you. Don't think you have to be, you know, the standard of a world famous

novelist to write a great book. And the second thing I would say is I see absolutely every day of the week the benefits that a book brings to a business. So we stay in contact with our authors after their books come out. I always find the timeline is about three months after the book comes out and the author rings me up and says, oh my God, I can't believe the things that have happened since I published my book. So even though we tell them beforehand, here's the things that likely to happen you don't quite understand it until it actually happens so you know we've had people get you know invited to speak at major conferences because they sent in a copy of their book we've had again plenty of authors on tv um you know all these sorts of opportunities start

to come your way um because you've written and published a book yeah i can talk firsthand to that i mean i i would never if someone had said to me four years ago you would you'd be on 60 minutes and and a whole heap of tv shows and and some of the keynote speaking opportunities that have come out of all because of the credibility that the the book gives you i would have laughed in your face i think um yeah absolutely but it's just been just yeah it's a really great ride it it becomes the the leverage and the credibility piece i think that that's still psychologically in most of us if you've written a book you must know what you're talking about there's that sort of elevates your credibility and authority, I think, in the space.

And suddenly you are viewed, you may be an expert, but you're viewed as an expert once you've got a book to hang out on. Yeah, that's 100%. Yeah, 100%. You know, in this world of, you know, blogs and podcasts and everything these days, which are all fantastic, there's still, you know, not many people who've written a book. So, you know, it still does set you apart from everybody else. No, I love that, mate. I'm going to pivot beautifully now into the ambush series, Michael, which is just five quick questions that the listeners all like to glean your words of wisdom on. And given you would be a reader extraordinaire, what's your favorite quote and why?

Yes. So my favorite quote is, if you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by. oh i love that where did you get that from it's from sun zoo it's the art of war it's it's all about patience which i think i think i think one of the things people people get in trouble with so often with everything in life is not being patient so i yeah that's one of my favorites i think about it all the time i think um striving for short-term results is is a real you know it's a real problem for people and uh you know especially starting your own business all that kind of stuff patience is so important 100 it's uh one of the key ingredients of being a successful investor yeah it's at least a 15-year journey and and then embracing that and not not trying

to fight it no that's that's awesome what about uh i mean you would there wouldn't be too many people that have seen as many books as you have over the time what what's the top book that you'd recommend people read and why and and give us a couple if you think if you don't want to narrow it down to one give us a couple i was actually just about to say butchie i'm going to be really disappointing on this subject i don't have one i've been thinking about this for days and um yeah there's just not one there really isn't um you know obviously i spent all day every day reading all sorts of books so i mean from from a business point of view we've got all the you know all the usual ones that you know the e-myth revisited and and all that sort of thing um you

know all those books are fantastic so um you know i mean our good friend andrew griffiths you know i was reading andrew's books 10 12 years ago before i ever even met him so his his books are absolutely fantastic for anybody starting a business um you know the most important thing is to just get out there and and you know start reading some books and finding out about this stuff um if i had one book uh that i would say you should absolutely read this book you'll learn everything you need to know and off you go um of course i would i would give that to you but um the more important thing is to be out there you know i mean you know if you're investing bushy read read your book you know it's um you know i literally don't have one so um yeah what about

outside the loop then i mean you've mentioned the art of war just in terms of general interest that what's what's the book that's captured your attention and the one that you enjoy most that you found perhaps coming back to um oh well from a personal point of view i kind of joked about Isaac Asimov before um so anyone who's a science fiction fan um you know Isaac Asimov the foundation series is um you know one of the series of books that really moved me on you know the power of writing a book um so um what else um I just I don't even know where to start Bushy um it's the old story though you don't ask an accountant to do your tax and you don't don't expect an architect to have a finished house if you're immersed in books all day every day

you'd be like nah yeah there's just there's just too many um you know the um uh you know a lot of the authors we we work with you know they've written highly specialized books around their top around their topics so um you know you can find books out there on anything that you want so i'm literally just looking at my shelf now we've got books about you know how to become a salesperson um how to start your business up in europe um you know i've got specific books specifically for tradies we've got books about um we've got a book specifically about how to um run a business for the ndis so you know you can find a book out there and just about anything that you want to these days yeah 100 agree now i'm going to shift gears a little bit here to

something that a lot of aussies feel like they pay too much tax so what's the top thing that you've done to legally minimize the tax that you pay michael well legally the things that i can tell you about um so um no no we're not dodging our taxes um so um what we we haven't probably done as much of this as we should have to tell you the truth but one thing we do have is um we've got a an investment bond um which uh to be frank i don't understand the details of but our investment advisor said this has tax advantages so do it so we just regularly pay into that um and we also have um uh oh no we haven't done it yet we're planning to make some extra superannuation payments as well so um because there's tax advantages in that as well

so that's the main thing so that's um so i mentioned the um you know kind of our how our investments are spread out uh before that's that's one of the things that you know we we consider to get some good diversification is that investment bond yeah love it love it awesome mate uh on the on the investment subject still what's both the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've received today so my one of my favorite uh pieces of investment advice actually from warren buffett um i'm a really big warren buffett fan um and it's i can't remember exactly the exact wording but it's basically when the taxi driver starts giving you share market advice it's time to get out so um i think that's absolutely fantastic advice it's um you know one of the

great tools for success in anything you're doing is actually doing things differently from everybody else um if you do things the way everybody else is doing them you're going to end up where everybody else is so um i think that's a fantastic piece of advice um the worst piece of advice and you'll probably cringe this one as well but she is worst piece of advice you just hear everywhere is um is uh you know property debit goes down so um you know i think that that probably makes you cringe as well obviously property is a fantastic investment but um you know people have this attitude that you never lose on property in inverted commas is um yeah not very clever so i think that yeah probably probably about the worst investment advice i've ever heard

yeah i start to gag when i hear that mate uh yeah it's normally someone in a in slippery shoes and a showing so that's just trying to tell you that yeah yeah no that's that's awesome but uh back on the personal front then what what's a a personal habit or ritual that uh contributes most to your success today um look i i think it's it's actually again a really simple one it's just hard work it's and and you know we we all know so many people who have lots of skills and have lots of talent, and you just never see them take advantage of it. Now, you know, I have no opinions on what people do with their lives. You can do whatever you want with your life.

But I know people who are not happy with their lives, and, you know, they've got all these skills, but they've just never done anything with them. So, you know, it's just, you know, it's what your parents tell you from grade five kind of thing, work hard. But, you know, it's actually true. It's, you know, there's talented people everywhere. I work with small business owners all day, every day.

and the absolutely without doubt irrefutable thing they all do is work really really really hard so um you know that's that's what we do i know bushy i know how hard you work um you know it's such a such a simple but such an important part of success 100 agree and it's uh i think uh it's how you perceive it though that people see hard work as exactly that is a very painful experience I don't know about you, but I actually get a lot of enjoyment out of immersing myself in something and really going for it. Yeah, me too, for sure. Yeah, so it doesn't feel like hard work. It's certainly investing heart and soul, but it never feels like hard work, really.

Yeah, exactly. Very sound advice, mate. The final question, and it's a big one. If I gave you a microphone that spiked to every single one of the 7.7 billion people in the world, mate, and I gave you one minute to talk, what would you say? Right now, it'd be stay home and wear a mask. But beyond that, look, I think, you know, I think a lot about what kind of, you know, you look at what goes on in the world. I think so many of our problems, this goes back to the quote that I had before, so many of our problems come from short-term thinking. and that's you know that's not just investment that's you know everything in life so um you know

if you think about the long-term results of what you're doing uh that's you know and plan for that and work around that that's how you end up getting where you want to go um short-term results uh always you're aiming for short-term results always gets you in trouble because anything worth doing is going to take some time so um that that'd be my my short piece of advice to 7.7 billion people Yeah, I love it, mate. Absolutely so true, mate. It's probably the reason why I admire the Japanese culture so much. They think in generations and in decades, not days.

It's a very different way of thinking and much more enjoyable, I think, when you take that exercise because it actually reduces your expectations and the risk of being unhappy if you are adopting a much longer timeframe. What do you think? yeah absolutely i agree 100 and again again coming back to sort of things that you know just i've seen people i know do um you know in terms of sort of starting and running businesses and i have no doubt you've seen this with business and investment and that kind of thing as well bushy is that people start something off and it hasn't worked in four months like oh this isn't

working and they try something else i know i know a couple of people who have have been through kind of four or five or six business iterations over like three or four years and none of them have worked whereas if they'd picked one of them and stayed with it they'd probably be doing really well by now so it's um yeah i do think it's a cause of many many problems is short-term thinking yeah i love it mate you're singing my tune there mate it's been awesome mate i really appreciate you coming on uh i'm excited about uh uh where publish central is going to go and i've got to commend you and andrew griffiths on the australian business book awards i think the initiative that you're doing there to give recognition and also awareness for the great work that a lot of authors

are doing is second to none, mate. So keep up the great work and look forward to staying in touch. Yeah. Thanks, Bushy. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on and thanks for your ongoing support as well. Thanks, mate. Talk soon. Cheers. Thanks, Bushy. Bye. Well, Freedom Fighters, how good was that? To get a summary of all this investment gold in the show notes, just email me on hello at khgroup.com.au or check us out at www.bushymartin.com.au forward slash getinvested. I look forward to joining you next week for another episode of the Get Invested podcast.

so thanks for listening and as always dream as if you live forever and live as if you die tomorrow