The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Jim Flynn, Author Interview

Episode Date: October 2, 2021

Jim Flynn, Author Interview JimFlynnSix.com About Jim Flynn Jim Flynn worked in the financial industry for 35 years. He is currently writing the JR Johnson book series, and has published the first two volumes, Losing Lola, and The Bitcoin Gambit. Losing Lola won The AudioBook Reviewer award for Best Thriller in 2020. The books are written as financial thrillers with humor. Flynn is currently writing the third installment of the series. The first book Flynn published was Be Sincere Even When You Don't Mean It, a humorous fictional memoir. Flynn lives on a farm on Northwest Connecticut. For more information, see website: jimflynnsix.com

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Hey, we're coming to you with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for being here. We certainly appreciate it. Go to show.com. Hey, we're coming here with an upgrade podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for being here. We certainly appreciate it. Go to youtube.com. Fortune's Chris Voss at the bell notification button, and you can see all the wonderful things we're doing over there. You can also go to good reads for slash Chris Voss.

See all the books for reading and reviewing over there. You can also go to our Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those different places on the interwebs. You can see everything we're doing there as well. Today, we have an amazing author on the show. He's the author of four different books, Renegade and All, all the cool stuff he has to offer. His name is Jim Flynn. He's retired from 35 years in the

financial service industry. He lives with his wife and two horses on a 39-acre farm in Northwest Connecticut and has written four books in two genres. Number one, humor. Number two, financial thrillers. His most recent release is the humorous golf book, Hit Your Second Shot First. Welcome to the show, Jim. How are you? I'm chris uh you thanks for all the energy there you go that's we do the big energy you know that sounds like my drinking days hit your second shot first wait yeah that's pretty good advice in golf too so that makes you a better golfer usually i found that so give us your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs? Well, let's keep it really simple. The best way to find me is my website, jimflin6six.com. And then you can link into Facebook from there. You

can link into my books. That's the simplest way to find me. You can email me. There are some things we're going to mention tonight. People who are interested in writing a book can email me, and I'll help them as other people have helped me. I can't name. I would take too much time naming all the sources I've used, but I'll be glad to, if anybody's interested, I'll be glad to help them. So mclint6.com. Yeah, a lot of people have helped me, and I'll get into that.

And you also have some people you don't want helping you so i'll get into that too you know i just went through this journey writing my first book over the last seven months i think it is six months seven months now and uh yeah it was uh it was quite the roller coaster ride of uh it was the hell ride from hell basically it's not easy people think it's easy it's not easy it and especially when you get into like the you know everyone's like yeah you just write stuff down and it's done and it's not that easy what kind of book was it uh it was a non-fiction book a business book and so it was uh my background uh of business and stories and stuff and you know i told these stories for a million years so writing the first 35 000 words was like really easy i'd been you

know repeating the mad nauseam but uh boy the editing and then the book covering and artwork the pr well the pr is hard i i enjoy the artwork and book covering. I farm that out. I'm sure you do, too. But you feel kind of like the boss of this artistic project. It's fun. I like doing that. Yeah, it's kind of fun, but it's kind of learning to do it the first time and self-publishing. Did you self-publish your books?

Yes, but one of my sons also has his own computer gaming company. Oh, wow. He's my consultant. So when I get stuck, I just ask him to do it. So it's nice to have somebody who knows what they're doing. Note to self, adopt the son next time I publish a book. My son might talk to you for a fee i mean you know i i uh in fact i used to i i never had kids and so i used to tease my uh brother who uh when we would game in gaming like

your son does um he would have his son his 12 year old son do the raids for him you know and all that complex military stuff they do on those things. And I'm like, I would have had kids if I know, and I could have had them do the hard parts of my video games. Like I would have signed up for that. None of my kids want to come home because they have to spend the first couple hours in it. It support.

Yeah. I've been there. I've been there. The one thing you don't do is you don't tell your family that you're in IT. They're like, hey, we got this computer that doesn't work. So anyway, so give us the titles of your four books, and then let's talk to them in the order that you want to chat about them. Okay.

First book was called Be Sincere Even When You Don't Mean It. And it's a fictional, humorous fictional memoir. That's how I got started writing. I'll get into that. And that evolved into people suggested you broaden your audience and write a story, more of a novel. And that led into my financial thrillers. I have two in that series. It's the J.R. Johnson series.

He's the protagonist in both books. The first one is called Losing Lola. The sequel is The Bitcoin Gambit. And the fourth book, which I just published, this little funny golf book, is called Hit Your Second Shot First. What made you want to write your first book and get into being an author? Well, I always wanted to be a writer. And while i was in the financial business i was what used to be called a stockbroker but that's when they have to have more highfalutin title now so they're financial consultants i like to be in a stockbroker but anyhow i'm not doing that anymore

and while i was doing that i was a contestant on Jeopardy. Oh, wow. And to answer your question, I lost. Now, I need you to say that in the form of a question. Yeah. What does it feel like to be a loser, Alex? Ouch. Yeah, it feels bad is the answer. But I wrote an article about what it's like to be a Jeopardy contestant on the way home on the plane.

Oh, wow. Literally on a napkin and an envelope. And it was eventually published as the cover story in the Hartford Current Sunday magazine. Hartford Current's the big newspaper in Connecticut. And in those days, they had enough money to have a Sunday magazine. Now the paper's about three by five. An index card, you know, newspapers aren't doing that great. Anyhow, it was a great experience.

I got fan mail. I got people called me up, said, you should be a writer. You're funny. We really like this article, Jeopardy, blah, blah. And I actually went around and gave talks about what it's like to be a Jeopardy contestant. It was a lot of fun. Oh, wow. So even though you lost, you turned it into a win.

Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. But I had a good job. I had three kids and a wife. They didn't want me to quit and go write and make no money. So I kept working for a long time. And I had some medical issues. And to put it succinctly, I ended up having brain surgery. And there is no minor brain surgery. It's a pretty big deal. So when I was done with that, I really couldn't do the financial stuff anymore. And there is no minor brain surgery. It's a pretty big deal. So when I was done with that, I really couldn't do the financial stuff anymore.

Now, fortunately, I'm old, and I could retire. So I retired and decided, okay, now's the time to write a book. So that's when I wrote Be Sincere Even When You Don't Mean It. And you went to school and learned that a novel entails character development. You take a relatively immature guy, and he goes through all these struggles and adventures. And at the end of the book, he's a changed person, become a man. Usually they get better. Sometimes in The Godfather, they get worse. But there's some kind of, they call it a character arc. Oh, okay.

Now, I had just been to my 50th high school reunion. And I noticed the same guys who are jerks when they're 18 are still jerks when they're 68. So I said, most people don't change. So I'm going to write this book where the guy doesn't change. So he starts off as a young kid. He ends up in his mid-40s. It's kind of a Walter Mitty story. This guy actually does all these things. He's a baseball player at Stanford University who wanders into football practice, ends up playing in the Rose Bowl, gets drafted by the Oakland Raiders, plays in the Super Bowl, becomes an astronaut. In the meantime, he's an astrophysicist.

He plays in the Masters Tournament. He does the Hawaii Ironman. Wow. And, yeah, I got – and it's – the book is funny. So – Is it kind of tongue-in-cheek, kind of like Fight Club or other books that are like that? Yeah. Yes. This guy doesn't take himself too seriously.

Mm-hmm. But it describes, it does a pretty good job describing what it's like to do all these things. Yeah. And it's funny. So when you're a self-published author on Amazon, you have to fit into a certain genre. This book is hard to put into a genre. Well, even the cover is really unique. Yeah, the cover is unique.

So it did pretty well. Awesome. Considering, is it a humor book? Is it a biography? What is it? So it was hard to advertise. It was hard to get people to see it. But fortunately, it did well enough that some people who I consider real serious authors

liked the book and contacted me out of the clear blue sky. That is awesome. Yeah, that was the best out of the clear blue sky. That is awesome. Yeah, that was the best part of the whole thing. Yeah. And they said, you're a really good writer, and you're funny, and most even really good writers, a lot of them aren't good at humor. So, but if you want to broaden your audience, you have to write a novel. You have to write a story. So that's what led me into losing Lola and the J.R. Johnson series.

And I decided, again, if I never sell another book, I'm not going to starve to death i'm okay i decided i'm going to do what i want yeah so as opposed to running a standalone novel my favorite form of entertainment are long-form tv shows breaking bad dexter um the americans Longmire, Person of Interest. There's a great Norwegian series on Netflix called Occupied. I don't know if you've ever seen that. It's actually in Norwegian with subtitles, and it's fantastic. Oh, really? Yeah, there's an old show, Midsommar Murders.

And my wife dragged me kicking and screaming into watching The Crown, which I thought I'd hate. I love The Crown. I haven't seen it. It's about Queen Elizabeth. Yeah. But if you know any of those shows, every one of those shows does have character development,

but not like a novel, because it's longer than that. That's what they call a long-form TV show. But also, each one of those shows, and some of the humor, like in The Americans or Dexter, it's very dark, but it does have its funny moments. So I thought, that's a better form for me than writing just a novel. So I think of my books as being each book is one season of, let's say, the Americans or Dexter. So each book I think of as being six episodes of a long-form TV show. And I'm now writing the third book, which the title is Better Than Even, which is going to finish up the trilogy of those three people. And what they're about is I think that sex, money, and power are all fruits from the same tree.

And since I spent my career in money, I see it through the lens of money. And money means different things to different people. Some people, you know, they want to make enough to have beer money. Some people want to pay their bills for their kids. Other people, money is a different thing. People want to have a Jaguar and a mansion and all that stuff. But if you take the really rich people, I noticed they have something in common. There are people who really care about money as a thing in itself. Not what I can buy. It's how they keep score in life.

And if you take, let's say, Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg, all these guys have billions and billions of dollars. And people say, why do they do it? They don't need any more money. They do it because that's the game they play. That's the sport they're in, and it's not like football. You don't have to retire. Gates has given away a lot of money, but he still wants to make money.

Yeah, everyone wants to be on that top tier of the fours. That's one of the themes I explore in the books. But I also, I got to know, you really get to know people when you have their money. And people have this inner thing, this kind of, they think there's a secret sauce. There's a secret thing that only they and a few other people will know. And the first book, Losing Lola, J.R. Johnson is a money manager. Lola is the world's most beautiful movie star. She's this big movie star. J.R. is afraid he's going to lose her account to this New York hotshot who he suspects is up to no good because this guy's numbers are too good to be true.

And that's based on Bernie Madoff, who just made up his numbers. Yeah, I was going to ask that. He never lost any money. You can't be in the money management business and never lose anybody any money and have any returns. You have to take some risk, and sometimes you're going to get burned. Bernie Madoff never lost any money. And so the bad guy in this book is based on him.

The character is different, but the way he operates is the same. And that's called a Ponzi scheme. Now, Ponzi schemes are as old as the hills. They're named after a guy in the 1920s. It was basically, hey, I'm going to get you in on this thing, and only a few people are in. And what a Ponzi scheme is, you pay out earlier investors with money that comes out from later investors. You don't actually make any money. You just have to keep the money pouring in. And a Ponzi scheme, it's like a perpetual motion machine.

It can't work because it's the shark that has to get fed every day. And eventually, there isn't enough money to come in to pay out all these people. You're promising 20% returns and all this. Ponzi schemes always blow up. Yeah. You know, Madoff was, I forget how many years ago, but I'm sure there's Ponzi schemes out there.

Now there'll be other Ponzi schemes. I live in Connecticut in the nineties. There was a really big real estate Ponzi scheme where people went to prison and they're very influential people who invested in this. The great story I tell about it is when the guys went to court, it was a federal crime. It was fraud and all this stuff. Federal crime.

In Connecticut, there was only one judge who could hear the trial because the other three federal judges were all invested in this thing. So that's the kind of money these guys had. People fall for this thing. So even smart, sophisticated people fall for these schemes. They think there's something special out there for them. So that was the theme of Lola. Now, I'm not going to write a textbook or a history.

That's not my thing. I want to write an entertaining story. So there's violence and crime and sex and all that stuff in the stories. It goes along. So you could just read it for the purposes of entertainment. But also there's an underlying theme. Hey, what are people thinking about doing this? Right, that story ends.

The next thing I explore is Bitcoin Gambit. So JR's done with the Ponzi scheme thing. He lives in Austin, Texas. And I chose that on purpose so he could be an outsider. And that's kind of the theme of all my books. An outsider is somebody who can view something from the outside, not so caught up in it that he can't see the forest for the trees. So he's in Austin, Texas. Bitcoin is getting hot hot he's kind of bored he's running his money man he's conservative he's running his money management business he decides what's the

worst that can happen if i just dip my toe in a little bitcoin investing well guess what you know there's there's russian guys there's killers there's you know there's there's Russian guys, there's killers, there's, you know, there's a thriller story involved in it. And my point isn't, oh, people say, oh, you don't like Bitcoin. That's not my point. Yeah, it's a story. I'm not, well, I'm not telling people how to invest anymore. I do not give investment advice. What I'm saying is Bitcoin has the same hey, I got

the secret sauce. I'm going to just tap a few keys. I'm going to buy this thing that doesn't even really exist. It's just on a computer somewhere. And I'm going to be rich because I'm smart enough to buy this thing. By the way, Bitcoin

when it was 300 nobody wanted to buy it when it's 50 000 they couldn't wait to get in yeah so they're just i did a lot of studying on bitcoin i don't really understand it i have i admit i don't really understand i mean i know all the terms and all the jargon and stuff but i guarantee you i understand it better than 90 of the people who own it oh yeah it's really insane all the people that buy it and you're just like do you have you ever done investing you know yeah it's well then buy it because it's going up and there's something called something called fomo yeah fear of missing out there they don't

want to miss the bus so all i'm saying to people is maybe you should understand. You know, if you put in 200 bucks, big deal. But there are people who put in more than they can afford to lose. Buyer beware. That's the theme of the Bitcoin Gambit. And a lot of fun stuff happens during these books. And there's some dark humor in it. All of my books, if you read, whether it's the humorous books

or the thrillers, if you read the reviews, every review, not every review, every book, somebody said, hey, this book made me laugh out loud. So even the financial thrillers are funny. And when you start writing thrillers, the advice you get is don't make a thriller funny because people want this rock-hard, tough guy with his AK-47 shooting people. That's not my style. And as I said, I'm going to do what I like.

So it goes back more to the form of the long-form TV shows than, I don't know if you ever read Jack Reacher. Yeah, I didn't read him, but it's in the movies. The movie. Yeah, there's not a lot of humor in Jack Reacher. Like, none. Or Spencer for Hire. There's no humor.

These are just tough guys. They're very successful books. I'm not criticizing them, but that's just not me. So I'm not going to try to be the guy who writes Jack Reacher. I'm going to be me. So I'm working on the third. By the way, those books sold a lot more than my first book. Because for one thing, I have strong female characters.

And women, the first book is more of a guy book. Guy plays football, plays, you know, is an astronaut, more of a guy book. I would say the financial thrillers are more 50-50. Oh, really? Yeah. And if you want to sell Kindles, you know, the e-reader on Amazon, the average Kindle reader is a 38-year-old woman. Oh, really? Yeah.

So you have to write something that women like. Yeah, that's important. To give you an example, my first book, I didn't know anything about marketing. You're talking about, you know, now you've written a book, you have to market it. I didn't know anything about that. I didn't know you could publish a paperback book. I thought you had to publish a Kindle. So I, you know, I was proud of my book. People told me it was good. I put it up there. First couple of days, it's not put it up there first couple days didn't didn't not

like it didn't sell a lot it didn't sell any zero it sold zero copies even my friends had told me they're gonna buy it said what's a kindle i you know they didn't can't can i just buy the book so i then i went back and found out hey you can publish a paperback on amazon and you don't have to pay them anything. Oh, yeah. There's an old model where people would self-publish. They'd have to buy 1,000 books for 10 grand and be stuck. There's old stories about they died, and they opened the garage, and there's 1,000 books in the garage.

But Amazon has something called print on demand so on a day where i sell five books they actually print five books and send them out yeah so so i discovered that and you know and we had the fun of designing a cover and all of a sudden the book started to sell that is awesome so and so but if you want to be, you actually make more money selling Kindles. And if you think of it from Amazon's perspective, they don't have to do anything. There's no printing, no binding. There's no printing.

They just, they don't even hit the button. It's all automated. Yeah. The people in their Kindle just get the book. So, you want to do something that's successful in Kindle. And these second two books were much more successful in Kindle than the first one. I was going to say, you got a lot more reviews than a lot of friends that I have that wrote business books. And they have big audiences.

But I'll go look at their reviews, and they'll have like four reviews. You're doing way a lot better than most of the friends I know who wrote business books. Well, that's because I sold more books. Yeah, and more people are reading them. Even so, it's hard to get people to write reviews. Yeah. I mean, I've gotten fan mail from people I don't know. I loved your book.

I loved this character, Sierra Quinn. You should kill her off. She's so bad. But so I've taken to, I will take their email, and I'll copy the part where they talked about my book, and I cut and paste it and send it back to them and say, there's your review. You don't have to even write anything more.

You just have to send this to Amazon. They still don't do it. I think people are shy about writing reviews. They think they have to write some big essay. Yeah, I think so, too. I'm in that hunt and peck right now with the art crowd, the advanced reader copy crowd. And I'm like, look, you just give it the stars you want. I try not to be like, you got to do five stars.

I'm like, give it the stars you want. Just say, great book or awesome. Like it. Just say, I like the book. And I say, yeah, give it, yeah, whatever stars you want. I like the book. Or you could pick one part you liked. I like, you know, I like. You don't have to write war and peace. Yeah, yeah, whatever stars you want. I like the book. Or you could pick one part you liked. I like, you know, I like.

You don't have to write war and peace. Yeah, yeah. People are reluctant to do that. But then again, I think about myself now. I'll get back to my brain for a second. People don't believe this. They think I'm kidding. But one of the problems I had after my brain surgery is I have a hard time reading.

If you say you're writing all these books, you can't read. I said, well, it's a different part of your brain. I can write all day long. I have a hard time reading what I wrote. Oh, wow. So I mostly listen to books. I mostly listen to audio books. And I think about I have to make myself, because I know how important it is to somebody for reviews.

Because as you may know, Amazon bases a lot of their algorithms on how many reviews you have and all that stuff. So I make myself write a review for the book. And sometimes I just say, hey, it's a great book. I really enjoyed listening to it. Five stars. That's all you have to do. So people listening who read my books, please just do that. So anyhow, I'm writing. I'm done with my, I'm done with the Bitcoin Gambit,

which has been the best seller. And I think I was smart when I named it. People think, people see Bitcoin, it grabs their attention. Yeah, the keyword. It's got a great cover. You know, I worked with the artist on that. He did a great job. It is a cool cover.

It's really kind of got that whole sort of thriller mystical look too yeah well they you know i did do some learning about how to market a book the first thing people search for on amazon is the author oh but they're not gonna look for me i'm not you know i'm not anybody they know you know if stephen King or John Grisham or somebody like that, he wrote a new book, Nelson DeMille. I'm going to go look for that. But after that, they look for the cover. So you have to have a cover that jumps out at people.

It has to be in your genre. It can't be some sunny day at the beach if it's a thriller. It has to be dark and sinister and all that, which the Bitcoin Gambit's perfect for that. So the cover helps sell your book. Anyhow, did well. It got wonderful reviews. And now I'm writing the third of the trilogy. And J.R. Johnson starts off as a high school kid in the first book.

He's now a man. He's going to have his character development. If he lives through this book, he's in pretty deep doo-doo with a lot of bad guys in this book. So something's going to happen at the end of this book. It's going to be the end of the trilogy. It may go on. I haven't decided what I'm going to do next. It's going to be the end of the trilogy. It may go on. I haven't decided what I'm going to do next.

That's the nice thing about being your own boss. I'm going to write whatever book I want next. You don't have the publishing agency going, you better do it this way. Yeah, or you got an advance and you better have to finish the book by Tuesday. But, and I don't want to get all authory like I'm some big artist or something, but if you're writing, you know, you talked about writing a nonfiction book. I will tell you, a fiction book is harder. I imagine so, yeah.

Because you have to make it up. You made up a fictional world. Yeah. Characters live in. And if you think about, there are a couple long-form TV shows. One is The the man in the high castle i don't know if you saw that um and there was a show on nbc last year about a spaceship that came to debris and both of both of those things do something i and i said i don't want to sound like a big artist but they violate lost is another example oh yeah they set up a story world and then they violate the rules of

the world because they're just making up stuff as they go along and so like lost that people who liked lost hated the ending oh yeah that was That was controversial. There's still people angry about that. Yeah, because they just had to make stuff up because they violated the rules as they went along. So now my book is more realistic, but a novel has a story world. It's not real life. You don't say, well, I went to cvs and bought some vitamins you have to just talk about the interesting stuff it so it's not real life when you have this female assassin who's going around shooting people that's not kind of most people's normal tuesday that's

wednesdays around here not tuesdays so straight i't know. It's a different experience for me. You start to, you have to live in that world a little bit. It's not like you lose touch with the reality, but sometimes you're sitting there watching TV with your wife saying, what's Sierra Quinn going to do next? You know, how's she going to get out of this mess that she's in? So you're kind of living in that world. And one of the things I have with my medical stuff is I shouldn't be under a lot of stress. I should avoid stress. It creates some problems for me.

But you're writing a book? Yeah. Well, just think about that. You're putting yourself under stress. Oh, that lost my mind and in a novel or story for it to be interesting the main character has to be in trouble and escalating trouble think about every movie you ever saw james bond movie die hard or even a romantic comedy there has to be more and more trouble until they resolve it at the end.

Oh, boy. So you're living with this guy. He's got the Russians trying to kill him. He's got guys shooting him. It created too much stress for me. Wow. And I had to back off. I had to just stop writing that book. And I took a month off, and I wrote the golf book

because the golf book was a hundred pages or 105 pages. It's funny. It, and it did really well. It was the number one golf humor book on Amazon for like a week, which is pretty good. Yeah. That is awesome. That's not bad. Yeah. And it's, it's funny. It. It's kind of snarky. But that's my sense of humor. And, again, people said, hey, it made me laugh out loud. And even so, it might even help me with my golf game. And that was kind of my ambition when I did it.

So what it did is it kind of cleansed my mind, took the – because that kind of writing is easy for me. And I'm not – it's not like I'm living with some character and developing all these things. So I kind of cleansed my mind, and now I'm back to writing the – I'm halfway through the second draft of Better Than Even. One of the things – now, remember I said I'm going to tell you people to seek out and people not to seek out?

A lot of beginning writers seek out these writers groups. We're all going to get together, and I'll read you my latest chapter. I would tell you do not do that. Everybody tells you you stink. People just think about it. Are they trying to sabotage you? Is that what they're trying to do? Well, sabotage, they want them to be successful.

They don't want you to be successful. And that's just a normal human thing. So it's just jealousy. Don't do that. You you can develop sometimes you have to pay them some i have a couple of beta did you use beta readers for your book no meaning people who read it when it was like a readable draft i had friends do that okay we're willing to be critical yeah i mean you can't you don't says, hey, this is the greatest thing I've ever read and not tell you anything bad. Yeah, my friends are pretty mean, actually, too.

But I have two different people who don't know each other who've done that. And, you know, I give them, I print it out. I go to Staples, have them print it out, double spaced, and they mark it up and send it back to me. But they're not competing with me they're not in some writers group they actually like doing this they like that's a much different so i would tell you use beta readers don't go to a readers group it's it's yeah sabotage is a little my issue is i had some really good friends that were involved with me in what I call my focus group. So I had about 10 or 20 friends.

But what I found out early on was I was writing a business book. And I really needed people who read business books continually. And people that weren't really business book readers, they didn't really get it. They're like, what's some of the terms that I use that business uh you know uh nominal terms average terms that you hear in business they were kind of like what and i'm like well this is you know this is what you talk about in business and they're like we read novels or something you know i don't know yeah but uh they were really helpful but but yeah i found early on that i've got to go find whoever my audience is for this thing and have them pre-read the book. Yeah.

To finish on, so anyhow, I'm back to writing Better Than Even. That's awesome. And what he's exploring now is what's called FinTech, financial tech. People are trusting their whole financial life to their phone. And without giving away the plot, there's some people after this guy, after J.R. Johnson. They're trying to sabotage him. And just to give you a little taste of it, imagine if you had somebody who was technologically very savvy,

much more savvy than you, who was trying to ruin your life financially. It sounds like my seven prior wives. I'm just kidding. Yeah. I'm just kidding. Well, imagine. There were only six. You go to the airport, and your credit card doesn't work.

That was the six wives, yeah. Or all of a sudden sudden your stock market account has nothing in it and that was the six wives too yeah it had two million dollars the day before and now it's closed and it it moved to cyprus imagine what somebody who's who was really good, could do it. It starts happening in this book. Yeah, the Cypress was the third wife. So, yeah. It goes from there.

Well, that's awesome. So let me get this straight because we're getting down to the upper hour. So the first book in the series is which one? The first book in the financial series is losing Lola. Okay. So that's the one people that that's the other question I had for you. So are the books made so that even if you don't read them in the order of the series,

can you still kind of pick up on what, what had taken place and where you were in the whole? Yes. And I did that intentionally. And that's one of the reasons I had other people read them. Here, read this book first and see if it stands by itself. You understand what's going on without having read the first book. In fact, a lot more people read the second book. And the nice thing, as you may know about Amazon, there's no gatekeeper anybody can publish a book on amazon it's pretty so you have to stand out somehow and one way of standing out is to write

a series because people who read one book in your series will tend to read the other books in your series so a lot of people who read the bitcoin gambit first went back and read the other books in your series. So a lot of people who read the Bitcoin Gambit first went back and read the other book, and they understood it. Now, the third book, I'm doing the same thing, having somebody read it who hasn't read the other books. And she said, hey, you know, I don't understand. And so it made me go back and do a little more explaining. And that's why it's really good to have somebody outside look at it

who's not living with it every day. Yeah, I learned that in writing my book, how important that is to, number one, preserve your voice with the editors, but also, you know, have somebody look at it. Because you look at it, it's just ad nauseum. I noticed you started writing these books, what was it, January of 2020? Yep. Yeah.

Was it the coronavirus that prompted you? No. The first book, I actually took two years to write it. Oh, okay. Okay. I'm a lot faster writer now. You get better with time, don't you? Well, you know, you well you know um old business you

probably know this from your business studies um and this isn't an exact equation but they say when there's a new technology when you double the production the costs come down by 10 percent or whether it's a light bulb or a semiconductor or whatever it is, an electric vehicle. So the cost – remember when solar panels first came out? They said, oh, they're too expensive. Nobody will ever have them. But as they keep making them, the cost keeps coming down per kilowatt hour.

The production techniques get better. I don't want to get into all that business stuff. The same thing is true with writing. I'm not going to draw an equation for you but as you double your output you get to be a better writer and more productive writer and you get to know what you're doing there's no question about that yeah i learned a lot in the edit process where they kicked my head and they said uh they're like hey you know the,000 words you wrote because it was in nonfiction with 50,000. And I'm like, yeah, they're like, well, we cut it down to like three pages. The rest of it's garbage.

So can you write all that, please? It wasn't that bad, but it felt that way. And boy, you really have to be able to take you really have to take some criticism. So as we get out, anything more you want to plug out on the books? Anything we haven't touched on that you more you want to plug out on the books uh anything we haven't touched on that you think is important to tease out to readers yeah all the books now uh hit your second shot first just came out yesterday they're all available on audible as as um as audio books i've got a great narrator. His name is Gary Williams.

He's a professional narrator. I realized I couldn't do that. He's fantastic. He makes the experience better than just reading the book. So if you're a listener, go on Audible. Well, go on my webpage, and then you can click on any of the books and and it'll take you either to the audible or or to go by the paperback yeah there's a lot of work that goes in that audible program and stuff uh you have to do it perfectly or else oh yeah why i i tried to do my first book and then then I listened to myself, and I said,

this is so bad, I wouldn't even listen to it. Forget about somebody paying for it. So I realized, and I know we're running short on time, but the audition process and, you know, people audition to do a deal with you to read your book. It's fantastic. It's a lot of fun. So here's my message.

Go to my website, jimflin6.com. Even if you're just interested in writing a book, email me. I'll give you some advice. You may want to buy one of my books when you're there. There you go. Buy all of them. Yeah. Get them all.

And, yeah, that should be great. So we've got your plug-in. Give us the plug one more time. It's JimFlynn.com? JimFlynn6. S-S-I-X. Okay. And that should do it for us. Any parting words?

No. Thanks very much for having me. It was great, and I hope we can do it for us um any parting words uh no uh thanks for thanks very much for having me it was a great and i hope we can do it again there you go thank you well we'll have you on for the next book so that we can get that announced so you know what the anticipated launch date is that yet i'm trying to get it out for christmas ah there you go get that christmas rush yep yeah there you go there you go all right well and i will be on that it. Let's do it when the book comes out. Definitely. Definitely.

I mean, you'll have five books by then. But, yeah, you're doing much better in your reviews than most of my business friends. And some of them, their first book was like a New York Times book, and they published like six or seven books that weren't New York Times books. And now they sell like four books and get like maybe a review. Well, you know what? You have to in this day and age, you got to keep promoting your books. You've got to advertise. You do special deals on Amazon because there's so much competition out there.

You got to not just write them. You have to do some other stuff too. I think I heard there's 330 330 000 books that are published every month largely independent i don't think i don't think it's quite that much but it's a lot it's about a thousand a day yeah it's crazy man so i think what i went through and i'm like other people really want to get the tortured method of this but but i'll tell you what a lot of books sell one copy that's true and and if you want to have some fun go to the books with like no reviews and you know how they have this thing

where you can read a page it's there's yeah it's i won't say anything it's just you'll see some real interesting stuff on there well i'm hoping to sell at least two copies yeah so if i can just get to two so i'm not a one email me. I'll not a one term room, hopefully a two term. Yeah. Anyway, it's been a wonderful day on the show, Jim. Thank you very much for sharing your stuff. It sounds like some exciting stuff that's coming out of you and you're doing really well in the space for novels. I mean, I have, we, we do two authors a day on the show and yeah, it's a struggling business sometimes for people and you're doing really well so keep up the good work and thank you for coming on the show

oh thanks for having me chris all right guys and my audience go to youtube.com for just chris voss hit the bell notification button go to goodreads.com for just chris voss see we're doing a reading or reviewing over there go to facebook linkedin twitter instagram all the different places the chris voss show is and you can see more of what we're doing over there thanks for tuning in be good to each other and we'll see you guys next time