The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – SHOW AND TELL WRITING: A GREAT, SHORT BUSINESS BOOK ABOUT HOW TO WRITE A GREAT, SHORT BUSINESS BOOK by Mike Ulmer

Episode Date: May 17, 2022

SHOW AND TELL WRITING: A GREAT, SHORT BUSINESS BOOK ABOUT HOW TO WRITE A GREAT, SHORT BUSINESS BOOK by Mike Ulmer Getcatapulted.com In Show and Tell Writing, Mike Ulmer is true to his word. He has written a great, short business book about how to write a great, short business book. Mike traces his own story and evolution as a writer to create the ultimate handbook for people who want to rejuvenate their businesses. With easy, step-by-step instructions, Show and Tell Writing explains... How writers access our hardwired need to resolve patterns and reach conclusions to create know, like and trust. Why every book is a business book and why the act of writing a book is so transformative for the writer. The three pillars of every great business book: The Proposition, The Backstory and The Recommendations. Loaded with tips and chock full of unforgettable stories, Show and Tell Writing is the one book you need to write the book your business needs.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss and here's your host chris voss welcome to my show guy the chris voss show.com hey thanks for coming by guys we certainly appreciate you as always as always thank you for coming by the chris We certainly appreciate it. As always, as always, thank you for coming by the Chris Voss Show. I know we see that every show, and you're like,

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group subscribe to that as well. Today, we have another amazing author. I don't know, where do we get these guys? We put them in the Google machine and we search amazing, brilliant authors to come expand our minds, make us smarter because I'm about as dumb as a rock. Today, we have Mike Ulmer on the show with us today. He is the author of several books. This one is coming hot off the presses. March 11th, 22, it came out and it's called Show and Tell Writing, a great short business book about how to write a great short business book. Wait, does that cancel itself out? He is on the show with us today.

Welcome to the show, Mike. How are you? Thanks. I'm really great. How are you guys doing down there? We're doing good. I guess you're coming to us from Canada. great how are you guys doing down there we're doing good i guess you're coming to us from canada does that mean you're looking down on us i am looking straight south and whenever i look south i don't like what i see a bunch of crazy americans no i just spent

right here when i look south i see the dad body and i go oh man i think i'm looking north there's always that just keep the dad bought away from the wife oh, man, I think I'm going to keep looking north. There's always that. Just keep the dad bod away from the wife. She'll be happy. So tell us a little bit of an origin story about you. Also, you're a.com, so people can find you on the interwebs. Sure. So my website is called getcatapulted.com.

And my story is that I'm a writer. I've had about 20,000 interviews. And when you do something 20,000 times, you get pretty good. And so my career was journalism. I traveled the world as a journalist, a great, great gig, met all sorts of famous and important people, you know, Michael Jordan and all those guys who went to the Super Bowl, the Olympics and had a lot of fun, a great career. And now I'm helping people write their books. And that's really, really rewarding because there's just a profound need. Everyone talks about the need to write a book,

but it's a little bit like Mark Twain said about the weather. Everybody talks about it, but no one does anything about it. I talked about it for, what was it, 10 years? And then finally it came out over coronavirus. Did you ever write it? Yeah, yeah, finally, finally. Good man. I tried putting one out when the iPad first came out.

Yeah. And all the publishers were like, yeah, we're going out of business. Thanks, Steve Jobs. No, we're not doing it. I still have, like, the letters. But no, the joke is that I took 54 years to write my first book, so I have my second book out when I'm 108. So this is really good.

Show and tell writing, helping people learn how to write a great short business book. What motivates you, Ryan, to write this? You've got how many different books? I think I've got about 14 or 15. I know it sounds silly because there's some that it's sort of 95% me. I never know whether to count them or not. Sure. Yeah. No, it was just a thing where I wanted to be able to help people. There's just so much trepidation about writing. The thing about writing is that you know everyone you think does it better than you do, and so it's very intimidating. And my point is, well, like, you know, that great guitar solo

where Prince did, well, my guitar gently weeps, you know, famous guitar solo. Just because you can't do that guitar solo doesn't mean you can't play guitar. It just means you can't be Prince. Yeah, and you can't do rhythm. Yeah, we all have the ability to write a great book It doesn't mean you can't play guitar. It just means you can't be Prince. Yeah. And so you can get your rhythm. Yeah. We all have, we all have the ability to write a great book because we all have fantastic stories.

Our stories are our fingerprints. They're the only thing that distinguish if you sell insurance and you sell insurance and you sell insurance. What's different? Well, what's different is the values that you formed in you and the journey of your life and how that underscores how you do your business. And that can only be told through story.

I thought it was because I was pretty. No. No, no, no, no, no. Wow. We Canadians are sworn to truth up here. Deals, man. Wow. I know. I know. We hurt people's feelings just randomly up here. I didn't know you guys were so vicious.

You guys are usually so nice. I know. It's just your reputation. That's what we want you to think. Oh, wow. Okay. All right. Hey's just your reputation. That's what we want you to think. Oh, wow. Okay. All right. Hey, don't send those brides I hired from Canada back. Anyway, so why a short business book and why not a long business book?

Because the first purpose of any book is to be read. And people want a shorter business book because it takes less time to read it. And really, if you're writing 60,000 words, you're patting it. If you can't say it in 15,000 words, stop. Because you're just putting air in the tube. Anyone should be able to say everything they need to say in 15,000 words. Yeah, that's what I'm going to tell my editor next time. 15,15. That's pretty much what my editor did.

They took my 60, 80,000 words or whatever it was I wrote, and they handed me back like a page. They did you a favor. The only thing was keeping it. They did you a favor. There's that great saying. I forget who it was that said, I would have wrote it shorter, but I didn't have time. That's the truth. So I know there's a strategy where a lot of people will write short business books.

In fact, I have a friend who gave me advice while I was writing mine who's written like 60. And they're like really small. Like how small? Like very small. Like how many pages? They might be. I'd have to go look it up. It's been a while since I talked to him since the book came out.

But we used to talk a lot on Clubhouse and Clubhouse Quit Being a Thing. They're really small. I think they're 5, 10, 15,000, I think. They're not, they're really specific too. They're really like, here's how to do a task. But he uses them. So 50 pages or 75 pages or 100 pages type of thing? Might be.

Might be. I'd have to go Google it up. He, but his key is, and he doesn't charge a lot of money for him. His key is he uses them in list builders. Yeah, I believe that. So he makes these cheap, really unique books, and then he uses them to build his list. So inside of his book, he's got a QR code,

and he's got like, you know, sign up for my coaching services. It makes perfect sense. It's really about consulting and list building. And I was like, wow, because lists are really a great way to make money. There's two things about writing a book. The first thing is you get most of the value from it without people opening the page, opening the book. The fact that you have a book is an instant credibility builder. Now, it's lousy if people read a lousy book. The other thing about a book is that the

journey of writing a great book, you find out the story you need to tell every day for the rest of your life. Then you write the book. So what we do is we help people write that book. We interview them. And generally, it takes about three or four hours for them to go through the entire process and have the book. Generally, we do deal with clients who have more money than time. But it's that understanding of your life that comes with it and how you got here and what it is you do and everything you do kind of is in a much more clear focus. And so we tell people, look, we'll help you figure out what your story is and we'll throw the book in for free because really the great value is that,

A, you have it, and B, we've helped you figure it out. Yeah, totally. You know, telling people's stories is really unique. You know, you mentioned at the beginning about how stories are really what separate us. I didn't learn until I was, I think, 48 or 50 the importance of how stories are. For some reason, you know, I knew how important they were because I collected mine and it was kind of like a griot for for 54 years retelling my stories and i didn't realize i was retelling all my stories because i was trying to remember them i know my wife will tell you the

same thing yeah and and it's because she was hearing all your stories and going obviously this one if you say that the wife has heard the husband's stories thousands of times you know but the thing about kind of the show and tell thing chris is that we what we observe when we see something is far more powerful than what we're told so if you show someone something and let them figure it out that's how we're built right our amygdala works and we take information in and we have to believe that that information is real and we can act on it right so if someone tells me that tells me that they're honest or I see someone do an honest thing, seeing them do the honest thing is far more power. So the trick to great, you know, convincing people that you have merit is to mix in the show with the tell because you have to tell people stuff.

So I'll give you an example. The movie The Big Short with Margot Robbie. Remember she's sitting in the bathtub drinking champagne, explaining to your trenches and financial things. That's a sheer tell, right? You're listening to Margot Robbie. That's a sheer tell. But all things that you observe about someone, maybe they don't even know that you're watching

or a story that you tell about how you stayed at something or how you stuck with something or how you valued somebody in your family. When someone hears that story, they're making, they're going, oh, okay, this is someone who has these qualities that I look for. And so to show and to tell are both really intermingled. And when you put them both together, they're really, really powerful. And that's how we're built. We have to draw conclusions.

Definitely. It's, it's the stories, you know, I realized that stories like movies, yeah, film, TV, that's how we learn. That's how we learn, how we track stuff. I, I, I, I taken, you know, I just never realized how important they were, but I was carrying all these stories and just madly telling to everybody. And I was starting to forget a lot of them, which is the sad part. Back when I had all my companies and we had a ton of employees, you know, hundreds of employees. I've had thousands over the years. I could have written like four books on employee stories about all the craziness my employees put me through. And I never wrote them down.

And unfortunately, a lot of it's gone into the ether but you know the fun part is is now that i there's a big relief when i wrote my book and it's kind of half a memoir and and i put my stories down there's been a big relief in my brain where my brain's like finally we got that on paper no isn't that interesting you needed you needed to tell that i needed to i needed to put my mark. It's a weird feeling that I got that it's like, hey, I just did something that's going to survive me. Yeah. And it's going to be around at least as long as Amazon's around. There's an element of immortality to it. When you have your book, you're showing those who come after what it was about, and you're telling them in real time.

I did a book book i got a lot of books so i'm in all sorts of libraries and people's homes and it's awesome to walk into a library and find your book it's cool i've spoken to about 20 000 kids about writing and i go to they give me entire schools and i go and i talk to them about writing we talk about different elements of writing about rewriting and about editing and stuff like that and and it's just it's just the best it's just the best to have so i know what you mean having written it right written a book there's a great saying by dorothy parker who said you know i don't like writing i love having written the editing process oh my gosh and that's true because writing is really hard man i mean

writing is hard hard man i mean writing is hard hard hard hard because as soon as you get a little bit better at it you know you can't cheat people with the stuff that you put out yesterday right so you have to make it better so the bar is always climbing you don't get any any better you just get yeah hopefully so we're working on the second third book right now so nice that's good. So you help a lot of people. You basically help people, coach them, get their book out. Do you handle all, do you show them how to do all the editing, all the promotional stuff? So no, all we do is, you know, there's so much emphasis on Chris on, on, on marketing the book. Everywhere you go on Clubhouse, there's people that are going to tell you how to market your book, market your book, market your book. We're going to make you

the number one list. We're going to put you on the Amazon list for this category. It's just such crap. What a good book. Okay. Every great business book has three pillars. Okay. And here's what they are. There's a great proposition that really gets your attention, like the four-hour work week, right? Something that twists your head over when you're walking by the bookstore and says, I've got to look at that. It can be anything. It can be how to win friends and influence people, which is a great title. But there's got to be something contrarian about it, something that really promises a benefit specifically to you. Who doesn't want a four-hour work week, right?

Who doesn't want time management for mort work week, right? Who doesn't want time management for mortals, which was such a good book. So it has to have a proposition. And then it has to have a backstory, your backstory that validates the proposition. The backstory shows the character of the writer. If you read something and the guy says, well, it just came to me one day, or you read something and the guy says, I worked at this for 15 years. I had three false starts, two businesses, two divorces. Everything went wrong. Finally, I figured out who do you want to buy from? You want to buy from that guy because you know that he's got miles to show for it. So the backstory illuminates character. And then the third part of the book that you

really have to have is tips. You have to have lots and lots of tips to help your writer. So every book needs those three elements. And the tough one is finding the proposition. So what we have to do is go back into your story and just find stuff in your life that led you on this journey and figure out how you got here. So it takes a lot of conversations. It takes sometimes two or three hours to help you figure it out. And then when we do, the rest of it's easy. So what you're saying is a lot of people probably have books in their heads. They just don't realize it. Everyone has a story, man.

The problem is that people are – it's not that they don't realize it. It's that they're scared. Oh, wow. We've been told by teachers, by adults, that our stories aren't worth listening to. There should be a seventh circle of hell for teachers who tell kids that they can't write or they can't sing or they can't do anything. And we don't feel entitled to tell our stories. Listen, if you tell me, if Chris Boss tells me, I haven't got time to write my book, Mike, I'm fine with that, right?

Or I have other things to do. I'm fine with that, right? Or I have other things to do. I'm fine with that. Don't tell me you can't because you can. And someone's lied to you. And I find that repugnant. Everyone's got a story. And as you know, story is the key to business. So that most people are scared to tell their stories is blasphemy to me.

What about, do people need a, well, let me back up to this, to touching your point. You know, I went through that. I've been telling my stories for a lot of years, so I've really tried to perfect them as best I can. I'm reading the Moth book. We had them on the show from the moth, the group. I love that book. That's what drew me to your podcast. Oh, really? Awesome. I, you know,

I, I like a couple of years ago or a year ago. Well, I think it was after I got the book done because I've got to go do the speaking tours bit. And I'm like, uh, I want to, I want to tell better stories. I think I tell good stories, but I want to be best at it who's the best the moth group and so i looked them up and then and then like six months later i get you know contacted from random house or whoever and penguin and they're like hey you want to have these guys i'm like holy shit yeah and so yeah telling stories is so important but you know i went through that period all right i was able to perfect my stories over time because I've been telling them for 34 years. And Clubhouse kind of pushed me over the edge because I was telling all my stories in these groups to entertain people. And they're like, these are really great stories.

And I'm like, yeah, I've been telling them forever. And so as I was writing the book, you know, I had those thoughts. Like, I'm like, this is a lot of work and I can't believe. Like, is anyone going to buy this and read this? Like, I'm like, this is a lot of work and I can't believe, like, is anyone going to buy this and read this? Like, is anyone going to care? Some of those self-doubt thoughts halfway through it. So people go through that, you know, where they have this. Everyone, we all feel that.

Everyone feels unentitled. Everyone feels that their story isn't worthy. No one that does this every day doesn't feel what every rookie feels. It's really hard, man. It's really, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It's really hard. And finding your own story by yourself is really, really hard. The analogy I make is if you have a, you know, we don't do our own appendectomies for a reason. If you're going to work with me, I'm going to make you occasionally uncomfortable. I'm going to ask you about things that maybe you don't want to talk about,

because those things are really key. So let me get, can I give you an example? Yes, please. Sure. I have a client, a friend of mine that did a book on him. His name was Ron Foxcroft. He did, he invented the Fox 40 whistle, that really shrill whistle that you can hear, it goes, cuts through cement. It's a fantastic product. He's become a very wealthy man on it. Ron is one of those guys that was always such a hard worker.

And he told me, you know, I don't drink. He said, when someone tells you they don't drink, there's a reason why they don't drink. There's a story. It's either their story or their mom or their dad's story and so i said how did you get along at home and he says well my i had a hard relationship with my dad and he beat me every week just regular he would beat me and he was a mean mean drunk and he had this he would say i should have i would have i could have and ron decided after getting those beatings that he was never going to be that guy, that he would never say I would have, should have, or could have.

And he became this fantastic entrepreneur. That's not a comfortable story to tell, but it's key to understanding who Ron is. Ron would not volunteer that story. Naturally, I wouldn't either. When someone asks you and explains how important vulnerability is and vulnerability is essential then the story comes out and that that nothing in that book and there's like it's called the 40 ways of the fox it's all sorts of business advice there's great stories it's just loaded with great stuff people talk to him about the fact that his dad

beat him and my dad beat me too and that shaped shaped my life and gave me the sense of, so I never drank. Everyone tells a guy, I never drank. I don't drink. And generally, sons or daughters of alcoholics either drink or don't drink. And so that's such an informative, really super important detail that he wasn't comfortable sharing. And that's why sometimes you need someone kind of pulling it out of you. Yeah.

I mean, ask the hard questions. I mean, these are stories or life lessons. They're, you know, we don't get a manual in life. Like no one has, unless you got one. Did I get it? No, no. Actually, I have several. I wrote 14 manuals.

Well, you wrote them. Yeah. You didn't get handed one, right? No, I wish I could. Oh, mine's in the mail, I think. So, you know, we don't get handed them. And that's how we learn. We learn through stories.

That's how we're wired to do so we're we're wired to draw conclusions from what we see what we perceive and then third what we're told and so what we so we're wired for someone to be able to tell you hey chris go out turn left at the front of the cave there's a big stone there knock a big piece of the black stone take a read stick it on the back come back you got yourself a spear sharpen it on the black stone come back okay that's great so you have to observe that that you have to be able to recall that information so that's why we're still here because 99 of the species on earth aren't it's the ability to do that absorb that story and take action from it it separates from every other species yeah but when you come back with that spear i have to be able to look at you and figure out what you're going to do with it and so it's the ability to discern body language it's the ability

to draw a conclusion from the way you're standing from the way you're looking at gorg next door to me you know all those things have to so i have to be able to absorb information but i also have to be able to make a judgment based on all those other clues. And that's what showing and telling is. You know, and you, you talk about short books. I remember I had one author on and I was, I was planning on writing like a hundred thousand words or a hundred thousand words. I think I was shooting for 150 and the first, the first 35,000 were easy because I had these stories I'd been taping for like 50 years. So I pounded that out like overnight and I put my book out in three months or no, it was three months of writing. And then a month or a month or so of editing hell. And then I think we, we waited for like a two month pre-promotion site, but, and I had a guy on the show and he was published by a major publisher

and he's like, he's like, yeah, it's only 50 50 000 words and i'm like really i was gonna plan on writing 100 000 he goes no man he goes my publisher's like no cut throw all that crap away he goes around 110 000 words cut it down to 50 people don't have the attention span for it anymore he goes make a second book you've got make it a second book you've got to be pumping air into the tire if you're going to a hundred thousand words, there's just no one that, that, that needs a hundred thousand words.

We don't have time. You know what? It's a disservice to the reader. They want fast disposable, you know, fast information, just the same way we do. So,

you know, tell them that one thing they have to remember. I'll get, can I give you an example, Chris, how are you doing for time? So we're fine. Okay. So here's an example. Here's a book idea. It's a fictional thing. So a guy's writing a book

about planning and he goes to all sorts of financial planning and he recognizes because every day people come in and they tell him, you know, I don't care who is going to implement my will, but I want to make sure the government doesn't get it. So they move around who the beneficiaries are. They move around who implements the will. They do all this stuff. And the result is chaotic. Families are destroyed routinely, right? It happens all the time, you know, because they're so obsessed with beating the inheritance tax, okay? The IRS reports that less than 2%, even less than 2% actually, of the wills in the United States generate an inheritance tax. The boogeyman does not exist at any measurable volume. The financial planner understands that. So he tells his clients, look, don't do that. Figure it out.

You're worried about a tax that you're probably never going to have to pay anyway. Don't destroy your family. Okay. That is an example, a hook, a great, great hook, a great proposition that then the person says, you know, I did this for 15 or 20 years. I saw so many funerals. It went and I could just pick the people up. You're going to fight with you. You're going to fight with you. They're going to screw this whole thing up. I went to see it over and over and over again. And finally, I said, I can't take this anymore. I found out that only 2% of the population pays inheritance tax.

And I realized this had changed my life and it would change my practice. Okay. That's the back story. Okay. The third element of the story is my dad was a very ethical man. And I would go to insurance. He would have people over and I would listen. Okay. The third element of the story is my dad was a very ethical man. And I would go to insurance. He would have people over and I would listen.

He knew people in the insurance business. And he would have people over and they would advise the insurance company to settle, to pay the claim. And my dad said, yeah, it was really important for my dad to do the right thing and say the right thing. And I guess when I think about it, that's why I am the way I am about this. Okay. We're there. Now tell me all sorts of hints and stuff and devices that you can use to make this happen. Because now we have our book. We have the proposition, don't wreck your family over the boogeyman, right? We have the background. I had all this stuff, all these experiences, which brought me to this conclusion. So that validates everything that you're saying. And you have the backstory that speaks to character, right?

Honesty. And then you have all these things, ideas and clauses and stuff that you can use, measures and means that you can use to avoid this happening. Those are the three elements of the book. If you have those, you have a great book. You don't tell any part of your story to take your, to sort of get it off your chest. Every word in that book should be of utility to the person that's buying it. They're giving you all their attention. They're stopping everything in the world to read what you have to say. Everything you do in that book should

be to their benefit for them. So don't tell stories just because you think it's a funny story. Tell a story that's going to illuminate who you are and how you can help them. Definitely. And, you know, I was, I can't remember if I was in the editing process or at the end, and I was really struggling with, I had a lot of people that were in my ear and a lot of vendors that were in my ear. I had one friend that was like, don't do a memoir, write a definitive novel or not a novel, but a definitive dictionary or encyclopedia on what leadership is. And I'm like, oh my God, like, you know,

Peter Drucker style thing on leadership. And then I had all these great stories that we'd gotten down and, you know, I was just all over the the place it was a fight over the structure of the book at that point because i didn't do a pre-structure i just started slamming words and then and then we shaped the mold from there and i was i was really almost to the point of throwing the whole thing out which helped my author friends like you're almost there then you're you're at the good point i'm like are you kidding me i'm ready to burn everything and just go i know that feeling man yeah and they're like you and just go. I know that feeling, man. Yeah. And they're like, you're almost there. When you have that feeling, you're almost there.

Just go a little bit further. And I remember a friend of mine in England, she wrote me and she was a multi-book author. And she said, she says, listen, man, somebody needs to hear your story. There's somebody out there that needs to hear what you're writing and they need it. And you're the only one who's going to connect it. And you're the only one who's going to connect with them. You're the only one who's going to save them from whatever their problem is. They need to hear your story. You have a mission. You need to deliver your story to those people. And if you don't finish that book, you're going to screw that person. And then I had another,

about the same time I had another author, and that saved me that night. I was like losing it. I had another author who came on who works with the big publishers and she talked about how one time she was at a book signing and this gal came in and this gal had been in prison for several years for something or other. And she talked about how her previous books, they'd had them all in prison and they used them. And I think they were just novels, but they'd use them just to inspire themselves and be better women. And they created like a book club group with her books and they used them, and I think they were just novels, but they used them just to inspire themselves and be better women, and they created like a book club group with her books, and they all read them, and many of them were leaving prison

because of some of the influence of being better people. And so when she writes, she keeps a picture of that gal. She sent her a picture of her in her orange jumpsuit. Nice. So she focuses on that, and that really makes a big difference because then it's not so selfish while i'm writing a book for me you realize you're writing for the people it's not a wank everything you the rule number one if you could see the chalkboard behind me rule number one is everything you do you must do in a spirit of love for the

reader everything you do you are doing for the reader, everything. And so the problem with writing a book, as you found, Chris, is that what's here is good and what's here is good, but what's here is ego. And what's here is you want to sound better, smarter than you are. What's here is a little insecurity. So by the time what's here and here gets to what's down here, it's corrupted. And the real hard part, there's two real hard parts. The first part is to keep your ego out of it and operate in service to the reader. That's really, really, really hard. And the second part, and you discovered this as well, Chris, is that if you wrote the book you thought you were going to write, you wrote the wrong book right it's the journey to the book to the

conclusions yeah that's what gets you there don't write a book about what you know write a book about what you're learning yeah right yeah we really i really took it you know like do you recommend people do that pre do like a pre-form on the book, like pre-plan the book? No. Really? No. No, because once again, you're putting yourself into a spot. You can ask yourself a couple of questions.

Like a great question if you're going to write a book is, what is the one thing about your business that people would surprise somebody at a party? And if you said, well, you know, inheritance tax, that's a good one, right? That would be, so you can start with that, but do not. Here's the thing about a book. It already exists. It's very difficult to make people understand this because it sounds very kind of hairy, airy, fairy. It is already exists.

It's there somewhere. You're not building it. You're uncovering it. It's going to lead you on a merry chase. And a hundred times, you're going to think you're right. You've It's going to lead you on a merry chase. And a hundred times you're going to think you're right. You've got it and you won't. But it's like being in love. Because when you're in love, you realize all those other times you thought you were in love, you weren't. And now you realize what being in love is like. And now you know you've got your

book. It is cool to be an author. It was cool to fill out all the author stuff and play my thing and then see it on Amazon. That was like all my friends and everybody. I'm like, look, I'm on Amazon. There's nothing that makes the people overestimate your intelligence like writing a book, correct? It really does, yeah. I've actually got a couple of friends. I've been dining on that for decades yeah i've got a couple friends that i that i you know they traveled all over the world before covid you know

you're making fees and everything i thought i was like i need to fucking read their book and i'd go buy their book and i'm like this is gonna be like it'd be like type that was like this large and just horrible origin stories and i'm like serious you've been you built this career off this thing and not everyone's booked that but there was a there's a couple ones that are real standouts that's like like you know and then i realized that a lot of people don't read books they buy books and listen to books which is great and that's what i did too so yeah yeah we got to do my audio book yeah i think those are fun. Those are a lot of fun. But it is – there's nothing that makes people – it's just amazing. Fifty percent of the value of having the book, you don't even have to release it.

Just put it on Amazon and don't even sell one. Even when I'm dating. Just not even for you're an author. Even when I'm dating, women are like, you're an author? I can't believe you date. Really? Yeah. Well, I couldn't afford all the divorces, so I never got married.

I'm still saving up for my first divorce. How many times have you been married, man? I was engaged twice, never been married. Yeah? I tried. I put it up to it and looked at it and went, this is going to end in less than five years, I can tell. No kidding, eh? So you did the separate

you did the cleaving you did the breakup yeah yeah i usually leave i'm you have a real free bird you know i'm kind of broken too early on i was i had a modeling agency and an acting agency it was one of our empire companies that we had and so i lived kind of as the ufner of utah for a while and had a bikini team one of my friends friends, Ron Rice, who once ran Tropic, and had a lot of girls that went to the Playboy Mansion and stuff. And I never got to go hang out with Hugh, but I knew how Hugh operated pretty well. So I got kind of an interesting life that's behind me.

I just, I don't know, man, I've seen a lot of people go down that road. Oh, one of the other things is I had a mortgage company for 20 years. So I read a lot of divorce degrees and a lot of divorce stories. I'm sure. And after a while, you kind of go, yeah, I don't. Oh, man, I got it right the first time. I just met my wife when I was 18 years old. And, you know, now we didn't know at the time, but what she was doing, she was like, you know, she was stalking me.

You can't say that now, but she was absolute. I tell her that you were stalking me and she laughs at me. I met the perfect woman when I was 20, man, I was so lucky. When I was 18, actually,

that's what you got to do. I mean, that's what they're finding now with the data. You've got to get those girls that are, that don't have a high body count. And they, you know, they've,

they've all my friends that are still married. They're there. They married in high school. Yeah. I find that to be really true. And I think that, that I think 30 year old women come, come already pissed off and I don't blame them. If I had to deal with the goofballs that they've been dealing with guys that are sending them all these photos and stuff, I'd be pissed off too. Anyway, any who's all. So, uh, the other question I want to ask for you, uh, you is is I guess you recommend people self-publish. What's the difference between self-publishing and using a big publisher in your opinion? Well, a big publisher is almost impossible to get. Lists are getting smaller.

You know, publishing houses are closing. And we have the tremendous advantage of being our own media companies. All of us are our own media companies. So you can self-publish and you can so what we do is we everything up to the moment that you roll the book off the line we do so we'll we'll pick the cover out for you we'll we'll we'll edit it we give it to anywhere 10 of dutch copy edit we do the interviews we format everything the book looks great and then you just roll off it and and that's the beauty of it because you can, you can do anything with that book and, and it's such a powerful tool, but I just write a good book. Don't worry about marketing it. Don't worry about lists. Don't

worry about any of that crap. Write a great book. Everything else will take care of itself. Yeah. I mean, you can get a good speaking career going. It's like, you know, I remember even doing speaking, people would always be like, do you have a book? And you're like, no.

And they're like, the, the, I was really lucky too. Cause I was shooting for publishers and I was hoping, you know, cause we have so much, I mean, we have a great relationship with all the publishers.

They book all their people on our show. And I'm like, maybe I can find an in or some way to make this work. You know, I'm already friends with the part of it, the editing crew. And so, or at least the PR crew. And, and so I was going to shoot for that. And I had one of my friends called me up, who's a very large name and she, she got a fairly good offer and she's like, don't, don't do it. Self self-publish you know and the control that you have over copyright and you know if i want to go back and edit something i can do it yeah uh it's really great there was we actually flipped around the book uh the structure of the

book of yeah you're too into it the there's so much more power and she got talking to me and i was like holy crap And they bury it pretty much with, with, you know, all the advertising they do and everything they, and they put into it, you know, trying to get a beyond your advances is quite low. And I was kind of surprised too, as to the advances. And I was like, I can make more selling a book and speaking than those sort of advances for somebody who is like nobody. And they're advancing your own money, man. And so, you know, royalty is like somewhere around 12%.

So 50% of the market for the book happens in the store. Okay. You're not getting 12% of the 20 bucks. You're getting 12% of the $10. And then there's a whole lot more things coming out. Really, books are not really very profitable things through the major publishing houses unless you have a hit. And, you know, that's really, really hard to do. And so rather than take that one in a thousand chance,

write a great, awesome book and use your only social media, all the elements that you have, because we are our own media companies, promote that book and have control only social media, all the elements that you have, because we are our own media companies, to promote that book and have control over every word, every comma, every syllable. Yeah. You can go back and change it. You can go back and edit it. You can cut it into pieces. Once you give away that copyright, anytime, like my friend was like, yeah, I wanted to go change something. And a lot of times you don't get to pick the cover of your book. You don't, you don't get to pick the title sometimes. a lot of authors will tell me, you know,

in the green room, they're like, yeah, I didn't even get to pick that stupid time. No, I know. I'm like, I'm like, you know, people give me a bad time when I was picking the cover of my book. And I'm like, I'm gonna have to look at this for the next, however long I'm alive. So I don't want to be in a book signing, hating myself going, I hate this cover. Why the hell did I do this? So I'm going to find something I love. One of the things I was looking over your website as we were talking. Yeah. How long does it take to get my book back? So do you interview people and then you have somebody go write the book or? No, what we do is, what we do

is I interview them or one of our staff members interviews them. So there's two, two things. We're sort of getting into helping people, helping people sort of write their book. Cause there's a lot of, there's a real market there, people just want some help. So we're kind of figuring that out. Our basic services, you call me, Chris, you call me and we schedule three interviews, four interviews. And we talk for a couple of hours, maybe three hours and we sift around and we find what that thing is, what that, that, you know, that really, really great hook is, that proposition that's yours. And sometimes that takes forever. I had a friend that was writing a book.

We were writing a book about servant leadership and he's a big proponent of servant leadership. And we were talking hour three or something like that. And we were talking about millennials. We were talking about how they how we taught them to sort of just want what they want. If they didn't get, they walk, right? And that's really causing a lot of consternation. There's a lot of talk about millennials being entitled, all this stuff. And my friend says, and he's a business coach, he says, they're right. They're absolutely right. What they're asking for, steady feedback and recognition of what they're doing, access to the decision makers, were all stuff that we wanted.

We just forgot. And I said, man, you're like a 50-year-old millennial. That's the title of the book, The 50-Year-Old Millennial. The 50-Year-Old Millennial. I saw that one on your list. Yeah. And so it's about how – it's not a book about millennials. It's a book about servant leadership and how that's a perfect vehicle to keep talent, whether they be millennial talent or not.

But we didn't know that was the book until so many hours in. It takes a while to find that amazing, amazing element. Once you have that, you're in good shape. And I imagine you help people shape their stories because some people you know you can kind of have to turn them into something and that that usually happens during editing too well not editing editing but me re-editing like i would write the story and then i would go back and i'd be like how can i flesh this out and make it more you know give it maybe several different rungs going on or some different aspects going on where there's it's

just not one thing there's like multiple things happening and and being able to play it out that that flows in an even way and i remember restructuring you know some of my stories a million times and to me they got better than the ways to tell them and of course the telling it in a book format is a whole lot better than just telling people a story because there's a lot of nuances and a lot of kind of segues that kind of offshoot. Sometimes you can put that in the book, but you don't really like to hear that in a verbal story, at least in, I don't know, my opinion. But yeah, as we round out the hour, anything more you want to touch on or tease out about what you guys do in your service and the book? No, that's really kind, Chris. Really,

we're looking for people that know they want a book, want to write a book, and just don't know how. They don't necessarily feel entitled. Maybe they have a bit of money because they weren't spending over COVID and they want to push their business to the next level.

Maybe they want to get into some speaking engagements. Maybe they want... The other great thing about a book is that you know what your story is, as I mentioned, for the rest of your life. And you can spin all your social media content out of that, right?

You've got your story. You've got the book. The book is your script. That's it. You're done. Just excerpt from the book and riff off your book. Never have to worry about what your social media is going to be again. Yeah.

Pretty handy. That's a pretty handy thing. So the name of the website is, as I do the shameless plug, is Get Catapulted, C-A-T-A-P-U-L-T-E-D.com. And if one of your listeners just wants to talk about it, we just book a 15-minute call and we explain the process and we kind of kick around their story. And maybe I can help them. And if we can just send them on their way with an idea or two and that's enough for them, well, then that's enough for me. There you go. Lots of good comments.

People have been loving what we've been talking about. You know, the other thing you touched on is when you do a book, it's a great business promotion. You know, like we just had the, what was it, the meetup.com CEO on. He was promoting his business. I think there's a GoPro or 1-800-GO-TRASH-GUY or whatever. We had another guy on who was a blue-collar guy who talked about how to become a multimillionaire in a blue-collar business, which no one really talks about.

Yeah. Like chasing back. And they're great advertisements for your business. And so you can do that and take that to the next level. And it really does. I think the 1-800-GUY, I've seen him all over LinkedIn. It's the 1-800-TRASH-GUY where you pay to have the trash bins brought and they fill them up and stuff. The guy's like everywhere. And he uses it everywhere on LinkedIn. And he's got a book and everything. And it really is fun to be an author. I've loved it. I've loved

being one. I've loved telling people, what do you do? I'm an author. And every word is your own because we've talked to you because we've interviewed. So what we do is we take the transcript and we shape your book with it. So every word that's in that book, you said, right. So it's really, really powerful. So you don't have to go on a ghostwriter. They just basically write you a book and go, Hey, here it is. And maybe it's about you and maybe it's not. It's really just fiction. But your book has every – you spoke every word that's in that book. There you go.

And that's really powerful. Definitely, definitely. Well, it's been fun to have you on the show, Mike. Thank you for having me. I had a great time. And a good Canadian. Good Canadian guy, as a hockey commentator used to say i love canadians i need to go hang out there i just we got room yeah that's true you do you

got plenty of space i need to go see getty lee and alex lifeson up there and uh throw rocks through nickelback's windows or something there is almost a national day of mourning when their drummer died when neil pert died died. He was extraordinary. People love Rush, man. People love Rush. Mike, the car teacher, was just a wonderful guy. He thought Rush was just – Rush is one of those bands you either get or you don't. And I'm going to tell you, I don't get them.

But there's a lot of people that love them. Well, you guys put out a lot of great comedy up there too. I mean, some of the great comedians out of Second City and stuff. Mike Myers and all those guys, yeah. Jim Carrey, yeah. Some people think that's because Canadians sort of have this, they're the quiet person in the room looking at the really

extraordinary people and they're the ones that are taking all the notes. When they turn around, their humor is a very, it's like seditious really when you're laughing. The greatest humor is the intersection between truth and surprise. When you say something that's really funny very it's it's it's like seditious really when you're when you're laughing and so the the greatest humor is the intersection between truth and surprise when you say something that's really funny but really true it just brings the house down and you have to be someone who observes and

as canadians we spend a lot of time observing pretty interesting stuff south of the border that's true you get you to watch our crazy murky stuff going on that we're always up to we're the we're crazy we're the crazy drunken brother we are as we said as robin williams said we're it's being canadian is like living above a meth lab that's pretty much true especially these days and it'll probably get worse and we're trying to import some of that up to you guys you guys have that big trucker thing oh man that was bad you're Here in America, those guys were to get dragged off on the first day. Oh, they should be.

Those guys were terrorists. They were terrorists. They were the government. I voted for that government, thanks. Did you see what we did in California when they tried that? What'd they do? They ate the crap out of the trucks when they passed through town. They got egged.

They had to leave because yeah they're getting but yeah those trucks sit there for that long was just amazing to me i'm like you're in america man we tow shit we don't fuck around well the thing was is that they came and they had they they came into a milieu a country there was no precedent for that right and so they had no natural predators now you're in America, we have lots of natural predators. There you go. We are the natural predator. That's why we waited for three weeks until we got rid of them.

This is so polite. Here in America, we're just like fucking be assholes to everybody. That's how we're going to die. Nah, man, I don't agree with that. I find, as you and I were talking earlier, man, I just, I think that there's so much good there. I really do. Well, I think President Obama said it the best. He said the American democracy is not perfect, and it's something in the Constitution.

What does it say? We're striving for a perfect whatever. A more perfect union. A more perfect union, and that strife never stands. He goes, but we tend to zig and zag, and the hope is we always zag back. perfect whatever perfect union a more perfect union and that strife never stand he goes but we tend to zig and zag and the hope is we always zag back so anyway thank you very much mike for being on the show we really appreciate it uh thanks for coming by i had great fun thanks for having me there you go thanks to my honest for tuning in go to youtube.com fortress chris voss

hit the bell notification button go to goodreads.com fortress chris voss see all the groups on facebook linkedin twitter instagram and remember to refer the show to your friends. Thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next time.