The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish - Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

In this episode, Charlie Hoehn explains the secrets behind why some books are unforgettable, and others no one seems to remember. He shares his journey of helping authors transform their ideas into best-selling books and provides actionable advice on structuring, writing, and marketing a book. You'll learn how to craft titles that make people want to read your book, design compelling covers that stand out on the shelves, and use certain strategies to engage readers effectively depending on the ideas you communicate. Hoehn also shares the psychology behind book promotion, how to leverage feedback, and the dynamics of traditional versus self-publishing. Whether tackling a novel or email, this episode will transform how you write and communicate. Charlie Hoehn is the founder of Author.Inc and a 3-time New York Times bestselling editor. He's the mind behind some of the influential books from Tim Ferriss, Ramit Sethi, Codie Sanchez, and Noah Kagan. Charlie's expertise has helped sell over 10 million books. Newsletter - The Brain Food newsletter delivers actionable insights and thoughtful ideas every Sunday. It takes 5 minutes to read, and it’s completely free. Learn more and sign up at https://fs.blog/newsletter/ -- Upgrade — If you want to hear my thoughts and reflections at the end of the episode, join our membership: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fs.blog/membership/⁠⁠ and get your own private feed. -- Follow me: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://beacons.ai/shaneparrish⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ -- (00:00) Intro (03:04) Helping Authors Succeed (03:38) Writing for a Specific Audience (07:14) The Importance of Real Feedback (10:18) Traditional vs. Self-Publishing (20:50) The Economics of Self-Publishing (24:42) The Art of Book Cover Design (30:29) Crafting a Compelling Title (36:42) The Importance of Book Structure (47:22) Editing: The Final Touch (51:35) Book Sales Percentiles (52:32) The Harsh Reality of Book Sales (54:20) The Emotional Impact of Writing (55:12) Dealing with Compliments and Criticism (58:24) The Quest for Bestseller Lists (1:00:04) The Complexities of Hitting the New York Times List (1:12:25) Leveraging AI in Writing (1:20:21) Effective Marketing Strategies for Authors (1:28:14) Creating Evergreen Content (1:35:30) The Importance of Authenticity in Writing (1:40:54) Final Thoughts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The title is the most important marketing decision the author can make for the book because virtually all books that sell more than 10,000 copies are driven by word of mouth. The title has to do a lot of things. When a person says it, it has to evoke curiosity, fomo, some sort of emotional reaction, whether it's intrigue or even repulsion in some cases. it should be almost a tip-of-the-tong thing that gets triggered regularly in conversation. An example we used was Meeting Suck by Cameron Herald. Even if he didn't necessarily like the book, people would complain about meetings.

Meetings were a constant in companies. And so this book would just kind of organically come up as like, you ought to read this and it would just naturally be recommended. Welcome to the Knowledge Project. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. In a world where knowledge is power, this podcast is your toolkit for mastering the best of what other people have already figured out. Today's episode will transform how you write and communicate.

My guest is Charlie Hoan, this secret weapon behind bestsellers like the four-hour work week and dozens of other books that have collectively sold millions of copies. While Charlie isn't particularly well known to many people, he's the book whisperer to the people in the industry. Whether you're crafting crucial emails, high-stakes presentations, or reports, or that book you've been meaning to write, Charlie breaks down exactly what makes writing connect and convert. We explore everything from hook-driven titles that grab attention to structures that keep readers engaged, to marketing strategies that make ideas spread. We also dive into the real trade-offs between self-publishing and

traditional publishing, what actually makes book covers work or fail, and how AI is changing the game for writers. This conversation is packed with immediately useful insights on how to make your idea stick, something Charlie has helped authors do repeatedly at the very highest levels. It's time to listen and learn. There are too many podcasts and not enough time. What if you could skip the noise and get just the insightful moments, even from shows you didn't know existed. That's what Overlap does. Overlap is an AI-driven podcast app that uses large language models to curate the best moments from episodes. Imagine having a smart assistant who reads through

every transcript finds just the best parts and serves them up based on whatever topic you're interested in. I use Overlap every day to research guests, explore, and learn. Give it a try and start discovering the best moments from the best podcast. Go to joinoverlap.com. That's joinoverlap.com. How would you summarize what you do? I help authors go from idea to successful book. It takes a variety of shapes. You know, sometimes I'm helping them with the actual production of the book, sometimes just editing. Other times focusing mostly on the launch. I'm an author myself. I've done 20 years in video productions, but mostly it's, I'm just helping authors with their books. You're a three times, if I understand this correctly, New York Times bestselling editor. What have you learned about

writing that you wish more people knew? The best books are written for one or two real people on the other end. And a lot of authors write as though they're speaking to a huge general audience or to their perceived fan base, the entire fan base. It's the fastest way, in my opinion, to kill a book because it's not interesting. They start speaking in terms of, we need to do this. We should be like this. And it's like, who are you talking to? There's one person on the other end of that book, speak to them, or speak about yourself. I learned this. And if you want to apply it, you can do this.

So the most powerful, interesting books tend to be written for one real person in mind, and the paradoxes, they tend to reach a lot more people that way. And that person can be the author. Are you making something that you want to consume repeatedly? And if you are, it's probably pretty good. It'll find an audience eventually. Do you think most authors, especially in nonfiction, are sort of like working through the subject that they're talking about

and that's the writing, Mark Manson, like he cares, right? So the subtle art of not giving a fuck is sort of like him trying not to care as much. James Clear was really working on his habits when he was writing about habits and sort of like, so you're writing the book you almost want to consume? Yes and no. So it's, you have to become the embodiment of the book first. So you can't really write it as though you're that person that you haven't become yet, or the person that you're becoming. You kind of have to write it from a place of, I've already become this.

I've already grown into this, and I'm the embodiment of this. Naval Ravikant had a great quote where he said, in order to write a great book, you must first become the book. I work on prescriptive nonfiction exclusively. I don't help with memoirs. I don't help with fiction, just like business books, self-help, personal development, that type of stuff. If you think of the author, their expertise is a ladder, right? And so they've climbed so many rungs to where they are. If they're trying to write for people on their rung or above, it will not be a good book.

They need to write for the people below them and address those people. Because they can pull those people effectively up to their rung. they can't push somebody who's on their wrong up further. You know what I mean? Because they're not there themselves. Is that the transformation for the readers? Like, I start at X and now I get pulled a little higher. Yeah.

And I might not reach the level of the author, but I'm moving forward or towards them. Yeah. Or I have a blueprint to get me there. How do you write for a particular person? Like, what does that look like? Well, there's a variety of ways. One, you can be talking to them in real life, right? So a lot of authors who've written good books are like, yeah, I've been coaching clients

or consulting with these companies for years. I have this stuff down cold. I know the questions they ask. I know they're common emotional challenges, the technical obstacles they face. Those, that is a great way to write a book. It's like, you know that person very intimately or that avatar. And other ways are you can do it kind of online now. you still need that real feedback though from actually helping a person transform just to clarify

on that like you could in theory be writing for an online audience right in helping them with a particular topic and seeing oh they left a comment here about this they had a question about this okay but when you go to to write the book you're not actually witness missing what they're going through. It's similar to for like software development. You think you have a good app that you've developed and you're like, this is awesome. Cool. Go put it in front of somebody and watch them use it. And watch how quickly they get stuck or are they confused or they're bored. It's the same with books. And so I think it's important to get that real, you know, personal feedback that you can see here's where this person is struggling. Here's

where they're succeeding. How does an author do that with they're writing the whole book, right? So, like, you can't write the book, publish it, then get feedback and sort of like, okay, now what do I do with this? Well, you can, but I'll circle back to that. The, the method I encourage is teach it in real time first. And ideally, you're somebody who's already transformed numerous people, at least three, with the transformation that you're trying to codify into a book. So generally speaking, you ought to have coached, consulted, helped at least three people

achieve the transformation you're trying to make into a book. You can, in theory, publish a book and then see where people are getting stuck, see their reviews, and then adjust the book afterward. I don't recommend it. It's not as, it's not a strategy that most authors will stick to, but like Hal Elrod, who's based here in Austin, he did that with the Miracle Morning. And so in the first year, he promoted that book, sold like 13,000 copies or something like that, which is quite good for its first year. With every negative review that he got, he went back into the manuscript and made revisions so that that feedback couldn't be given again. So that review couldn't be given again.

And he just kept doing that until the negative review stopped. And to date, it sold millions of copies. I think he said in year six, it sold its millionth copy. But he stuck with that book. And he was like, I really believe in this. I'm going to keep modifying this as though it is software. I'm going to release V1, V2, V3, V4, etc. Most authors don't do that. One of the reasons that I am reluctant to advocate for the traditional publishing processes, like your book is set in stone there. You might, if you're lucky, get a 10-year update, you know, the 10-year anniversary, but you're not going to touch that book again. What's your take on the pros and cons of sort of self-publishing versus publishing? What are the considerations that you look at? When does it?

make sense? When doesn't it make sense? How do you think about that? I agree with my buddy Nat Eliasson's take on traditional publishing. And it's a very simple lens to look through, overly simplistic, I guess. But if you can get a publisher to give you a $100,000 advance or more, you should probably do it. I mean, if you have millions of followers, 100,000 is not enough, but like you get the general concept you want them to have enough skin in the game to take you seriously you want to get as substantive as of an advance as you can to actually you know put some money into doing the book as well as you can and launching it as well as you can for 95 plus percent of authors I talk to I tell them it doesn't really make sense for you to do that there's a number of

reasons most authors care about financial ROI we can start there granted, the worst way to make money with a book is by selling lots of copies. But with a traditional publisher, they're going to be taking, you know, I think it's upwards of 90% of your royalties. It may not be quite that high, but I remember talking to James Clear, and we were talking about how much you would have made, had he gone the self-publishing route with atomic habits? And I did the math, and it was like, ah, it's about three hours. more per copy. But would he have sold as many copies? Exactly. Would he have sold as many? It's a great

question. We'll never know. The distribution is much higher with a traditional publisher, right? You're getting into retail stores. That's not an easy game as a self-published author. But my argument is over 90%. I believe it's at minimum of 80% of books. Book purchases are through Amazon online. So if you're applying the 80-20 to book sales, self-publishing typically makes sense. You should invest in making the best possible product. Other things to consider with traditional publishing, a pro is like they'll assemble your team, your production team, so they'll help with editing. They'll prevent you from getting into legal issues in their editing process.

They will help you design the cover. The con is, I've seen their processes. It's not that. I've seen the cover of my books. Like, you know how terrible it can be. I won't say a bad word about your book. But, yeah, I mean, what was your experience, actually? I don't know.

The whole thing for me started in 2018 when the New York Times wrote this article about me calling me out as a spy who helped people Wall Street. And within 72 hours after that became public, I was the number one story on the New York Times.com for two days. I had all of these inbound contracts, basically from publishers, no book title, no book, a lot of money. And I was like, oh God, I don't even know what to do. I don't have an agent at this point. And so I remember Nikki from Portfolio had come to one of my events in 2015 or 2016. And so I just reached out to her. And she's one of the people sort of like bidding on this too. And I was like, hey, can we chat like as friends, right? Like not as you as an editor trying to buy a book, but I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know

like who to talk to. I need an agent. Like, do I even want to do this? I don't have a book idea. And so I finally ended up interviewing a couple agents, got an agent. And then the money was, I mean, it means sense in my case to do it. But I didn't. take the money and use it. I just sort of like put it in the bank. So this was a weird thing too. Like as an entrepreneur, I don't want a boss. And for four years, I basically felt like I had a boss, right? I would get this email. You know, at the start, it's like this trickle once every two or three months. And it's like, where are you at on the book? And I'm like, I don't know. I haven't even started the book. I don't even have the idea yet. You know, like I have some ideas. And then all of a sudden towards the end,

it was like weekly, you know? It's like, where are you at? And finally, I was like, do you want your money back? Like, I'll just give you your check back and we can just call it a day because I don't want the pressure. It's going to be done when it's done. I know I agreed to a timeline. COVID happened. Timeline changed. And the process from there was actually pretty good. Like, Nikki's an amazing editor. She added a lot of value to the book. There's pros and cons to it. You know, I sort of ended up with a cover that I don't personally like. I don't think it did the book justice. Sort of like the titling could have been better. And I don't know. what I don't know the first time. And so I'm relying on the recommendations of sort of the

publisher. And they do know. I mean, they have a lot of data. I don't know how accurately they use that data, but my experience is pretty good. And I know people have different experiences with publishers, but we also got worldwide distribution. We're in like 28 languages now. And I don't know if that would have happened if I saw public. I might have made more money, but the goal wasn't sort of make money. The goal was distribution. How do we pull people back? into our ecosystem. So when I think of like Farnham Street as a an ecosystem, remember that Disney map from like the 60s? It's like theme park characters. It's like, well, I want this to reach people that I haven't reached yet. And then a certain percentage of those people

come back to the website, a certain percentage of those people listen to the podcast. And how do I pull people into our ecosystem? So I lifted the book as like, I don't want to make any money on the book. I really just want to grow the business and get better at what we're doing. Because if we We get a bigger audience. The optionality for the future is huge. And the optionality is we get better guests on the podcast. We get more advertising revenue, which doesn't come out of any individual pocket, sort of comes out of corporations in a win-win way. They're reaching an audience that's hard to reach. We have one of the smartest audiences on the internet. And so, like, this is how I thought about it, which is like, how do I just maximize my optionality?

And I don't know if that's right or wrong, because we never talked before I published. I wish we had. I would have changed the cover. So when the paperback comes out, we're definitely going to do that. So like what you said is a common thing, is just wanting to raise visibility and create opportunities or bring more opportunities in. So it tends to be like raise visibility, bring in opportunities, grow the business, leave a legacy. It tends to be with with nonfiction. I'm curious with your cover in the title, what was the process with how did you end up there where you're publishing a cover and a title that you're not crazy about? Well, the subtitle came first.

Actually, so I had the turning ordinary moments into extraordinary results and I loved it. And then the title was like 10 people basically brainstorming a title from my agent to the editors to people who work at the publisher. And we're just back and forth until, you know, we're like weeks away from printing. This is where it gets really tricky, right? So it's like in everything in my body and I'm writing a book. about decision making and you know I'm like this feels push and I'm like trying to pull back right I'm like slow down like it doesn't matter if we hit this deadline it doesn't really matter but they're

like no we've got the book like you're booked into the printing queue you're like this is happening and you know effectively it's like we will take over one way or another and the book is no longer yours and you sort of get this message and it's like well I want to slow it down I want to test it I want to sort of like figure it out. And I want to come up with different options. Didn't have time to do that at that point in time. So the process sort of like you get to a certain point in that, no, had that been three months earlier, I totally could have stopped it before it was sort of like booked into printing. Before we had the buyers buying it, before the bookstores had bought it, before the sales agents go out, you can sort of slow it down. But once that process gets rolling, you're sort of at the whim of them and you do the best you can give in the situation. Right. Now, having written a book, if I write another one, that would be all take a different approach to that whole thing. So you lost creative control, which is like a common thing.

Well, sort of, yeah. I mean, effectively, that's what happened. I mean, it sounds a little, you know, on a continuum, it sounds probably very far right. Right. Where it's like slightly more pulled in than the screen. Sure. You were a participant, obviously,

and you were the main. But once they accept your manuscript, title or not, like, they can pretty much do what they want with it. Exactly. Contractually. Yeah. And that's like two entrepreneurial people. I find that that is very difficult oftentimes.

And like obviously you and I are friends with people who thrive in that and like have done extraordinarily well. Ryan Holiday. You mentioned Tim Ferriss, James Clear, like these guys have, and continue to do well. I'm not taking anything away from that. But I have seen the other side as well. where entrepreneurs are dumbfounded by decisions made by their publishers or like creative control being taken in a way that they're like, this actively hurts us.

Because both sides have pros and cons and both sides can be done wrong. I do want to say like most people screw up self-publishing. They don't do it well. And so traditional publishers are right to stick up their nose at self-publishing. But it's like, to your point, if it's your first go-round as an author and you don't know what you're doing, the like, likelihood that you'll step on a landmine that hurts your book during the self-publishing process is even higher than if you're working with a traditional publisher. Well, I've done self-publishing, too. Right. So we took the great mental models. I created a publisher, effectively from start to finish where we created content. We got creative. We laid it out. We found printers. We printed. We found distributors. We stored. We monitored storing. We fixed the updates. We're constantly doing Kindle revisions. It's a lot of work. goodness. It was like a full-time person, if not more, just from a maintenance point of view for four books, let alone sort of like doing any other books. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot. It's also

expensive up front typically. Oh, totally. I was paying $8.00. Like people don't understand the economics of self-publishing from a hardcover perspective. Sort of like audio and Kindle are great because the margins are good. But from a hardcover perspective, we were paying $8 U.S., $7, U.S., approximately for printing. We were charging $30 for the great metal models on Amazon, which means we get 15. Then the distributor takes approximately $3 per book. Then there's shipping costs per books. There's storage costs per book. By the time, like, the hardcover sort of worked there. I think we made like 50 cents to maybe a dollar a copy from a hardcover point of you. And it wasn't worth doing, but we weren't doing it for money. We wanted these books to exist, still do. It didn't

make sense from an economic ROI point of view to do what we were doing in any way, shape, or form. You know, I would have a high production value. But I would argue that, like, the perception of Shane after doing those books was elevated. Well, I don't know. Like, we didn't, originally, we didn't even have my name on them. It was like, that's right. That's right. Like, it was all about the ideas. We basically created this niche encyclopedia of big ideas. And that, that's what it is today still. I mean, it's morphed into something. Hopefully they get better distribution. But so we created this niche idea and it came

from talking with Charlie Munger. And I was like, oh, I'm going to, I'll do this. Like, why doesn't this exist? Did you actually talk to him? Yeah. Amazing. So like just a very quick side note and then I don't mean to cut you off. The conjuring last rites on September 5th. Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! Ah! Hooray!

Oh, hi, buddy! Who's the best? I wish I could spend all day with you instead. Uh, Dave, you're off mute. You're Huff mute. Hey, happens to the best of us. Enjoy some goldfish cheddar crackers. Goldfish have short memories.

Be like goldfish. One of my good friends' moms was the CEO of John's Man Bill. And so she would hang out with Warren Buffett and stuff. And I was like, begging her, please tell Charlie Moker when he was live to publish a book on mental model. That would have been amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the closest he came was, I guess, the psychology of human misjudgment, which if we had a fifth book in the series, like, I wanted to tackle psychology, but we couldn't do it as well.

So he actually gave us permission to distribute, like, the accurate version of his talk. Right. Online and if, as a bonus, if you sort of get, if I was publishing a fifth book, that would be it. But I can't tackle psychology as well as he did. No. By any shape or form. I wish you would have done what we did in his words with his ideas. I mean, we did the best we could.

It took seven years to create four books. Oh, my gosh, dude. Yeah, there was you, and I think Michael Simmons did a course on mental models, and it was like, I'm grateful you guys did that. Oh, yeah. Munger, all he did was poor Charlie's almanac. I feel bad even saying that because he's so ridiculously great. Yeah, I so wish that he had done that while he was life.

Me too, 100%. And so, like, my name wasn't even Anna. I don't even know if it was in the original version. And it was all co-author. We had multiple people. We had no bylines. We're not into like that stuff. It was more like the economist, right?

It's like, let the ideas stand on their own. And we did that for three versions. And we had three different people working on those versions. And now, you know, my name is on the cover. But there's massive contributions from everybody else. Sometimes I'm the least of the contributions. But from a sales and distribution point, it makes sense to have my name go first because we can't fit all three names on the cover,

the way that we design them and like the covers actually look really good. Yeah, they're great. So where do people go wrong in self-publishing? You said, like, where to begin? I think there's a lot of places they go wrong. From the reader's perspective, I would say that they typically don't have a good cover. And so they immediately kind of shoot themselves in the foot. Traditional publishers will typically put out solid covers.

when you're self-publishing and you've invested a bunch of time and money and you haven't made any money on the work and it comes time to putting a face on the thing, a lot of self-published authors are like, I'll go to Upwork or I'll hit up my designer friend who puts together PowerPoints and I'll pay them 500 bucks. And it always results in something unremarkable. You have to pay an artist, a book-covered designer specialist. to create the boldest thing that you possibly can. So go deeper on that. Like, what does a book cover artist know that most people don't? What makes a great cover for a book? And does cover matter? Oh, yeah. So this would probably be a conversation you'd want to have with, like,

Peekarceau, who did Adam Grant's covers, James Clear's covers, he's brilliant, or Zoe Norvell. She created a great site called I Need a Book Cover. And it's just a directory of the top cover designers in the world who consistently work with the big five publishers. So they're specialists in cover design, not in general design. Like, they just do covers. What does that mean? Like, what are the nuances to cover design?

I reached out to Pete, actually, because I was like, oh, for the paperback. Right. But we're years away from that. But for the paperback, I was like, I want to work with you. I think it was Chip Kid, the guy who did the Jurassic Park, cover effectively said something like it's a haiku all on one page or something, but it's basically the embodiment of the entire book within an image that you instantly understand what the book is trying to communicate in a way that compels you to pick it up and read the dang thing,

which like when I say it sounds like kind of mechanical because I'm not a designer. I don't pretend to be one. But I've talked to enough designers to realize, like, this is a real, legit specialty. And it's similar to YouTube where the right thumbnail versus a average, mediocre thumbnail that's clearly been created in Canva by the producer of the video, the right thumbnail will outperform a thousand X. And I'm not saying, like, a cover will make or break a book. That's not true. the book has to stand alone as a good product, regardless of the cover. So I don't want to sound too cosmetic.

You like pick it up. Yes. And it's got to evoke the right feelings from the target reader. Like your target read and it should be aligned with the story of the book and everything. So like there's there's a cover by and I think he was in the FBI or CIA, but he was basically a guy who would. build rapport with people in other countries and flip them like make them into informants so it's a very social or very specialized social skill to be able to do that very difficult and so he wrote a book I think it's called it's not all about you or it's not all about me and this cover looks like it was

created in Microsoft Word and it's it's the classic like white 3D clay you know image with like very basic arrows pointing out from it it's an awful cover but it's actually aligned because he wrote the book for people in the military right and people who are trying to appeal to a mass audience no but the book was so good that it ended up reaching a lot of people but like it was for the target reader and they were like okay this is exactly what all military presentations look like this level of designs a worthwhile while expense that instantly communicates, are you legit or not? Is this a good book?

The covers a direct representation of all the inside. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I wonder if we could go through. What makes some of the most popular books like great covers? And this is, again, a conversation more with a designer, but I think they tend to be iconic in that it is bold and different. A lot of cover designers find themselves being given creative direction of like, I just

wanted to look like that person's cover. Right. I just wanted to feel like that. And that's useful on some levels of like, hey, kind of stay within these guardrails. And it's also helpful to give a designer like, hey, these are covers that I hate. Right. Right. there's there's kind of genres of cover design like you'll see um kind of malcolm gladwell type

rational optimist type where it's it's all white and there's like one little image and then the rest is like kind of an elegant serif font right that's that communicates this is an intellectual book so you can give them kind of guidelines to stay with and to communicate this is that type of book but If you're wanting it to be too derivative of everyone else, it just kind of blends into the sea. So I think great covers often are iconic and bold in that they're claiming the most courageous representation visually that the author could possibly put forward. So like then title, subtitle, subtitle, subtitle, sort of why. Walk me through. Titles.

Like what goes into a good title and subtitle? Title is the most important marketing decision the author can make for the book because it's virtually all books that sell more than 10,000 copies are driven by word of mouth. The title has to do a lot of things. It is when a person says it, it has to evoke curiosity, fomo, some sort of emotional reaction, whether it's intrigue or even like repulsion in some cases. It has to be fun and easy to say. So like I always struggle with that FBI book that I mentioned. I always forget the title. I cannot remember it. But it doesn't

really matter because there's a story that I'm telling with it. But with a title, it's it's kind of like a It should be almost a tip of the tongue thing that comes up that gets triggered regularly in conversation. This dovetails a little bit with what you've written about or like the problem you're attempting to solve, right? So an example we used was like meetings suck by Cameron Harold would always come up. Even if you didn't necessarily like the book, people would complain about meetings. meetings were a constant in companies and so this book would just kind of organically come up as like

oh have you read you you ought to read this and it would just naturally be recommended authors also kind of need to take into consideration like what are the tip of the tongue conversations that are going to be happening and how does this sound when it's being recommended so a title can't be embarrassing to say either like play it away a book that I wrote is like played away I originally was going to get my working title was like how I cured my anxiety which was like saying that is a mouthful it sounds like an attack if it's recommended to you you ought to read how I cured my anxiety it's like whoa it's almost like you're making a statement about the other person right and yourself yeah you say that yeah if you say read meetings suck it's like

I'm not saying meetings suck, but this book might be arguing that. Testing titles in person and saying, like, have you read this? And watching the person's reaction, like, do their eyes glaze over? Are they curious? Are they leaning forward? These are important things that you kind of have to measure before. Title is the thing that you should take a lot of time, invest resources in figuring out and gathering some data. Is this going to be the best option? How do you test it?

My process I'll tell you after I tell this quick story about Tim Ferriss. So Tim and I worked together for years. And one of the stories he told about the four-hour work week, which I would still argue is in the top five titles of all time in the nonfiction space. He did tons of testing. He tested like, I don't know, 30 to 50 different title ideas. A lot of them, he'll admit, were bad, you know, stuff like the chameleon millionaire. you know, drug dealing for fun and profit.

And he tested them at the time on Google ads. And so he would just see which had the highest click through. And the four-hour work week, I think, had a 2x over the second place highest. So he had some data to stand on. Other ways you can test is like, is there a phrase that you're constantly using with clients? if for your book, do you find yourself constantly leaning on this one phrase? And that's like the unlock phrase for them. That's the one that they're like, ah, I always, I always return to this. Okay, that's memorable. Good. The process I use, I have like a list of criteria, uh, that I lay out,

which is like, fomo, fun to say, memorable. It's, it's like seven criteria. And I rate them all on a scale of one to 10. I plug it in. I kind of made my own GPT book title score. So now I just punch in, here's all the title ideas, and it'll spit out. Here's its score. And here are the top ones. It's not perfect, right? It's not a guarantee, but it gives me some sense of like, okay, these ones are strong. These ones are weak. Anything that is under a score of 50, it tends to be like, that's probably not going to perform well. And then after I do that, I put them through pickfoo.com, P-I-C-K-F-U.com. And that allows you to do real quick testing with audiences and polling and to see their feedback on why they like a title or why they dislike a title.

So an example was I was working on a book that I was trying to figure out, should I call this paid to play or fuck work. I pulled on Pickfoo and F-Work performed pretty well, but when I dove into the data, all of them had the wrong expectations for the book. That can kind of be solved with a subtitle, but not really. Right. It's showing that, oh, all these people want like a funny book about venting about how much they hate work. I'm not writing that book. That's not what this is at all. If that's their expectations going into this, that's going to equal negative reviews.

Because you're not meeting the expectation. precisely yeah you want to get that data you want to test your assumptions with stand-up comedians they'll sit and write a joke right and then they'll be like that's pretty good and then they'll go perform it in front of 10 audiences and they're like oh my assumptions were wrong yeah this is off just enough yeah and i think the title needs to be treated with that same kind of respect it can't just be uh oh this i like that like no you need to test it how important is this structure of a book once you, so you've got a title, you've got to cover. Now it's structure. This is like the thing I geek out on a lot because I think this is the thing that if you over-index

on structure, you'll be in a really good spot. Like I can send a self-published author confidently off to do their thing if they over-index on structure. So what I mean by that is you should be spending a ton of your time. You don't have to decide on a title till like, the very end, really, you can be playing around with it forever. But like, you should not write a word until you have solidified your table of contents. Your table of contents is the thing. It is the structure, the make up the foundation of your book. And so the exercise that I like to deal with the table of contents, how do I take my one reader,

my perfect target reader from zero to hero? what are the exact steps and it tends to be like the big milestones there'll be two to four of those typically so if you look in table of contents of bestselling books they're typically divided into two to four parts often three so i just as a general rule i'm like just do three parts right so three big milestones that help them go from zero to hero within each of those parts you have these sub-steps, right? These little things that they have to do during that major milestone to ensure that they get there. Or you have questions that they're going to ask during those phases. So you take your table of contents and then you spend a bunch of time talking to real target readers

showing them your table of contents before you write a word. And you say, which of these is a hell yes, which of these is a eh, and which of these is like not relevant. And that's the data you gather on early. And so like bloggers do this by writing articles and they see, oh, that one kind of, you know, that took off, that headline and then that content is really strong. Cool. That's potentially a chapter. The table of contents is this is the menu of the book. Do you want to eat here or not? If they say hell yes to everything, you have a really strong book on your hands. And it makes the writing so much easier after that because you're confident that you can help the person you're trying to reach. And it doesn't feel like guesswork.

That's so interesting. I mean, this is one of the big mistakes I made writing and clear thinking. It's like I just sat down and wrote it like a blog article the first time and then the second time and the third time. And even now I was like the actual structure that I would do today is different than the structure in the book. But I felt like it had been published for two or three weeks. And then I was like, ah, I missed it. I know exactly what it should have been at this point. How did you know what was like the aha moment where you were like,

ah, that's how it should have been? Well, I like the idea of showing readers. I think, you know, I didn't have a structure. I wrote the book. I deleted it. I had a loose structure. I wasn't confident with it. Wrote the book, deleted it.

And then I sat down and I was like, I'm going to do that thing. Ryan told me to you. And I'm like going to structure the book. And I sort of came up with something that made sense to me, but I never verified it with a public. like even my editor or anybody else. And so I came up with it. But I have all this knowledge about the subject in my head.

Right. Which is different than where the reader, meeting the reader where they're at and taking them from, you know, you said the word zero to hero. But like that's different than positioning it for where they're at. I would not change the content of the book, but I would change how I structure the content of the book. And I think it would have made it an easier read for people. because I do think structure does some of the lifting for you. If you let it, it's either a headwind or a tailwind. And in my case, it's probably neutral, but it could have been a tailwind.

And I don't think I nailed it. But what's the difference between, like, if you're looking at a structure, and I give you like four or five different ones, like what's the difference between a good and great structure? That's a good question. Well, I'll say to that point, I had an author come to me recently, and he was told like, hey, the publishing house that I'm working with, they gave me this as like the template to write my book.

He said, I feel like I don't know if it's a good book or not. I'm too close to it. What's, what's your take on this? And I looked at it and within a few pages, I was like, dude, I'm sorry, your publisher screwed you because there's no structure here. The table of contents was literally like, it looked like an afterthought. like a thing here's what you fill in after you're all done it's the exact opposite it'd be like uh we're building a house so i want you to start picking out light fixtures and like your furniture

it's like what are you doing like no your publisher it made a very bad move that wasted you a bunch of time and now we have to figure out how to structure this and like that takes almost as much time is just like rewriting the thing. The writing is super easy actually when you nail the structure. Because then let me just do a substructure. Like what does a chapter look like? Right.

And then you can sit down and it's really easy at that point. Just sort of write it out. Well, not easy, but you know what I mean. Right. It's easier. And so I'd imagine it's pretty similar in like songwriting, right? If you don't know the concept of a bridge and a chorus and like all the, like these beats, you have, and you're just told, write a song.

You're probably going to write a. terrible song. But if you have the structure that you can lean into, it will at least be more representative of what humans process. Similar with stories, right? You talk to a storytelling expert recently. Story structure is always the same pretty much. It's once upon a time and every day until one day and because of that and because of that and because of that until finally and ever since that day, right? Or it's the three-act structure, you know, climax, resolution, all that stuff. I think the best structures, quite simply, are what the reader wants, what the reader wants and needs. And so you can't get that if you're guessing. You said it yourself. You have the curse

of knowledge, of expertise. And so you're so close to your topic. What is remarkable to you is confusing to who you're trying to reach. And what's boring and trite to you is fascinating to who you're trying to reach. And so if you're not having this be an interactive communal process of producing a book, you're shortchanging yourself. And so this is another like common assumption that people have. We all have like the idea of Hemingway and J.K. rolling in our heads of like this is how to make a book where they're hold up alone. They're being a tortured genius grinding through. And like, yes, That is how you can make a book. If you're a really good writer, you can do that.

But I think people should lean more toward Bray Brown's production style, where she actually will come up with like her talking points and rent an Airbnb, bring her girlfriends and a bunch of wine and be like, can I just like present this to you for a day or two? And then they talk about it. They give her feedback. And she's like, oh, okay, that works similar to stand-up comedians, right? And so I think the, yeah, the great structures are co-created rather than isolated by the author, created in isolation. Man, I wish we had met before I published that book.

What about chapters? I mean, in nonfiction books, they seem almost formulaic now. Yeah, they are. Here's a story. Here's the point I'm trying to make. And here's like a summary, you know, that's sort of the, why does that work? And is there a more effective structure? Yes, you should lean into a formulaic structure for chapters when you're writing it.

And I want to differentiate it between writing and editing. Writing is getting the clay on the table. Editing is shaping it into the sculpture, right? And so when you're writing, yes, lean into this structure. You have a hook, something that grabs the reader, usually a story or a bold statement that feels novel or even dangerous, right? Then you have your thesis, which is in this chapter, I'm going to, yada, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you have the body, which is just making up all the points that you're trying to get across. And this can go on for a long time.

This is the meat of the chapter. And then it's key takeaways and segue into the next chapter. If you follow those five beats, like you have a solid chapter. You can note thesis, body, structure, link. Takeaways, segue. And you can open the chapter with a hook. Or I'm sorry, with a quote. That can come before the hook if you want.

You can pepper quotes throughout. It doesn't matter. But when you're writing, yeah, follow that formula. There are other slight modifications, but generally speaking, prescriptive nonfiction books tend to fall within that structure very consistently. It's in editing where you can make the chapter really sing. And so, like we were talking about video before this, right?

Similar in video, it's shooting in, okay, I want this act first. I'll shoot this next act, this next act. Just because you have the structure of the story that you're telling in the acts does not mean people want to watch that video, right? You now need to edit it to retain their attention and keep them going through it. And then in a book's case, you're doing the exact same thing with your editing. You're editing it in such a way that they are not only staying engaged, they're taking action and implementing when you want them to implement.

They are highlighting stuff. Like, it feels important. They're maybe even taking pictures of stuff. It's like you have these key points that you know, similar to software, when the reader gets here, I know they will do this. Talk to me about editing. So we have, at this point, we've got a cover, we've got a structure, we've got a chapter, and then we have a book.

So we have a series of chapters. So we have a rough draft and rough manuscript. Should we allocate our editing time, like 80% of your editing time? You have 100 blocks of editing, right? No matter what it's a finite amount of editing time. Should you allocate 80% of that to the first, like, 50 pages and then, you know, 20% to everything thereafter? So I think it's like the average person. I think Amazon released this once.

It's like they read 15% of a book, maybe 16% of a book. And they get all the stats from Kindle. They know exactly where people drop off. Just like YouTube gives you, like, here's the drop-off points. Spotify does the same thing. Amazon doesn't give that to authors, but there's drop-off points. And so should you allocate your editing time equally across the book? or up front.

Up front, 100%. You are correct. It's the YouTube hook. It's the retention graph. It's the exact same with books. And so with a book, if you assume that maybe 60% of readers are going to read the introduction, 100% of people who open the book are going to read the first page of this book. Can I get them to read?

past this first page and sear the message in the, the, the best possible story that's the embodiment of what I'm trying to communicate with this book. Can I sear that into their brain so that they can recall it five years later? James Clear, uh, with Atomic Habits, which is a great example because sold 15 plus million copies over the last few years, been number one on Amazon overall for five years. Yeah. He starts his intro with, a general recommendation I like to make, which is, like, put them in the most intense moment of your life, basically, put them in a situation where they're like, oh, my gosh, like, you grab them by this throat, and it's like, this was a personal thing that I went through. That's the

introduction. That's an opening hook. In his case, I think he got hit in the face with a baseball bat. Then he was, he had to do like fly for life or something like that. I can't remember. So you're like, whoa, okay. But that's just the introduction. The whole purpose of the introduction is just to sell you on reading the book. That is, it's the sales page convincing you this will be worth my time, which is you've got smart readers. The thing that they're going to value the most is, is this worth my time?

Yeah. Right. And then the first story in chapter. one should be the encapsulation of the message that you're trying to get across. It should be the most memorable. It should be the thing that you're like, oh, yeah, of course. And so, like, if you look at great TED Talks, Simon Sinek, if you just watch the first two minutes of his start with why, he does a dead simple, draws three circles that anybody, a five-year-old, could remember and then draw and show their friends, like instantly gets the point across. Similarly,

that's what you can aspire to with prescriptive nonfiction. What I think James did so well in atomic habits is he frontloads the book with the best stuff. And a lot of authors make the mistake, both self-published and traditional, they'll bury the best stuff in the back of the book. And it's like, what percentage of your readers are even getting to that? You know, they'll start with theory of like here's how we got here you know here's the history of this topic can you believe the history well guess what like i'm trying to change my life and i'm busy and i have it right make it practical let's go dude yeah like hit me with your best stuff right here if you want to spend some time pointing out the stakes of how important this is cool like let's talk about that and i'll pay attention

but like i'm on this journey i signed up let's go don't make me work for it. I love that. With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track side. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex.

Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and vary by race. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at mx.ca.com. You can get protein at home or a protein latte at Tim's. No powders, no blenders, no shakers. Starting at 17 grams per medium latte, Tim's new protein

Lattees, protein without all the work, at participating restaurants in Canada. We've talked about a lot of numbers, I think, so far we've had like 10,000, 100,000 million books. We've used these milestones. How do we think about those in terms of percentiles? So like what would be a 90th percentile a 99th? And I'm imagining a million is like 0.001 percent. 0.03. Of all books ever published, right? So what would be the 90th percent? Is that like 10,000 copies? I'd say 90th is a thousand copies probably. Yeah. So you're the 90th percentile if you've sold a thousand copies of your book. Yeah. Most books do not sell. There's a great article called no one buys books. And it breaks down what the Department of Justice forced all the big

publishers to like reveal their sales numbers on books. And it was like, oh, wow, this is shocking. These publishers are taking the funds from books, book royalties that they publish 50 years. ago to fund all these little projects, right? And the vast majority of them don't sell it in copy. Part of that is authors neglect marketing and sales and they just kind of like they don't do it in the right sequence or whatever. Other parts of it is people didn't even want those books. Like the market doesn't demand them and the book wasn't good enough to take off on its own. And so it's a mix of variables. But yeah, like the average book sells less than a thousand copies over the course of its lifetime. And so my focus with clients I work with is like, let's get you

to that threshold as efficiently as possible. Anybody can do it if you're doing the right sequence of things. Most authors don't do it. So it would be a thousand for 90%. Okay. So what's 100,000? That I would probably put at 90. I'm just making this up. I don't know the exact, but like 98, 99% for sure. All books ever published. For sure, there's 500,000 books plus published every year. That's crazy. 20 of them sell a million copies, and most of those are fiction. You know, nonfiction tends to not move huge volumes.

Have we lost track of sort of like what numbers mean? Like, I think of this politically when we toss around billions. But in the context of books, I'm thinking, like, people are like 10,000 books. That doesn't sound like many. I got 12,000 Twitter followers, you know? Like how, but it doesn't translate it. Like 10,000, there's a lot of books. It's a lot of books.

Yeah. Especially if you've written one that actually impacts those people, that they actually read, that they actually implement, and use to get real tangible visual change in their life. I mean, that's what ultimately propels these books to do well. That can be scary, too. Like, I've gotten two emails now from people who've read the book. And they're like, I broke up with my fiance. after reading this book.

And I'm like, oh, God. Well, you ultimately did them a painful favor. Right. But I'm like reading this going, oh, boy, is like, what have I done? I would absolve yourself of that guilt because they'd made that decision all. But we talk about inertia and how, yeah, take over a relationship. Yeah, yeah. So you end up just sort of progressing, but you're not consciously progressing, right?

And they were like, yeah, I realized like this was just happening. And I was like, oh, God. Like, so these emails about usefulness. They don't always put a smile on your face. True. But our brains, unfortunately, are hardwired to pay attention to the negative, right? See, a pallor cleanser. What is an email that you were, like, stoked to get from a reader?

Well, you know, I have this weird thing and just being a little bit vulnerable here. I don't hear compliments. And, like, my mind. Like, you reject them or they just pass through you or what? My mind turns off. And I'm working on this because, like, I do want to, I think. at some point, like if you want to dive into the roots of it, it's like somebody used it against me or took it away, right?

Used it as power, which removed my freedom. If somebody says something nice about you and, you know, you believe it, then you want them to keep thinking that. And so if they're manipulating you, it becomes like a source of power of them over you. Well, this is how, I don't know, like, I'm working through this because what happens with me is, like, the minute I think I'm predictive, right? Like, the minute I think somebody's saying something nice about me, my brain turns off. Like, it literally just passes through.

But on the other hand, you have a program that says this is not helpful to me. It's going to. There's nothing. You know, like, and I might love the person. I might respect them a ton. But, like, oh, this is good news. Like, I don't need to hear the good news. But on the other hand.

This isn't a self-worth issue. It's literally like, this is not useful to me. No, thanks. But I have a predatory almost like instinct when somebody's saying something negative. It's like, what are they saying? Is that true? Is it not true? Like, how can I use this piece of feedback to, is there a hole in my boat?

Is there, you know, do I need to fix this leak? And so it's like always skewed towards the negative. And I've talked to people about this. Like, even James is like, I remember the negative reviews. Of course, everybody. Positive room. Yeah. So it is a common thing.

I don't want to ask like you're, you're completely normal in the front that you pay more attention to the negative than the positive. Are you that way in like sports and stuff? Are you, you'll, you'll, you'll, only negative, only negative. It's almost only, yeah. I would encourage you to consider, it sounds like a super boring book. Have you read the inner game of tennis? Yeah, a long time ago. Right.

Right. Yeah, I mean, probably, right? At the wrong time. Yeah, I mean, you've seen with kids, right? Like, you're a dad, so do kids flourish under negativity criticism or under reinforced positivity? It's obviously a balance. carrot and stick, but, like, if it's all stick, it stops to work. But it doesn't impact, anyway, I don't want to go to as it reads on it.

It doesn't impact my happiness and life, my satisfaction. Like, if I see a five-star review on Amazon, I'll read it, but it, like, has no, it doesn't stick. Is it a part of you, like, yeah, yeah, I know. No, not at all. It was just sort of like, this isn't necessarily useful, and please don't go leave, like, negative reviews now. Do you want me to read them and, like, assimilate the? And it works for any. compliment in life, right?

It could be like, you've hosted a good party. As soon as somebody's like, oh, I had so much fun. Like my brain and I'm still paying attention. Yeah. I'm in the moment, but I'm like, oh, this isn't. As long as it's not like a self-worth issue, like one of my best friends, like he, for a long time, he would reject compliments because he was like, you're wrong. You know, like, that's not.

And so now he has to like repeat the compliment, sit with it. And, but yeah, that's not your case. Talk to me about lists. a lot of authors have the goal of making the lists, right? So the most common ones being the Wall Street Journalist, which went away, which was a pure bestseller list. For people who don't know, that was statistically the books that sold the most, regardless of publisher, no editorial control, the New York Times list,

which is the only major list now these days. That people think in their minds. That they hold their personal qualities, right? And that's an editorialized list. And so a lot of people set their goal as like, I want to be a New York Times best selling author. I've helped authors hit the list in various capacities, some a little bit, some like very intensively. I've had authors come up to me and say, my goal with this book is to hit the New York Times, number one New York Times, sell a million copies and get on Oprah's couch. You are going to be disappointed.

Yeah, the joke I make is it'd be easier for you to do. do six months of therapy instead because a lot of I want to hit the list is at its core I want to be validated as super legit I want to be picked you know it's it's similar to the traditional publishing and in some ways for some authors not all authors right but some want to just be picked by the taste makers and say you're good there is a validation yeah absolutely there's validation but I would argue that like it's it's so let's get into the logistics before we get into like the psychology I guess of it so I hate hitting the New York Times best seller list in how much effort and logistical headache that comes with it you have to sell if you if you're

going like in an average time of year anywhere between probably 10 to 20,000 copies. A safe place to bet is 15,000 copies. So you have to sell 15,000 copies right out of the gate. How many copies did I say the average author sells over the course of their lifetime? Less than a thousand. Most week sales, 15,000. People try to manipulate it, but you can't. It's very difficult to do. You can, but it's very difficult. And it's just, it's a pain. Like, there are service providers out there who will funnel your bulk orders. Let's say you do pull it off, right? You sold 15,000 copies. You know, that's times like 30 bucks, right? So you have sold $450,000 worth of books. That's a lot. Now you have to hand that money to a service provider who will then funnel it through certain retailers who will

make it look like they aren't bulk orders and that they're geographically distributed across the United States. They need to couple those 15,000 copies with as many individual addresses as they possibly can and then send those books to those people. That alone is just ridiculous, right? Because you have to communicate. Like, these are legitimate sales. There are other service providers, and I'm reluctant. I'll say Rory Vaden. He's great. Like, he knows what he's doing. I'm reluctant to mention other service providers because this space of will help you launch your book and hit the New York Times is filled with people who will charge you hundreds of thousands of dollars and not guarantee if they like the New York Times is pretty dang sophisticated.

Well, they must be on to this, right? Because the worst thing that could happen to them is like people gaming. Exactly. The list. Exactly. So they need to have reputable choices. and they like they were sued by the author of the exorcist years ago and they were there was a big lawsuit he said you're you're withholding uh because i'm i'm outselling i think i can't remember

his name but he's selling tons of copies and they won the lawsuit because they're like it's an editorial product it is not a pure sales list we get to decide and so political things can come into consideration with the near times and them curating right are you a Minority. Are you a doctor? Like, these are actual factors that influence whether you're on the list. Allegedly, I don't want to say, like, I guess nobody knows, right? It's like, nobody knows how the Google algorithm works. Nobody knows how they know. Well, like, at the end of the day, there's humans on the other end being like, should this be on the list or not. I think it was Dave Ramsey who sold 60,000 copies at his lunch and didn't hit the list. Well, think of the psychology of money. It never made to New York Times by selling list. Yeah, that's happened to a lot. sold five million copies of Ryan Holliday didn't hit number one on New York Times until his ninth book. Yeah, I mean, but that, he was trying to manipulate this as he was very, not, not on his book, but he had talked about all the ways he had manipulated media. Oh, for his first book. Yeah, why are they going to validate him at that point? You know what I mean? Like, if I'm in the New York Times,

I'm like, I'm not. This is what I've heard. They have screwed over enough politicians and billionaires with their books at this point that they had to come up with a set of criteria that guaranteed you hitting the list. Not necessarily number one, but they can put you at number eight, number ten. What's the criteria? Do you know? The criteria in this, again, is put a big asterisk of Charlie probably doesn't have this right at all. But it's a certain number of copies sold through certain retail people or retail that geographically

maps. It is a percentage of those being e-books, not audiobooks, e-books that have been read a certain percentage. Oh, interesting. And so you can't just buy a bunch of e-books and they all register as 0%. Which would actually be a sign of you're manipulating it, right? Correct. Yeah. Okay. Again, New York Times, they got a budget to set up some sophisticated trackers and they've had this list for many decades. So a mix of traditional PR, legacy PR. So like you're on radio, newspaper, TV shows that are hitting a certain number of regions in the United States. You're hitting all these markets. Okay, that tracks through the number of sales that you have.

Digital. Interesting. A certain number of, and this is this pure guesswork, but like a certain number of blog articles that have come out, a certain number of podcasts that have come out. certain number of Facebook engagements, Twitter engagements, like, and I mean comments and re-shares, not just like likes, right? And so it has to basically map, they have to be able to see on a holistic level, is all this tracking with the minimum number of sales that we require. Ali, Abdel, I don't know how many copies he sold, but it was under 15,000 at his lunch. It was a lot, but it was under like the general recommended.

this is the other thing you have to take into account is which month are you are you releasing the book if you pick December like my client Cody Sanchez who is you know very confident she can hit it um but I was like dude like this is the worst month you can pick because you have to sell double it's a book buying sales yeah whereas August is like for nonfiction atomic habits will sell 50,000 copies that month and like it's been out for five years good luck hitting number one in December. Yeah. Selling 20,000 copies versus 50,000, it's exponentially harder.

That doesn't guarantee you anything either, right? Like 20,000. You can do as much as you possibly can. But yeah, I mean, you're right. Things go wrong, too. Not everybody's publishers keen on you working with these service providers who do these services. It's so much. and I think it's just kind of not worth it.

And so that's one of the reasons, frankly, I like the self-published route is you don't have to play that game at all. Like, it is a political, logistical nightmare. And I will say to people who hit the list, like, congrats. It's hard to do. And you're probably going to make whatever investment you made into hitting that list back. But it won't be because of the list. It will not be because of the New York. It will be correlative.

in other words all the marketing that you had to do to get it on there marketed you in your business and you will reap the benefits of that there's a great video by anna david uh about the called the truth about hitting the new york times bestseller list she's hit it and she's like it was the brokest i ever was you know i i think she wrote a she wrote a memoir i think and she was basically like look it didn't change my life i eat out on the title and whenever i can you know and i'll also say it for the rest of my life. It's a legit credential. So I made it yeah. Congrats.

Through luck, right? Like just totally didn't yeah. Didn't follow the publisher's advice on like how to go about it. Had a big list. Yep. You know, sort of just marketed it to the list, but didn't do bulk orders. Just said, hey, you buy one copy. We'll give you the pre-order bonuses. Not by 10 or 100 or 1,000.

Like, it was just sort of low-key. And I was, that's awesome. If I make it, I make it. And if I don't, like, I can hold my head high. What was your number? How many did you sell? I'm not going to reveal that. Can you give a range? No. But so, like, I made it.

And the only change that I saw really, and you're right, like, you do all the work beforehand. Like, I did all the work when it was like, what's the key message of this book? Like, how do I market that to my audience? How do I get people to read it? How do I write a good book? And the only thing that really changed was the distribution in the physical stores. They moved it from, like, the shelf. of like new to like a new york times section for like a week or two yeah and then it like goes back

to the whatever i think we made it twice or maybe three times i think it was twice i felt good about it like that was something where i was like oh i have this this thing that i can't i didn't know you could buy it like i i can't buy somebody's given me this thing and for the rest of my life i'll forever be sort of like a new york times best selling author which is kind of cool but it doesn't you know my signature block in my email doesn't say like you know at times bestselling author it's just shame right there's a clip of jim carrie where he goes up and he's he's introducing an award and he's like i'm two-time emmy winning jim carrie and he's like when i dream at night i think about being three-time emmy winning jim carrie because then i'd be enough yeah and so i think it's it's a

cool credential like you can you can add it to your thing uh or to your list but um I will say the traditional publishers, you know, Cody's with portfolio, right? So, like, they definitely push you to try, not to, I would say, they don't cross a line in terms of, like, manipulating it. But they're definitely trying for you to hit that list. I don't know if internally they have some sort of incentive or bonus or something if their authors hit it. But they definitely, like, they give me a whole bunch of ideas. And I was like, I don't like that. I don't think that's, like, high integrity.

I know. You know, it might be right, but it's not something. I want to do. I don't feel comfortable with it. So like, I rejected a lot of the, the things that they were sort of trying to get me to do. And they weren't crossing a line into like illegal. It was just things that made me uncomfortable. Yeah. Like, yeah. It's like, well, if I was the New York Times, I just put myself in their shoes. I was like, and I knew I was doing this. That's probably detrimental to their thought process on an editorialized list where it's like they're trying to come up. You know, I'm like, what are the reasons that they would exclude?

you but what are the reasons they would want to include you too and yeah we i didn't put a ton of thought into it but i'm lucky because i have a big audience that i've built up over a number of years so it's a lot easier for me to to do that right and well like think your your brand has a as a prestigious reputation right like farnham street is known as kind of catering to a very smart audience the new york times that's like a good association with them right and so i'm not saying that's why they put you on the list necessarily, but certainly it's something they took in a consideration of like, oh, the shame. You actually love to see, like, any book, little in mind, but like watch the algorithm

in process, right? People involved, like, what are the considerations that would be fascinating to watch? It'll never be revealed it. It would be. But, like, at the, the whole, my whole feeling on these list is like, you're not writing it for the list, you know? It's like, you don't, you don't make a movie to win a trophy. You don't play a sport to win a trophy.

Like, you do it because it matters to the people that you're trying to serve. Right. Am I helpful to the reader? Right. And I don't think hitting the list equals you will get stronger visibility and reach more people for any significant period of design. The list is a byproduct. It should be a byproduct. You can do stuff at launch, and you should, and, like, I don't advocate not doing your best at your launch. It's kind of like how Bo Burnham's like, if you can live your life without.

being famous, you should. I think if you can write and publish a book without chasing a New York Times bestseller list or any list, you should. Yeah, you shouldn't be chasing anything, right? Right. You should be like, just your hatters. How do you serve the best book possible for things? Exactly.

As a writer, how do you see the impact of AI? The cost of writing dropped 10,000 percent with the advent of AI, which like historically, it's been over $100 for, you know, writers to write. and then it just dropped precipitously. A few years ago, when ChatsyPT came out, I would stay up after I put my kids to bed and I would just see what it could do. And it became very clear, very quickly,

that, hey, this isn't a great writer. It can be kind of an okay editor. Where I had an unlock was realizing, oh, it's really good at cleaning up transcripts. And if you give it a clean input, a clean structured input, it can do some crazy stuff. So now take this and make it into a chapter. Yeah. So now the, not to plug my stuff or anything, but I developed a process called first draft

in a week where we over indexed on structure, we get all the clay on the table as efficiently as possible by using AI on the back end. Like, there's no interfacing with it, but, like, you feed it the right transcript. Right. And it will just spit out a book following all these prompts I've laid out using Zapier and chat GPT and Claude and air table and all this stuff. But it's like magic. It's magic.

And there's been these book-in-a-weekend programs forever, and they produce garbage. The way people are thinking about AI right now, I've found in publishing there's two camps. There's one that's like sticks up their nose at it. Like, it's a parlor trick, it's garbage. And to those people, I say, you don't know what you're doing with it. You haven't experimented enough to make that claim. If you're making that claim, I guarantee you you have not put in the hours and run the experiments. To the others who are AI enthusiasts, they're like, let's strip away the creative process entirely and generate books in 15 minutes.

And it's also a disaster because they're going off minimal inputs. And they're like, fill out a form and you can create a book. Isn't that great? It's like, no, it's embarrassingly bad because AI sucks as a writer. It's not a good writer. I don't know if I agree with that. And I'll tell you why. So I put two paragraphs in clear thinking that are completely AI generated.

My editor couldn't tell. And to date, no reader has correctly guessed the paragraphs that are completely generated by AI. Keyword paragraphs. Yeah. You didn't write a chapter. No, I did it just as like a fun because I thought it would be like a nice Easter egg sort of thing. Of course, that's my point. Yes, it works for a paragraph or two or three even.

But once it hits a certain point, it stops being good. And you can run it through zero gpt.com and it will show you this percent was written by AI. Oh, interesting. It can tell. And the data on this is readers will, as soon as they detect its AI, their retention drops in half. If the exact same paragraph is presented to a reader, I say it's AI generated. The retention drops. Not if you say it, if they detect it.

Oh, if they detect it. Yeah. You have read blog posts and articles, I'm sure, where you're like, oh, this is AI. Yeah, a lot of them now. Right. Yeah, exactly. And so if it doesn't feel human, if it doesn't feel conversational and accessible, people won't read it.

And so that's what I mean by it's a bad writer. It can do a little bit. It can't do the whole thing. Where do you see this going, though? Because, I mean, this is the worst it's ever going to get at writing. Yeah, I don't know. I honestly, I don't know if it'll be able to thread the needle for hundreds of pages. I don't.

I'm not sure. But for now, what I do know is you can produce a book that is conversational and accessible written entirely by a human being, but leveraging AI in the right way to produce it 90% faster at 90% less. So how do we leverage AI for writing? I mean, with my kids, I'm like, you need to do the work yourself. And you could submit what you wrote to AI and be like, where's it week? Where is it? Like, what am I missing?

Yeah. And I keep the full history because I'm like, if I ever have to go to the school and sort of like Argsoo. Because the school is like anti-AAI. And I'm like, this is ridiculous. So you're growing up. And that's like telling me not to use Google. Don't use calculators. And so I'm like, you can.

But I need the full chat history. Right. So that if I ever have to go to the school, it's like, here's what you submitted. Here's what happened. But like, how do we leverage? AI from a writing point of view today? The ways that I have found that I really like are for idea generation, structure, suggestions. I'll often tell chat GPT or Claude, which Cloud, by the way, I found is the strongest editor, but it's not perfect. I'll say, interview me on this one question

at a time for up to five rounds until you can come up with the strongest whatever I'm going for because people I think are either not very good at or just don't want to go through the whole process of laying out here's the precise context AI is way better at like let's pinpoint precisely what I need to do a decent job so if you want to draft something I would do that as the precursor move it will yield better results pretty consistently My favorite use is what I baked my process around is cleaning up transcripts because conversational is eight times faster than sitting and typing. And it is very rarely do people get talkers block. They get writers block all the time because the reason people say, but I'm such a better writer than

I am a speaker. It's like, yeah, because you get to edit while you're right. And you're so much slower too and you're also hitting imposter syndrome perfectionism you're hitting these emotional landmines that are effectively emergency breaks on your process so i say do it conversationally but structure it and then use ai to clean up those transcripts and retain it in your words you can crush with putting out content that's crazy yeah one thing people don't understand about AI that I teach the kids is like you can actually get AI to generate a prompt for you that you can feed into AI. Yeah. I found this better because I'm like summarize a podcast. And I'm like, well, I'm writing, you know, summarize a podcast forward prompt. And I was like, well, one day I was like,

okay, well, you need to write me a prompt on what matters that I can feed into AI somewhere. And it writes back like five or six sentences. And it's like a way better job. Oh yeah. Summarizing the podcast than what I was doing. What have you learned? about prompt it. Yeah, this is, that's precisely what I do, too. I say, give me the ideal prompt that will achieve this outcome. That's, that's really, like, AI is better at communicating with itself than you are. So just prompt it to do.

I think the keys is, like, people just don't tend to experiment with this stuff. I think we're probably in a small segment of society that actually is, like, a lot of people have used chat GPT, they know about it, et cetera, but it kind of in the same. way that a lot of people know about Bitcoin. People aren't actively using it all the time. You might be around people who are, but the vast majority of people aren't. And so I don't know, we're in such an exciting, unique time where it's like, all you have to do is play around with this stuff on a regular basis. Like, that's all you have to do. Just see if you can like break it or impress yourself or whatever. And exciting things come from that. Let's switch gears to

marketing what strategies are most effective when it comes to marketing most authors lose at marketing because they they miss their shot during the production process to like sow the seeds with their readers here's the typical journey of a of a self-published author releasing a book in the eyes of their friends their friends receive an email one day hey i wrote a book it's out today please buy it please review it please share with your friends and their friends are like where the hell is this coming from? Haven't heard from you or their business contacts. And so no one takes any action because all of a sudden it's just being thrust upon them

that you're in charge of my success person that I haven't really connected with at all. And it has no idea that I'm making this book or why they should even care. There's zero emotional investment into the book. And so I say most authors lose because they could have been co-creators with readers. They could have done really simple, easy things that would make the reader feel like, oh, this is just as much mine as it is the authors. Send a survey to your list and say, I'm writing a book on this topic. What are the two questions that you have on this, that if I answer them, it would make it worthwhile? Or what are the two biggest pain points you have in relation to this?

The two things that you're most stuck on, that if I helped you with this, it would be amazing. that's an easy one to start with right another in just announcing it and in like hinting at it movie studios do this you know they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on movies how it's never like hey the movie's out right now you should go see the dark night it's like no they teased like little behind the scenes photos they had little whispers the whole time and then you finally got the trailer and the trailer was a big event but the movie's still not coming out for months there's this buildup of building anticipation and teasing and whispering that authors neglect. And so you could also send out, hey, here are some title concepts. I'm thinking about, can you vote on these, right?

Get them involved in that. You don't have to do pick food. That's another alternative you can do. Hey, I just got my, I'm thinking about doing a cover. This is where I'm at. Like, just sharing updates and being like, this is where I am in the process of this. Uh, Even sharing, like, today was horrible, this went wrong. Like, they're not on the journey with you at all unless you are sharing those types of things. And it's normal to want to resist those during the creation process, but it's a lost opportunity, right? Because you could be letting them in on showing how hard you're working on this or showing that you value what they care about. You could be using help this book.com, which is a service.

for beta readers where you can upload chapters or your whole manuscript and see data on what they found confusing, what they found valuable, insightful, boring. You can see with very clear data where they're dropping off in those chapters, right? You can show them multiple cover concepts and have them vote. Do you think, I love the idea of going out and being like, hey, I'm writing on this topic. What are the two things that I need to include? Or what are the biggest problems you face here? Do you think you can do that at a chapter level or do you do that at a higher level? Yeah. Oh, I have a chapter on focus. Like, what are the... Yeah. Yeah. My point being, the more involved you can get your community into them feeling like, man, this is really a thing.

The easier promotion is because when you, when you pre-launch, they're buying copies of your book. They're actually talking about it. They're like, this is, I've been so excited about this for months. and, like, it's a natural thing. It doesn't feel weird. It doesn't feel forced. They're, like, in it with you. So we have pre-launch, we have launch, and then we have posts. So, like, what do I do during launch and what do I do post-launch to sort of make the book

evergreen or constantly, like, bring it up without being obnoxious? Yeah. So I'll define pre-launch, too. You're building up hype. You're like, the movie hasn't come out. You got the trailer. You got people in Vesta and then launch. Like, the movie's out this week.

the movie is out right now today. Yeah. What changes from marketing perspective? I'll answer that. I just want to make one point about the pre-launch and the launch. These are the two windows where sales will spike. So the announcement of the book, basically, that it's up for sale, and then the announcement that it's officially live.

Those have the two highest conversion rates for sales. So authors need to optimize for those by offering, you know, basically, there's a saying that's people will buy what you're selling when you start selling what people are buying. If you can package buying multiple books with services or products that you know people are already buying from you, it makes it easier for you to sell a bunch of books during those windows. So basically it's easier to sell a lot of books at once than one book at a time. And to couple it with something that you know people value and purchase. So like coaching calls, you can just package those with buying three to ten books or whatever.

during the pre-launch it's having that infrastructure set up so that they can buy more than one copy basically and then sending emails just leading up to it and then closing it out it's it's it is boring product launch it's like the extra that's like yeah blocking and tackling yeah it's just setting setting up those emails and seeing them through yeah and it's similar with the launch but my philosophy on launches is if you're self-published, if you do not care about lists, your launch should be your victory lap. It should be the least stressful week. The pre-launch is where you determine like, hey, I'm going to set a goal that's modest, but it's a bit of a stretch. I'm going to hit it. And I'm going to go into launch week knowing I sold 1,000 or 2,000 copies or 500 copies, whatever. And

when you get to launch week it should be a celebration right you're not stressed right you're not stressed it's you just achieved a huge milestone i know so many people who watch like launch week like every minute like they're so stressed yeah it's it's horrible an intellectual baby has come out of your body and you're like yelling at it to like grow up you know like be a fully formed adult and it's like dude like celebrate like this is this should be a blissful week that you're celebrating with friends with family, with peers, you just hit a bucket list item that most people never accomplish, celebrate. And so that's my emphasis during launch week. You can do an event. And if you want it to be a big thing, if you don't, it doesn't matter. But I firmly believe the launch week should be

as enjoyable and low stress response. And so what about post launch? So like book him out. it's like a week later now. How do I, as an author, published with a publishing house or self-publish, how do I remind people that already know about the book, that the book still exists, that I haven't bought maybe? Or how do I let new people know about it without being, like, I think we've all been on those email lists where we get like 30 emails a bit of book. And it's like, I got the hint, you know, like create products you want to consume. So like if you got 10 emails about my book, And, like, they were dedicated emails with no other value add. Like, I wouldn't want that as a viewer.

Right. And so, like, how do we do this subtly? Like, who does this really well? Like, what can we learn from them? The launch week, the only metric I care about is reviews. Is hit a certain number of reviews based on the number of copies. So 1% of copies you have out in the world, try and aim for that number of reviews. It's a good metric.

Because then you lay the foundation first. the book converting indefinitely or converting well. So what do you do to set up kind of an evergreen system? You set it, which is set up an email sequence, but have actual value from the book be delivering it. So it should be like standalone stuff from the book. So for play it way, I set up a 10-day series helping people who are struggling with anxiety, and I've restructured parts of the book so that the quickest wins were first. So it was like, I know somebody who's anxious, all they want to start is give me a pill. So I'll recommend the couple supplements that actually make a difference when you're in that state. And then we're going to go on to a little bit

bigger stuff. And it's going to be a 10-day journey, taking them from zero to hero. And in each email, I mentioned this is excerpted from the book. And so I like that because it's like, I'm offering value. It's a subtle, it's not overbearing. It's not sort of like, buy this book right now. Right. And it's an automation sequence. So that I added it to a blog post that was doing really well for years. And so I think 30,000 people or something went through that series as this is excerpted from the book, I think it was like every third email, I would be like, if this was helpful, this is from Play It Away. If you wouldn't mind leaving a review, that'd be great. I have a three times higher conversion rate from sales to reviews than a typical book because of that.

Interesting. It's sold plenty of books too. So I think it's just you set up that system that's effectively like a car wash that cleanses the person who signed up and introduces them to the best parts of the book and encourages them to grab a copy if they want. But then you move on. It's in your ecosystem now. So you should be focused on let's keep creating and let's keep doing stuff. And you can be the person who keeps pounding the drum the same drum for years and years. But like most creatives have other things they want to say. So let opportunities kind of come to you. Keep putting yourself out there. But move on. You know, that that is my philosophy. What I kind of like about books and podcasts, at least if they're done in a certain way, is that you do all the, you fight up front, you do all the work, you launch, you have your systems and processes in place, you can go, you can earn money while you sleep at that point.

Like this conversation, hopefully people are listening to it in 10 years, all the work's done, all the editing is done, all the costs are already incorporated, and then hopefully it just like keeps adding value to people. but you do that by not talking about topical things, by sort of being classical. What else do you think goes into like creating an everlasting book? Obviously content matters, structure matters, title matters, but like what makes a book shareable? I wrote an article that basically breaks down the 12 tests that consistently determine whether a book will sell a million copies or not. It's not comprehensive, but it gives a good idea. The big ones are, like, does this transform the reader in a visible way that other people want to talk about and ask about? This is why a lot of diets will take off is because it literally changes the body of the person in such a remarkable way.

Oh, let me tell you about this diet. Right. I'm doing carnivore. I'm doing keto. I'm doing it. And it's like, which diet's right? It doesn't matter. They all transform the person.

Like, even David Gagin's book can't hurt me, which is a great book just on its own. But he used exercises in there and inspired people to do what he does. And so they would physically transform. I saw this consistently with a lot of books. It's like, do they provide a quick transformation that the reader wants to talk about and the people around them can't help but notice and talk about? Right. The other things are, has this kind of hit a zeitgeist where it's kind of a contrarian message during a time of peak people grappling with this.

It's kind of unexpected, or it goes against what most other books are saying. So let me give an example. So I thought Mark Manson's book, The Settle Art. came out at a time of peak social media awareness that this is creating a lot of mental health issues. It's like it's too much. It felt like too much. It felt like it was finally under the microscope of like how bad is this problem really. And Mark came in with a proven mass market product Buddhism. And he millennialized it. He made it through, here's what's happening in the zeitgeist right now. I don't know how intentional he was around like, this is the zeitgeist.

I think he hit at a perfect time for that book. It was similar to like one of my buddies and long, longtime clients, Tucker Max, he came out with I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell at a time of kind of like peak college partying awareness, I guess. No one had done that type of book before. It was like contrarian for its time. And so it was novel. and unique in a way. I must wonder if you could, maybe this is a great idea for people listening who are looking for book ideas. Like go back to like the 1920s, 1930s, like, what are the best selling books? How do I take that concept and sort of like reposition it for today's world? Where we have the core concept that still exists, which is timeless. Like you filter for sort of

like Buddhism or something like this is enduring. It'll be talked about every, I don't know, 100 years, 30, 40, 50 years. Like go back and then you take that concept and then you write about it now. But you're really just positioning the exact same thing for today's world. It's possible. The challenge with it is the zeitgeist changes faster than her now. And it's, it can be kind of a dangerous game to play the topical thing. But I hear you. If you can root it in timelessness, this is, this was one of the tests I say, is it timely and timeless. So like Mark's book wouldn't have worked if it wasn't rooted in a timeless concept. people who write about like Trump you know when he was in office and like a tell

all sales go up fall crashing down and never return ever again you got to balance it so what else goes into making a book shareable you had a list of things um again is the author the embodiment of the message i think there's a lot of books out there where the author and this is part of the problem with the creation process if they isolate themselves the author's trying to project that there's somebody that they're not. They're hyper-aware that this is going to be read by people. And so they want to put on this false bravado and act like they've achieved more than they have. And it's like, no one wants that.

It's boring. We humans have really good BS detectors. We can tell when you're effectively lying to yourself. We sense it, right? And not even consciously. Like, we know when somebody's walking towards us and they're sort of like suspicious. Yeah. And we're not consciously.

paying attention to it, we just feel it. But the same way we feel like it comes across, but not in a way that is necessarily quantifiable. But you feel it when you read it. Same as like, oh, I feel this is AI generated, even if I don't go to like this, I can't prove it, but I feel it. And the minute I feel it, I discount it. Yeah. And one of the guys who's really interesting to watch in YouTube videos is Jordan Peterson, because he'll say something and you'll watch him check in with how he feels about what he just said. And he's like, that didn't feel authentic. Like, you can see him being like, that wasn't authentic. And he'll pivot and say it in a way that he's like, that's truthful to me. It may not be the truth, right? But it's truthful to him. A lot of the

stuff he says, it feels solid, right? And substantive. What are the, that may be a different direction on this is like, what are the tips and tricks that you see authors doing today that you're like, oh, that's really clever. The last time I was like, oh, that's, that's a clever way to go about that. Interesting. Was seeing Oprah and Tim Ferriss produce books that were interview-based. Oh, yeah. You know, Tools of Titans.

And I forget, Oprah, I think, has done a couple like this. And maybe that format was common before, but I just didn't notice it. I don't really know. I remember thinking that was a very clever way to produce a, book that was fun, sustainable, and not a huge heavy lift. I think it's really hard to pull off for the average person. Oh, you've got to be a media. You have to have an audience, like listening to your interviews for you sort of do that.

Exactly. I've seen other people try and do that, and it doesn't really work. It's kind of a very small segment that can do that. I, you know, I've been most impressed. Ryan Holiday and I, we started our careers at the same time and we were kind of on, we were kind of on similar tracks. He's always wanted to be an author. I've always wanted to be just like an entrepreneur who does creative things. I've just been super impressed just watching him through the years. It's been awesome to see his like just steady beat of the drum coming out with books. Look a year. And what was what people don't necessarily know or

remember about him is he started writing marketing books. And I think to this point, he's written like three, maybe four marketing books. And they just don't perform as well. What he did, though, was he created a category for himself with stoicism with kind of a dead or obscure topic. And he revitalized it. And we were just talking about that, like going back, taking a subject and like putting it in position for today's world. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Somebody might be able to do that for Epicureanism. Who knows? But I thought it was really cool to watch him test, test, notice that that's a thing and then basically create this blue ocean category for himself. That would be like the ultimate tip and trick. And that's actually on my list is does this create or revitalize

a category? Interesting. And so if you can do that, it's like winner take all scenario. Tim Ferriss did this with lifestyle design. Right. And so, like, tons of other books came out after him on lifestyle design and businesses, but he'd already won because he'd, like, named that thing. It was a new thing. Lilloo Lemon did it with Atholeisure. Mark did it with the subtle art, too, because remember all those books came out after

with, like, fucking the title? Right. He created a category that swears on the cover. Yes. He was the first that I noticed that did that. Creating a category is difficult, and there's a good book by these guys called the Category Pirates, called the 22, I think it's called the 22 laws of positioning, or it might be the 22 laws of category design. That book, I think, was really smart of them to write because category design

is super important. Positioning is super important. It's not intuitive. It's not easy. It's similar to like coming up with a book title where you're like, I know this is the most important thing I could do. Yeah. I, it's not something you can just snap and figure out. You got to really sit with it. Just don't sit down. Yeah. I mean, I don't anyway. Right. It comes with a lot of experimentation. And I think that's the ultimate tip and trick. Experiment in public. See what hits. And once you've found an oil well, just drill. Keep going. Yeah. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. We always end with the same question, which is what is success to you? It would have been a different answer several years ago, but success to me now is just a house full of love with my kids, for sure, my kids and my wife, and that is my daily marker of success.

What changed? You had kids? I had kids. For a long time, I was just career focused. I felt like I was good at what I did, and then I had these narratives around having kids pulling me off of that track. Yeah, it's just realigned my values. Thanks for listening and learning with us. For a complete list of episodes, show notes, transcripts, and more, go tofs.com. Or just Google the Knowledge Project. Recently, I've started to record my reflections and thoughts about the interview after the interview. I sit down, highlight the key moment. that stood out for me, and I also talk about other connections to episodes and sort of

what's got me pondering that I maybe haven't quite figured out. This is available to supporting members of the Knowledge Project. You can go to fs.blog slash membership, check out the show notes for a link, and you can sign up today. And my reflections will just be available in your private podcast feed. You'll also skip all the ads at the front of the episode. The Farnham Street blog is also where you can learn more about my new book, Clear Thinking, turning ordinary moments into extraordinary results. It's a transformative guide that hands you the tools to master your fate, sharpen your decision-making, and set yourself up for unparalleled success.

Learn more at fs.blog slash clear. Until next time.