The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 079: Tucker Max – Attracting Women & How To Write Your Book

Starting point is 00:00:00 If you start with great fundamentals and you practice those over and over, you're going to at least be solid, if not very good. Maybe to get to great, you've got to work on a lot of fancy stuff, but you don't have to. Most of the great people are great because they have amazing fundamentals. Are leaders born or are they made? Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders.

Starting point is 00:00:29 Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey guys, before we get to this great conversation, I want to let you know that this episode was brought to you by Mizan and Maine. You'll probably remember from episode 64, I spoke with a CEO of Mizna and Maine, Kevin Lavelle, and we promised to continue that dialogue as we both progressed on our journeys. And we certainly have, and we formed a partnership. and Kevin and his great companies and support and people that he works with have agreed to sponsor my podcast.

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Starting point is 00:02:49 And I promise when you try the search, you will too. Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk and I am thoroughly excited for you. guys to hear this one from the one and only Tucker Max. With that said, if you are not a fan of colorful language, this is not the episode for you. And I would urge you to skip it and go on to the next one. However, if you are okay with that, I think you'll really appreciate and enjoy this one. I found myself challenged by Tucker during a few different points of our conversation. and I don't think that happens all that often, but Tucker just says exactly what he thinks,

Starting point is 00:03:36 exactly when he thinks it, and he doesn't apologize and just says it. And I think that's why a lot of people are drawn to him, but I did find myself challenged from it, and I'll be curious to hear if you guys think the same thing. For those you who don't know, Tucker Max has written three number one New York Times bestsellers, which have sold over three million copies worldwide. He is credited with being the originator of the literary genre of fratire and is only the third writer after Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis to ever have three books on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list at one time. Truly incredible. A few of the things we got into tonight. We discussed this newest book, Mate, Why He Wrote it and What It Provides.

Starting point is 00:04:19 The subtitle is Become the Man Women Want. And I don't actually think this book is only for single guys. I think it can be for married guys like myself because the true basis for the book is about becoming a better man as a whole, not just to date women, but overall. And certainly for married guys, you need to constantly think about that as well. We also discussed this newest venture book in a box, what they do, how they do it, why Tucker wanted to do this, and how they specifically help people get the books out of their heads, as Tucker would say. We discussed their entire process from start to finish of how they get help people write books. A lot here in this conversation. And I know you guys will find it entertaining as well as educational.

Starting point is 00:05:08 Ladies and gentlemen, it's Tucker Max. All right, Tucker, extremely excited to have you here, man. And I appreciate your time. I got a question to get us rolling. And that's around success and sustained excellence. And you've been fortunate to spend a lot of time around people who have. have achieved big things who have sustained excellence over a period of time. And you're obviously one of those guys.

Starting point is 00:05:40 And I'm curious from your perspective, what are some of the common characteristics that those people all seem to share? That's a good question. There's a lot of stuff written on this. And I feel like most of it is pretty stupid and pretty bad. Like, you know, for me to really kind of give a deep answer, I'd really have to sit down and think about it. But I'll tell you, just off the top of my head.

Starting point is 00:06:03 so right away the first thing I think of when I think of people who achieve stuff is that they actually do stuff which is like one of those things what sounds like obvious oh well obviously except the difference between a entrepreneur and entrepreneurs is action then and it's effective action and so many people think they are taking effective action and they are not what they're doing is just moving or you know moving deck chairs on the titanic they're not actually doing anything uh there are actually spending their time on those actions that actually move them forward in a real way towards whatever it is their goal is, you know? And that's a big thing that I think a lot of people that I think high achievers do.

Starting point is 00:06:48 The other sort of thing that I think is really important is I think people who achieve a lot tend to look at reality as it is. They're excellent at seeing things the way they actually are. But then they also tend to be very good at, especially if we're talking about entrepreneurs, they tend to be also good at seeing what could be. So they ask questions about not just what is, but why it is the way it is, and they wonder about other ways for it to be, right? Which is a very uncommon thing for a lot of people. And I think most people don't. Most people just accept things the way they are.

Starting point is 00:07:28 and and which is fine like if you just want a normal calm life there's no problem just taking things where they are never asking questions and never sort of seeing or never sort of taking a hard look at reality but um people who who who by definition do things unusual or notable or big or what that remarkable almost by definition have to see things differently than other the ways that other people do. And yeah, those would be the two things I would really point is how they look at the world and then as a subsection of that, how they ask questions about it. And then do they convert that perception of those questions into effective action or not?

Starting point is 00:08:10 When you think of sustained excellence, high achievers, success, who are there people or who are the people that pop into your mind immediately? Are there one or two people that immediately like, ah, that's who I view or my vision of nobody? No. No. Well, it's not that no one's successful. of course they are. It's just that no one to me embodies, like, because you kind of have to be talking about an area, you know, like if you're talking, if you want to talk about, let's think about entrepreneurs. Okay, so that's an easy answer.

Starting point is 00:08:37 So then immediately you have to think of someone like Elon Musk, right? But whereas if you just talk about overall success, he's a total failure as a father and a husband. But an incredible, astounding success who's a great role model for a decision maker and an entrepreneur and someone who's impacting society. And they're different things. So I know very few people who are successful in multiple fields, especially all of the fields that really matter. And when I say fields, I mean areas of life that really matter. So you have to be, you have to narrow that down. But entrepreneurship definitely, I don't know if you could name anyone who's more of an entrepreneur than Elon Musk. You can name people that are maybe in that league,

Starting point is 00:09:21 but not more. That, you know, that brings up an interesting point. I've talked about this with other people. And it's, it's a little bit bothersome, actually, to hear that answer because you want to believe that you can do both. But do you think it's possible to be a great dad, a great husband, and, you know, send rockets to Mars and create cars? You don't think it's possible? Why? No. So it is possible to be a great entrepreneur and a great father and a great husband. Absolutely. But he's not just a great entrepreneur. This dude didn't start one great company. He started four and three of them at once. That's incredible. That's almost. superhuman. That's borderline

Starting point is 00:10:02 superhuman. And so like, no, there's no way. If you actually, I don't know how much of Elon Musk stuff you've ever read. Ashley Vance's book and all of his stuff. Yeah, I love it. So then you know, like one of the, when people ask him, how do you get so much done? He'll say, well, when you

Starting point is 00:10:18 don't have a social life and you spend all your time working, you automatically double the amount of time that you have available to work. That's the first thing I do. So by that, I mean, he says it himself. Those being Elon Musk trades off of being a well-rounded human being.

Starting point is 00:10:37 But do I think you can be an excellent entrepreneur and a father and a husband? Absolutely. There's a lot of examples of those. Just no examples of people who do what Elon Musk does and also spend time with their kids. Yeah. Tucker, let's take a minute for, I mean, most of people listening know who you are, but for the minority of the group who doesn't, I'd love to dive into you, who you are, and how you've gotten to the point to where you currently are at. Now, you're obviously one of three people to have three books that are number one New York Times bestseller.

Starting point is 00:11:10 The other two are Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Lewis, Tucker, Max. No, no, no, that's not right. There's a lot of people have three number one. At the same time. You can't have three number one at the same time. There's only one number one slot. So me and Malcolm and Michael are the only three nonfiction authors to have three books. on the nonfiction list at the same time.

Starting point is 00:11:29 Right, right, right, right, right. My bad. So obviously you've got that gone. You're an incredible writer, sold millions of books, but I'd love for you to take a minute to share that aspect of how you've gotten to this point. I mean, you've summed it up. That's about it. Like, I mean, I created a literary genre, sold three million books.

Starting point is 00:11:49 What else do you want me to talk about? The things that you've done as far as writing to where now you're, you know, I know you're investing or you've spent time. as an investor as well as written an additional book called mate as well as book in a box the company that you've you've started so there's just a number of different things that you've done prior to this point and now what you're you're doing currently right now my time is pretty much all spent on book in a box my new company yeah I mean like dude you'll see you're kind of young as you get older and you actually do a lot of things and it's weird I feel like

Starting point is 00:12:26 I've gotten, the more I've done in my life and the more I've accomplished, the more humble I've gotten, and the less I care about talking about what I've done, it's weird. It's like when I had done very little, I was all about yelling about what little I had done, you know, but like now it's like once you kind of reach a point where it's like, I'd rather just actually do things than talk about, you know what I'm saying? I mean, I'm happy to talk about it, but what exactly do you want me to, because you, you nailed all of it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:12:57 Three books, mate, book in a box, that's it. That's one of them. Yeah, and so I'd love to dive into mate

Starting point is 00:13:01 because I think a number of my listeners would be interested to discuss and the principles. And so I'm a married guy, a dad, and I still found huge value out of this book,

Starting point is 00:13:12 but the book's called Mait, the five principles of mating success, and you wrote it with Jeffrey Miller. And so it's backed, you know, decisions are made with science instead of bias.

Starting point is 00:13:22 And I found a lot of learnings through the book myself after reading it and rereading it again prior to us having this conversation tonight. And so I wanted to dive into one. What made you want to write the book, Mate? It's pretty, pretty, it's one of those things where a hole is so big, you don't realize it, right? And if you think about it, like, if you're a young guy who wants to learn about dating and sex and women and how to do it in a way that's effective and ethical,

Starting point is 00:13:55 And, like, something you can be proud of. Where do you go to get that information? You know, I mean, the only people that are systematically out there teaching this stuff are pickup artists, and they're the worst kind of manipulative slime balls. And actually, most of the stuff they teach is not very effective. And so, which is the worst scam of it. And so it's like, where do you go if you're a young guy? You know, like, I had to learn all this stuff on my own.

Starting point is 00:14:18 You probably had to learn it on your own. If you're lucky, you have men around you. Men are women who teach you this stuff, but very few men do. And so Jeff Miller and I just like, we kind of realized this in a conversation and we're like, well, no one's more qualified than he and I to write this book. I have the street credit and the experience. He has all the academic credentials and the intelligence. It's sort of, it was one of those things that once we realized that this hole was there, it became an obvious easy thing. The book was not easy, but it became obvious what we had to do, you know, that there was this massive demand that no one was teaching.

Starting point is 00:14:55 this and that we could. And so it's sort of like if you have a chance to help the world, even in a small way, and you don't. What are you doing? You know? So let's talk about some of my takeaways. And I would love to expand a little bit on what I read and some things that you could help explain a little bit better.

Starting point is 00:15:16 So there's five principles to the five-step process. I'm not just going to reread the book because I would urge people to go read it. whether you're a single guy or you're married. But a couple of them start with, get your head straight, develop attractive traits, display, attractive proofs, go where the women are, and take action. How did you guys come up with this process? It's because basically what we did is, it's funny,

Starting point is 00:15:43 the book we thought we were going to write ended up changing because we have a podcast called The Mating Grounds. And we over the course of that podcast, we thought this book was going to be much more advanced than it was, that it ended up being. Because what we realized through the course of the podcast is that most guys don't even have the basic fundamentals down. And so we wrote the book that teaches and explains the fundamentals.

Starting point is 00:16:07 It's sort of like, I mean, you're an athlete. So you probably know very well, like a lot of athletes want to work on the cool, fancy things. Like, you know, like every wide receiver wants to work on the crazy O'Dell Beckham one-handed catch, right? but then they're dropping like third down balls that are right in their face, you know, because they don't work on fundamentals. And for almost all sports, if you start with great fundamentals and you practice those over and over, you're going to at least be solid, if not very good. Maybe to get to great, you've got to work on a lot of fancy stuff, but you don't have to.

Starting point is 00:16:45 Most of the great people are great because they have amazing fundamentals. And so that's really what this book is, is the fund. of understanding how to effectively deal with women in a romantic context. And most guys don't even understand how the very beginning things. Like, they don't understand simple basics like, okay, if you want to be effective with women, if you want women to like you, then you have to be attractive to women. Like, you've got to understand what do women find attractive in men? First off, you have to understand that women are only going to engage in any sort of romantic relationship.

Starting point is 00:17:23 short or long term with guys that are attracted to first, which is believe it or not, kind of a shocking revelation for a lot of guys. You wouldn't believe how many guys come to me for advice about, okay, like, oh, I'm not doing good with girls, blah, blah, blah. And my first question will be, okay, what's attractive about you? Why would a girl want to get with you? And then they'll look at me like I'm speaking French and be like,

Starting point is 00:17:45 I don't know. And it's like, well, if you don't know why a woman's going to like you, how the hell is she going to know? And so, like, that's a basic fundamental thing. The whole book really centers on attraction, is understanding that if you want to be effective with women as a man, you need to be attractive to them. And then we explain exactly what women find attractive,

Starting point is 00:18:07 why they find it attractive, how to cultivate those traits in yourself, and then how to effectively use them. And that's really it, man. It's about helping guys get into the relationships they want to get into. And we don't take positions long term, short term, oh, you shouldn't sleep with a bunch of women or, oh, you should bang every girl you meet. Honestly, we don't care. It's not, it's not our job to make moral judgments about that.

Starting point is 00:18:34 It's our job to help guys understand, regardless of their goal, how to achieve it. As long as you achieve it, like, you know, in an ethical way, if you're honest with women, you deal with them, you know, sort of in an inappropriate way, which we actually kind of guide guys through. What do actual practical ethics look like, you know? We just, it's, it's the book that you wish you had when you were 16 or even 26. Mm-hmm. And I, as a guy. Yeah. And I think even though for people like, like in my situation who are married, but you're,

Starting point is 00:19:03 you're looking to gain a better understanding because one of the things you guys do really well is, is help guys understand things from a female's perspective. You even tell a great story in the book about what it's like to be a female going to a bar. And I thought is it really interesting analogy you guys used for a guy to put yourself in their shoes because we never really thought of it that way. We just go out and hang out with your friends and try to, you know, talk to girls. And for them, it's one of the first things. A bar is a very different place for a girl than it is for a guy. It's a scary place.

Starting point is 00:19:38 Never think about that at all. Right. Right. Well, because that's one of those key insights that guys never think about. But as soon as you tell them, it changes their entire life. So the insight you're talking about is basically that a woman's deepest unconscious fear is that a man is going to kill or rape her. He's going to hurt her physically. Men don't worry about women physically hurting them. Women, generally speaking, are not physical threats to men.

Starting point is 00:20:03 A man's biggest fear is that a woman's going to humiliate him or generally sexually humiliate him, but in some way embarrass him. And so if you think about it, dude, a bar is like the worst possible construction. of a place for men and women to meet because you have a bunch of random guys that a woman doesn't know who have been drinking. So think about if a woman's fear is her physical safety, until she gets to know a guy and knows that he's a good dude, that's every woman is thinking about that. So you put her around a bunch of random guys she doesn't know and then give them alcohol. And then what's she going to be?

Starting point is 00:20:40 She's going to be afraid and she should be. It makes total sense. Now think about it from the other side too. So from a guy's perspective, the worst thing that can happen is a woman embarrasses, humiliates him, right? So you're putting a dude around a bunch of women who are clustered together for safety, who don't want to go running off with different guys because they don't know who they are, and then expecting guys to go up and somehow charm them or convince them to ignore their own primal fear. It makes no sense, dude.

Starting point is 00:21:14 That's why bars are so awful for most people. There are some people who excel. Like if you're very gregarious, very outgoing, very verbally intelligent, you're good looking, you know, like physically very good looking, there's some guys who can do really well in bars. But most guys don't. They do really terribly, both because they're set up in a way that doesn't help guys or girls meet. And most guys don't understand this. They have no idea.

Starting point is 00:21:42 they don't understand why a woman is suspicious of them and doesn't want to talk to them because all they're doing is thinking in their head, I'm a good guy, I'm not going to hurt her. And that's probably 100% true, but she doesn't know that. And she can't know that until she gets to know you. And so we kind of walk through all of that with guys and explain it to them and then give them better places to meet women because bars are just about the worst place. What are some of the better places?

Starting point is 00:22:08 So it's less a place and it's more of a way. So what we tell guys to do is that your dating life and your social life should not be different things. They should be the same thing. And that you should meet women in places where you are doing things in groups with other people, some of whom you don't know. So for example, if you're volunteering at a dog shelter, you're going to meet a ton of women and you have a reason to be together, right? you're volunteering, common cause and purpose. She can see you display traits that she might find attractive. You're going to know people in common with her that can vouch for you so you're safe.

Starting point is 00:22:53 You're going to have a reason to talk to her, and she's going to have a reason to talk to you, that is independent of sort of alcohol or sexual undertones, even though, of course, it will be sexual undertones. that's not the prime reason you're talking to each other. So it takes a very stressful situation and makes it very unstressful. And so like we basically say any sort of, we just tell guys to do lots and lots and lots of social things, but do them in groups with other people, especially women that you can meet. Volunteering is one example. There's about a million others in the book.

Starting point is 00:23:29 And as soon as you start looking at meeting women not as a target, You don't look at women as targets to go find at a bar and then capture, but you look at them as people who have interests and you want to meet ones who have similar interests to you, then it becomes a totally different thing. Now you're thinking, okay, so a girl who has interests X, Y, and Z, just like me, I'm just going to go do activity X, Y, and Z, and then I'll meet all those girls. And in the context of doing those activities, we can talk to each other and relate to each other and see if there's any sort of mutual attraction,

Starting point is 00:24:05 and then we can act on that very easily. Another thing you guys talk about is improving your circle of friends and your social relationships for kind of some social proof. And you ask the question, who are your big five? This is another big topic, and I talked with Joey Coleman about this when I had him previously on the podcast, and some of the drastic measures him and his wife Barrett took to improve their big five, so to speak,

Starting point is 00:24:29 of who are their closest five friends. Talk a little bit of, more about why that's so important in this case. I think it's even more important, not just for dating and for girls, I think it's just more important in general. It's important for life. Yeah. So, well, actually, it's, that's a funny thing about mate is that it's really kind of a

Starting point is 00:24:45 self-improvement book that's under the guise of sex and dating. Although every single piece of advice in there is about how to get better with women, the vast majority of it is actually how to become a more effective man because that's the ultimate answer about how to do better with women is you need to be an effective man because that's what women are attracted to are effective men. And so at the corest, most biological level, there's no better way to get girls. And so anyway, so back to your question, there's a ton of data about this that basically, this is a simplification, but it's true, you become the sum of the five people that you spend

Starting point is 00:25:25 the most time with. So if you spend time with negative shitty people, that's what you're going to be. If you spend time with positive people who are doing great things in their life, that's what you're going to do. In fact, it's so the impact of your friends is so strong. But there's a lot of data about this, a lot of studies. The happiness level of friends of your friends that you don't know, believe it or not, more accurately predicts your happiness level than does what you are earning or anything you do.

Starting point is 00:26:06 Like, think about how crazy that is. I can meet, I can meet you and judge you, right? And then I can tell, like, do whatever, like measure your happiness level. And I can more accurately predict the happiness of someone I don't know, some mutual friend you have with your best friend that you don't know. I can tell you more about them than almost any direct measurement of them. Think about how crazy that is. But that's how impactful your friendships are.

Starting point is 00:26:36 Because listen, most people don't understand human beings at all. The reality is humans are, we're not just social creatures. We actually don't exist as humans without other humans. And I mean that in a very literal sense. Like, unfortunately, there have been quite a few examples. of terrible, like, awful monsters that will, like, have a kid and then basically raise it in a closet and won't interact with it and we'll just put, like, food in there, you know, like, awful sort of things. But what happens is those people that are raised in closets or the other people who kind of were raised by wolves,

Starting point is 00:27:13 there's examples of these actually, like the Wild Boy of Avignon, you can look up. They're not human. Like, in the way we think of human, they don't have higher order thinking capabilities. they don't have a lot of sort of basically they have undeveloped frontal lobes like the things that make them human they don't have and so because they had no exposure to other humans so you can almost think of it like a fax machine a fax machine by itself is totally worthless a fax machine plugged into a network is extremely valuable humans are the exact same way if we don't have other relationships we have nothing and we are almost

Starting point is 00:27:53 never anything more than the sum of the relationships we have. Yeah, it's fascinating, especially all the science behind. That's why I love it. In Chapter 70, you talk about the intelligence trait, and there's a number of different ways to show your intelligence, social intelligence, emotional intelligence, verbal intelligence. And I love the example you used of Bill Clinton has a carnival cruise ship's worth of charisma to show his verbal intelligence.

Starting point is 00:28:21 Talk to me more about verbal intelligence. Well, verbal intelligence is just how good you are speaking. Like how, like I have a lot of verbal intelligence. I'm a really good speaker, right? In fact, I was just thinking about talking about this with my pediatrician for my son. I was talking in full sentences and already like winning arguments with adults when I was 16 months old. My son is now 16 months old and he barely talks. He's not a verbally intelligent.

Starting point is 00:28:50 He doesn't have high levels of verbal intelligence like I did. It's funny, though, like, he'll, I'll teach him words, like, bye-bye, and he'll learn bye-bye, and he'll say it a couple times, and then he'll just be like, eh, I'm bored with it. I don't care. Like, he doesn't, he doesn't, like verbal communication is just either not high in his priority list or just not high in his trait list. But he's, you can, I can already tell he's going to have extremely high mechanical intelligence. And sort of, he's probably going to be an engineer or something like that because all he wants to do, even at 16 months old, is get into every cabinet, pull everything out. like manipulate all kinds of physical things so that like his kinesthetic intelligence and mechanical intelligence is going to be very high, right?

Starting point is 00:29:31 You know, I mean there's some people, in Western culture, especially in America, we think of intelligence as book smarts, which is total bullshit because we all know this super brilliant egghead professor who can't get his piss in the toilet and is alone at 50. You know, how smart is that guy?

Starting point is 00:29:48 He's failed at life, even though he's incredibly book smart, right? That's just one sort of intelligence. The most effective people generally put together several different types of intelligence. Like Bill Clinton's a great example. He's extremely book smart, extremely intellectually intelligent, but also extremely socially intelligent and verbally intelligent. Combine those three things together and you get a world leader.

Starting point is 00:30:15 You know? Yeah, you brought up your son, and I think so. for some of the people listening, Tucker, like they might be surprised if they haven't read about you recently to hear about where you currently are, maybe if they read some of your earlier books, to hear now that you, you know, you're married with a child and you're, obviously, I've listened to you another podcast and read about you. And I know you're really focused on being a great spouse and a great dad, which is awesome. But people who are fans of yours from maybe a few years ago might be like, whoa, wait,

Starting point is 00:30:47 this is Tucker Max, the same guy that I've, read about what do you you know how do you how have you progressed has there been specific events in your life that's helped you progress from maybe some of the decisions you made earlier in your life to how you now are as a husband and a and a dad i mean that that's a super super it's not a bad question on it's just super broad yeah so like what exact like what aspect of that i mean there's a million ways to sort of go about that i'm thinking about like inflection points in your life or specific moments to where maybe you had something that stopped you and said, wow, like, I feel like I have, I'm ready to grow past the earlier stage of where you were, you know, writing about and going out and

Starting point is 00:31:29 getting with a bunch of women and drinking and all that to now to the stage of being married and having a child. I mean, to me, dude, I just thought, like, I don't see any conflict or contradiction between the things at all. It's just, you just can't do them both at the same time. Right. You know, like, if you want to go party and hook up with a bunch of girls and have fun, that's fantastic. Do that. If you want to be a family man and have a kid and a white, you can do that as well. You just can't do those two things together. And the best order, I think, to put them in is the one I did. Like, get your partying and hooking up and all that stuff done early and then get it out of your system or get through as much of it as you need to. And then you can move on to sort of family and husband, especially for guys. It's much easier that way.

Starting point is 00:32:19 But there's a narrative in our culture that, like, one is good and one is bad. It's nonsense. It's just total nonsense. I think that's, there's a lot of reasons for that, whatever. But if you're a man and you want to do both, it's fine. Just don't do them at the same time. And you'll be fine. Seriously, there was never a doubt in my mind that 15 years ago that I was going to have a great wife.

Starting point is 00:32:46 and kids and all that stuff, I was just going to have them when I was ready. And when I got ready, then I did it. I don't know what else to say. Oh, I got you. And now, so you transitioned to book in a box, the company that you're spending the majority of your time on. And I met...

Starting point is 00:33:02 All my time. All your time. Family time is its own time, right? But I'm talking about work. It's all my work time now. Talk to me about booking a box. Why did you start it and why are you so passionate about it? So the company, basically, we've figured out a way to

Starting point is 00:33:16 turn writing and publishing into a service. So if you have wisdom and knowledge in your head and you want to turn it into a book, you can sit down at a computer for a thousand hours over the course of a year and type it all out and then figure out a way to get it published. Or you can come to us and you can spend about 15 hours on the phone over about four months and never touch a keyboard and we do everything. And it's your ideas and your words and your voice in the book. and we publish it and everything.

Starting point is 00:33:47 Yeah. I mean, like, it was, dude, it was one of those things that came, it kind of fell into my lap. A friend of mine, this woman I know, wanted to write a book. She didn't want to do it in the normal process. She asked me to help her solve her problem. And I didn't think it would work, and it did. And even before we had this as a company, people were asking us,

Starting point is 00:34:10 hey, can you do that for me? Can you do that for me? And so it was like one of those things where when you're selling a product before you're even advertising it or trying to sell it, then you have product, then you've got a company. That's the definition of product market fit. And so it was like one of those things where we kind of, Zach and I started doing it. And after about three months, I realized what we had on our hands.

Starting point is 00:34:32 And I realized it was way bigger than anything I thought. And so this is, I mean, this is probably for the next decade or more going to be, if we do it right, it may end up being the greatest thing I ever do. what so what was the process like or what is the current process for for people who because I think there's a lot of people listening who do want to write a book and you get the book out of their heads and not into an actual you know book form so what is it like if someone's like oh how would I do that that sounds kind of cool what would you guys do? The simplified explanation of our process is there's really two three big attributes to it that

Starting point is 00:35:09 make it different the first thing is the way we create outline and we basically start most out of people will tell you to start with what your book's going to be about that's actually the last thing you do in an outline the way we do it is we start with what result you're looking for in a book because you know everyone's like no one wants a book they want what they think a book is going to get them right right no one's like oh yeah I'm going to write this book and then I'm going to put it in my drawer and never look at it again no that's not when anyone wants because if you just wanted a book that's what you would do right so so what results are you looking for then

Starting point is 00:35:44 next question is what audience do you need to reach to get that result and then to understand the next question then is what do you know that's valuable to that audience then that is the book you need to write and then uh so we kind of have a process we work through that that kind of outlines the book and then that's that's sort of in our book we wrote a book called the book in a box method that explains the entire process it's the exact thing that we do with our clients and so um our outline process once you're done with the outline process then instead of sitting down to type it all out. What we do is we interview you off of the outline and we get all of the knowledge and wisdom out of your head in a verbal way, which has a lot of benefits. Namely, it saves an immense

Starting point is 00:36:26 amount of time. It makes it about 90% faster. Usually you get better content out of people because they're not trying to translate it from thoughts into sentences. They're just talking. And people, pretty much everybody is a better talker than a better writer. There are a few exceptions. and they're professional writers. Those people become professional writers. There's very few of them. The other sort of big benefit is that you're able to sort of get to core ideas a lot better. I think most people are through talking.

Starting point is 00:36:56 So we record the entire conversation. It takes, you know, eight to ten hours over a few interviews, get it transcribed. And then what our editors do is they translate that transcription into book prose. Because if you've ever seen a, like if you've seen a transcription of a podcast, it doesn't. It's really hard to read. Exactly. So we don't, it's not just a transcription. You have to translate that into the book.

Starting point is 00:37:18 But because it's in outline format, it's really easy to organize it. And then it's just a matter of making the sentences and paragraphs flow, which is really easy for, we have, you know, professional, professional freelance editors who do that. But it's actually for most people that's not so hard to do. It's much easier for them to sort of edit a transcript than it is to try and write from scratch. And then the other big sort of part of the process that I think is really innovative is that is the editing phase. So once you're finished with the manuscript, what we do is we get our authors on the phone with us and they sit in front of the manuscript and they read it. Page for page, word for word, they read it out loud to the editor because when you read your writing out loud, it's really easy to see all the mistakes and correct them. if you're trying to read it to yourself and correct them,

Starting point is 00:38:10 unless you are professional, it's really hard. And so our authors, the people who work with us, don't actually even ever touch a keyboard. All they do is talk and all they do is read and think. But if you're doing this yourself, you need to touch a keyboard some, but still most of the process is not sitting at a computer typing. It's talking because that's the way human brains are designed to work.

Starting point is 00:38:34 The whole process is described. We got it's on Amazon the book. It's called the Book in a Box method. It's like $2 the book is or something something crazy like that. So if any of your people want to want to do it, it's on or I'll tell you, you can get the book for free actually. If you go to bookinobox.com, if you join our email list, I'm pretty sure the opt-in is like you get a copy of the book for free. Yeah, I got it when I was out at Jason Gator and Joey's event in Vegas when you spoke. And so I read it on the flight home. So it's really good and helpful. And it's certainly something. something I'm interested in pursuing. Now that you're, you know, you're leading this business. I'm curious about from the leadership part of the, of leading a business with, with other people that you're working with, what are, what are some of the main characteristics in other people and business partners that you look for when you're saying you're going to hire somebody to work with you. I know you have different positions that you hire, hire for. I saw you recently were hiring for salespeople, you hire for different positions, but what are you looking for in business

Starting point is 00:39:35 partners. Yeah. So business partners are people we hire? It's not the same thing. Like my exact, my co-founder and my company, I'm not sure I would hire him, but he's an amazing co-founder. Explain that. Why?

Starting point is 00:39:49 Because a co-founder, if you're a true entrepreneur, I don't mean fucking like online entrepreneurs, these clowns who talk about that. No, I'm talking about a real business. Yeah. That actually makes real money with real employees that you have to. to actually deal with and manage. Being an entrepreneur is about, it's kind of like what I talked about earlier,

Starting point is 00:40:10 you've got to sink in a very specific way that's very different from everybody else and it's very difficult. And there's a large emotional context to it. Two, you've got to be able to balance a lot of paradoxical ideas and you've got to deal with a lot of chaos and you've got to make decisions and it's very, very difficult

Starting point is 00:40:28 and it requires a very different skill set. And people who are true entrepreneurs are generally not happy working for anybody else. Not always, not always, but often. And Zach is the type where he's never going to be happy working for somebody else. He's got to have his own thing. But when he has his own thing, it's something he believes in, and his tasks and sort of day-to-day sort of work is focused in sort of creative areas.

Starting point is 00:40:56 Like he's going from zero to one, so to speak. He excels. He's amazing. He's like, I couldn't have had, I couldn't have gotten a better co-founder if I designed one from the ground up. But like, but I wouldn't hire him as an employee because I think he would, he just not, he wouldn't, it would waste so much of his talent. And it would, he needs to, he needs to feel like he's in charge and in control of his own destiny. And he is, because he started the company with me, you know. But, so that's the one sort of difference between an entrepreneur and sort of an employee. But that being said, Zach and I, we do two big things we look for.

Starting point is 00:41:36 One is sort of character. A lot of people use that word in different ways. But basically, is this an awesome person? And we don't mean like high character and of course integrity all those things. But I mean, is this like, is this person just awesome? Do we want to hang out with them and spend time with them? Do they, are they a good person? Are they like people think culture and stuff is secondary in a business?

Starting point is 00:41:59 Those people don't run successful businesses. not anymore. Like the days where you could look at employees as just sort of employees and not as part of a tribe or whatever, those days are gone. And, you know, maybe some of the old legacy businesses can still operate that way, sort of, but the clock is ticking on them. So we look at not hiring friends necessarily, but hiring people that we just, we're going to be spending a lot of time dealing with this person.

Starting point is 00:42:24 The question is, do we want to? As a human, do we want to be around this person and spend time with them and whatever? And so, and that's, that's very much what I would summarize as character. And the other big thing that Zach and I do that I think most, not most, but most, or a huge number of business owners don't do, or at least managers don't do, is we actively look for people who are smarter and better than we are, at least, at the very least of the job we're hiring them for. So like, okay, so I'm a, like you said at the beginning,

Starting point is 00:42:57 I'm a three-time, number one New York Times is about selling an author. but I've sold millions of books. Right now, there are at least three people in my company who are, I think, without a doubt, better writers than I am and more skilled with story and narrative and structure and, like, whatever measure of creative, intellectual writing ability there is, they are better than me. And it's awesome.

Starting point is 00:43:24 I fucking love it, man. Of course, yeah. Because the jobs that they're in require those skills, and they are so good at those. They do a better job than Zach and I were doing when we were doing those tasks, and it makes the company excel. So, like, I think if you, basically if you hire great people, people who are both great people and great at their job, then you're going to do really well, and that's what we try and do. Well, it's show security in the leader as well. Some insecure leaders are a little bit scared to hire people who are smarter than them, and that's when you see businesses fail.

Starting point is 00:44:00 Exactly. I mean, that's the definition of an insecure leader, someone afraid to hire over them. We've all seen those types. And then we've seen the inverse of the ones who actively seek out people who are smarter than them. If you're not better than me at the job I'm hiring you for, then what the fuck am I hiring you? Yeah, yeah. You know, if you can't sell better than me, then you shouldn't be in sales in my company. Right, exactly.

Starting point is 00:44:21 How is it like from a year-over-year growth perspective without, you don't have to dive into the exact revenues. How is a company doing? I'll tell you. Dude, I'll tell you. I'm no problem with it. So our first year, we're about 18, a little bit under 18 months old. We started in August of 2014. We've done about 2.5 million since then, maybe about 2 million in this calendar year.

Starting point is 00:44:43 You know, we're growing about consistently, I think our average annual, or our average growth, or our average growth. rate in terms of quarter over quarter is about 40-ish percent. Last quarter was 65. That was pretty good. We don't really, we're not more than, you know, our year-over-year growth rate is like one quarter to one quarter. So it's like, it's just, it's too early for those growth rates to matter. But I think realistically, we should be able to get to somewhere between six and 12

Starting point is 00:45:12 million next year and then 20 to 30 the year after. What's long term for the business? Do you want to stay in it? Do you want to eject? What's to sell? Oh, yeah. So there's two, I think we want to grow horizontally and vertically. So vertically means like right now we charge $18,000 for our basic package, which is not cheap.

Starting point is 00:45:30 I mean, it's not really expensive actually considering what we do, but it's also not cheap. And so I think we can create, we can turn our process into software as a service and make it much cheaper for a lot of people and open it up to a lot of people that otherwise it would not be accessible to. like Zach and I see our company like our sort of mission is unlocking the world's wisdom and not necessarily through books books are just one way to do it and so I think the other way we're going to grow not just turning our process into software and service but I think we're also going to um going to sort of extend it to other areas like speeches or pitch decks or movie scripts or video courses or I mean basically any sort of medium that you can transmit knowledge from one head to another can be turned into a process like I mean like you the the way to sort of

Starting point is 00:46:30 create those to go from idea in your head to to sort of finished product that other people can short as share yeah so I think that's the longer larger longer term vision for the companies to spread horizontally and vertically and then we be the company that if we do this right, we're the company, the service process company that everyone uses to create, to turn their ideas into finished products, whether they're books or speeches or anything. Yeah. If you were coming across like a 24-year-old guy who is saying, hey, Tucker, what are some of

Starting point is 00:47:07 the best books for me to read to increase my overall knowledge, intelligence? What books would you give them? Man, it really depends on the guy. Like, it's really hard for me to give generic explanations because it depends. A wall full of books in your house. Right. What are some... It just depends.

Starting point is 00:47:28 I don't know. There's not... Everyone comes from different perspectives in different places. There's not... There's almost not a generic book, I would say. Read this to get smarter. Yeah. Because...

Starting point is 00:47:43 Or to be a better person. Like a give and take from... Adam Grant or something like that, you know? I mean, listen, I know Adam. I love Adam. It's a great book. But for most people, the fucking book is like just not. It's just not, it's like giving someone instructions about how to like, you know,

Starting point is 00:47:58 repair a TV set when all they want is to change the channel or something. You know, it's like, no, seriously, most business books are just so complex and complicated. And they're dealing with issues that are on the edges. It's like what we talked about before. It's like, are you going to focus on the edge or you're going to focus on the edge? you're going to focus on fundamentals. There's very few people who need to focus on education. Most people need to focus on fundamentals.

Starting point is 00:48:22 But it just kind of depends, man. Like, give me a specific person or, like, you can be a generic person, but like a specific situation where they are in their life, what they need to look like, what are they looking, what basic things are they looking to learn about, et cetera? 25-year-old, he graduated with a degree in business from a top 25 school, works at a big consulting firm, but he doesn't like it, and he wants to, he doesn't know what he wants to do, but he wants to do something else. Okay, the first thing, because of the way you described this person, the first thing I would actually tell them to read is a book called Status Anxiety by Elaine DeBotton.

Starting point is 00:48:58 Okay. One of the things that most people don't understand, they don't understand why they do what they do. Status anxiety explains in a deep way what drives human beings to act the way they act. it's a wonderful book Elaine De Botton is one of the best thinkers of our time he's like the Socrates of our time the dude's fucking brilliant I would first off recommend that

Starting point is 00:49:21 then I think he was just on Tim Ferriss's podcast actually yeah I actually yes so then I might I might depending on so I might have them look at

Starting point is 00:49:36 Clayton Christensen's book what do you want to do with your life it's pretty good about sort of sorting out the moral issues and then assuming they want to start their own thing or their own business. Man, there's so many great books about how to start a business. You know, I don't know, man, they could go with, I don't know, it's hard to say. It depends what field. Like if it's in tech, I would point them towards maybe lean startup. If it's in sort of, if they want more small business type thing, I maybe point them towards like E-Miss.

Starting point is 00:50:08 if they want to do like some sort of nonprofit thing, I might point them to like, I mean, there's a ton of those books. Maybe I know Adam pretty well, so maybe pencils a promise. Like it just kind of depends what field they want to go into as to which book is how to start in that field. I love it. It's great now. Hey, man, Tucker, I really appreciate you. You've been really generous to your time, your investment and bringing the energy.

Starting point is 00:50:34 Man, I got one more question before we jump off here. it's all around you like I told you before we started recording my show is a learning leader show it's all about focusing on the art and science of leadership and and constantly striving to improve and get better on a day-to-day basis thus the learning aspect of it and I'm curious when you hear the phrase learning leader what what pops into your mind is it a is there a definition in your mind what do you think of when you hear that phrase I mean that's like to me that what pops into my mind is sort of what we're doing with our company, a book, and a box. I feel like there's a massive tectonic shifts going on underway in business, and it's invisible to most people. But I think most 20th century organizations were about access to resources. I think 21st organizations, 21st century organizations that succeed are going to be about access to both knowledge and wisdom, which are not the same thing. but really max mostly access to wisdom and that means you that means you that means you that 21st century organizations are essentially learning organizations and and the the better leaders in

Starting point is 00:51:52 institute a learning environment higher learners institute an environment that fosters both learning and then changes the results of the learning and the quicker the organization can learn the better it's going to succeed that's the way I see myself My job and my company is to find the best possible people I can and then set them up in a way to succeed. And then that's a big part of the way we set up our organization is that like everyone's a learner at every level. And we assume everything we're doing is wrong and we'll eventually have to be changed. But it's just what we're going to do right now. And everyone's job is to constantly make it better.

Starting point is 00:52:29 And the only way to make it better is to learn, man. So like that that's what comes to my mind. Awesome. That's so good. and I love it and where where would you send people to find you online

Starting point is 00:52:40 it depends what they want if you want books go to bookerobox.com if you want to read my books probably go to Amazon and buy them I don't know

Starting point is 00:52:50 I mean no that's good that's probably about it yeah okay cool man like I said I really appreciate it and I look forward to continue talking as we both

Starting point is 00:53:02 progress I'm excited to see everything you do with book in a box as we both progress, man. Cool, man. Thank you, brother. Thanks, man. See you. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to Learningleadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO,

Starting point is 00:53:26 world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time. on The Learning Leader Show.

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 079: Tucker Max – Attracting Women & How To Write Your Book

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