The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 349 - An Inside Look At The Book Writing Process With Jay Acunzo

Episode Date: January 27, 2020

The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk Text LEARNERS to 44222 For full show notes go to: www.LearningLeader.com  #349 - An Inside Look At The Book Writing Process With Jay Acunzo Why this topic? We've both written books. And my book is out this week! Context on our books: Welcome To Management.  I wrote the book I wish I had when I first got promoted.  Jay's book is called Break The Wheel. "Write a book because you think it has to exist.  Not to be a best-seller. The Process: Research, outlining, fan interaction, drafting, publishing -- Why an outline is a vital piece of the process.  "The outline is the bones." "Doing research in public created a system to vet ideas and best practices." --> Using client interactions as real time research to help test ideas Podcasts - It was extremely helpful for me to be recording while I was writing the book: I was consistently doing research while writing the book.  Interviews, asking questions about writing/books, ideas, etc. I was working full time while I wrote this book and I think that made it better. It forced me to be disciplined with blocking time to write daily. Traditional vs. Self-Publish vs. Hybrid -- Jay chose a hybrid approach to publishing his book.  I chose to publish traditionally with McGraw-Hill.  I did a lot of research on the different paths for publishing and chose the traditional route because: I wanted to create options and leverage for myself.  And after I spoke with Casey Ebro from McGraw-Hill I was completely sold on accepting their offer. Superlatives: Platitude about writing/writing books/creativity that you found MOST true during this process? LEAST true?  Most true = Writers write (listen to the James & Kristy Clear story from dinner).  Least true = I've read from a few well known authors that you have to dedicate your life to nothing but writing the book.  I found that continuously working and building a business at the same time as writing was helpful. When I do q & a's on stage after a keynote or on my podcast, I get ideas and prompts to write about... Most useful habit/routine: I learn through talking.  I had regular sessions where I would sit in a room with my Dad and/or my friend Lance (who was a prosecutor for 10 years).  They would give me prompts, ask questions, and we would talk out the book. I would type notes during our sessions, then I would go by myself and write.  In my very first session with my Dad, he said, "Remember, it's a lot harder when you care."  He meant this in the form of leading people… And he's right. But the same is true for writing a book. It's hard when you care so deeply about the topic of helping people lead others more effectively… Because I understand the ripple effect.  The wake left behind you as a leader. Most surprising lesson: You don't fully know what you think or how little you know until you put pen to paper.  Writing REALLY forces you to be clear on what you believe. I outline sections and then would ramble on for pages.  The editing process was helpful. I hired an editor/writing coach to help. Best story from the book:   I sent an early copy to Ryan Holiday to read and offer feedback.  He called me said, "Dude, why is your best story in the middle of the book?  You should open the book with that story." And so I did... What was your editor's favorite part? Casey Ebro (from McGraw-Hill) said to me, "I read non-fiction business books for a living.  I've read hundreds of them.  And your section titled "You Have To Do All Three" in chapter six is the most unique and helpful view that I've read about leading, managing, and coaching."  -- That was a great moment. Additional Benefits: Publishing your work online is becoming the greatest networking tool in the world -- When done well, you attract the people you want to be around. (David Perell, James Clear have written a lot about this) Writing is the ultimate exercise to help you find clarity.  Sometimes you don't realize how much you don't know about something until you try to write about it.  -- This can help everyone (especially useful for leaders).

Welcome to a very special book launch week edition of the Learning Leader Show presented by Brick Zienmeyer. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text learners to 44222 in order to join tens of thousands of learning leaders from all over the world. Receive Mindful Monday updates what I'm reading, writing, watching, thinking about. Also give you more details about my book, which is out this week. Welcome to Management. Learners to 44222.

Now on tonight's featured leader and topic, my good friend Jay Akunzo is back, author of Break the Wheel, former digital media strategist at Google, head of content at HubSpot. His thinking has been cited by the New York Times and Harvard Business School. Longtime listeners know Jay has routinely come on the podcast to talk about specific topics in depth. Prior episodes with Jay were about public speaking. interviewing and podcasting, and this one, there's no better time for it than to go in-depth when it comes to writing. We will take you inside the book writing process, specifically about the research, outlining, drafting, editing, that how our podcasts each have made us better

writers. And then we get into some superlatives like most useful habits or routines, or what's the most surprising lesson you learned? Or one of my favorite parts, what part of your book did your editor like the best and think would be most useful for readers? I have a really compelling story in this part of the conversation. Jay shared some incredible promotional tactics he used with his book that could be implemented for any business or any project that someone is looking to spread. And then we closed with ideas about why it's so important for you to develop your writing skills, regardless if you'd like to write a book or not. So as I mentioned at the beginning of this intro, this week is so important for me,

because I have put everything I have into my book, Welcome to Management, to hopefully help readers use their immense leadership power for good. Be someone who builds an organization that is, built upon commitment, not compliance. And that's what Welcome to Management is all about, is that I've taken the best of the best from what I've learned for more than 350 incredible leaders, mash that together with my own stories and learnings and mistakes made,

and then put it all into this book, Welcome to Management for you to become better. It's out this week. It would mean so much to me if you supported it, bought it, shared it on social media, tell everybody you know, because I firmly believe it can be helpful for you. Once again, thank you so much for being here and enjoy this episode with my friend, Jay Akunzo.

Jay, back by popular demand. My listeners, these are their favorite episodes, man. I had to have you back on a very special week for me talking about a topic that I am fascinated by. And I know you are as well. and we love to go inside what it takes to produce some sort of creative work. Well, welcome back, man. It's good to have you. Thank you so much.

Also, congratulations on the book. Thank you. How are you feeling? I feel good. I mean, early feedback has been very positive. We've got just a number of people who have preordered. And as this is coming out, this podcast is coming out. The book will be coming out this week.

So it's one of the few non-timeless episodes. I will release. But yeah, I'm very proud of it as we'll get into here because as you know, the process of getting your thoughts down on the page and then revising and editing and editing and editing and asking for help and then sending it to your official editor as I did at McGraw-Hill and getting it back. I thought, wow, this is actually good. This is actually useful. So I feel pretty good. I'm excited about it. And now I'm just excited for really the masses to get a chance to read it. It was, it's an important topic. There's few in this world that I've ever considered it the way you've considered it and for the length of time you've considered it or

have seen the breadth of intelligence, creative, driven people talking about it. Certainly thanks to your show, right? So, and we will talk about how your show, I know, fit into your bookwriting process and how my podcast fit into mine. Because I think it was, in a way, our sneaky advantages. And I think it will continue to be so. We're going to give away that advantage, I guess. And, you know, the last thing I'd say is there are very few things that you do in your life where it switches not from what you're doing to something else you're doing, but it switches from I am not this to I am that. In other words, there are very few things where you're like, I am a father. I am a husband, a wife, a partner. I am an author. You are an author, man. I just want that to sink it for you. It actually gives me chills. As weird as that sounds to admit, it is pretty cool. though, because books in general have been one of the greatest life-changing tools for me.

I did not grow up actually as a reader. And so I read books about sports and little things about that. But I wasn't really that curious when it comes to books. All I wanted to do was play sports. And that's all I did do growing up. I had to mature a little bit to appreciate the greatness of books. And this is like one of my book buying rules. and it's not mine. I've read about it for multiple people online. I bet you have it as well.

If you are even considering for one millisecond, if you should buy the book or not, and I'm talking about any book, click buy. And here's why. Because that will cost you between 15 and 20 bucks or less. And if you get one idea that alters your trajectory of your life, your return on investment is like a million. Think about it, for real. So never hesitate to click buy when it comes to a book that is peaking your curiosity because it could change your life. And they certainly have changed my life.

And I think that's a rule I try to live by. And I encourage others to think of books in that regard as well. I, first of all, I really appreciate that. The thing I would lace that with is it's a little bit of a caveat, which is, so I worked in venture capital for three years. I worked in tech at companies like Google and HubSpot and then venture capital running a brand and now I'm out of my own doing this kind of stuff. And when I worked in VC, what I realized is people, including those who knew better, would really, really celebrate the moment of raising capital for their startup. And I had a founder friend critique that. And I was

like, why, you know, why not celebrate it? It's hard work to raise money. And he said, well, it's kind of like celebrating the fact that you went out to the store and bought groceries. And I Actually, the real work is about to begin, right? So when you buy a book, it's really tempting to say, I've started the work. You feel that dopamine hit of almost like pseudo achievement. It's weird, but I think we can all relate to that. You have to read the book and they have to put it into action, right? So click by, 100%, click by.

But then spend meaningful time with the words that Ryan has put on the page and figure out how to enact the stuff he's talking about to your life. So that would be my caveat. I love it. All right. Let's set it up for why we're talking today. So we've done episodes on what it's like to be an interviewer. In the podcasting world, we've taken a deep dive when it comes to being a communicator specifically as a speaker on stage and how to be a better speaker in all areas of your life.

So if you want to catch some of those previous episodes that Jay and I have done, we've done that. This one, it's timely and it makes sense. We go inside the process of writing a book. And it's not just about writing a book. It is about the will be some topics on just writing in itself because I think that can relate to anybody listening to the show. We know not everybody listening is going to write a book, but there are some specific ideas we are going to share actually in part three of the rundown that Jay has written to cover for anybody in regards to the topic of writing. So Jay, are you ready to go? Yeah.

Do you want to give an overview of the rundown real quick? Go ahead. Yeah. sorry. I'll hit the first one. You hit the second, too. Okay. All right. Yeah. The first one, so I'm setting it up right now. Then we're going to go into the process of what it is. So some of the parts of the process that we'll dive deeper is the research outlining, drafting, publishing, marketing. Then we're going to talk a little bit about how our podcasts were helpful in the process. And then there's a lot of talk out there for people in this space about traditional publishing, self-publishing, hybrid publishing. We'll touch on that. And then Jay and I have some, I think, general advice. when it comes to the nature and skill of getting your thoughts down on the page and the, I guess the impact of hearing someone's hidden habits and why that can be useful. So that's the process. And then the second section we're going to go into is called superlatives, where we're

going to force each other to think about things like the most, the best, the least, et cetera. So some of my favorites include the cliche about writing or writing book. that you found most true versus least true, the most useful habit or routine, and several other superlatives like that, certainly the hard parts as well. And that will be the second section. Again, that's called superlatives. And the ending, we have thought of, both of us have thought of some ideas that could be useful for you as a listener who maybe has never written a thing outside of emails to colleagues or someone who is in the process of writing a book or maybe someone who has already written a book, some things that could potentially help you.

And so we each have jotted down a few bullet points to be helpful, some things that we learned through the process of writing our books. We're going to give you a kick in the pants. Ryan's being nice. We're going to give you a kick in the pants. Sorry. You always have the better analogies. I was an English literature major, full disclosure.

Were you really? Yeah, yeah. I used to say I got a BA. We've talked about that. No, we've never talked about my degree. I used to say I got a BA in BS because I was always like, well, it's English and the culture around English literature majors is, you know, what do you do with that degree? And my retort now is, what do I do with that degree?

Anything I freaking want. So I'm a proud card-carrying member of the English major society. Well, there's something I'm going to cover here in the third part of the rundown, Jay, that I think when it comes to writing as to why it can be so helpful to work on this skill. And it's not necessarily exactly what you think. Okay, let's get to part one, the process. So I'd love to ask you first, and I'll share what it was like for me. And I think it'll be cool to hear some of the differences, because I'm not. I know, even though I haven't seen your answers, I know that we, our processes are not exactly

the same. And in some cases, they're polar opposites as they were with the speaking episode, which I think could be helpful because there are a variety of people listening. So can you walk me through your process for research, outlining, drafting, publishing, all of that when it comes to your book? So the research part is, it doesn't look like research, but it was the most important step. And it definitely was research, which is I basically did my research for my book. in public. And actually just to back up a step, so I did a whole episode the first time I ever

appeared on Ryan's show. We talked all about my book. It's called Break the Wheel. And the whole concept of the book is that there's just lots of average work and average results out there in the workplace, but nobody aspires to be average. And so I like to say that the dark side of information, or the information age, is advice overload. And I think that's to blame for all the average work, because we don't have a process in this era of endless possibilities for vetting those possibilities. And so we end up retreating to the quote-unquote best practice, which is fraught with all kinds of issues. And so in the book, I went exploring what those issues are through history and modern stories, through science and stats. And the real thrust of the book is if we're surrounded by

endless possibilities, we need to put a system in place for vetting them. And the key variables that are always missing from those possibilities from somebody else, from the history of our companies, et cetera, those best practices, if you will, the key variables that are missing are always from our unique situations. So we need to start our decisions from those things, our context, not the best practice. So I wanted to see if I could create a system, which is not a best practice, because it's actually a series of questions because I can't be a hypocrite. I can't give you a best practice if I'm questioning best practices. So the whole point of the book was to see, can we land on a series of questions that we can ask each other and also a system to develop

more questions back in our workplaces with our teams, that if we answer these questions, will start making better decisions faster, even if we're surrounded by endless best practices. So the point is not to find best practices. The point is to find the best approach for you. So that's what I wrote the book about. So I think it's just important context for people listening. The research, because man, that's a hairy concept to go after.

I mentioned I did this in public. I wrote articles on my personal blog. I wrote a newsletter once a week every Friday. I published my podcast episodes. first weekly, then I went to seasons, because I needed time to sleep, eat, and not publish content all the time, but my podcast unthinkable, and then public speaking. So you have like four pillars of content, blogging, newsletter, podcasts, and public speaking. And public speaking was kind of the best of the first three rolled into a speech. And I spent two years errating all these stories

and all these insights and basically trying to pressure test them so that the book was kind of the culmination of this journey to understand everything that I was trying to explore. So I didn't go away to, you know, this classic idea of doing research, like you hole up somewhere with a laptop and a bunch of books and a notebook. And I didn't quite do that. I spent two years filing away some usable stuff, some garbage, and a lot of stuff that was sort of in between and needed some work when I went to write the book. And so that doesn't look like research, but I found that building in public helped pressure test these ideas. It made the research almost like the self-improvement process because I was allowing others into that process, although I never said, hey, this is

going to be a book because I wasn't quite sure. So that, yeah, that's a crazy process I realized, not for everybody, but that's how I, I just felt like it was the most authentic thing for a tinker like me and also ended up being the most beneficial thing. So my process, actually, this is one area where we are similar because I was working full time while writing. And there is a lot of advice you'll get from authors to say, you need to dedicate this year or the six months to doing nothing but writing the book. That just is not my reality. I could not do that. Couldn't afford to do that building a business at the same time as writing a book. So I think this is one of the areas where our podcast, so this is kind of merging with the second question here we're going to talk about.

So maybe we can bring these together because it's a huge part of our research. But having regular dialogue with very intelligent people is helpful. But it's actually not even the most helpful part. What is, is that remember, for each episode, there's roughly 10 to 1 research to actually talking. So if I'm talking for an hour, that means I've probably on average done 10 hours of research on that person minimum. So this in a way forced me to be reading a ton over the course of the time while writing. And so if I was ever stuck or I was thinking of an idea and I couldn't quite get there, I would learn from other people. Just like Austin Cleon says, you know, steal like an artist. I mean, I try my best to, to my books, really, the combination of

what I've learned, my personal story and some of the highs and lows of my story, mashed together with some of the most thoughtful leaders in the world and then sharing some of the questions you can ask yourself. And what I was really hoping to do is help leaders, specifically new managers, not make the same mistake that I did. So it was always with that slant. That was the idea. So my research was primarily done through the preparation to get ready for the podcast, a ton

of reading, watching TED Talks, reading all the articles written about these people. And through that, you'll find yourself daisy chaining on from article to article. And Tim Urban talks a lot about this. If you look at, you know, you have Chrome open if you use Google Chrome. And I'll have like, my wife will walk up and she'll be like, you have 45 browsers open. What are you doing? And I'm saying, well, because I started here on this, I was, I was researching Jay Akunzo. And because of that, it led me to this idea, this topic, this person.

And I'm down a rabbit hole. And maybe we're just talking about one specific area that's going to end up being about a paragraph in my book. But I'm trying to get to the best of the best and distill it down. But that was my process for research. So I would say it was kind of slow, arduous, hard. There's so much left on the cutting room floor when it comes to both what I've written and what was researched. But I just feel like that's part of the process to get to the good stuff. Yeah.

I mean, it sounds that we both had multiple years worth of material. that we were reflecting on. And, you know, people don't have to have that vehicle. Our podcasts were kind of this discovery vehicle. But I think the mentality is important, which is, you know, especially in today's day and age where you have things like podcasts, like social media, where you put these, quote, unquote, business visionaries up on a pedestal. And I don't think these visionaries really exist.

Or if they do, they have a certain kind of vision we're not talking about in that they don't see the future. They don't see some mythical thing. They don't have the gift of the muse. they just see the present more clearly than most. Because I think a true visionary decides, well, this is what's unfolding in front of my face. I'm going to pull this thread and see where it leads me. I'm going to ask big questions and pursue that and not have to be the person that has all the answers.

But I want to invite you, the listener, the reader, whomever, to come along on this journey with me as I try to uncover more, better, deeper, or next, right? To me, that's what a visionary is. They just see the world more clearly than most. And we can all do that. It's right in front of our faces. But the mentality, again, you don't need the podcast, but it's sort of like, that's why writing all the time matters. It's like you just file away, thought after thought, get better and better all the time. And because it's filed away, it's public, or at least it's logged somewhere you can access, you can reflect back on it.

So one of the things I learned through this process, and I hired a coach for this part, actually, was the importance of outlining, which then leads to the first drafts. Can you share your outlining process, which and then as that transitions into the draft? Yeah, you know, it's funny being a speaker, it was another type of sneaky advantage. If the podcast and the other content were ways for me to really improve the content, the stories I was telling, you know, the insights and the way I articulated those insights or the things that were missing because I was getting feedback all the time. That was kind of like the meat. What about the bones, right? So that was the outline. and the outline actually pulled in some ways from speaking.

Because when you give a keynote, it's a very different type of speech than when you give a breakout. Like a keynote is very much meant to help you think better so you can apply it to many, many scenarios. Kind of like handing someone a compass. Whereas a breakout session is like, here's the map we all agree is important to us. We're only staying in this terrain during this breakout. And I'm about to draw you my directions on the map. So it's more limiting. It can be just useful, but it's more limiting.

So with a keynote, there's like a structure to. the keynotes I give. And so I use that for the book. It's kind of like, here's the goal we all share. Here's the status quo of how we're trying to come at that. Here are the problems with that status quo. And so the first two things are like, yep, I'm in agreement, Jay. Here's the, yep, that's the goal I have. Yep, that's how we're coming at it. Oh my gosh, I hadn't stopped to consider all the problems with the status quo. And now what do we do? We'll consider this thesis. Here's this like hidden truth. All right. Interesting. Hadn't considered it. Or maybe even I'm skeptical, what does this look like? All right, here's a featured story where I can show this to you

end to end. That's kind of like my death wish coffee featured story, like my signature story in the book and my speeches. And then you're like, okay, I get what it looks like. How do I do this? How do we enact this back in our world, wherever we're reading this from? Well, now let's go on this journey to find ourselves a process, a methodology, some heuristics, the science behind it, et cetera. And then you have this like the meat of the book beyond that. So it's kind of like I took my speech, took my podcast content. tried to figure out on an outline, like, how it all fit together. But because I had that framework, I was able to chunk it a lot more easily.

I like the style and the manner of the way you think about it. I think especially with those questions and how it relates to the keynote. For me, I think it was just having so much content, right? Where do we go? And so the importance of an outline for me was helping me, helping create some sort of direction. so when I sat down to write, okay, I know I'm speaking about, okay, for example, this, this is on hiring for the members, hiring members of your team, right? So that would, that would flow in a part of the outline. I needed to get an overall framework for where I was going to parachute into and play that day, right?

Because, because if not, you're just going to start writing down random thoughts that whatever is hitting you, as opposed to being a little bit more intentional about what you're talking about. what you're thinking about. It'll help with your research as well. So for me, I had to really, and again, I hired this out. I hired someone to help me create my outline to get all the topics in first. Now, the book ended up being a bit different, but that outline at least got me steered. I would say help steer me in the right direction as I sat down to write and be more focus on a specific area.

So we could share, maybe even the show notes, like what some of that looks like. or if you have any specific examples of if someone, let's say they just want to become a better writer or they want to write blog posts or something, is there an outlining like quick 30, 30, 60 seconds that you have on ideas around outlining for someone, even if they're not writing a book? Oh, you have to think about that. To me, and this goes to a later question, which is like, what's something I enjoyed the most that most people would look at me and go, you're kind of a freak, Jay. It's the writing process. It's the actual thing. I just loved it.

And so I think I get away with a little bit less outlining than some because I really, this feels like my vocation. I love to write. And that feels like, it's funny, I ran cross country in high school. And as a sport, I was doing the punishment of other sports, right? Like running was the sport. I played basketball, too. When I played basketball, the punishment was running.

Nobody wanted to just straight up run. But yet I did that the season prior as a sport. And I feel like that's me with writing. Like a lot of people in a lot of functions write. and some do it for fun and some do it for email and because they have to or internally or it's part of their job as marketers or whatever. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. It's not this necessary evil. It's the thing for me. So I am a freak. I don't think you should go based on my outlining process. I think that's interesting because I'm not that way. I needed it because I was I was trying to

write this book for really a couple years. And I think having a bunch of random thoughts that weren't really structured in any way, shape, or form is why there wasn't a book earlier. And I think now, looking back, I'm happy. I'm glad because I'm in a better place with better ideas and thoughts that are unique to share than I was two years ago. But that's the primary reason why, because there was no format or it was just a bunch of random thoughts. And you can't, no, books aren't going to be useful if they're just a bunch of random

thoughts. There's got to be some sort of purpose behind it and some structure to make it make you keep turning the page and to make it useful for the reader. So I think we're a little different in that regard, which is good because it shows the difference in our processes. Okay, the second part, I did. Well, Ryan, I just want to make sure I did work with somebody to create what's called a book treatment, which is essentially like, here's like the statements of like, this is what the book is about and who it's for and why I'm writing it. And here's like a rough outline of the chapter breakdown. And then I went to all of my content across that two-year journey or however long it actually was. And I basically like scanned it all. And I was like,

yes, this is potentially in the book. No, this is not. So I whittled down my backlog. I had this book treatment from working with this editor. His name is Josh Bernoff. He writes an amazing book called Writing Without Bullshit. And I use the book treatment as like the North Star. So there was this one asset that kind of became a pseudo outline for me. Gotcha. Okay. We talked about the role of our podcast. Do you have anything more to add? I mean, I think I hit on the benefit. fits of the podcast or you want to you want to jump to the next next topic no you know really quick the only thing that helped me um that i didn't mention was i used i still kind of do this but i used to really do it on an ongoing basis i would send invites to my listeners to do one-on-one video calls with me where i

would spend half the call asking questions to learn about them and then the second half trying to help them with whatever they wanted to talk about and if i didn't do that i probably would have written a book about like the creative part of content marketing because that's where my show started it was I just want to create a show about this because I'm interested in it. And more people need to care about it. And then I talk to listeners and I'm like, wait, you're not in marketing. You're an accountant. You're a CFO. You're a tech founder. And so the more I started doing these calls, the more the journey evolved. And I could basically start to explore what we all shared and try to find the thread, like the through line, if you will, that tied us all together as a community. And that became the book.

So the one-on-one video calls to me were the most transformative, I think, to creating a book that supersedes like what I've done professionally, like the LinkedIn bio that you'll find of me is like, oh, this guy worked in marketing. The book is not a marketing book. And it's because of those calls. Well, that sounds like a good idea, Jay. Last time we talked about the importance of hearing from our audience and how that's fuel for us. I would offer that up again. Ryan at Learning Leader, if you'd like to set up a call, I'd be happy to do a few of these. I think it would be fun. I think it's a good idea, too, to understand where your listeners are at. I think the aspects of my podcast that I'm most proud of is the caliber of people that

listen to it. I mean, some of the roles, I mean, we have military leaders overseas, CEOs of companies, amazing individual contributors making a difference in the lives of other people, moms, dads, everything. And I think that to me, Jay, I'm like, hey, what a good idea. So feel free, shoot me a note. I think that would be a fun thing to do is to set up a few calls. I'm not going to spend all day doing it.

I still need to be a creator and publish work. But I think that is a good idea. So I will steal that and offer it up to the people listening right now. Awesome. It's yours. Okay. So traditional publishing versus self-publishing versus hybrid publishing. So this is a little bit more inside baseball when it comes to book writing.

I had no clue about any of this before I got into studying the thought of writing a book. But I do think it is an interesting topic. So what are your thoughts on the different methodologies for publishing a book today? There is a use for gatekeepers, which is they provide arguably the same benefit as best practices in some regards, which is it's a shortcut to meaningful work. Right. Like, oh, you have a book with so-and-so. That must mean it's a good book because you got through the gatekeeper. I've been somebody who throughout my entire career, I'm sort of defined by side projects, by the lack of gatekeeper, by tinkering and learning and doing and building community. And so I just thought, okay, this is who I am. It's my first book.

And I also have a timeline that's rather quick. Maybe at some point I'll go the traditional route, but I went the hybrid route, which is essentially, rather than do every piece myself and upload it and package it and all that stuff, I provided a service with the entire somewhat completed manuscript. They did a final copy edit. I provided them with the design through an art director friend of mine. I even found my own editor to get to the completed manuscript and they took it home. So they basically made it into a book, did the ISBN number, all these details that I'm like, I don't want to be really good at that stuff. I want to be really good at teaching and inspiring and writing and creating and helping people

see and make a difference in what they do. So I need to invest more time into that and less time into the things that are more like ticking boxes of the pure self-published route. So I'm not saying you should write off the value of traditional publishers. my bias was I come out of marketing, I know how to distribute, I know how to promote, I know how to do that stuff better than most people in publishing. And I really, really want to be good at these things. So the rest of the list should go to people that are really, really good at that. And so that went, I went the hybrid route.

People who may not be aware, going the hybrid route can be somewhere between, let's say, buying your teenage child, their first beat up car to buying like a pretty damn nice used car. Like it is not the cheapest route to go. And, you know, you're not, I didn't write the book to make money. And we could talk about why I wrote the book and how it's helped my business. But I just want to overshare because I think there's this lack of understanding. It's a bit of a black box in what people tend to pay when they actually do publish a book. It's not something where you're doing it to get famous or make money. That's not why you should write a book.

Great point. So I want the traditional route. And there's a lot that goes into this. I was listening to, and I believe it was one of Coppulman's podcast with Seth Godin. And I was actually, this was years ago, but I was quite surprised. Seth, Brian, or I believe it was his show, was asking him, you probably get asked to blurb books, blurb, like, you know, write a little for those who haven't asked for book blurbs, right? Do you see the endorsements of famous people on books? I happen to have a number of them, which is another topic, Jay, for you and I to talk about where we've done different things.

But anyway, I heard Seth say, I will never blurb a book if it was self-published. I will only blurb traditionally published books. And I was really taken aback. That was surprising to hear. But I would be lying. I say it didn't have impact on me. And so part of my process was I wanted to create leverage for myself and I wanted to have options. And deep down, if I'm being completely honest, I wanted to see if I could write something

good enough that one of the big houses would say, yes, we will pay you a book advance and we will take care of everything when it comes to publishing your book. In a way, as someone who, before this, was not an author, was more of a speaker and a podcaster. I thought that in a way would make me feel, I guess, and again, I hate admitting this, maybe a little bit more legitimate. The fact that I could get a traditional book deal like a lot of the people I've had on my show where they pay you in advance before you even get the book done. And then when you turn it in, you get another part of that advance. And certainly we can talk about the financials on the back end of the amount of books I have

to sell before I start out earning my advance. But I at least wanted to see if people, if I could do it. it. But then, but I wasn't guaranteed. I told my book agent, this literary agent, Jim Levine, who is an incredible literary agent. I told Jim, I'm not going to, I'm not promising you that I'm going to accept an offer, but I do want to see if I could get some. And so he goes, okay, I understand. So we put it up for bid and we got a few offers. And he goes, I think you should, at minimum, you should talk to some of the lead editors from these companies. And the first one that I had a call with, and I remember, because I was in the car driving home from Chicago, my wife.

and I had just seen the show Hamilton. We were driving home the next day. And Casey Ebro, one of the senior editors at McGrawl Hill, called me. And we talked for half of that drive home for me, which is a couple hours on the phone together. And she had read everything I'd written from the very first word to the last word of that proposal. And that was a giant proposal and just got it. And she loved it. And I thought, I don't care if there's no advance.

I don't want to say this publicly because maybe the next. next one, Casey, you'll be like, great, we don't have to give you an advance. But I didn't care if there was no advance. I was going to write that book with Casey. That was, I told Miranda, my wife, right, and I hung up, I go, I'm going with Casey. I know there are some other offers. They may even be higher. It doesn't matter.

I'm going with them because of her. And so really, for me, it was about building a relationship with someone that just really got it and understood what I was trying to do. And so that's why I decided. And now, you know, I have the copies in hand. and it's beautiful and I'm very proud of it. And Casey was a big reason for the, for I think the success at least of,

or at least the fact that I believe the work is very high quality. And I would say that's, that's why I decided to say, yes, I'm going to go that route. Because I built a relationship with an incredible writer and editor who was not afraid at all to put me in my place on a regular basis by marking the thing to death. When I got the first one back, I remember thinking like, oh my goodness. I don't think,

she probably thinks I can't even write. The whole thing was marked up. And I actually got a text from Zvi band. I don't know if you know Zvi. He was a CEO of Contactually. He's been on my show a few times. And Zvi text me and he said, hey dude, I worked with Casey as well. She's the greatest. But don't be alarmed when your first draft is marked up to death. That's just that's just the way it goes. And I said, you know what, I'm grateful because it's going to be better. And I called Casey and told her that. I said, I'm grateful. I think it's going to be a lot better. And it is. It's a lot better because of the work that she did. So that is, I know it's a long answer, but I know that's why I want that traditional route. Yeah. I wish this brings to mind, like, I wish we would

stop saying I'd like to write a book or I'd like to host a podcast. If we'd all be a lot better off and happier, if we knew what it was actually like, we should start saying, I'd like to edit a book. I'd like to edit a podcast because that's actually the work. It was actually the real work. Oh, my goodness. It's putting down a lump of amorphous, uncertain stuff, and shaping it into something great. And Neil Gaiman likes to say, the second draft is like making it look like you knew what you were doing all along. So I love that you had, I had my editor, Jordan Tiker.

Jordan is a phenomenal freelance writer. He's the editor-in-chief at Contently, which is a software company, but he's written for the Wall Street Journal and the ringer and places I admire the New Yorker. And he helped me edit. And, oh, boy, was that a blow? the old ego. As somebody who has who wanted total control, and that's why another reason I self-published or hybrid published, I wanted total control.

Oh my. Getting a real professional writer and editor like that on board for someone who thinks he's a writer, that'll eat, you'll be eating humble pie. Let me tell you. But in a way, I don't know about you. Like, I loved it though. Because all I saw, what I was thinking, and I printed out and showed it

to my wife, remember, I said, my book's going to be so much better. It's going to be so much better because of this. And so I was very grateful. I still am. And yeah, it was just a pretty remarkable to see the first draft, which I still have to now what's in the book. Yeah, it's a lot better.

It's a lot better. So, okay. We're in the back third. We should go to superlatives. Okay, okay. Here we go. Okay. Why don't you take superlatives?

Go ahead. Okay. Yeah. This is when I came up with. What's the platitude about writing, whether it's books or, you know, even just general creativity, but the platitude you found most true during this process and least true. Okay, can I tell a quick story for the most true real quick?

I'll try to make a quick. You always get me talking longer than any other person I talk to. So I went up to Columbus, Ohio. Miranda and I went to Columbus, Ohio to have dinner with James and Christy Clear, James's wife. James Rodotomic Habits sold 1.1 million copies in the first 51 weeks. Blue my mind, right? He writes at his website, James Clear.com. So anyway, I build a friendship because we live within an hour of each other.

And I did a live show with James once. And so we were going back to have dinner. And we were sitting down and I was telling Christy that I was working on a book. And I had not sold my proposal yet. And she was like, oh. And she's literally one of the sweetest people on the planet. It's like as good as it gets. And I remember she looked at me and she goes, well, what time do you write every day?

And I kind of stopped for a second. And I didn't really know what to say. I go, you know, stuttering. What do you mean? And she just goes, oh, I just know, you know, James writes every day. And, you know, people who write books write every day. And, but she didn't say it like in a mean way. She said like the most kind and sweet way ever, but just matter of fact.

And it really, like, I played it cool like at the dinner, right? I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah. You know, but I was thinking, oh, my gosh, like, I'm not a writer. I don't write every day. and it actually set me on like a path of having a calendar and accountability partner of putting down the number of words I would write a day. And it all started with that conversation with James and Christy where basically the gist of that story is writers write. Writers write and they write every day. And so I know that's been said before,

but that is one that I absolutely believe and I felt it like deep inside when those words were said to me by one of the sweetest people ever. And so I think that's that's the most for me. How about you? I love hearing that. When I played basketball in school, it was shoot or shoot. I was that scrawny white guy who played defense and shot threes. So I love writers right. Yeah.

The most true to me, the most true platitude, I heard the host of Radio Lab, which is one of my all-time favorite podcast, Jad Abamrod. He once said that telling these stories the way he tells them, they're very layered, very complex, very nuanced. It's like trying to find your way through a jungle. And eventually you end up finding your way out and it feels so good. But while you're in it, it never feels like there's a way out. And every episode I ever shipped of unthinkable, every episode I ship of my current podcast, three clips, every episode I share of client shows and certainly everything I wrote for the book. There was a lot of that. Even the things that I was treading over a second or third time, it always felt like I can't see the way out.

Like when I finish it, I'm like, is this awesome? is this terrible? I don't know. For the first time ever I felt that way. And so that was a cliche that I always written off. I'd always written off. But I saw it in spades with my podcast and I saw it with a whole deck of cards when I wrote the book. Okay.

Lease True. So this one's a little tough for me. But again, I mentioned it briefly earlier on. Some of the advice I've gotten from some really good writers were you basically have to put everything else on hold and not necessarily go off in a cabin. although some do, but put everything else on hold and write and do nothing but write your book. And for me, that just was not realistic. I was giving a bunch of keynotes. I was working with clients.

I was running leadership circles all while doing this. And I will say doing that made the book better, specifically when I think about the Q&As in my leadership circles, as well as on stage. And even as we've talked about before, on the side of the stage afterwards, the questions you're asked from people, those can be really helpful. At least they were for me, prompts to think about. So I'd immediately go back to my hotel room and write down some of the questions and write down some of my answers and better answers than I gave to them sometimes. And they would create ideas for me that maybe would get injected into the book. And so for me, the least true was that you have to go away and do nothing but write that part of it. And I know that probably is true for some, but for me that is not true.

Amen. Wasn't true for me at all. I was running a business. I was speaking. I was doing multiple clients podcasts as a host and a producer. not true at all. The least true for me was there's this platitude of being a bestselling author. I've even seen some authors who I know I've never actually made a list that is the best selling author list and they will put in their Twitter bio bestselling author. It's just become really cheap and

people who are in the industry know you can bulk purchase books, you, your organization, whomever and that rockets you up the lists. So I don't value that list personally, but others seem to. So why would I play into that? Like why would I need to feel like, this is only a success if it's a best-selling book. I'm a good selling author and I'm proud of it. But here's the thing. So don't write a book to be a best-selling author. Write a book because you think it has to exist. And I guarantee you if that's true, you will agonize over it, you will care about it, you will find the space in your life to write it. You will find your voice and share it, say something meaningful and try to shift the culture in a positive way. And the things like sales and acclaim to me, those are byproducts. I don't think the word great exists when you're a creator of something. That's for someone else to assign to you.

There is no such thing as great. And if you assume the role of a writer or an author, that's what you're thinking. There's no such thing as great here. There's only better. So I want to get better with every draft. I want to get better with every day. I want to get better with everything I write. And to me, that shifted my view of what a book really is because it's not the start of something.

It's not like now I have this sellable product. I like what Seth Godin talks about where he says a nonfiction book in particular is a souvenir of the idea. The real work is, he said something about getting the idea out there consistently, right? It's not a secret. It's not bottled up in the book. It's not like I'm giving you just enough so you'll buy it. I'm sharing everything and anything because I want this to exist. I want to help shift the culture for the better. So that's honestly why I wrote the book. And there's a little bit of fetishism around the idea of bestselling and I can't stand it. Really good stuff. You know you're speaking my language with all the better talk. That's

I love it. Okay. Most used, do you want me to go first? You want to go first? Most useful habit or routine? Okay. Yeah, most useful habit. Okay.

I'm going to just choose one. I had a few about writing in the morning and candles and all this stuff, but I'll bypass that one. The one I'll say, though, is that I actually learn a lot through talking. Shocker, considering that I record a podcast for a living. But so what I would. do because I understand this about myself is that I would regularly ask people that were very close to me to sit in a room with me, usually for hours. And a lot of them, we did record these, by the way.

I don't think I'll ever release them, but we did record them. And they're usually with a smart person who was willing to be hard on me. And so I'll name a few of them. One of them was my dad. He was incredibly helpful through this process of just regularly creating prompts. And then I would ask them some questions and then he would get me going and then I would jot notes and I would type some notes. And by the end of those sessions, I'd have a bunch of notes. Another one though, and this is what I think could be helpful for other people is that my friend Lance Salyers, who I met when I worked at Lexus Nexus, we'd always have these sessions where we'd be in one of I'd be in his office or he'd be in mine and he'd be up on the board writing and we'd

should be talking about ideas and ways to make the organization better. Lance is a former prosecutor. So his role in life for 10 years, more than a decade, was to be persuasive. And I think great writers are persuasive. And so he would be very hard on me and push on me about my ideas to ensure that they were persuasive enough to go into the book. And then he'd ask me these really helpful questions and then follow-up questions that forced me to go deeper. And so I would sit in the room with a few of my friends, usually one or two. They'd ask me questions. I would jot notes. I would type notes. And then after the sessions were over, usually take a nap. But then after that, I would go back to my computer by myself and then just dump everything out based upon the prompts, the

ideas, the things we were talking about, and then edit that after the fact. And that became a very useful process for me to get what was in my head down on the page and then worry about editing later. Love that. That's such a good answer. My habit, I was living in Queens at the time. I live in Cambridge now. I was living in Queens. There was a coffee shop. down the street called Queens Room. Shout out Queens Room. As Charles Barkley likes to say, nobody gets free pub. I'm giving Queens Room free pub. So Queens Room down the street from my apartment about two blocks away. Every Thursday, that was writing day, period. I'd spend a ton of time in Queens Room, but it didn't matter where. I would write all day on Thursday. But my goal would

then be two mornings, aside from Thursdays, I would be the first one at Queens Room when it opened. I'd get the same drink. I'd sit in the same chair, and I'd write until I felt like I was really like struggling. And some days that was 11 and some days that was one. I forgot to eat lunch. It was basically like I'm going to write until. And then I'd take a break and get back to the rest of my work. So that was the most helpful routine. To those listening, I would add this. And this is really kind of like reflecting on my own book, break the wheel. It doesn't matter what best practice you use part all, none. What matters is you find the best approach for you. This is what worked for me and Ryan, but it's really easy to feel process shamed. It's like, I don't have a

that thing or he said that the ultimate truth is X, Y, or Z, and it sounded super pithy and tweetable. That doesn't mean it's the truth for you. So I just want to throw that out. We're talking a lot like this is gospel. It is absolutely not. It's about finding things that work best for you. Perfect.

Okay. I'll hit a couple more of these. What's the pros of do you want to hit other ones? We got a lot written down here. We'll just hit a few of them, I think. Let's go. Can we do one to two sentences each? That's our biggest challenge is podcasters.

You know, man, that is close to. impossible. I will try, but I'm not going to promise that. Okay, go ahead. Most, most surprising lesson. I'll go first. Most surprising lesson. How ineffectual all these like social media graphics that share quotes are actually like very little engagement, very little people who do engage. I was about ready to start creating all these things, man. Are you serious? No, biggest. biggest waste of time. Really? It's a best practice. Yeah. It's so visible. Everyone does it. Biggest waste of time ever. Okay. My lesson is completely different. What my lesson is was, is that I

don't think you fully realize what you don't know until you try to write in depth about something. That's why I need, I would bring in other people. So for me, I think writing really forces you to be clear on what you believe. And so sitting down saying, I'm going to write about this specific topic, forces clarity of thought.

And also at times can be really frustrating because you're like, what do I have to say about this that is useful? So that was probably, I was, I guess I was a little bit surprised because I thought I know everything here and and I realized that I didn't as I started writing. I'm going to I'll accept the answer only because it was three sentences, but there was one run on in that. So just, you know, shape up. Hawk. Shape up. Okay. All right. What's next? All right. Hardest part. You go first. Uh, um, hating myself after reading some of my first drafts. Honestly, like, it sounds really bad. But I mean, legitimately thinking, am I going to have to pay their money back? Is this good? Is this original enough?

And you just got to get through it. You have to get through it. And I always, not always, but most of the time I did. But yeah, like having this thought of that, I'm not good enough at parts during it was the hardest part for me. I want someone to respond to my hardest part answer with like such positive, oh my God, right type answer. Because I just need the catharsis.

So, but this is very specific to folks who have done anything big like a book or anything that takes a while, I should say, not big. the hardest part for me is what happens to the material after you publish it. So like right now, as we speak, I wish I could go back and rewrite it or I wish I could do my interview with you about the book for the first time again because I've continued to talk about this stuff. I've continued to think about it. So it's better now. My walk to the coffee shop, a new idea will pop to mind. Like, it's better now, right? So the idea lives on well past the book. That's why the book is a souvenir, according to that Seth Godin quote. But I would be way better at writing this book right now.

And I'm better when I appear on a podcast to talk about. I'm better on stages. Like it's just, you continue to live with it and shape it and mold and go deeper and deeper. And that's what's hard or hardest. You know it was helpful for me and I actually was fortunate. I did the audio read for my book. So if you buy it on audible eyebooks or any place you get to listen to the book, which I know that's a lot more common now, especially probably people who listen to podcasts. I actually changed parts of my book after reading it out loud. I had never read it out loud until that moment. So I'm sitting in a room in a studio with these audio engineers, multiple people watching me read my book.

And I would stop. I would take a picture. I would send it to Casey from Ebro at McGrawl Hill and say, Casey, when I get home tonight, I'm going to change this part. And I go, please tell me we have some time. And fortunately, we did. So I don't know, just a side note for anyone writing. Read your work out loud. It is hard, but it also was helpful.

So just to just a side note. Yes. Best advice on writing I've ever received, ever. Yeah. Okay. Let's do, do you want to go with the story, best story from the book or what do you think? No, you want to go something else?

Let's do something else. Let me hit that one real quick. I was sending some of my stories to others throughout the course of writing the book. And I'm not going to share the whole story. but what I will say is I got feedback. Again, I'm fortunate to build relationships with podcast guests. I hate feeling like I'm name dropping. But I send the book to people who have been on my show.

And it's like first draft stages. And I remember I was in Hilton. You can name drop. You can name job. It was the guy named Jay, Akonzo. It's awkward. It's super awesome. Yes.

So I was at Hilton Head, actually. We were on vacation. And I got an email back from Ryan Holiday. And it said, dude, why is your best story? on page 45. It should be on page one. And I remember I called him and I said, what do you mean? He goes, he goes, that keeps me turning the page, but you dumped it in the middle of the book.

So I would just say I did move it to the beginning of the book because of that email and that phone call. So anyway, that's just an interesting story about the process of writing. Okay. What's another one you want to hit? I like, we did the hardest part. What about the easiest part for you that others might have said would be hard? So this is definitely the one I was going to skip. This is of your rundown you sent me.

This is the only one where I have no notes. I'm just speaking truth. I honestly, I don't know if any part of it was easy. So you're going to have to take the whole, you're going to have to brunt this answer for both of us because I was trying to think of like, what was really easy that other people thought was hard? I'm not there yet. I don't know. Okay. Okay.

Asking me to fill time. Dangerous proposition, my friend. Dangerous. I'll run with that. So, no, I think what this speaks to, I'm going to try and see if this is your answer. Let's see if we could do this here. Could be. You, maybe it's so obvious that you didn't notice it.

You knew what you were exploring. Like, you were doing the work to explore it for years, for 300 plus podcast episodes, for speech after speech, email after email, tweet after tweet. Like, you immersed yourself in this. You went on a journey of understanding, which made you somebody worth following into this domain. versus what I see, I think entirely too much, which is, well, I did this personally, so you should do this too. And I think that's a really, really, really inefficient way and really insufficient way of writing a nonfiction book, which is basically like, it worked for me. Clearly, it'll work for you. Maybe something that happened to you tips you onto the journey of discovery and exploration and research.

But that was something you were just living day to day. So to me, that's really hard for people to do. What do I want to explore and how? And the hard part is not even just the selection of those topics, but the getting going in that direction. Like tipping from not acting to acting, like trying to come up with the idea of theory to, I have no idea. It's like the headphones in your pocket with the wire that gets all tangled when you take it out. The only way to figure this stuff out is just start pulling and prodding and poking and pushing and eventually it gets nice and smooth and you get what you wanted. But the only way to solve that puzzle is you just got to start trying to start trying.

trying stuff. And you've been doing that for years. Well, I appreciate that. I think what's, the interesting thing about that is, is again, I was just really following what I was most curious about. And I think, I don't know if that was easy, but it was just, it just what I wanted to do, right? And I think that's why it's important as you. And I had to, I had to kind of mature and grow up a little bit to figure that out. But, but for me, this kind of journey of following what I'm most curious and passionate about was kind of what, like, the reason outside of my family, it was like the reason to wake up every day. It's what I was thinking about the most outside of them.

And so, yeah, I guess it became just a natural part of my being and still is. It's still my favorite thing to do, Jay, in the world is to have a long form conversation with an intelligent, thoughtful person who can tell good stories. It's my favorite thing to do, which is this, right? Podcasting is still, after all these years, my favorite thing to do and then trying to deconstruct and distill that to its essence and then share that whether it's on another podcast or in the form of a book that that is just man like it really you can probably tell like that's what gets me going daily i love it and it is something i think is very hard for many very many people where you said you followed your curiosity you said i just

followed my curiosity yeah well you take away that just and that's how a lot of people feel because you were willing to act as if as if this is important enough to follow you that you're as if you were the person to do it, as if the things you were publishing were worth your time, there's a lot of things you were doing that maybe came naturally or maybe over time became habit that I think it is difficult. And people would look at you and be like, wow, how'd you do that? And it came easy to you. So kudos to you.

And I already mentioned mine, which is just I like to write. And the writing process sucks for so many people. So we can skip mine because yours was such a good answer. I just don't want to follow that up. Well, my answer was your answer. Oh, that's why I think that's a good answer. Yeah, of course. Right, right.

I think you told me on one of these that we did together that flattery will get you very far. So I remember that. And it's true. So actually, do you have, I do want to share my editor's favorite part. I've talked about her a lot on this show. Do you have one that you want to share or you want me to go? You know, I don't have an editor's favorite part. How about this?

Since I come out of the marketing world and I've been doing, like my book's been in a while longer than yours because congratulations, it's now live for you. So I'll do my superlative around the most effective promotional approach. Okay. And you can do the one around your editor or publisher's favorite part. Okay. Okay. So why don't we start with yours? Casey told me, and she wrote this in a note, which was cool to see and then called me afterwards and says,

my job is to read nonfiction business books for a living. I've been doing it for many years. So I've read hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these types of books. chapter six what's under the the section titled you have to do all three i've never read anything like it and it's the it's impacting me greatly and in fact i'm going to use it in my life that is great and if we could if it wouldn't completely mess up the structure of the book i would put that at the very beginning that's how much i believe in that part and uh i just want to make sure you know that So normally we wouldn't put what I think is such a compelling part that is useful and practical for the reader at that part of the book.

But we have to based on the structure. But you should just know that. And I would talk to people about that. So I'm not going to go into it. But in chapter six, a section titled, you have to do all three is my editor who reads business books for a living, her most useful and favorite part of the book. I love that. You know I'm going to sell a little bit here, Jay. Like, we are teasing.

We're selling. We're doing our part. But it's true. 100% true. I'll post the email if I need to. But it is, I know we all trust each other. But it was very, the reason I share and I'm excited about it is because it was very meaningful for me to hear that. Because you know how it is.

Like you put your ideas, ideas out there. It, you know, you just, you just don't know. You're just not certain how they're going to be received. And so when someone who tells me, I've read more business books than anybody you're going to meet in your life says, that part is really good. That was a meaningful day for me. Okay. So this brings me back to the organization that I run marketing showrunners.

We always say that we want to help marketers build their audience's favorite show. So podcast or video, it doesn't matter, favorite show, to be their favorite brand. But the reason we're talking about the word favorite is when you're putting something out in the world, somebody should find something about it that either in that moment or the entire project, they're like, that's one of of my favorites ever according to every list on every media like whether it's for a specific purpose favorite career book whether it's a medium favorite book favorite chapter um something in there should fall under wow that's my favorite because i think a lot of times when you create media of any kind you focus on reach and what we actually should be focusing on is resonance and so i love that you told me a story of resonance because there's too many authors appearing in too many places including

their own shows and they're hyping the numbers and you are hyping this like hidden moment that's that speaks volumes about you and I'm just so happy to hear that that's actually something that happened cool thank you most effective promote I'm gonna learn here I'm curious because I have some ideas but what's most effective promote I assume it's the tweets with a little uh quotes from your book right all the dozens and dozens I did know so that I did one before and one after so the thing I did before is I created a gum road landing page it could be any kind of tool I make no money by saying gum road, but gum road where you could basically create a landing page and people could submit pre-orders before the book was ready. And it was the largest single lump sum of sales

that was sold through any one channel aside from bulk book orders coming through my speaking engagements. But my lesson there was that the book is a culmination. It's kind of the final gift to folks who had been on the journey with me all along. So it was, you know, looking at who that was, It was people who follow me on social media, but people I knew, like people I'd engage with online or offline or both. People from my email list, long-time podcast subscribers. It was this event that it was like, hey, we've been on this journey for a while and here's kind of like where I think we're at.

This is like the mountain peak that we've reached. Now what you find after you publish one book is you're on a mountain range, not one mountain. But it's like, okay, we just went through this jungle together. Now we're at the peak. We can sort of seek more clearly. And here is this final thing. Let's enjoy the view for a moment. So that was something I did. It was like the pre-launch, you know, I did some signed copies and some

stickers and notebooks and things like that. After launch, instead of trying to like hype for reach, I decided who can I just go really deep with one-to-one? And I created about 50 to 60 gratitude videos where I just strung up some landing pages in MailChimp really easily, same template for everybody. But I customized the language on it. And I filmed like really quick, like either on my phone when I was walk into a coffee shop or on my laptop if I had a batch session scheduled, thank you videos. Like, hey, Ryan, like, I can't thank you enough. Like, you saw in me the ability to have a great conversation. You thought my insights were worth coming on your show that one time.

I can't thank you enough, right? And I would, like, expand on that a little bit. And I just did 50 to 60 of those. And forget if they shared it with other people, just the responses I got and the relationships that I maintained and or deepened, that alone was worth it, right? And gratitude is one of the best ways to experience happiness in your life as actual science and studies show. And so that was one way for me to practice a gratitude exercise. So I just felt great too.

So that was the thing I did after the launch. And it was, yeah, it's like if I didn't have the book, I almost wish I'd done that sooner. I love it. That's something to jot down notes. By the way, just my one quick pre-launch for the last six months, we've been building a launch team. And these are all people are listening right now. They're listeners of the show that have opted in and they get an early copy of the book. And their whole mission is to, we're working to create an army of learning leaders to go out there and spread this message one person at a time.

Word of mouth marketing, as good as it gets, right? A true, honest referral to say this will help you. And so those hundreds of people that have opted in for that that have signed up to say, yes, I will do this. I'm so grateful for them. and I know a lot of them are listening right now. It's go time, right? Like now it's like the real go time to really spread the message to get it out there for everybody to share why this could be useful for them for my new book. So great stuff, Jay.

Okay, you want to hit a few of the parts in the, I guess the C block of your outline here when it comes to ways that we could, some things that could be helpful. Hopefully the whole thing has been helpful, but maybe some things more specific to people listening. that they could implement right now to help them out? Yeah, I think let's start with this. The creation process for me, and you could insert writing if that's the way you create, but making stuff for me has always been about finding the answers, not sharing the answers.

And yes, sometimes if you read something for me, it's like this guy has this one question answered, thank you. But I assure you it's because what you didn't see was 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 different times, however many, thousands of times, if you want to go that far back in my career, like I was trying to figure this out, right? Or I was writing. And I think so often in the workplace,

or even just solo in our own careers, we want to gather up all the answers we think we need to justify acting, whereas I think it's far better to act to find your answers. And so if you're thinking about writing a book, a blog, a newsletter, I think position yourself as,

this is an exercise. This is my constant self-improvement process of showing up, doing the work, finding and honing my voice, and yes, eventually I'd like this to maybe shift the culture. But if you start with, I have this grand aspiration, it's very easy. I'm not saying this will happen, but it's very easy now to start looking sideways at everybody else, start disassociating yourself and what you can do from others because they're on step 700 and you're on step one or zero, right? So for me, that's how I always orient. And I have this writing ritual where on my phone, on my laptop in gap time. I punch out really short blog posts three to five times a week. And sometimes

I'll pick one thing and I'm like, I don't understand that well. Why does this happen in the workplace? And I'm just going to write random thoughts on it over and over again. And sometimes it's just all over the place. But it's just this commitment to yourself, not to others, to yourself to show up on a recurring basis and to keep striving for better. So again, instead of trying to get the theory right, then make the thing, I would just start making the thing. And you'll be so shocked and grateful for deep the well actually goes. How is that, I've been reading your base, close to a daily blog type writing, how has that impacted you, whether it's from response or just your own internal thoughts from publishing so frequently, how has it impacted you? Oh my goodness. Well, first of all,

I always feel like I have a better day when I write. If I've written something and put it out into the world, I'm like, check in the box, I did my job today, right? I showed up. It's not like I'm in the mood or things were perfect or this is the greatest thing I've ever written. It's like I did my job. To me, that's what being a professional writer means. Real quick, I'll interrupt. Saying that my brother and I and AJ, he would say this to me frequently and it really impact me and it's very simple, but he would say it's easy to work out when you feel good.

But we got to work out every day. That's part of what I, as a professional athlete, that's part of his mantra. But in college, we would say that to each other because we had a rule that. that we weren't going to not have fun in college, but we were never not going to show up to the first workout the next morning, no matter what. So if you wanted to go out and have a good time and do what you do when you're in college, we were going to be at the 5 a.m. lift. Not because we felt good.

Oftentimes we didn't, because that's what we do. And I think that's very similar, Jay, to yours is that you don't necessarily feel like it every day, but that's a part of who you are, right, is that you're going to do that. You're the type of person that is thoughtful and is going to write on a regular basis because it's hard. Most people aren't able to do it. The consistency part is really hard to continue to do. Right.

And look, there's a million ways to learn. I learn best by trying stuff and doing and reflecting back on what I've tried. And so, and then supplementing that with consuming smart or inspirational things, like,

you know, as an incremental improvement to what I'm doing, but the fundamentals always been making. And if you think of like, this is kind of a weird analogy, but like there's some video games that I used to play as a child that the map of the video game,

You're playing Zelda and you're exploring a medieval-looking area. The map starts out as all in shadow, and you're in this one region, which you can actually see. And the more you play the game, the more you poke around and explore, the map starts to become colored. There's light shed on more parts of the map until you can see more clearly. You can see more things. And I feel like that to me is how I feel when I write these little blog posts. If writing is exploring, I essentially give myself the ability to take a lot more steps and to shed light on more of the map. And eventually what's going to happen is either I'm going to run out a room exploring a specific topic and I'll move on and get a new map or if the map here and the analogy is just everything I could possibly explore, I'm going to die. And I'm going to, however much progress I made, that's what I made. And it's like, oh my God, if that's the case, well, I better get going today, right? That we have a finite number of time here. Like, I better actually use that time. So writing is exploring to me. It's not saying I've explored and here's the answer.

Writing is the ultimate exercise to help you find clarity. No doubt. Think about it. It really helps you understand what you believe, what you think by writing, by getting it down on the page. And this is why it could be useful for anybody, especially people who are in leadership positions. It is very important that you understand what you believe and what you think that you have clarity of thought. So create that for yourself by writing. You don't have to publish it.

But that leads to my next point that I think the future of networking is not going to be conferences. It's not necessarily going to be meeting people in person all the time. I think it's going to be publishing your work online. David Perel and James Clear talk a lot about this right now. I love both of the pieces that they regularly publish. But writing or publishing great work, and I felt this mainly through podcasting, But publishing great work is the ultimate networking tool. You attract the type of people, assuming it's excellent work, you attract the type of people that you want to be around.

And so I would urge people, that's another reason why it's worth it to work on this skill. Because if you're regularly publishing good work, people are going to say, that Jayakundo is kind of interesting. I saw what he was writing about. I want to talk to him. And so all of a sudden now you're attracting the type of people that you want to attract because you've had the good. guts to publish your work to be judged by all. And I think that is the ultimate form of networking. I think it's currently that way and I think it will be even more moving forward.

My challenge to people is to find not the writing routine, the blog post, the big idea. Like, again, there's, there are some ways that this could all come across as process shaming. And I am acutely aware, like, when I hear a writer who has sold a ton of books or written a ton or someone I admire, it's like, well, I'm not them. and it tends to, it's easy to spiral in a negative direction. And so what my challenge is to people is, so the feeling I have when I'm writing on my personal block, because this is what works for me, is the same feeling I have when I curl up into the corner of my couch and put on a show at the end of a long day with a snack

and a cup of tea or a nice glass of wine or something like that. It's just like, this is my cozy corner hidden from the world. It's truly, and now it's insane to say that because it's public and everything I do is public and it's part of my business. But to me, I have this little carved out niche where I could care less about anybody else. And it's all about that one moment and that feeling that like this is for me. Ah, how great is this? So my challenge to people is not to copy any of the things Ryan or I are saying, but to think about what is my cozy little corner of this here internet or career, even if it's private, not on the internet, that I can just return to day after day after day. Man, this is great.

I think we're getting better. What do you think? I've just so enjoyed both the opportunity to speak to you talking to the listener here and to you, Ryan, and also the ability to hear how people have been affected positively by the things we're saying. So, you know, my overture to everybody is as you make progress on any of this stuff, please close a loop, like tweet me, Ryan, Ryan gave you his email. You know, what we want to do is continue to have an impact here, even though we do have fun just doing this selfishly for us. Like, we're trying to serve. And so please close the loop and let us know how we're doing on that. You know, Jay, Scott Belski told me on my show that he tries to surround

himself and sometimes hire people who are more interesting each time he has a conversation with them. And that is absolutely true with you. And so I just want to thank you for that, man, that each time we talk, text, even if we're not recording, each time we talk, you're a more interesting person. And I love surrounding myself with those types of people because it makes for an interesting life. And I loved how the Scott put that. And I think it's, it's something for all of us to strive to is like, what could I do? What could my daily actions be if I was working to be a more interesting person every day? And one of the ways to do that is to be interested, right? Interested in who you're talking to and the topics that you're studying, the places you travel.

I think that is a great way. And so anyway, Jay, thank you, man. I just really appreciate all of our conversations. I am better because of it. And let's let's keep, let's keep doing these, man. Well, I'm sure we'll, uh, well, let's request some feedback from our listeners here and, and we'll figure out what the next topic is. But certainly this one is timely based upon my book coming out this week. I thank you. That was incredible to hear and thank you. Uh, and to everyone listening, go pick up Ryan's book. He's doing meaningful work. He is showing up. He's, he is to me, the consummate service-minded leader and, uh, somebody that I, I, I, I, have long admired. So, you know, first of all, congratulations, my friend. And second of all,

let's O'Gall all go support, not just Ryan, but I think this movement that Ryan is trying to build that we're all a part of and can contribute to as well. So if a visionary is someone who, who asks the big question and goes on the journey, not somebody who has all the answers. Ryan has certainly been living that for years and years. And we can all pick up our own machetes, so to speak, and go hacking away in the jungle with Ryan. So I think we should do that. I think an important tool is his book. So that's my plug for going and picking it up right now. Thank you, man. Until next time. We'll see you.

As you can probably tell, I absolutely love those conversations with my friend Jay Akunza. We will continue to do them. Thank you for all of your emails and great support for these types of conversations where we take a specific topic and go in-depth discussing our process for doing it. And obviously there's no better time to talk about the writing process than this week with my book, Welcome to Management is coming out. And thank you for all of your support. So many of you have emailed me about already pre-ordering it for, I'm just, I feel so much

gratitude for you to support me without even fully knowing what's in it that you say, no, I believe in it. I'm going to pre-order it. I'm spreading the message. It means so much to me that you do that. And it also means a lot to me that you are regularly spreading the word, telling one person at a time about the power and benefit of the learning leadership. I just want to again say thank you for that.

It juices me up to see those recommendations and emails from all of you that it makes me want to keep getting better and better at it to provide value for you. And because I get to follow my genuine curiosity and obsessions with great rigor, I will forever be grateful for you. So thank you so much. It's a big week. Talk with you next week. Can't wait.