The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 475: Chandler Bolt - The Life Changing Process Of Writing A Book... (How You Can Do It Right Now)

Episode Date: June 5, 2022

Text Hawk to 66866 to become part of "Mindful Monday." You along with 10's of thousands of other Learning Leaders will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right... Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com Twitter/IG: @RyanHawk12    https://twitter.com/RyanHawk12 Chandler Bolt is an investor, advisor, the CEO of Self-Publishing School & SelfPublishing.com, and the author of 6 bestselling books including his most recent book titled "Published.". Self Publishing School is an INC 5000 company the last 3 years in a row as one of the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the US. He's currently spending his time scaling Self Publishing School, a company he's built from 0 to $20M+ in 5.5 years.  Notes: Thinking of your topic – What are the broken record conversations you continue to have? What questions do others ask you on a regular basis? The market will help you understand where you add value… Hiring others-- An hour is an hour. A simple metric… Your take-home pay is divided by 2,080. That is your hourly rate. Hire others to do work if it's cheaper than your hourly rate. This is hard to do but appears to be a wise investment long term The 4 P's of writing – Person, pain, promise, price. Write to one person… just like you're responding to an email. "A book is a $15 mentor" Writing process: Mind map Outline Rough draft "People who pay, pay attention." "Go from I want to, to I am doing it." The root word of authority is author Revenue = Vanity Profit = Sanity Cash = King Designing the life you want first... Michael Hyatt has helped him schedule his time off first. "Valuing freedom above all else; entrepreneurs work harder to create future freedom, which directly takes away from their freedom in the present." "The truth is, you'll never "find the time" to write a book. You have to make it." "Don't be the person who misses out on opportunities in life because you take too long to accomplish your work tasks. Be the kind of person other people marvel at. Be the kind of person other people see and say, "I don't know how they do it." Be the kind of person who takes action and does so immediately." Get a free copy of his new book, go to www.PublishedBook.com/Hawk  

Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text, Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to, help you start your week off right you'll also receive details about how my book the pursuit of excellence will help you become a more effective leader text hawk to 666866 now on tonight's

featured leader chanler bolt an investor advisor and the CEO of self-publishing school and self-publishing dot com he's the author of seven bestselling books, including his most recent titled Published. Self-publishing School is an Inc. 5,000 company the last three years as one of the 5,000 fastest growing private companies in the United States. During this conversation, we discuss how writing a book will grow your career and your business. And this is especially for the very busy senior executive. Then Chandler shares his unique view on hiring people. Then we went deep on the process of building and scaling a business,

as well as some of the mistakes that I am making. Ladies and gentlemen, I think you'll find this one enlightening, informative, and entertaining. It's Chandler Bolt. All right, Chandler, it's good to see you again, man. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. Ryan, great to be here. Thanks for having me. I know we've had a ton of back and forth. I went on your podcast, and you've been a mentor of mine from afar for a while,

especially when it comes to thoughtfully building a business and certainly writing and publishing books. So first and foremost, I normally wouldn't do this, but for you, since you're so young yet so accomplished, Can you share a little bit more about your backstory and how you've gotten to this point? You're the CEO of a multi-million dollar business. You've built it. You have a team. You scaled it. I'm fascinated by all this, man.

But what is it in you that's brought you to this place? Oh, man. Yeah. So for context for people, I run a company called Self Publishing School. We help people write and publish books. We've published about 6,000 books in the last seven years or so. just hit Forbes 30 under 30, a bunch of stuff like that. I think probably a deeply rooted desire to be an entrepreneur first and foremost. And just kind of growing up, I ran businesses in high

school and college and then got to college, realized I'm learning how to run businesses from professors who have never ran a business. That didn't make sense. So I dropped out to kind of a more unconventional path that ultimately led to me going from, you know, someone who's a sea level English student in a college dropout with ADHD and who I hated reading, I hated writing to ultimately writing books and running self-publishing school. And so I think, but I think it was realizing that, okay, the traditional path is it working for me? But I've got to, so I'm dropping out of school, but I've got to operate like I'm still in school and take that learning to books. You know, I always say it's like a book is a $15 mentor. The smartest, most successful

people in the world have written a book. All we have to do is pay 15 bucks and spend a few hours and we can read it. And so instead of looking for maybe not finding a mentor for a lot of people, that's one of their goals to grow is I said, well, hey, I've got access to these people. So I started rolling into books and then that's really how I've built my business in a lot of ways. It's just I got a problem. What's the biggest problem in the business right now? Okay, what's the best book that I can read about that thing? And then now let me just read it and then implement what it says in that book and then just keep doing that. And so I think that's been a big,

a big spark for growth on top of just other maybe fundamental, like work ethic, discipline, all that stuff. The other aspect of this that I really want to focus on is, because I think there may be someone who currently is like a VP at a Fortune 500 company who says, oh, I don't think this applies to me. You know, I, not only did I finish college, but I got my MBA. And I'm moving up the, I'm moving up the, in my career, up the chain when it comes to promotions and things like that.

So Chandler's story, I'm not sure that helps. And I would say that's not accurate. And here's why. One, I think by now, if you've listened to this podcast, you know how I feel about writing and the fact that the most effective leaders become good writers and they work on that skill. The reason it's important to write as a leader is because writing is the, ultimate form of clarifying your thinking and to be an effective leader you have to be a clear thinker can you share more now you've worked with tons of clients to help them do this of all ages

and all ranges and all intelligence levels can you share more on why it's so important for leaders to be writers yeah well i think writing is crystallization of thought right and and there's a reason why jeff bezos has the rule in his um in his company which is no no powerpoints right he wants you to crystallize it into a couple-page memo and then everyone can read that memo and then come into the meeting and discuss. I'm finding this as we scale at self-publishing school is a lot of times people want to send a voice note or a loom or a whatever, and it's just lazy. And I've strongly considered banning them because it's like it's laziness on the part of the person recording it's like, oh, this is the fastest way that I can record this thing. And then just send it to everyone and say,

please watch this five minute loom and the next thing you know you're watching five minute looms all day about important things rather than being able to crystallize thought and make decisions. So like you said, Ryan, I mean, writing is crystallization of thought. But then I also believe that a book is the best thing that you can do to grow your career. And to grow your business if you're running a business, but more importantly, if you're working at a company and you want to grow your career, you want to get promoted, you want to be known as a thought leader on whether that's, in customer success, in sales, in product, in marketing, crystallize your core methodologies into a book.

That book can open up big accounts. If you're in sales, that book can standardize your onboarding process. If you're on the customer success, like there's just so many ripple effects. The root word of authority is author, as they say. And for a lot of people, you become an authority by becoming an author. And yes, this applies whether you're running your own, company or whether you're working within a company. I think it's one of the best ways to become indispensable, to get promoted, to get a raise. Like, I've just seen that play out so many different

times. What about the person? Because I've said this exact thing to somebody and they're like, dude, you don't understand. I don't have time for this. Yeah. I just don't have time. I'm running his team. I'm already behind as it is. Yeah, easy for you guys to say, right? You can make your own schedules or whatever. Let's dispel that excuse right now. Yeah, it's one of the biggest excuses. And I would say you don't have time not to because it's yes, it is a short term sacrifice, but you're creating a long term asset. What happens when you create a book, and I talk about this in my new book, is like you do work once, crystallize what you know into this thing that then goes on to impact thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even millions of

people, right? And but you've crystallized it into a book and it's, I call it leveraged impact, right? So it's like, you do that work and then it goes out into the marketplace and, and it brings back lead sales and referrals for your business or authority or whatever else. And so, yes, it's a short-term sacrifice, but you're creating an asset that can be used as training material for your team that can be used to get a, you know, if there's two VPs, and I'm considering promoting one of them, one of them's written a book on the topic, who who do you think I'm more likely to go with, right? Or now your value in the marketplace just went up because you've become an authority on this

topic. So there's just so many instances where it makes sense to take the short term sacrifice. And no one that's written a book had time to write a book, myself included. And I know you can speak to this as well, Ryan. It's like, but you've got to make the time. And if you do it, yes, there might be sacrificed for a year, maybe even a year and a half, maybe two years, whatever that, however long it takes you. But in doing that, you've created an asset that will grow your career and grow your authority in the area that you're working in.

What's your, because I mean, you're the CEO of a business that is growing. You probably have tons of meetings. You've got people who always want your time. So you're right in the mix of somebody who is constantly people are pulling at you. So when do you write? Like, what's your schedule? When you're in book writing mode, which you probably are a lot, I'm guessing, because it's not like you've only written one book and stopped. You keep going.

what is your book writing process to ensure you're a good CEO, you're doing your job, your day job, and you're taking time to write books? Yeah, it's a really great question and a tough thing to balance. So I just did this recently with my newest book to show that this can be done at the highest level, right? Or maybe not at the highest level, but a very high level. So, you know, I've got 35 employees. We're running a big business. We're scaling.

where all that's kind of in that season. And so what I did and what I recommend that people do is just like I really block it out and I get intense with it over a short period of time. So I picked up a pen. I want to say it was August 31st, September 1st, something like that. And then the book was published. Now this is like lightning fast and this was my seventh book. So I'm not saying that this is like achievable for a lot of people.

But went from that to book published. I want to say December 14th, 15th. And so there's about 105 days, all told, is in my most recent book, from picking up a pen to the book was published and launch week. So very fast, but what I do and what I recommend that people do is follow, I call this the more writing method. So mind map, outline, and then rough draft. And until you've got a rough draft done, nothing else matters. So the rough draft is like the most important thing. and then to answer your question on the habits and schedule and all that, I write in the morning

and I would stack my meetings in the afternoon. So like my first half day, and some days it'd be a full day or when I'm in that heavy book writing mode, then that's for writing. Some people, they'll go a different path. They'll go, all right, I can only give 90 minutes a day or 60 minutes today. Okay, do that for 90 days straight, six months straight. You got a book. If you're writing a thousand words a day will if you can write for 60 days in a row that's a rough draft of a traditional nonfiction book right um so you could you could certainly you can chunk it up you can batch it whatever works best for your schedule but then that combined with having really a really solid team and really solid leaders that you can lean on um to say hey i'm going into this season i really

need you to shield me from as much as possible um and if if we always joke it's like if you need me don't. But really like, hey, only bring me stuff if it's like if something's on fire. Otherwise, I trust you to make decisions and I trust you to move things forward. Because I know that that short term sacrifice and there's some things that slip through the cracks and all that. But that 60, 90 day window, I created such a massive asset that I think will generate tens of millions of dollars for self-publishing school over the next five to 10 years. And so I knew it was really important. I needed to set aside that time. That's a, that's an, that's an, insanely fast turnaround.

I will say if you go the traditional route, which I have twice. Yeah. It's not that fast. Way, way, way longer. But I don't, nowadays, you don't have to do that. I think you used to have to do that. You still can, and there are definitely advantages. There's pros and cons.

We don't need to get into that now. Because I think for the most part, people listening, it's probably smarter to go this route, like self-publishing school. And there are other companies that do stuff like this scribe, page two, right? This is not an advertisement for Chandler's company. he knows that. I believe in him. I think it's interesting. I certainly, we're going to continue to have conversations as I continue to write, so there'll be things out there. Let's get practical for a second, man. Let's say someone's like, you know what, man, I've been thinking about this.

People have told me I'm a good writer. I believe I am. I'm writing emails all the time. I'm addressing my team. I write speeches. Let's say someone now has finally said, okay, it's time to go. And let's do it through self-publishing school. Are you, are, I know I didn't mention this to you before we started. Are you willing to go there and talk about like cost and time and process and how it works? Okay. So let's say there's this, there's this person. I'm certain that this is true right now.

What do I do? What's the next step from? Okay, I have some ideas. I'm not exactly sure, but I have ideas. I know I can write. I've been doing it for a while. I want to publish a book and let's say I want to get it done within six months. Where do we go?

What should I do next? Yeah. So I kind of like to break down this. process. So we break down the book process and I know a lot of people probably listening, not watching, but there's an image on page 17 of my new book. So basically there's eight milestones to going from idea to published. At least that's how we try to simplify it and help people make progress on one milestone at a time. Right. So you've got the first four of what I call the more writing method. So you've got mind map, outline, rough draft, and then editing and specifically

self-editing. So that's the first four, right? So then you go into professional editing, then you go into cover design, then you go into formatting, then you go into launching the book. This is like, I just zoom past like a big high level, right? But to be very practical, I answer the question that you asked, Ryan, it all starts with getting clear on what you want to write about and then getting a rough draft done using the more writing method. So mind map outline rough draft. And so the idea phase, there's probably people listening right now, where you're either in one of three camps, right? I have no idea what I would write about.

I've got one idea that I think I could write a book on or camp three. I've got way too many ideas. There's like a bajillion books that I could write. I'm trying to figure out which one to write first. So the goal here is to crystallize on one idea. Depending on where you're at, if you're in the no idea camp, I would ask a few questions. Like what are the broken record conversations that you keep having over and over and over

again with clients, with prospects, with your team at your company. What's the special sauce that makes you different? What do people come to you for advice on? Or all the other VPs coming to you for advice on this one thing because they know that you're great at it? Well, then that's probably a great book that you could write. And so that helps you get clear on what to write about. If you've got a bunch of ideas, I would ask the question of, hey, which one can I actually finish a rough draft the fastest and kind of use that to get clear. But then very practical exercise, like as soon as you're done listening to this episode,

I would grab a blank sheet of paper, draw a circle in the middle, put your idea in the middle, set a timer for 15 minutes, and I'd write out everything you can think of on that topic. So what are the ideas that you have? What are the stories that you have? The lessons that you've learned,

the broken record conversations, all those things. And in doing that, you're going to see that this could actually, actually be a book. I've seen this happen time and time again with our students, with people that we work with. It's like, oh, wow, this is a book. And so then you're on your way to completing step number one in that more writing method, the mind map. And then that really makes the whole rest of the process a lot easier. So what's next? Let's say they want to work with you. Price, timetable. Do they get to talk to you actually channel someone on your team? Like, how does it work?

Yeah. Yeah. So the first step for a lot of people, though, they'll go book a call with someone on my team. So you can go to self-publishing school.com forward slash apply. It's kind of basically the way that we start working with people is we have a first call, which is to get clear on your idea, get clear on your goals for your book and your next step. So putting together a plan. And then if people are a fit and if they qualify to work with us, we kind of talk about what that looks like. But then, so if they say, hey, I want to work with you guys,

typically six to 12,000 to $12,000 is kind of how much it costs. So you're going to get paired up with a coach on our team that's going to work with you one-on-one. This is an expert, someone who's a best-selling author, works with them throughout the process. We've got kind of a ton of templates and curriculum that they'll go through throughout the whole process to just make it easier. Like say, for example, like a, press a couple buttons, 25-page Google Doc template comes out, and then you can fill in that when you're writing your book. Like that, just a bunch of things like that. So we've got coaching one-on-one, we've got curriculum, we've got workshops,

like virtual workshops, like all these things that people get access to. We just started rolling out. We do people's covers now. We format their book. We upload it to Amazon. Like there's all kind of these services that come with that too. So previously that wasn't included, but we just had it like a couple months ago because people were spending thousands of dollars on this. In addition to working with us and we'd save a bunch of money, but we just said, hey, let's just do that for people.

Our goal is to save people hundreds of hours in the process and to save them thousands of dollars. in the process and then help them write and publish a better book that sells more copies. So that's kind of the goal. I look at it kind of like a mix between Indiana Jones and Jillian Michaels, like Indiana Jones blaze the trail. Jillian Michaels hold people accountable, like to actually do the work. And so that's kind of how we work. And then to answer the very specific question, yes, I still work with students and the

community, not one-on-one, but in our group coaching call with our highest-level students every single week, answering questions, giving people feedback on their titles and covers and kind of all the things. Wow. So that could start right now for somebody. I like, I think prompts and somebody pushing a bit, like a coach, I mean a good coach right there, an advisor, a listener, bounce ideas, that's super useful to have. It can be an intimidating process, and one of the hardest parts is just getting started like

most things, like start the run. usually then can keep running or lifting weights or writing a book. I think the hardest part is getting going and once you get going. And I've done this with both of my books. The beginning idea doesn't necessarily mean that's going to be the last idea. It usually evolves and changes. The title changes a little bit, right? But you have to get going before that happens.

If you just think of it, you're never going to get there because the way you learn is by actually doing it, by writing it, by talking with others and bouncing ideas and meeting with editors and things like that. I think that's been super helpful for me through the process where I may have started here, but it didn't finish there. But the important part was just getting started. Yeah. And really committing to yourself and committing to someone else, a little bit of public accountability, right? For some people that's publicly announcing that they're doing the book. For some people, it's, you know, paying to join self-fublishing school. People who pay, pay attention, right and so it's like oh i've paid this money now all of a sudden i am in this or for you is probably

signing the deal for your first book or for your next book so it's like all right i now sign this publishing deal i've got a manuscript deadline like this is happening right and so there's got to be some sort of commitment to transition from this place where according to new york times 81% of people surveyed said hey i want to write a book well we know that less than one percent of people actually do it. So it's going from I want to to I am doing it. And whatever that takes to get you there, I think it's very important. It's really one of, if not the first steps for people to say, hey, I'm actually doing this. I think, and from your book, you've accomplished this. I assume your clients get the same service is that I have seen some kind of paperbacks that people go through

Amazon where when you get it, and these are, you know, random friends who I receive. expect that have taken the time, but they maybe have not, they've just, I think you can go straight through Amazon and do it, even paperbacks, but you can tell. You get it and they're like, this is, this is, it feels and looks terrible. And I don't, I mean, regardless of who you are, it's, it's hard not to judge the book by its cover and by how it feels and looks. And so how do you, how do you ensure that this looks like a professionally well done published, but like similar to traditionally published books, which you can tell that they look and feel good. I think that's really important because people, I mean, you judge them by how they look and feel. Yeah. So there's a couple

key things. You mentioned one of them, Ryan, is people judge your book by its cover. So you need to have a good cover. I've got a whole chapter on this in my new book. It's a good book cover. I like to think of it kind of like a billboard. And so it's the billboard for your book. Right. And so what does a good billboard do, well, the same thing that a good cover does. It grabs attention. Your title is easy to read and it's preferably in the upper third of your cover, right? And then people instantly understand what the book's about and whether or not it's for them. Right. So I'm using my book as an example. Grads attention, read cover, title is easy to read and you instantly understand what the book's about. There's a saying, confused people don't buy. If I'm not clear about what the

book is and whether or not it's for me. I think you've done a great job of this with your books. I'm just looking at this, like the pursuit of excellence grabs attention. The title's easy to read, the uncommon behaviors of the world's most productive achievers. So it's clear. It's easy to read. And then I love, I think I commented this to you previously, but welcome to management. I love that title when that hook, how to grow from top performer to excellent leader. I instantly understand, oh, I'm a new manager. This is for me. Right. And so that's what you need to do as an author is all those things on your cover. But then I also talk about how your self-published book shouldn't look self-published, right? The beauty of Amazon is that no one knows or cares, whether you're

self-published or traditionally published if your book looks legit. And if it has a lot of reviews, and it looks, it looks interesting and it looks like it's well done. And then kind of, like you said, the litmus test of like, all right, when I get this book in the mail, does it look professionally done? And so your self-published book shouldn't look self-published and you just spend time making sure that it's high- And that's all stuff you guys do. You're thinking about that. You're making sure that happens because like I said, I've seen the ones who go, because you can go straight through Amazon publishing.

Is that true? Yeah, yeah. And I actually do. And so what you got, I think, there's a couple different versions that we sent out, but I think what you got is directly through Amazon, but you need to do it the right way. Okay, yeah, because there's different ways to do it.

Yeah, and or, you know, people will just slap a cover, they won't follow instructions, they won't work with professional designer, they won't like all that. So I think what that shows is, yeah. So it's funny, right before this podcast earlier today,

I'm planning one of my events, my personal excellence workshop. It's a small event, mainly for my learning leader circle members, and I invite a few extra people to, some guests. And I was, but I was meeting with an event plan.

event coordinator because I've done it by myself the last few years and I am an attention to detail guy and I think about all that stuff but you know what that what happens with all that it takes a massive amount of time and it's probably I'm not an event planner I probably should not be doing that's why I talked with her spoke with her and we were saying I was just saying like oh this is going to be so nice right because one it's going to be better it'll be done a lot better because I'm going to hire a pro yes I'm going to spend some money up front but I believe be worth it. And then I will only focus on being excellent when I'm teaching and sharing and thinking only about it, not about all of the behind-the-scenes stuff that you do when running an event.

The same thing with the book, I feel like it's worth the upfront investment to work with pros so this artifact, this thing you're creating looks and feels excellent. So it's like, this is well done. So I think that's part of it. Yes, it does take more money up front. but I think longer term it's way worth it. Yeah, I agree. It's an asset that is permanently out in the world bringing back lead sales referrals, all those things, and you wanted to be a great first impression. Talk about books as for you, it feels like they're a big part of your marketing plan.

So I know you give them out at speaking events. You're regularly pushing them. I know we're going to do a little giveaway with my listeners here at the end. I'll tease. So share more about why they can be such a great tool. By the way, it goes about saying that the book, the contents inside the book have to be excellent. Okay. I'm not telling anybody just to get a book out there as a business card or a marketing tool.

Table stakes are the book must be great. So let's take it a step further from that. How have you used this to help build your business and to use it as a great marketing? marketing tool. Yeah, it's a great question. So, and it's, you know, a lot of people say, hey, a book is a new business card. And I agree with that, but it needs to be done well, right? And I actually think a book is better than a business card because if you give someone a business card, they're going to throw it away within 24 hours. Like, that's just what happens, right? We go to an event, someone gives us a card. It probably gets left in the hotel room.

But if you give someone a book, I don't have business cards anymore. I don't. I don't know. I don't know that I've given a single one out. But I learned this from my buddy Howell Rod. Like I take this book everywhere now. I've got five boxes of them right there for an event coming up and from an event that we just did. And I take them everywhere and I give them out. And so if I'm going to the chiropractor, if I'm going to a mastermind, going to event, whatever, hey, giving people books, it's memorable. I'm building community.

But then I'm also, hey, give this book. So get very, very practical. I look at how do I use a book to get more leads sales and referrals right so leads these are people who hear about me because of my book so these are people who hear about my book published they would never know about self-publishing school but they found that book right so they hear about the business through the book then there's more sales so this is getting more of the people who already know about you to do business with you and so that's where to kind of your point we use the book throughout the our sales funnels and stuff like that to get people to give us their contact information

or to show up for an appointment or show up for stuff which leads to increased sales conversion across everything. And so that's the second piece. And then referrals, which is how do you turn your customers into active referrals? And so I give, or what I recommend is that people give two copies of their book to every single new customer or prospect and say, hey, here's one for you and one for someone you know who needs help with the problem that you solve with your book. book, right? So for me, here's one for you. Here's one for someone you know who needs help with

writing a publishing book. And there's a bunch of other very simple things that we do to just allow our customer base to just gift the book to anyone they know on their behalf who's thinking about writing a book. And that just brings people back into our ecosystem. So I recommend it in all those ways. And that's why it's so intentional for us is because people, the book, like you said, the book is valuable. My goal is to drop the mic on the subject, whereas like people, read it, they're like, oh my gosh, this is the only book I need to know. And if they hear about someone writing a book, they say, you need to read this book. And in doing that, people read the book, they say, this is really helpful. I'd love a little bit more help. And so that's the goal

with the book. But even getting very practical for your audience of VPs or people working at Fortune 100, Fortune 500 companies, is I would send, I would, if you're in sales, that's an easy one, send it to every decision maker at every big company and big account that you're trying to get into, they will take your calls and they will book a meeting meeting. And it's, you know, a book is four or five bucks. A business card is what, 50 cents or something. So I mean, it's not much more expensive, but the impact is way greater. But then also with decision makers with if you're trying to get promoted, I would send it to everyone up the chain that has decision making ability to promote you or to include you on off-sites or leadership strategics or any strategic media.

Like, send it to important people and they'll make a big difference in open doors. I think it's an intimidating thought. Part of why I wanted to record with you, Chandler, is to make this less intimidating for people who think that's just for other people. It's not anymore. I do think it used to be. I don't, it's not that way anymore. So for that person who is intimidated by the thought, say, there just seems like too much work. involved, even beyond the writing, is what I'm saying, which the writing, don't get me wrong, is a ton of work, and it's not easy. It's not meant to be easy. But it shouldn't be an intimidating

thought anymore to actually get a book published, even if you don't view yourself as an author, or if you are a sales rep or a manager or VP. I mean, if you're a CEO, you absolutely should be writing books of a company, I think, if anything, for the culture of your own business. So your people kind of know where you're at. So I think that's a big part of it. Can you, can you share more about that aspect of it when it comes to that it shouldn't be intimidating anymore? Yeah. And I love that. So there's two things I'll share. You said if you're a CEO, if you're, like my book is, I'm onboarding a new assistant right now. My book is part of the onboarding process for every new employee, right? What's the fastest way that they can become familiar with our

product, our mission, what we do and what we believe in, read my book. And so it's, it's a way to scale, especially if you're a CEO of VP of a growing or large organization, well, the fastest and best way to literally be able to spend one-on-one time with every new person that comes into your company is write a book about your methodology and include that in the welcome packet or the welcome swag bag or whatever. And so then to answer your question about why should it not be intimidating. I was in scouts growing up. And I remember my scout master, we were out on this camping trip. I said, hey, are there bears in the woods? And he said, well, yeah, Chandler, there's bears. That's why we're hanging up our food in the tree, you know, so that the bears can't

get it. I said, well, hold up. What happens if we see a bear in the woods? What do we do then? And he said, well, here's good news. He said, if we see a bear, you don't have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than your friend. And just kind of winked and, and it's like, well, hold up. What does this have to do with being intimidated about writing a book? When it comes to writing a book, you don't have to know everything. You just have to know a little bit more than the person that you're teaching. Right. And so I think a lot of times we get in our way and we say, hey, who am I to write a book? Do I have time to write a book? There's this imposter syndrome. Write the book for someone who's two steps behind you. And I don't know about you, Ryan,

but I love reading books from people who are two steps ahead of me, not 20 steps ahead of me. Because if they're two steps ahead of me, that's more practical and it's more useful because they were just recently in that thing. And so that's where you don't have to know everything, write about what you know. And if you just know a little bit more than the person that you're teaching, like, that is going to be really helpful for them. I think one prompt that helps me is sometimes I will draft and write, we'll get practical for a second, as if I'm writing an email to one person or even a text message. to one person.

I probably wrote 25% of my last book on my phone in the Notes app, an Evernote, Google Docs, where I'd pull it up and maybe an editor or a writing coach would supply me with a few questions, and I would type them out on my phone, sometimes on the elliptical, on a walk, wherever, answering a question to a single person. And then sometimes from that a story comes, or I think of the research to back up the story, or I think of some of the practical application that I would give advice to that one person. And so that is a way to make it a little bit easier on yourself because we all respond to emails. We all get questions and we answer them.

So make it easier on yourself. And I bet some of your templates, I'm guessing, help with this, right? Where you make it so it's more Q&A-ish and less kind of stand up and lecture. I think of that one's both public speaking. If you're like, hey, let's just go to Q&A. oh, who can't do that? Of course I can do that. I'm going to be prepared, but it's different than getting up and giving a lecture. And I think that's some of the way to make it a little bit easier. Is I think of one person you're giving advice to, one person you're responding to an email,

one person you're responding to even in a text message that that way, thinking that way makes it, again, easier to get started. Then once you get started, it's easier to keep going. Yeah. I, I a thousand percent agree with that rhyme. It also makes for a better book. and it easier to write book because so many times people go into book writing land it's like to whom it may concern it's like we're writing to this big audience but if you think if you say

I talk about this concept of it's the four piece of a best selling book person pain promise and price right so who's the person that you're writing to what's the pain that they have that they know that they have and what's the promise that you're making with this book right and then the price is a little bit more straightforward on the book side of things, depending on the format.

So you were speaking to the first one, which is the person that you're writing to, and we are so aligned on this, if I know the persons, and it's actually someone I know, so if I say, oh, this book is for Ryan, well, then I'm going to write that book as if I'm writing a letter to Ryan. And then all the things that crop up when you start writing a book, like, oh, how should I write this? What tone? Should I be funny?

Should I use this story? Should I not? The answer to all of those questions is just how would I write this? to Ryan. And when you do that, you write a better book faster and you write it to Ryan, which means, okay, when I go to market the book, I'm like, okay, well, where's what podcaster Ryan listening to? What events is he going to? How does he find books? And so then I'm marketing it to Ryan. And then guess what? There's a ton of other Ryan's out there who are like, hey, this feels like this was written to me. Right. And so it just makes for a much better book.

Yeah. Are you okay with shift gears for a second? Because I love that we've really hammered the book writing process and why people should write books. Okay. The other thing you've done extremely well, and I want you to take me to the beginning of it, because I don't really know the origin of it, is that you, like you said, you scaled your business to 35 employees. And I know because I've worked with your team through the course of being on your podcast and through scheduling all this. I know this is a pain to schedule and that was all my fault. But beside the point, we got here. We're here. here today is how to make that decision because I'll tell you Chandler's I probably shouldn't put all this but I will because it makes it I guess easier for you to answer to me now I can do a lot of the stuff and keep my business insanely profitable right with keynote speaking is is super profitable the leadership circles I run is very fulfilling and there's a lot but all the services, right? The building leadership development programs, all of this. With that said, it's just a ton of work. It's a lot of work. And I'm doing a lot of things that probably are not within my native genius because I can and because, you know, there's not somebody else to do

them. So then I have to do it. Now, I outsource editing my podcast and all the videos, stuff like that, right? But for the most part, I do a lot of things on my own. You made the call to say, no, I'm building a business. I'm going to scale. I'm going to hire people. I'm going to cut into some of that profit in order to build. Can you just, and you especially as a younger dude, I feel like you think way ahead of your years. Can you just walk me through your philosophy and thought process on saying, I'm going to cut into some of the hard-earned profit in order to build this thing to scale quicker and to bigger so I can impact more people? Yeah, it's a great question and a lot of nuance to that, Ryan. I mean, I think what you're speaking to is profit percentage

versus net profit, right? And so sometimes it's like, we'll see that profit percentage go down, but actually net profit will grow much higher because we're doing higher volume on revenue. Now, that's not always the case. One of my favorite quotes is, and I think, you know, you've kind of nailed this with your business, is revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is king, right? So revenue is kind of just a vanity metric that people like to toss around. And profit is sanity because if you don't have profit, then, you know, what are you doing? What are you doing with the business? And then cash is king, though, because you can be profitable and run out of cash.

And if you're out of cash, you don't have a business because you can't pay the bills. And so I think through structuring that, but then I think through one of the early thoughts I had is how can I get out of delivery as quickly as possible or at least raise the bar for what I am delivering on. And so that's where I started training coaches early on and just thinking about scale. But one of the, it's like one of the simplest metrics, a simple metric and then a first hire, I think would be very applicable for you specifically, but then also to other people who are going through this is the simple metric, take your take home pay for last year,

divide it by 280. And whatever that number is, that's your hourly rate. Now, the question becomes, how do I raise that hourly rate? Well, the way that you raise the hourly rate is you've got to stop doing things that you could pay someone to do for less than your hourly rate. Now, this gets really intimidating. I forget what my most recent is, but it's like hundreds and hundreds, if not a couple thousand bucks an hour. And so now it's like, okay, well, and that's what I tasked my assistant is, all right, your number one KPI is, taking things off my plate that can be done for under 400 bucks an hour, a thousand bucks an hour

or whatever the number is. Right. And so that becomes a bigger list. And an hour is an hour. People get real weird about this, myself included when I was starting, you know, just come from a very blue collar background. My parents met working night shift at a factory. So it feels weird like, oh, I'm not one of those people that have an assistant.

So you're not mowing your grass. You're not cleaning your house. You're not doing dishes. Exactly. Exactly. Because an hour is an hour. Yeah. People are like, oh, I'm hiring.

an assistant, they need to do work stuff. And they feel weird being like, oh, I have someone come to my house and do my laundry and go get groceries and take my car to get the oil change and all that. You're talking about 24 hours. You're not talking about eight a day, like 24. Exactly. Because it's an hour, right? Okay, I could either take that hour and be working on my business or I could take that hour and not be doing those things and just be, you know, rest, rejuvenating. This could apply, by the way, to somebody who's not running a business, but somebody who works at it as a, is a high. It's a high. level thinker, they're a leader within a business of all floating some of these menial, not menial, but some of these other tasks to somebody else. Sure. Yeah, I think it applies to that too. If you're a VP making 150, 250K a year, people laugh at this, if you can't convince your company to hire an assistant, I think you should hire one out of your own paycheck. And it might be, okay, you might be a year to two before you're like, okay, this definitely

is ROI positive. But if you think about, if you're a VP working 60, 70 hours a week, could you gain back some of that time in your personal life or in your business life that would lead to a better performance, a better relationship with your wife or husband or significant other? Would it lead to like all those things? Absolutely it would. And so I think knowing what your per hour rate is hiring an assistant as the first hire and then thinking through, okay, systems and process. so that I can scale and so that I can delegate and all that. That was a big part of what we started doing from the front. And then what I've kind of continued to emphasize is,

all right, we've got to be able to do things that don't scale, of course, but we've got to be able to do them at scale by building systems and process. So one of the things, too, is you're kind of the star of your business, but I feel like you've done a good job of elevating others and trying to not make yourself the star. Now, I didn't have a plan coming into this because it was just following my curiosity to learn from

thoughtful people on the podcast. But what inevitably happens is when somebody calls, they don't want you, this is not a, this is not a bragging thing. This is just a reality that I actually don't want. But when they call... They were talking to Ryan. Yeah. When they email you and they, and don't even wrong,

like, I'm going to go give speeches on stages because it's scary, because it's fun, because it's profitable, because I like that challenge. Like it's pushing my edges. But there are other things, you know, come develop our plan or do this or be at our office to, right. That honestly, man, it's too much. There's there's too much. And so ideally you could, you could scale in some better way. You've figured that out a bit, it feels like. That's why I, so they get Chandler and you're like, well, not necessarily, I'll do the group stuff, but I'm not doing as much. Exactly. So what are some ways when a business, maybe even mistakenly, was built

on a person's name and that person, and you know, John Maxwell's figured this out, and Lencioni and John Gordon, and there are people out there who have figured this out. I realize Liz Weissman a bit, although Liz is better about it at the beginning. What are some ways that then you were able to get away from just trading time for dollars because you've run out of time? It's a big question. I think it's very important and not a lot of people consider it. So I think having a personal brand and selling the personal brand is the fastest way to six figures and maybe even your first million because people connect with a person, they don't connect with a company.

They connect with a person more than they connect with a company. For sure. Right? So I like and connect with Ryan more so than I would connect with maybe a bigger brand. But then you see exactly what you say. Then you reach this point where now, okay, I'm just, I've got a nice paying job. I don't have a business because it's fully built around my brand. And so for me, I use the personal brand up front.

And then we slowly started pushing self-publishing school. to the front and Chandler Bolt to the back, where it's this catch-22, because I actually still want to grow my personal brand using self-publishing school, because first decade or whatever of my business life, I was bringing sweat equity to deals. It's like, cool, I've got no money and no name, but like I'll work harder than anyone, and I'm bringing that into a deal. Well, now I've built up a bit of a profile, so I want to be like a Tim Ferriss or like a Gary Vaynerchuk or whoever else where I'm, oh, I'm bringing my name to the deal and some connections to the deal and I don't want to bring as much sweat equity, if any sweat equity to that deal, because there's no leverage in

that unless I'm, you know, plug in the sweat equity of my team or stuff like that, right? So it's, I was very intentional about using that in the beginning, but then phasing it out and then putting self-publishing school at the forefront. And then very practically, there's just setting up limits of like, okay, if this is speaking in front of 100 people or less, we're going to use one of the speakers on my team that we've trained. If this is speaking to a bigger event, I'll speak. If this is, so just having, you know, some parameters around that, and it's not an overnight thing, training out a speaking team, training out coaches to deliver. And you'll still, like, you still will, and I still get the question. It's like, oh, cool, but can I talk to Chandler?

and your team's got you know you have kind of some some talk tracks or some kind of some deflection of like you know no but I run this and I can definitely help you with this so let's chat let's go to the beginning though it's like what's that let's go to the beginning though so yeah there was a point where Chandler was a solo business what I don't even know what the name was at that time might it probably was different I'm guessing yes when was that how many years ago and then and then how did you what was what was what was what was was the beginning of building that beyond just you by yourself? Like first hires, what did they do? I'm sure you messed one or two of them up or more, right? That's normal. Like what was that like at the

beginning of the building? Yeah. So 2014's when we launched, it was called best selling book system. There was three, three of us business partners. And that was proof of concept. Then we got proof of concept. One of the business partners wasn't pulling his weight. So we said, it kind of couldn't agree on what was going to happen. So we said, all right, we're out. We'll just rebuild it. two of us. We launched self-publishing school, two business partners. That started taking off, hired our first employee was customer service because we knew, hey, we're drowning in customer support tickets and stuff like that. So that was the first thing. And then I wish I would have hired, I wish I would have hired an executive assistant that also did all of our customer service.

I didn't know that that was an option at the time. That would have been my first hire going back. and then part-time coaches who went through the first iteration of our curriculum and published books. So they knew all of our, so we didn't have to train them. They just went through it. And they just did it with their book. But we trained them on our coaching process. And then now I am pulled out within maybe 18 months of, because I'm just looking at my calendar and saying, hey, what are the biggest chunks that it's like, unless I remove this,

I'm going to be spending all my time in fulfillment mode and not in working on, on the business versus in the business kind of thing. And so then we had coaches. And so then now I'm no longer coaching pretty quickly. And then I have the weekly, which is we still do this to this day because I want to, I want to have my fingers on the pulse of what's going on with our customers and our students. And it's also like, oh, you want to talk to Chandler? Great.

Yep. Join Self Publishing School. Show up to the weekly call. You can definitely talk to Chandler. And there's only one way to do it. Like I don't do personal consulting. I don't do any of that because it's just not scalable. people offer and they'll be willing to pay a bunch of money, but it just, it just doesn't make

sense. It's hamster will revenue that involves me personally. And so that was kind of how I looked at it is, we've got to start building systems and process and then ultimately bought out my business partner and became sole owner of the company. And Bill, you know, I've got a lot of partners now. They're just my employees. And, you know, some of them have profit share. A lot of them have incentive-based comp. So, like, they do well when the company does well. Do you share your revenue numbers? Yep. What like where are you guys at now? So you started like yeah 9.1 last year. We've been on the 8,000 list, you know, years in a row and typically grow somewhere between 20 to 40 percent a year, like year over

year. We did 9.1 last year. I think goal is 12.6 to 14 this year. How much of that do you like, like how much of that is top line versus like take home profit? Yeah, take home somewhere between 25 to 33% net on that. So it's very, very healthy margin. But I mean, we've been very intentional about that. How do you decide how much to pour back in versus just take off the table? It's really tough, really tough. Because there's no exact science. When I'm thinking about reinvesting in the business, I think about, is this building a long-term, defensible moat? Am I investing in something that is building a long-term defensive mode? Or am I poor? using money just and calling it investing in growth, but it's really just wasting money,

which you, I mean, you never know. There's no like scientific calculation. It's like when the quants and the finance people run the company, you're probably, innovation is going to stop. So it's like I have to balance that finance brain for myself with the innovation growth. Like we need to be growing at 50, 75 percent. year over year, like kind of that just wanting to drive. So it's really hard, but I try to make sure that we're investing in long things that are a long term defensive mode. What's the example of that?

Yeah, so it might be like content and SEO. We develop, or honestly, this book, it's an asset that for years and years and years. So it's like, okay, let's invest in that and the sales of that. Then we have an R&D budget that is just to help us, because we realize early on, we're not innovating as much as we want to. And that's because we're viewing it as an expense, not an investment. So if we have an R&D budget research and development, then we have a training budget. So that's part of the P&L that we forecast. And we say, oh, no, this is like a budget that's set aside. So then when you're spending to do that thing, it doesn't feel like, oh, I'm taking this directly from my pocket, which yeah, I guess is technically true. But

we've made that decision kind of ideologically to strategically, we invest in these ways in the business. What's your long-term goal? I mean, I struggle with these, by the way. So if you do, too, feel free to pass. But longer term, do you have these giant ambitions to $100 million business, billion dollar business? I mean, is that what you, do you think that's within the realm of what you're trying to?

For me personally, yes. It's not for everyone. I mean, my goal is to run a billion dollar company that long after I'm off this earth. It's still making a difference. It's part of my legacy. And so that's a long-term goal. and that's going to happen. Not a matter of if, but when.

And I don't know if I'll get there with self-publishing school. Like self-publishing school might have a cap of $50, $100 million a year. But the goal is to publish $100,000, self-publishing school is to publish 100,000 books by 2035. So we're about 6 to 7,000 books published so far. In the first seven years, we published somewhere between one to three books a day. We need to get to more about 10 to 15 books a day more consistently.

And then that's what it's going to take to hit 100,000 by 2035 if we can get there within the next four or five years and start turning that over. So that's the goal with self-publishing school. And that's what we're working towards. You could live a really cozy, comfortable lifestyle by just kind of cruising along where you're at now. Healthy profits. Why not just chill out a little bit and let the business go? It's funny that you think that's funny, but I'm serious. Like what you know, you know what I mean?

No, it's just funny because that's, you know, what my mom asked, what my girlfriend asked, what a lot of people ask. You know, it's because I'm passionate about it. I love it. And I think, you know, it's, it's what I was put on this world to do, I think. Yeah. It's, you know, I was giving gifts. My faith is important.

So I feel like God gave me gifts and talents in business. And like, this is the way that I could make a difference. and I feel like business is the best vehicle for change that exists, right? You get to change the lives of your customers. You get to change lives of your employees. You get to create a profit which changes your life, your family's life, future generations. And then you get to take some of that profit if you choose to. And like we've built schools, we've built homes.

We've like all these things through nonprofits. So then that creates a ripple effect. It's a powerful vehicle for change. And yeah, I could stop working today. And we've got enough systems where it would keep going and it would find my lifestyle and all that. But I don't know, I've got bigger goals. Well, a lot of this is my own projection, as you could probably gather. I'm sure listeners could gather.

And I think people can appreciate me following my own genuine curiosity here of trying to learn because I, for one day, I interview Brad Stalberg, who has two full empty days a week, work day weeks, not including Saturday and Sunday, where he just thinks and writes and reads. That's all he does. and then three days where he's a one-on-one coach. And I was like, well, how do you scale that? Like, how do you grow that? And he's like, what do you mean? I'm not. Like, I don't want to.

And that's fine. I don't want. This is the best possible lifestyle for me. I have good clients. I'm sure they'll, you know, they'll grow and change a little bit because they cycle on and off, right? But I make plenty of money. And I have two days a week, not including the weekend, where I think and write and I

read. And I don't want to scale. I like, I love my lifestyle. And then I talk to Chandler Bolt. and you're the opposite of that. And I am sitting here thinking, I'm not sure which one. I'm not sure. And so like when I, when I share that kind of information with you, what do you think of that?

Yeah, I think a couple things. I think designing, being flexible and designing to the lifestyle that you want and not what you think that you're supposed to do or need to do. Right. And so it's not keeping up with the Joneses and, oh, this sounds cool that Chandler did this. So maybe I should do that too. But then I think there's a second piece, which is seasons of life, which one thing that I've really been wrestling with is, you know, if you always say you're in a busy season, then it's not a season. It's just how you live your life. And so I think I'm very guilty of that. It's like, oh, yeah, you know, it's just a really busy time right now. It's like, okay, well, if you've said that for months and a row or years in a row, is it really a busy time or is this just how you're choosing you to live your life, right? And so there's that, but there's also like, I'm not married yet. I don't have kids yet. That's thing. And so I know that I will be more intentional. And I think I'm, I have a high motor and, you know, high achiever kind of like I enjoy it a lot. So yes, well, I probably always be on that

spectrum. Maybe. But, but will that ebb and flow? Most definitely. Like, that's going to change when I have kids. That's going to change like with different things like that. And so I'm finding, I'm trying to find better ways to build that into the ongoing rhythm and balance. And one of the things maybe you've noticed this. And I think a lot of probably VPs and people who are big companies have noticed this is as your company grows, the company starts to plan further out than you do. And what happens is that means you get the leftovers. And so I think we have to be very disciplined to say, all right, I'm going to plan and a mentor mine and he's an advisor for self-publishing school, Michael Hyatt. He talks about, hey, you've got to put those things in first. And so the first part

of planning your year should be planning all the time off and then plan all the other stuff around it. And so that's what I'm wrestling with a little bit right now is I've got a team. I've got systems. I've got all this stuff. They're doing a great job of planning ahead. And I'm noticing that my vacation stuff just gets planned out because it's like, I'm going to do a vacation. Oh, crap.

We've got this webinar with so-and-so. We've got this podcast interview. We've got me speaking to this thing. And then you just end up not doing it. So I'm trying to be more intentional about planning further out with my personal time. This is a good dude. I know we went over. and out of my own kind of desire to learn from you.

And that's why this podcast, though, is so cool to me because I could talk to a really seasoned guy like Ken Blanchard who has built a big, awesome thing. And then I could speak to Chandler Bolt and everything in between. And it's just, I'm grateful for the opportunity, man, to speak with you. And I know you mentioned me before we started recording that. You wanted to do a little bit of a giveaway now if people have hung with us this long. Can you share more about that? yeah so for anyone who wants to check out my new book it's called published the proven path from blank page to 10,000 copies sold I narrate the audio book you can listen to it on audio if you're an audio person which probably are if you're listening to this podcast but if you want a free physical copy of the book so I'd love to give 50 free physical copies this is there's no strings there's no pay shipping and handling there's none of that all you have to do is go to published book like I

published a book. So published book.com forward slash hawk. Ryan's last name, published book.com forward slash hawk. I mean, it's in the running for best last name. It's probably up there with bowl, I'd say. But publishedbook.com forward slash hawk. First 50 people, I'll ship you a physical, we'll print it, packet, ship it, everything for free. You don't have to pay anything. So check it out if you're interested. Dude, I really appreciate it. I know we'll be. talking as we both progress and I appreciate your team sending me everything in regards to your work. Obviously, I think, I don't even have to tell you to buy the book. You get the book for free.

So go to publishedbook.com slash hawk. The book's called Publish, The Proven Path from Blank Page to 10,000 copies sold. And the one, the cool thing about this is, you know, I'm a published author of two traditionally published books. You think I know everything when it comes to this. And I think I do know a lot. I was learning stuff on almost every page. And I've, already published multiple books. So I, that's why I think if you're, you're curious at all about potentially doing this, it's a, it's a great free resource that you can get to use. And I encourage people to do it. And I'm just a fan of your work, man. And I want to support good stuff. And you're certainly one of those. So, so thank you so much for doing this, man. I obviously certainly want

to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. Ryan, you're the man. Thank you for having me. Awesome, dude. Chandler and I have had many conversations over the year. about writing, about publishing, about building and scaling a business. I admire what he's built and how he's built it. I look up to him, even though he's younger than I am. I view him as a mentor of mine to help with writing, publishing, and building. I hope you enjoyed this one as much as I did. If you takeaways from my notes, the four peas of writing, person, pain, promise, price.

write to one person, just like you're responding to an email or a text message. These are things we all do every day. And thinking of it that way helps me get started. And then once I get started, that momentum has been created, and it's a bit easier to keep going. Then your topic, what are the broken record conversations you continue to have? What questions do others ask you on a regular basis? The market will help you understand where you add value. And then how about Chandler's equation for an hour?

An hour is an hour. And that metric, your take-home pay divided by 280. That is your hourly rate. and he chooses to hire others for just about everything when it makes sense financially so he can spend more time in his own a genius. And I think this is hard to do, so it's probably good to start with an experiment on certain aspects of your life. Perhaps it's landscaping or cleaning your home. I love trying to find ways to alleviate work from my partner's life as well because she works full time too. And so any way that we can spend more time together or with family, it is a good investment in my mind.

And this could also probably happen more in my business. So Chandler regularly challenges me on this, and I appreciate that. I hope you enjoyed this one again as much as I did. If so, I'd love it if you would tell a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leader Show with Chandler Bolt. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader. And because you continue to do that and you continue to write reviews and rate the show, hopefully five stars on Apple Podcast, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so so much.

Talking soon. Can't wait.