Anna David's Blog, page 14
June 22, 2022
How to Make Your Book Into a TEDx Talk with Bridget Sampson
Bridget Sampson is a Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies, the author of Communication Secrets for Success and the co-author of Communication Training and Development. She's also a TEDx speaker who helps other people write and deliver their TEDx talks.
All of this made her the perfect person to talk to about how to convert your book into a TEDx talk, whether or not you should outline or write the talk out completely, how to book a TEDx slot, how many times to practice, what to wear and what to do if you bomb, among many other topics.
She also shared that people never seem to care that she was a professor for decades but they all care that she has a book and a TEDx talk. So get on it! It's easier than you think.
RELEVANT LINKS:
Bridget's Growth & Gratitude podcast
RELATED EPISODES:
How Authors Can Get Booked to Speak with Topher Morrison
David Nihill on Selling a Book to a Publisher After Self-Publishing
Talking About Your Book on TV and Podcasts with Media Coach Susan Harrow
TRANSCRIPT:
Anna David: Thank you for being here Bridget.
Bridget: Thank you for having me. So excited to talk with you.
Anna David: I love how we were just talking about how I'm casual verging on unprofessional. And then I'm like, that is the name of a book. That should be the name of my podcast.
Bridget: Yes. Oh my gosh, absolutely. I love it.
Anna David: It's not what we're here to talk about is that
Bridget: No. It could be related, because I think that that might be the way we want to be in any of our talks, especially a TED talk.
Anna David: Absolutely Okay, so, so many people come to me, and they say, I want to do a TEDx talk. And, and I say, you can make your book into a TEDx talk. So you are the perfect person. You've been a professor for 20 years in public speaking. Is that right?
Bridget: Yes.
Anna David: Did I get the number right?
Bridget: It's more, but let's leave it at that because people will think I'm younger.
Anna David: Well, you look 20. So you did a TEDx talk. And then you coach people to do TEDx talks. So let's talk a little bit about Well, first, let's talk about your journey. So how did you become a professor of public speaking?
Bridget: When I was an undergrad in communication studies. And I didn't know what I wanted to do after I graduated. So some professor said, why don't you do the master's program in communication, and you can teach. You can teach the basic public speaking course, I started teaching that course at 22, which is insane. They just threw me in, you know. I was teaching public speaking. And we got lots of great training on how to teach and public speaking skills. So I started really early. But the truth Anna was when I took my public speaking course, I waited until the last minute to take it. I was terrified. I completely fell apart. During my first speech, I was one of those super anxious, terrified nervous speakers, which is why I think I was so passionate about helping other people overcome that fear because it was so paralyzing for me. So that's how it all started. And that's how I love teaching public speaking. I love teaching communication, all of the communication courses. And I continued to do that for many years, as I also started my consulting business coaching people on their communication skills.
Anna David: Okay, wait, so you were terrified when you were an undergrad? And you were taking this class? And so what advice do you have for people who are terrified of public speaking?
Bridget: Yes. Well, that's my first thing is, I can serve as an example, because I was terrified that I fell apart during my speeches and was teaching that same exact course two years later. How insane is that? Right? So I have tons of advice. But the truth is, while I love what you said about um, casual verging on unprofessional, the best speakers are people who realize they can just be themselves. Yeah, just be you, for God's sakes, be real, whatever your personality is, are you funny? Are you sarcastic? Are you serious? Just know that you can just be yourself when you're speaking to an audience. Yes, you should prepare your thoughts and have some valuable content. Of course, the people just stress about the delivery way more than we need to, in my opinion.
Anna David: I know and I think but I think TEDx is one where it has an even greater stress value, because it's so it's the it also let's talk about how most people don't know the difference between a TED Talk and a TEDx talk, which is true.
Bridget:I agree. And I love that, that works for us. Right?
Anna David: Absolutely. And to clarify, a TED talk is, you know, the thing where it's like Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates give TEDx TEDx is something where any community can, as far as I know, get sort of getting a license and put on a TEDx event. It is not easy to do. But um, so I don't even think TEDx knows how many TEDx events there are to you? What do you know about this?
Bridget: Yeah, I think at one point, I heard there's at least one TEDx event happening every single day. And I think it's even more. I think it's way more than that if you go global, right? So yes, I agree with you. Sometimes I say I gave a TEDx talk. Sometimes I just say TED Talk. Absolutely. You are affiliated with the TED brand. Even if it's a TEDx talk, it is a TED talk, because it's the TED brand. They own it. Right? They have somebody thankfully, not me, not us. But the coordinator of the TEDx event that you're at, went through a lot of trouble, as you said, to get to be able to have a TED, you know, sponsored conference and have TEDx speakers. So yes, use it by all means. It is not as hard as people think to get a TEDx talk to apply. Just make the case that you got something important to say, it's only 18 minutes if you've written a whole book. My goodness, you have got enough gems in that Look for sure to give a 10 or 15 minute talk that is going to wow people. I am just so passionate. I believe that wholeheartedly.
Anna David: I mean, it doesn't have to be that long. I mean, I read somewhere like there's like a three minute talk that's really successful. Yes. Do you have a favorite TED Talk?
Bridget: Probably Brene Brown's talk on vulnerability. I just love her so much. I love all her work. I gosh, I have so many favorites. I love Shaun Akers' work. I don't know if you've heard about him. But he talks about happiness. Oh, my gosh, his talk called the happy secret to something that happy secret to better work? I think it is. And it's all about how we generate happiness in our lives internally. We're looking for it in these external circumstances. And that's not where it comes from. And we all know this, but he shares it. And I think his talk is only 12 minutes. I've shown that at countless trainings, and shared it with countless coaching clients and everybody loves it and says it was really a mindset shift for them as far as how to feel good in our lives. So you're absolutely right. I think a 10 a 12 minute talk can be life changing for us. That's why I love Ted so much.
Anna David: One of my previous podcast guests, Chris Voss told me and he's a big media star. Now he prepared for the media by watching Angela Duckworth, grit talk. Oh, I love it. Yeah. He said, Yeah. What is powerful about this, and he analyzed the tone of voice and all of these things. I think my favorite is Derek Severs. Have you ever seenHow to start a revolution?
Bridget: No, I have to watch it.
Anna David: He barely talks. It's mostly showing a video. So it's like, you can get so creative.. So what do you know about the process of finding and applying? What can you share?
Bridget: Yeah, I think it's a matter of I think you have to have grit and you and persistence. And you have to do a thorough search. And you have to talk to everybody you know, and tell them you have a TED talk, and you're looking for a venue. And for me, it was just through the avenues of people I knew and I gave it at the university where I was teaching. But I've talked to lots of people who just were really aggressive, assertive about going out into communities, googling where TED talks are happening, talking to everyone in their networking community. A lot of people say it came through someone they knew or some connection they had, but that they didn't initially necessarily know that that person had a connection to a TEDx conference, right? And so you gotta be a big mouth. You gotta tell everybody.
Anna David: So do recommend deciding this is my TEDx talk and writing it out and memorizing it before applying?
Bridget: Yeah, I do and have a catchy title, have a timely topic, I don't think you have to, I think it's great. If you can do that. I don't think you have to have it. 100% fleshed out. In fact, a lot of what I do as a coach when I coach TEDx speakers is give me kind of a rough outline of their talk. And I can really, really help them flesh it out. We talked about this before Anna, but you know that I'm big on stories. And people, they come with an outline of all this, these are the things I want to teach people, these are the points I want to make. And then I help them say, no, no, you're gonna do that through storytelling, because the most popular TED Talks have lots of stories and your TED talk has been testing stories and your story about the homeless man, and all your experiences, you got to have your stories. So I actually maybe want to take back what I said and say, have definitely have your title, your topic, let be ready to let people know that is your area of expertise, but have it outlined and be ready to work with a coach or to even if it's just working with the people, you know, on fleshing out those powerful stories, because that's what people remember.
Anna David: Yeah. And by the way, one of the places where I got in, they were like, I've got my talk, and here we go. And they go, “no, no, no, no, no, we want to help you come up with the talk”, right? That was the only TEDx place where they actually had coaches where it was like free coaching. Yeah. But most aren't going to have that right?
Bridget: Some do. I mean, mine did, but I was the coach. Not only the responsibility of giving my talk and being ready and being the first speaker of the day, but to actually coach all of the other speakers. So in some TEDx conferences, do they bring in someone as a volunteer coach, or they have the funding, they'll pay for a coach, but many don't, from what I understand. Yeah.
Anna David: Okay, let's say you have a book and you go, I want to make this into a TEDx talk. How do you start and we can take some of my clients as examples. And I've had a few clients that have done it, but like, Okay, I'm thinking of a client, who wrote a memoir about growing up Mormon in this crazy family and unraveling different aspects of it. How do you take a story like that and go, Okay, I'm gonna make this into a 10 or an 18 minute talk. What do you do?
Bridget: I think You pull out what you think the beauty of having such a short time is you get to pull out your most powerful material. So I'm a big fan. Maybe it's because I taught public speaking for so long, though, right? But of having like your two or three key points like what are they real? Remember that people forget 25% of what you say two days later, I'm sorry, forget 75% of what you say. So people will forget 75% of what you say two days later, this is based on the communication academic literature. So what they'll remember is the key points, like, that person helped me understand that happiness comes from within, it doesn't come from external circumstances, right? They'll take away a key point. So you want to be clear from the get go from your 200 or 300 page book, whatever it is, like, what are their two or three core points that people will take away that will be most meaningful and most memorable? That's where you have to start?
Anna David: So my key point, you know, is that like, you know, you never really know your family or something like that. Do you cry? So you decide what the two or three key points are? And then you find the best story to illustrate?
Bridget: Yes, exactly. That would be my order, I would truly recommend it. And I think the title, like, really makes sure your title is catchy, intriguing, but also a really good indication of what people are going to get out of it. I don't think people like when the title has nothing to do with what the talk is actually about. It can be, you know, I know like your title, how were your labels. I love it, because it is what you talk about. But there's a little surprise about where you're going with it. So I like that. But I also think it's important for people to have some inkling of what they're gonna get out of it. It's like a teaser, right?
Anna David: Well, I'll tell you the absolute truth about my talk, and listeners I'm telling you to, I hired somebody to write that talk, which is shocking to us inside. This is all I've ever done is right. But I couldn't figure it out. I wasn't taking a book and making it into a talk. I wish I had, it would have been much easier. And I hated what they wrote. But they came up with that title. And I liked the title. In retrospect, now that this is years later, I know so much more about titles, and mostly from learning about book titles, that no, no, no, you have to give more of an indication in it. Because the competition is so fierce. So would you recommend, I don't know, key words, or just like how do you know what to put in the title?
Bridget: Yeah, so my title is How Public Speaking Will Change Your Life. And I'm actually happy with it. Yeah. Because I think it's why I have no paid advertising whatsoever, you know, 300,000 views, like people just found their way to it if they were searching for a TED talk about. Yeah, so I did nothing to do that. So and I'm not I'm not I'm not bragging because there are people with millions of views. But I'm saying with no paid adverts with nothing, I like literally just did it and wanted to have it and didn't do anything with it really. So people found their way to and I'm really happy with that, because it is about public speaking. It is about how to overcome the fear of public speaking and embrace public speaking in your life and your career and to feel good about it. And to see that it's a gift to the world that you have some kind of gift to give the world so I'm really happy with the title. The only thing I would say for you and I right, you probably agree is I would have had addiction in the title somehow. But the thing is that I do like that kind of peeking people's interest. I weighed myself because I know you and I know your story. When I saw the title, I was like, Oh, I can't wait to listen to that. Because I know what it's really going to be about what kind of labels she's talking about. So it can work for you, really you have to play with it, I think but I do. I do agree with you, Anna, that like, make sure your title gives people a clear indication of what it's really going to be about what they're going to get from it. So I had to have public speaking in my title.
Anna David: Yeah. And you know, to be clear, my mind doesn't have nearly doesn't have anywhere near 300,000 views. So it's like, it's wonderful if the people who know you are going to be interested, but it's not much more wonderful if people interested in your topic are going too.
Bridget: And I am telling you that that's because of my title. Yeah, I don't have nearly that many views or listens on, I have three podcasts and I have all this other stuff out there. And I really think it's because, one, it's the TED brand. And two, it's about public speaking. So people are searching for a TED talk on public speaking because it's in the name, remember that keyword, the SEO, the search, you know, all that all that really comes into play here. So back to you know, my recommendations have a really catchy title but a title that has the key words of what your talk is about. Have your two or three key core points and then anchor them in the most powerful stories that you can think of from your personal life. Anna, when you said to me that you had someone else write that really blew me away because it's so personal. And it's so you and it's so authentic and you're so vulnerable and open and real. I just love your talks so much. And because it's so us, it speaks to how you can get so much as you can even now to someone, right, and you probably didn't use what they wrote, but it was a starting point for you. If you can afford to get someone to write your speech, you can afford a coach, go for it, because you're still going to end up with your authentic piece of work. Yeah, why not get that help to give you something to start with? And to give you something to work from?
Anna David: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't recommend, well, now it's so different. Like this was a place where they were like, we've done talks for everybody, but nobody wants to admit that they have their talks written. So we can't tell you who and so I don't even think it was like that legitimate right dinner party told me about it. But what was helpful is they had a questionnaire and the questionnaire had a lot of personal questions. And you know, and so it got me thinking about it. In the end, I would say to anybody, don't do what I did, hire a professional. Write the talk yourself, right.
Bridget: And you can write it in collaboration, much like you do with books. Anna, you know, I say the same. I tell people about you all the time, like recommending you. If you want to have a book out there. You don't have to do it all yourself. Yeah, to do. You don't have to do a lot of it. If you want to get full service work with someone like Anna's company. But same thing with a TED Talk. I've had many people come to me and say, Can you write it for me? And I say no, absolutely not. But let's sign up for 10 coaching sessions. And we'll write it together. And it'll be amazing. Because you're gonna tell me and what I've done. It's the most fun coaching because I'm like, Okay, tell me your stories. Tell me what you most want people to know. And we write it together. And they're so happy at the end.
Anna David: So how does that work? So they show up? Does it have to be 10 Sessions?
Bridget: No, but this is what I typically recommend when someone is starting with nothing.
Anna David: Yeah. You're starting with a book, maybe five sessions?
Bridget: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would say at least two or three, you know, but I've also had people come to me. I've actually had people come to me, when they have the whole thing written, practiced. They have their TED Talk, they've practiced it with a million people, and they just want to do one session to get my take on it. My feedback, and that's great, too. So anything? Yeah, absolutely any level of service, which you offer as well, many different options there.
Anna David: So you know, talking it out with somebody, and then how much of it is written and how much is bullet points?
Bridget: You know, it's interesting, because I am a fan of writing the whole thing out nearly for a TED talk only for a TED Talk. When I taught public speaking for 28 years, I'll say, it was always bullet points. It was like Do not write out your talk because you're giving it in front of this live audience for just this one time and it's a small intimate group and you can just be yourself. Just have your bullet points and speak naturally, speak extemporaneously or conversationally, right. That's always my recommendation for most talks, but with a TEDx talk, given the stakes, the gravity I have to say honestly, you know, going in knowing Ted now owns this, you have no rights to it. You 're gonna put it online forever for you know, in perpetuity. So you want to have it be as close to perfect as you possibly can. So yes, write it out word for word. But the challenge with writing out word for word is you really have to practice and rehearse so that it sounds natural and conversational. Nobody wants to hear you read your speech.
Anna David: Yeah. Yeah. So okay, so you write it out word for word. And then do you recommend I mean, one thing I do is I will tape record myself and then play it back, do recommend doing that?
Bridget: I do exactly the same thing. Yep. record myself or just I have a PDF reader. So I can just have the words written now you can whatever technology works. We also recommend videoing yourself, recording yourself and looking at your body language and your movements. Is there anything awkward going on there? It's really important to have an awareness of how you're carrying yourself, your voice, your pacing, eliminating those vocalized pauses, hums and ahhs. All of that is work that I do with people and then I had to do myself as well.
Anna David: So let's talk about your talk. How many times do you estimate you’ve practiced it?
Bridget: Oh my gosh, practiced? Oh my gosh, I don't know. Maybe 100. I mean, maybe 50. I don't even know. I mean, I just listened. I definitely listened to it over and over hundreds of times, because why not? You're driving in the car, running, exercising. You're cleaning your dishes, washing your dishes, doing your laundry, you could be listening to it over and over. Right? Well, maybe 25 Maybe 50. It's really hard to say Yeah, and I did. I practiced it over and over.
Anna David: Until you're so sick of it.
Bridget: Yeah. Do you know how many times you did?
Anna David: No. I have no idea but like How do you keep it fresh? You know, when you're like, I'm so sick of hearing myself say this sort of thing, you know, how do you do that?
Bridget: You don't think you can keep it fresh for yourself. I think when you're in front of the live audience now I know a lot of people are doing type two TED talks, virtually now, I was lucky mine was before COVID. So it was with when you're in front of that live audience, and you look at them, and you see that they're hearing it, they're there and excited to hear it for the first time. That energy naturally is sparked in the moment.
Anna David: Yeah, yeah. So you just resign yourself to being bored with it and being like, well, and maybe you can pretend you're someone new, almost like an exercise? Or an audience member? So the order is, look at your book, you know, find the key points, find the stories that match it, write an outline, either work with someone or write it out yourself. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And then start searching, you know, it is not yes, they do not make it easy to find TEDx talks, because there's no unified center. So it really is a lot of Googling and spreadsheets and going, Oh, okay. Some TEDx events make it really clear, submit, hear most do not? Most do not. And I say if this is your goal, say, you know, I know people who've gone to Amsterdam to give. But yeah, for me, I said, I'm willing to go anywhere in the state of California. And so I just applied to every one I could find in California, they each have different themes. They're very general themes. So you can kind of make your topic fit a theme.
Bridget: 100%. I believe any topic can fit any theme. Yes.
Anna David: And each place is going to be different in each place, tech is going to be different. I did a TEDx talk in an auditorium where you couldn't even hear me. It was like a, it was like an I mean, a frickin school auditorium. And then I did one that was really great. So understand that you cannot control how high tech or low tech an event is. Yeah, you could do some Googling to figure out if this is, you know, some of the TEDx stages are a much bigger deal than others. Do you know anything about that?
Bridget: I don't know that much about it. But I think you can research you know, thankfully, you can research. You can look at the TED talks from that conference. And you look at what their website looks like? What does it say just you really, it's where the grit and the persistence come in. If you're serious about it, and you have a book, you will get it, you will get a TED talk. And you will, if you're willing to put in the work and the time and research, you'll find a 10x conference that matches what you're looking for. But you've got to be willing to dig deep and do the research. And you can even reach out to someone like yourself, so many people reached out to me, through my TEDx talk, they thought you know, you can Google anybody and you'll find an email for them somewhere or a contact page on their website. people reach out to me all the time. Hey, I found your TED talk, I'd love to talk to you about it, you know how I can do one. So you can find someone's TED talk at that conference, try to find them, reach out and be like, Hey, can I get five minutes of your time to ask you about what it was like speaking at this conference? Keep persistent, be assertive, find out from all the people who you can potentially tap into to learn and pick. Yeah, maybe you're going to be in the lucky position of picking which one you would most prefer to speak at.
Anna David: Yeah, I mean, you can do what I did, which is I just did the same talk and a bunch of them which one of them yanked me out you know, said you can't do that but most don't care and if you were to decide. If you're going to the trouble of applying for all these and you get in, why not? Why not have this experience? Yeah, what about the actual talk? What do you recommend? Like you know, it's down to don't wear red or don't drink too much water?
Bridget: I would say just wear something that's comfortable that you feel great in whatever you feel you look your best in but that's comfortable for you to move around in. I regret wearing a tight skirt. You know, I would want something a little more comfortable but I love blue and I feel good and blue. So I knew from the get go that I was going to be wearing a blue tarp. So I don't wouldn't say don't wear red but I would say wear what you know you feel good and look good in Yeah, and get a good night's sleep if you can. That's so ironic because I didn't sleep the whole night before my TED Talk. So get a good night's sleep but if you don't then just Just be careful of your trash talk in your mind. Right so I didn't sleep all night. So I didn't couldn't change that. It was like you know what you can do. You can teach and you lead all day training programs with unknown sleep, you can do this, you can do this talk on no sleep, you'll be fine. You can get through it, you know. So make sure that your self talk I think is really affirming and positive, no matter how much everyone else tells you. Yeah, you're gonna do great. You have to be able to speak to yourself that way. And just take good care of yourself. Yeah, don't drink too much water, so that you're gonna have to pee right in the middle of it. Take care of your physical needs, make sure you're in good shape physically, emotionally, mentally, as much as you can. And really just tell yourself, you've got this, you can do it.
Anna David: Do you recommend going early and mingling with the audience? And do you do? Yeah,
Bridget: I do. I mean, if you can, depending on what's going on with your TEDx conference, I was lucky enough to be among many friends, because it was at the University where I had been teaching for many years. So I felt really good to get there early, and get hugs and talk with people and have people say, I'm so excited to hear your talk. But then I'm a big meditator. I meditate every day, sometimes multiple times a day. So I definitely needed to be able to pull away and find a quiet hallway and just sit and center myself and get quiet and do some breathing. Breathing. So if that works for you, if you know that works in your day to day life, to calm yourself and center and ground yourself and find a way to find that space for yourself.
Anna David: And did you have to apply? Was that awkward?
Bridget: Yeah, no, they didn’t, I was worried that I wouldn't get picked because they didn't want to be incestuous. And say, no, we want to have community leaders, they had student speakers as well at my conference. So I thought, well, they might not pick me because I'm a professor at the University and they figure I can get a TED Talk anywhere. But it ended up working in my favor. And I knew the curator of the TEDx talk. And I talk about that in my talk that, you know, net, we always say like, networking is everything. And it's who you know, and you know, you and I are people, people, people anyway, and I like, sincere, and we love connecting with people. But I got that TED talk because of connections, that I was always very conscientious about making real and deep and genuine connections with people in all of my circles. And I would not have gotten that TED talk if it weren't for that. And I didn't do it because of the TED Talk. Because I didn't know that this person was the curator of the TED conference when I got to know her. But it happened to work in my favor.
Anna David: No, what do you do if you're bombing? What the hell do you do? Can you reel it back in?
Bridget: Yes, you can always reel it back in. And I've always taught this in my public speaking training programs and courses, you've got to be able to read the room, you got to be able to read the audience. If energy is low, when you're looking out there, or you feel it, like pick up your energy, pull yourself together, manage your mind, so much of it is going to be the talk in your mind is like if you're bombing and don't tell yourself, you're bombing, just saying I'm feeling a little low energy, you know what, I'm gonna raise my volume, I'm gonna, like, do that inner work of talking louder and talking a little faster, maybe and telling that story with a little bit more oomph and passion and enthusiasm. You can absolutely turn it around in the moment. I have done that many times.
Anna David: I love it. Now, would you say that as an author, you're that much more likely to be able to book a TEDx talk?
Bridget: Yes, absolutely. You're applying like you're applying for a job? Yeah, they want people who have credentials, who are going to bring a bigger audience who are going to capture people's attention more, having a book is a huge advantage for you.
Anna David: And you told me this thing that you're like, nobody cares, did we? I can't remember if I said this on tape. Nobody cares that I was a professor for 26 years. But everyone cares that I have a book and a TEDx talk. And that's true.
Bridget: Absolutely. Absolutely. Whenever I'm introduced, it's the book and the TEDx talk that come first and I self published my book, I'll say that proudly, nobody knows. Nobody cares. I went through that process and got lots of support, like the kind of support that you provide, and, you know, books and the TEDx talk.
Anna David: And well how has having both of those changed your life and your career?
Bridget: Well in that way, I mean, I just want to elaborate and say they give you credibility that you simply cannot find through any other activity you might do. You can be on a board of directors, you can be on the you know, in the leadership of your organization, which is great. I love doing those things. You know, I volunteer for a bit I'm involved in a million different things but you're gonna have credibility and that those that brand, like nothing else you can possibly do, but honestly, I'm not like and I didn't realize the extent of how much I would get this from it, but the the feeling of truly helped and people, like your TEDx talk was so meaningful and so powerful. And I know it's helped so many people, right? Who, who also identifies with being an addict and the empowerment that you brought to that talk, and I don't I have, we all have lots of labels. You know, It's so funny how your talk can be so meaningful and so deeply helpful and transformative for people who you wouldn't even think of, like your talk was so meaningful for me for a million reasons.
But because as you know, I have a transgender daughter. And that's a label that we have in our family, right? That is very scary to share with people, I have a transgender daughter, I've embraced it over the years, we, you know, we are out there in the world, educating people. But in the beginning, it was really, really scary to say that, you wouldn't necessarily think that in my TED Talk, where I openly talk about the label of being an addict. It's going to empower and inspire and transform all these people's lives who are going to hear this, who have totally different labels that I can't even imagine, right. So that's where I think it's going to be something of value in people's lives that they can't even imagine. That you're going to be giving a gift to the world that's going to feel so rewarding and meaningful and just profoundly deeply important to you in ways that you can't possibly feel before you ever have the experience of giving a TEDx talk.
Anna David: I love it. What a note to end on. So, Bridget, what's the best way? And so you guys are podcast listeners. So you have two or 3 podcasts?
Bridget: Three. Okay, so the most important, well, they're all important to me, my daughter and I the most popular for sure is my daughter and I have a podcast called Transgender School. And she identifies with three of the letters of the acronym LGBTQ plus. So we talk about sexual orientation and identity, we talk about gender identity.
Anna David: You talk about dog identity.
Bridget: My dogs are barking. So yes, we do talk about our dogs, talking about our dogs. It's very supportive. They want to be heard. And so please listen to that to be an ally, to be educated. It's not just for people in the LGBTQ plus community, it's for all of us, for everyone. It's so important for people to learn, and we're learning. And then my personal podcast is just me, my coaching podcast is called Growth and Gratitude. And I just started it. I'm just about to release my second episode, and I talk all about coaching, life coaching, executive coaching, we all have it and how to just live a meaningful and happy and rewarding life. And it's okay if it's not happy, and how to process emotion and feel sad, and just everything around living our lives fully and wholeheartedly as Brene Brown talks about. And the third podcast, which is on Hiatus, but we have 30 episodes, and I am so proud of is called The Right Questions, which is with my partner Todd, who's a fellow coach in my company, and we talk all about how asking ourselves the right questions in life leads us to the answers and where we want to go in life. And it's all about powerful questions, the power of questions. So those are my three podcasts, find them. They're free. They're out there, all of them. Also, we have the video of every single episode on YouTube. So you can watch us you can hear us there on all the podcast apps and I would love for people to find us and learn from us
Anna David: Also hire Bridget, you know, if somebody's interested in working with you on their talk, what's the best way for them to find you?
Bridget: Yeah, find me, go search for me. I have my coaching and consulting website called Sampsoncoachingandconsulting.com. We have transgenderschool.org. So find my website, you're welcome to email me. Both of those have contact pages, they go directly to my email, find me just google me, you'll find me I'm out there in a million different places. Bridget Sampson, Find me I would love to work with you and I do a free 20 minute consultation for anybody who wants to talk with me. Absolutely. I have time in my schedule for anything, any kind of coaching, any kind of training or I leave retreats, group experiences, whatever you need, we can chat.
Anna David: I love it. I will have links to all of that in the show notes. So Bridget, thank you so much. And you guys, thank you so much for listening. Go get your TEDx talks.
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM
June 15, 2022
How to Get a Journalist's Attention with HARO Creator Peter Shankman
Peter Shankman is many things, among them a five-time best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate in-person and virtual keynote speaker who focuses on customer service. But in this episode I got him speaking about something so many of you ask me about: HARO, or Help a Reporter Out...the website he started (and sold to Cision many years ago) that helps so many authors get featured in mainstream media.
In this conversation, which happened in rapid fire while he was in the throws of salmonella, Peter shared with me how he started HARO accidentally, the best way to get a journalist's attention and why someone stealing a Yoo Hoo truck ended up being the best PR Yoo Hoo could get, among many other topics.
RELATED EPISODES:
Talking About Your Book on TV and Podcasts with Media Coach Susan Harrow
Cameron Herold on Generating Free PR and Creating a Vivid Vision for Your Book
How Do I Use My Book to Get on Podcasts?
TRANSCRIPT:
Anna David: Hi, Peter, thank you so much for being here.
Peter Shankman: Glad to be here.
Anna David: So in addition to being an author, you many times over, I consider you someone who has helped authors get coverage more than anyone else out there because the first thing I do, as anyone who listens to this podcast knows, is I say go to HARO when you're writing your book, because you are writing a book on this topic, therefore, you are an expert on this topic. So I say thank you on behalf of all authors, Peter.
Peter Shankman: You're welcome. It's nice to see something I created almost 15 years ago now. It's still very popular. So that's makes me happy every time I hear it.
Anna David: More popular than ever, it seems like.
Peter Shankman: Yeah, people tend to keep using it. There's always a part of me that wants to buy it back. But they can't go back again.
Anna David: Well, and also there are these poor imitations that I have tried, and I'm just saying, they just they suck in comparison. I'm not naming names. So tell me about the inspiration to start HARO. How did that happen?
Peter Shankman: So I talked to everyone I have massive ADHD. And when you imagine ADHD, you talk to everyone and if I'm on a plane, and you're next to me, unless you fake your death, I'm gonna know everything about you by the time we land. And so over time, you know, just growing up and living in New York City and Boston and California, I created this massive Rolodex. If anyone listening to you is under 30, a Rolodex like Outlook that has cards, and you turn it. And I came with this massive Rolodex of 1000s and 1000s of people and journalists. I ran a PR firm at one point in my life and journalists knew me and they knew. Peter, you know, I'm doing a story on whatever, who do you know, who does? I tell them, ya call this guy or call that guy.
And over time, more and more journalists are calling me asking me hey, I'm doing this or whatever. And the straw that broke the camel's back was I'm calling for the Wall Street Journal, a friend of mine at the Times said that, you know, a lot of you I'm doing a story on African farming. And my friend said, you have a lot of friends that are subsaharan soil experts. And 12 hours later, I found a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend at USC who knew someone, right? So it's alright, this is getting a little ridiculous, maybe if I, what if I put all the queries together and send them out automatically. And you know, that led to what is now Help A Reporter Out.
Anna David: That is amazing. So my personal experience with harrow is the very first time I used it, I wrote a two line thing. And suddenly, next, I'm quoted in Fortune magazine, I ended up being quoted millions, you know, dozens of times by that writer, then I have written elaborate, amazing things like blogs that are super random, and I never hear back. So what is the secret? Is it just a numbers game?
Peter Shankman: I think it partially is a numbers game. But more and more across the field. I think it's about an early response game, you know, think about this when the Herald was at 545. In the morning, by six o'clock, there are at least 100 people that have sent in a response to every single query. And so if you're smart enough to know your answer, you need to do a couple of things, you need to make sure that your response is quick and to the point, and is easy. You need to make sure that you can write in such a way that the reporters are willing to use the answers to all the questions they have without wasting their time. Most importantly, that you haven't done it quickly. So I mean, the best recommendation I can give, create a mock write up of what you would send with some key parts left blank. And those key parts are usually with reporters going to ask. And so you know, my name is Peter, I recently found a company called blah, we do blah, based on your query about blank. I think I'd be the perfect person to answer the question of what is blank, because our company, blank, and you know, that gives you that much more to work with and you can really read the Harrow, fill it out and send it within three minutes. The speed game, a lot of the speed,
Anna David: It goes up at 5:45 East Coast time, right.
Peter Shankman: 5:45 am East Coast, 12:45 pm East Coast and then 5:45 pm East Coast. Yeah, I have a friend of mine on the West Coast who paid me a compliment when she goes, I know I've been awake too long on the West Coast when I get Peter's morning HARO before I go to bed.
Anna David: I know that's my recommendation to you in California. It's just staying up all night. You'll be the first.
Peter Shankman: Well there are people who set their mailing program on their phone to have the Harrow act as an alarm. And so they wake up at 5:45 when it comes out so they can review it and answer it. Yeah, there are some junkies out there.
Anna David: What I think is really genius about it is, you know, I started in journalism back when we would never have conceived of taking emailed answers as a quote and tie and it just changed. Did you understand that that was changing? Or was that just a lucky break?
Peter Shankman: I started my career. I mean, I was a journalism major in the early 90s. And then when I'm starting my career, my first job in a school was I helped found the Newsroom in America Online. And I watched digital news be born. And I watched the birth of digital news between the US and MSNBC. People don't realize that MSNBC actually served from Microsoft NBC, and it was a Microsoft NBC joint venture. And we launched a newsroom in the height of the dot com boom, well, not the height of the dot com boom, but back when the dot com boom was first gaining its legs in the mid 19, early mid 90s. And some of the time the.com boom came around. I mean, do you remember something called Point cast? When cast? Was this this screensaver that would turn on and bring you information? Right? bring you news to your screen while your screen is off, right?
While your screensaver was on. So you know, all I saw was where it was going. And I saw more importantly, that for every new bit of technology that was impacting journalists negatively, journalists are consistently having to do 10 times more with five times less or bite or scratch that reverse. And so for me, I'm like, Well, what can I do? I always had my job as a PR person back when I did PR isn't to make a client happy to make a reporter happy, they make the reporter happy, the clients I'm having by default. So what can I do to make that client happy? And for me, that was always offering them information, I didn't necessarily need to pitch them. And that was really the foundation of HARO. So the concept of being able to help a journalist do more with less, is really what sort of blew it up.
Anna David: And you also have a book about how to, one of your earlier books was really about how to, you know, kind of awesome PR sort of stunts, would you say?
Peter Shankman: Yeah, my first one was called, Can We Do That? It was all about outrageous PR stunts and how they can benefit your company.
Anna David: So how has it changed now? Do you have to be more outrageous today than when you wrote the book?
Peter Shankman: You know, it's funny. I'm talking about on CNN and MSNBC, and a lot of what they call me for back eight, nine years ago, they used to call me when when companies or people did stupid shit, when they took a PR stunt too far, when a celebrity said something stupid. With the invention of Twitter, and the dumbing down of America, and you know, our previous president, things like that, the bar for what stupid things actually are, has dropped, or has raised I guess, depending on how you look at it. And I don't get caught about that anymore, I get called about other things. But you know, a company making a stupid statement might gather two seconds of screen time when 10 years ago gather 10 minutes worth. So you have to ask yourself, you know, where is the bar? You know, it's the same thing with customer experience, the customer service bar is so damn low, that I don't need you to be awesome anymore.
I need you to suck slightly less than everyone else. And the same thing sort of applies from a PR standpoint, there are so many bad pitches going out every single day in the media, that I don't need you to be awesome. I need you to just get the facts right, get them to the right journalist and get their name right. I will, you know, my two favorite stories, one which happened a couple days ago. And quickly is my new favorite story, as I was in the Omni Hotel in Florida two days ago about to give a keynote. Yesterday actually, I was about to give a keynote. Ming you, I was doing this with salmonella, so I wasn't happy to begin with. And I couldn't get online and I called the front desk. I'm like, “Yeah, my like, well did you enter your last name, and your room number in the bottom. I'm like, “yeah.” “Are you sure you are spelling your last name right?” “Well, it's been my last name for almost 50 years. So I'm pretty sure I got that part down, thanks.”
You know, and then the other one my favorite is, you know, last Mother's Day, I got a pitch. I still get tons of pitches all the time from the media. And I got one last Mother's Day. Dear Peter, we know that working moms like you have it tough. So you know that if that's where the bar is, I don't need you to be awesome. I need your walk crossfire. That shifts hard. I don't need to do any of that. I just need you to [inaudible].
Anna David: I mean, you're preaching to the choir, this thing with hotels, like basically the companies that used COVID as an excuse to suck and never come back from sucking. Because they're just like, oh, no, we don't clean rooms anymore because of COVID. Sorry, sorry, what does that even mean?
Peter Shankman:: Yeah, I got the same thing. Yeah.
Anna David: So but in terms of a stunt that would work, you know, what kinds of things would you recommend? I mean, I'm looking at some of the things you talked about in that book. A small yarn shop that got people to eat their sweaters?
Peter Shankman: No, no, the small yarns shop, the best one for that. Well, yeah, that was made with a handsome Martha Stewart sweater, but the best one for the yarn shop was that we created. You know, the problem with the yarn store, they were just outside New York City, and when you’re just outside New York City, no one wants to visit you because you're outside of New York City, you might as well be in Wisconsin. And so what we did was we created a bus and we put two giant needles on the two giant needles and two giant balls of yarn made out of like, you know, plastic on the roof of the bus and drove around New York City picking people up taking them to the yarn store and bringing them Back called the Yarn Bus. And it was everywhere saying the show it was on Martha Stewart was all over the world. And they made a fortune. Because you know, they were the average spend, I think for every customer is like 200 bucks. And they're bringing like, you know, 300 customers a day, it was crazy.
Anna David: And so, so these PR stunts that you wrote about in the book, were they all once you engineered?
Peter Shankman: Yes.
Anna David: Okay, another one. You got CEOs to jump out of a plane in the name of brand visibility? Who is that for?
Peter Shankman: So that was actually for my PR firm. During the dotcom boom, everyone had a PR firm and it was trying to do better. And I'm like, Well, how can we get press that you know, what can we do to invite reporters and potential clients to do? Oh, a softball game, boring, picnic, boring, dance party, boring. Let's go skydiving, someone said. I don’t remember who. One of them. I mean, so 150 of us jumped on a plane. We called it a web dive 2000. We got a front page, tons and tons of press. My lawyer had a heart attack. When I told him what we're doing. It was incredible. And the best part about it was that the 150 people, 149 of them you know, jumped and had a great time. And I left it at that. Now I've wound up getting my skydiving license and I have over 500 jumps now. I've jumped over the Pyramids of Giza and all over the world. So yeah, it's pretty crazy.
Anna David: That was your first time though?
Peter Shankman: Yeah.
Anna David: And okay, another one: a stolen Yoo Hoo truck became a financial and media relations. Can you tell me about that one?
Peter Shankman: Yeah, we had a client. I was repping Yoo Hoo at the time. And we had a garbage truck that traveled around the country to go to the Warped Tour concerts in summer 2002. And they were followed by a truck with all the supplies, all the Yoo Hoo and everything like that. And that truck was stolen. And so we put in an APB offering a free lifetime supply of Yoo Hoo if someone found the truck, it was found in like 45 minutes.
Anna David: Oh, my God. So your brain, which as you've discussed many times, works really fast, just automatically thinks of these things. What do you think of something like that, that's going to be a stunt?
Peter Shankman: A lot of times, it's just understanding that, hey, this could be worth you know, I asked myself what I want to read about this, right? And that's really doing you should ask yourself, Is this something, if I didn't know, this company, if I wasn't attached to this brand, would I want to read this, but I want to take a look at what's going on with this interest me? And if the answer is yes, you know, why not give it a shot and see what happens?
Anna David: I mean, I think that that is the major problem. And I used to come at it this way. Like we think of our books as news. Our books are not news to anyone, no one cares about your book.
Peter Shankman: There is very little stuff that we do that could be considered news, very little. A lot of it is going to be the question of what is interesting enough to be worth the time of the journalist, because so few things are. So the question is, what can you find that becomes interesting to the journalist? What can you take a story that would otherwise be boring as shit? Repainting your conference room is not a story. Right? So what can you find that you can then take to the journalist? It's okay, this has some interest because it's not just about me.
Anna David: Right. So how have you used this for your books? Did you do stunts? So how did you promote your books?
Peter Shankman: Well, I mean, faster than normal. My most recent book, which is about ADHD, is the premise that ADHD is a gift, not a curse. And every media outlet I talked to, you know, thought of what they've been told, which is that ADHD is obviously a curse, it's a terrible thing to have. It's the worst thing in the world. But I cannot have a lot to say, actually, no, there's some benefit here. If you understand how to use your brain, and a better way, you can actually do pretty well. And you know, saying that, Oh, wow. Okay, never thought of it that way. Give me some examples at four or five examples ready to go at any given time, that changes things. So it really, it's a way of, can you make people think, a little different.
Anna David: And so it's not like you wrote that book with the concept like, Oh, this is gonna be really needed for journalists, this is what you know for books.
Peter Shankman: I wrote the book based on how I can help people channel their iterative gene and how they can use it to their advantage, but I understood how to pitch it because of what I do for a living.
Anna David: So somebody who doesn't have your contacts and doesn't, you know, but has a very creative brain and can think of saying, what would you recommend? Let's say they're like, I want to be on the mainstream media, and they've got a book about, you know, let's try to think of some kind of boring, I have no idea. Nothing is boring, adopting a kid. And they're like, this is my memoir. It's a really heartwarming story. How did they get media attention?
Peter Shankman: Well it's the human interest angle, right? You talk about, you know, I wasn't able to have children. And this was my journey towards eventually finding the child of my life, finding that child who changed my life is my journey of saving a child from abuse in Russia, whatever it is. You know, it's not just about her duplicate, where's the better part of that story? Where's the part that would make you go oh, wow, I want to read that. Where's that? You know, we have a very short attention span of 2.77 second attention span this country. So what can you do to make the reporter or the person or the reader stop and say, Okay, I'll give you more time?
Anna David: Yeah, yeah. And do you, I had a previous guest who said, "Oh, you've got to call journalists" because others never call a journalist.
Peter Shankman: No, you never do not. If someone called me right now and I wasn't expecting the call, I'd have them killed. No. There is nothing good about making a phone call. I mean, I can't believe I used to answer those things without knowing who was calling. I grew up in the 80s. The phone rang. Hello? No, no, do not email, text anything with the report. First of all, find out who the reporter likes to get their information. The best way to do that is to ask them how they like to get their information, they'll tell you and you use that way.
Anna David: So how do you ask them how you look on Twitter? What do you say?
Peter Shankman: Hey, curious, I got your email from the station or from wherever I'll have an idea for a story. What's the best way to pitch? They will respond and they will say "Oh, thanks for asking. Do it this way."
Anna David: Okay, so it's better to do that than just to go in for the pitch.
Peter Shankman: Oh, god. Yeah, make that first connection. Or follow them online. Hey, I saw this piece you wrote on XYZ. I loved it. I'd love to pitch you something similar. What's the best way to do that? Read their bios, a lot of time they'll write out what their bios are.
Anna David: Right. Right. And so you do occasionally, like you have a webinar coming up by the time this takes place, it's passed, on how to pitch journalists newspaper, TV, online, all of that. How often do you do these webinars? Can people just go to them?
Peter Shankman: Yeah, and actually, you know what you can actually even though it's, it'll be past when you run this, people can still buy the audio recording. So I'm happy to give you the link. So Shank.com/press.
Anna David: Yeah, I mean, even though the hotel doesn't know that Peter knows how to spell his last name. He does. He just proved it. So I'm just, I'm just looking at some of the things you're covering in that. What guarantees you'll never get a response from a journalist.
Peter Shankman: Pitching them the wrong way, pitching them off topic or complaining that they wrote a piece and you weren't in it, they're obviously mistaken.
Anna David: But you could write and say, I've actually done this effectively before, you can write and say I absolutely loved your piece. I'm going to not so humbly say, Hey, I also have a podcast about this topic or whatever.
Peter Shankman: Yeah, next time, if you ever do this again, once again, feel free to file this. If you ever do this again next time. Yeah.
Anna David: How To piggyback back off a great media hit. What's the secret?
Peter Shankman: Yeah, the secret is to grab that great media hit, figure out why it went, why it was a success and alternate it, and pitch it in different ways. There are different brands out there, if you got a great TV hit, how can you turn that into press, how do you turn it into written word, you know, blog format, maybe some want to follow that up with a podcast, whatever it is.
Anna David: I remember I had a publicist on this podcast who said to me, you could never get on a mainstream show first time out, you got to work your way up through local TV.
Peter Shankman: You have really stupid guests.
Anna David: I mean, that's weird, because my first TV thing was CNN. And so is that just someone who doesn't get how to play the game?
Peter Shankman: Yeah, first of all, anyone who says anything like, you'll never. I had a great teacher in school who told me that on a true or false test, if there's not a multiple choice test if the answer if one of the choices are at are usually never or always those usually wrong. Great piece of advice. So yeah, there are tons of ways to do better than that.
Anna David: Yeah, you can absolutely get on CNN or Today Show your first time out, if you want the right thing. I'm related to that, something I used to say, to like, you know, when your thought is always or never, it's not a true thought. A no, it's gonna be like, whatever it is. So that can be applied in many, many places. What are the best email subject lines to get responses?
Peter Shankman: It varies, but you know, for me, and I'm not giving away everything for the webinar, but I would say that I've had a lot of success with just being straight up a pitch on XYZ. You get, you should follow the NY Times pitch bot, it's pretty funny. They come up with some of the worst pitches possible to be sent in here at times. But you know, anything that you can do that's out there, you know, just figure it out. Again, don't waste a journalist's time.
Anna David: Yeah. I'll tell you in pitching you because I was just looking at the email. And this is how I pitch people I really want on the podcasts, I'll go podcast requests 950,000 Plus downloads, not a bad thing. You said yes, quickly.
Peter Shankman: I think at the end of the day, for me I don't mind doing things like this because it's good karma and [inaudible]. Yeah, I’m happy to help where I can, I think more people in the world should help.
Anna David: Great. Well, thank you so much for doing this while you don't feel well. If you could leave authors with one piece of advice, your final advice for them when they want to get media attention for their book or for themselves, what would you recommend?
Peter Shankman: One piece of advice. Don't focus so much on crafting a story about you, focus on what crafting a story that other people would find interesting that includes yourself.
Anna David: Great. I love it. Well, Peter, thank you so much, the best place for people to find you.
Peter Shankman: Yeah, my entire world is Petershankman.com. My social name everywhere is @PeterShankman, including Peloton. And yeah, reach out. I'm Peter Shankman. When it comes to my email, I'm always happy to chat.
Anna David: Okay, I'm going to find you on Peloton later today. Thank you so much. Thanks guys for listening.
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM
June 8, 2022
Approaching Your Book Like It's a Business with Bonnie Habyan
Bonnie Habyan is a communications marketing professional with an MBA in banking and finance. She's been a news reporter, a wedding DJ and even a Miss Baltimore Oriole.
But now she's taken on a whole new role: as an author. Her book, The World According to Bess, is a true love letter to her 90-year-old mother—a woman who can definitely give the Sh*t My Dad guy's dad a run for his money.
What surprised Bonnie the most about the book process is that, despite her history in marketing, launching a book is a whole new animal—an animal that requires as much of a plan as any other business...complete with KPIs, plans for how the book plays into ultimate business goals and much more.
So what has she figured out about a book business plan and what are her KPI's and plans? It's all in this episode.
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CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM
June 1, 2022
What Your Non-Fiction Book Needs with Elizabeth Lyons
Elizabeth Lyons is the creator of the Book Writing Accelerator and a five-time author whose first book, which she wrote because she couldn't find another book on the topic and really needed it, sold over 20,000 copies.
As someone who helps aspiring authors write and publish books, she's become a bit of my comrade-in-arms the past few years, where we regularly text each other questions, concerns and the occasional (or not so occasional) gripe.
We have so many feelings and thoughts about publishing, in fact, that in this episode we delve into beginners luck, navigating self-publishing and much more before we get to the meat of it: what to include in your non-fiction book. She breaks down how to start (you write a letter to your reader [genius!]), how to approach your Table of Contents and how to see it through to the end.
Did I mention she's a mom of five and super funny?
You'll like this one, I promise. (Who are we kidding, you like love all of 'em!)
USEFUL LINKS:
RELATED EPISODES:
The Debut of Launch Pad with Dave Chesson
Writing a Book in Public with Jesse J. Anderson
How to Write a Book Everyone Recommends with Rob Fitzpatrick
TRANSCRIPT:
Anna David: This is so long overdue. Would you not agree?
Liz Lyons: I would totally agree. It's so funny because right when you messaged me, I had been thinking the exact same thing, that I need to get you on mine.
Anna David: You came and spoke to my class. And I get that confused sometimes with oh, this person has already been a guest. But so we quote unquote, met early pandemic I would say. Where I noted your existence, and I did what I will sometimes do and I say, “I need to know this person.” So I reached out and I said, “Should we know each other?” And you basically said, “Yes.” Is that how you remember it?
Liz Lyons: I mean, who remembers anything from two days ago? Like I barely remember, did I eat breakfast today? I don't even know. But yes, that rings true?
Anna David: Yeah, it doesn't ring false.
Liz Lyons: It does not ring false.
Anna David: So, and I thought, Oh, my God, we do such similar things that we need to take over the world together or do whatever. And it's, and it's been glorious, on several levels, A, that we refer to each other, clients, because we kind of offer different ish yet similar things. And B, just to have someone to go to text and go, whoa, do you deal with this? Right? Yes, right. Yes, yes. Yes, I do.
Liz Lyons: And you know, what I love about it, too, is that we do similar things. And as you said, we do them slightly differently. And sometimes it's really reassuring, I think, in any space to recognize that at every there's a devil at every level, so to speak.
Anna David: Oh, tell me more.
Liz Lyons: Well, just meaning that it doesn't matter if you're offering a free course, a $47 course, a $1,000 course, a $25,000 package, $100,000 package, when it comes to just managing expectations, setting expectations, getting really clear about what a client is looking to do and whether or not you're the right person to help with that. It doesn't matter. Right? So you have packages at levels that I don't have packages at, and we still talk about some of the same things.
Anna David: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, sometimes I just, I feel like I've sort of given you this talk, it's like, my, the, the people who pay the least are the most demanding, and the people who pay the most or the least demanding. And I don't know if it's part of some, you know, 8020 principle, or just that having clients is the most fascinating experience in expectations. What it's taught me is when I haven't been a good client doesn't actually do that to you, because I just had a surgery. And I try to think of it the way that my clients think of our service when they come in, they don't know anything about it. What I know, I forget they don't know. And so it's constantly knowing that what you're dealing with is people's fear around the fact that they don't understand. And they shouldn't because.
Liz Lyons: And that's what I say all the time. Because you and I both deal with incredibly, you know, successful, confident, and I don't just mean success in terms of their bank account. I mean, they know of what they speak, they are confident and who they are. They walk with a certainness to the whole thing. And yet, sometimes they feel like there's something wrong with them, because they can't figure out this book writing and publishing thing. And that's what I say all the time is why would you know this? Like, why would you know what the surgeon is going to do with your intestines? It's not something that you have an interest necessarily in spending time researching.
Anna David: Right. That's why you've hired us. So let's talk about your journey. Totally different from mine. Let's also talk about how you have five children and I really don’t understand, but go on. Okay, so it starts with you looking at, I want to publish a book, let me look into this traditional thing. What happened?
Liz Lyons: Kind of right. So it started with, you know, finding out I was having twins and always having wanted to write something, not being sure what was I actually capable or qualified to write. Because I didn't have a degree in writing and all the things that people back then this was 2002 said you had to have. So I find out I'm expecting twins and I want a book that basically doesn't exist. And so I think maybe I can write that. And the first thing I thought to do was go traditional because back then that was the only thing I mean, that was the only thing to do really. So I tried and I queried and I queried and I queried some more and everybody was like nope, your market's not big enough. That's all I heard and this was before Amazon, social media. It was just all based on the market. Like, how big is your readership? And the feeling was that because my readership wasn't in the potentially millions, that I didn't have a viable product? So I thought well, I don't like the word no, I've never liked the word no.
So I thought, well, how hard can it be? Right, famous last words. So I did go initially with I guess what you would call a vanity publisher, you know, and it didn't go great. Because as we were just saying, I didn't know what questions to ask. So when I was told things, like, we're going to do this for you. And we're going to do that for you. I was like, Oh, my god, that's amazing. Not really realizing what that meant. And didn't mean. And so it became clear very quickly that I was on the losing end of this deal. In this particular case, because I was, I was fronting all the money, which is a fine business model, in my opinion, for book publishing, or really anything else. But they were keeping still, like 70% of the profit. I couldn't figure that out. So, it just didn't make any sense. So I quickly cut ties with them, and then started all over on my own. And that's where I figured out step by step by Google and then it did well.
Anna David: It's interesting, I was just reading Jane Friedman's hot sheet. And there's been this huge exploration of what they call hybrid publishing, which hybrid publishing means two things. It's what we do, where people pay us in order to do the work for them. And it's also when you pay somebody, and they take a percentage, and nobody in this report has any judgment about what we're doing. But there's great judgment about that model.
LIz Lyons: And I agree, I'm not gonna lie, I have great judgment about that model. And that's exactly why I don't run my publishing house that way.
Anna David: It seems like a terrible idea, even from a business standpoint for them, since most books sell 300 copies, because they’re setting themselves up for people to be upset.
Liz Lyons: Not only that, the accounting end of it, the administrative end of it for the publishing house, I have to imagine is insane. Because I know what it is just for my books, yeah, I'm just checking my own personal books, the books I've written and published and what they're earning on all the different platforms each month, and some pay 90 days and some pay at 30 days. And then there can be returns, if you're with, you know, IngramSpark, and you therefore are distributed to bookstores or whatever. And so all of those things come into play, and to figure out what you owe an author number one, and number two, for the author to look at that report and have confidence that it's correct. And I'm not suggesting that it's not correct. I'm just saying that I know, having worked with a wonderful distributor way, way, way, way back in the day before Amazon, to get my books in bookstores, I would get their report at the end of the month, and we could not figure out if it was even right.
Anna David: Right. I'm very challenged with reports and numbers anyway, so I don't even try. I've never looked at my book sales ever, ever, ever. I just take a check if it comes. So okay, you get everything back from this company, and you figure out all the things which back then must have been extremely challenging.
Liz Lyons: Extremely. Yes. I mean, that's an understatement. Because it was really, I don't even know if I was just a masochist or extremely determined. Because when I think back now, there's so many resources, they're almost too many resources, which is an opposite end of the spectrum problem for people. Because you can google deep dive all day long and never really know which approach you quote unquote, should choose. And so but that's what I did is I just kept diving and figuring it out. What's an ISBN? Do I need an ISBN? These people are saying, I don't need an ISBN. Does that feel valid, you know? And really just finding out to be honest, who my mentors in the space were, like, who, who's who was I listening to? And then if I trusted them, and I did, I took their advice, and I went from there and if it worked, it worked. And if it didn't, I pivoted again.
Anna David: Then was Jane Friedman, the only voice or she wasn't even there doing it.
Liz Lyons: Yeah. Back then I didn't know of Jane Friedman. And it's funny. I am so excited to see the hot sheet in my inbox this morning. So I learned about Jane Friedman, probably six years ago because I think Jane and I don't want to speak for her. But I feel like she's pivoted a little bit. She was very much more in the traditional space, puzzles and things like that. And that's not the space I've ever been in. Because ever since going indie in 2005 I suppose. I don't follow some agents now because I'm still interested in what's going on in the traditional space. I follow Jane, Jane is an absolute unbelievable wealth of information.
Anna David: Future podcast guest, just secured her.
Liz Lyons: Oh, good for you. She's, she's remarkable, remarkable. And, one of the things I really like about Jane...this is going to become the Jane fan show...is that she sits fairly squarely in the middle, like, she doesn't tell people you should do this, or you should do that. She just presents information as it becomes available to her. And I really respect that.
Anna David: It's funny, because when I first stumbled across her, you know, my big, my big heartbreak and publishing was when Judith Regan was fired, you know, she acquired my book for a lot of money. It's all exciting. And then she's fired by a woman named Jane Friedman, who was right under Rupert Murdoch at Fox. And who now I think does audiobooks. And like, she was the focus of my ire. Because it's like, I'm not gonna focus on Murdoch. And so it was like, and then I discovered Jane Friedman's an expert on publishing. I mean, literally for five years. That's who I thought it was.
Liz Lyons: That's funny. That's a great story.
Anna David: Oh, I wrote a piece that she published on her site. And when I pitched her I was like, by the way, I thought this was you for a long time. So who were the following back then? There were those dudes, there's that JT something like there was a guy that really made a lot of headway. He made a lot of money as an indie author. And he was one of the first I can't remember his name, people I discovered. Sorry, what his name was Barry, something.
Liz Lyons: Oh, that rings a bell, though. So Admittedly, I had blinders on. So I don't even remember, because to call them my mentors actually is probably a little bit of a misstatement, because it's not like I was following. Nobody had newsletters back then, we didn't have social media. I wasn't following anybody. It's just per se, when you did a Google search on, how do I know if I need an ISBN, for example, there were certain websites and resources that would always come up at the top of the Google search. And so I became uber familiar with those. And one of the first people that I started following very seriously, although this was probably after I had done at least two books, and maybe three of my own was Dave Chesson. Because he too, is just an absolute wealth of not just information, but tactical, like, here's how you do this.
Anna David: Yeah. I love him. You know, he writes his books under another name, because he told me he was the first guest I had when we switched this podcast to being about books. Because he's like, Well, I don't want to exploit the fact that I have a name in publishing. Bow down to him, it was Barry Eisler. I just Googled.
Liz Lyons: That name is very familiar.
Anna David: Yeah. And it's saying he turned down half a million in publishing contract for two books, and then went and did self publishing. And it's, you know, been terribly successful. So you figure it out, and you publish your book, and what happens, your first book?
Liz Lyons: So I published my book, and in my opinion, really, nothing happened, to be honest, because we didn't have Amazon. We didn't have anything. I didn't have an agent or a publisher telling me oh, these are your required sales. I was just getting a check every month and it wasn't earth shattering. It wasn't tens of 1000s of dollars, but it was, I mean, I was at that time, a mom of, I don't know, a four year old, two year old twins, and I think I was pregnant with the next one. Like, I was happy for anything, but it was more than anything. Right? I mean, you know, it was like, Okay that’s interesting. I mean, it was four figures. It was in the low four figures every month. And it was like, wait a minute, like, I'm not promoting this. I'm not, I don't understand. And so I didn't really have a handle at all on what the sales numbers were until several, probably years later, I had hired a publicist who was helping me get on radio and local TV and mostly radio. We didn't have podcasts yet.
And she mentioned a girl to me by the name of Jenna McCarthy, who is well, now she's in Texas, but at the time she was in California. And somehow she connected the two of us because Jenna had just written a book called The Parent Trip that was released by one of the big five traditional publishers, and she said, you know, you guys are so similar, you should connect. So Jenna and I connected. And then Jenna was mentioning my book to her agent at the time. And her agent went into Bookscan, out of curiosity, and said, “Oh, my God, she has sold more books than most of my clients who are traditionally published.” And at the time, the number was like 25,000 copies or something like that. And I was like, really? I was like, okay, and what's interesting about that, though, Anna, is that if that had been one and done, if I had only done that book, I would be sitting here telling you a very different story, because I'd be sitting here going, it's easy, right? Write a book with a niche market, and you just put it out there and it just goes.
Anna David: Don't you think the universe just doles these out usually in the beginning of our careers? Oh, it's like, I wonder if I'd never thought about this. Just the gateway drug. The universe is like, we're gonna give you this and you don't realize this is your blessing. You're like, I've always kind of deserved this. So here we go with my career. Right?
Liz Lyons: Right. I am raising all these children. Come on, I deserve something. Yeah. That's an interesting perspective. Because, you know, when I did Book Two, it was the sequel to book one. Book one was Newborn Twins, First Year with Twins. Book Two was Toddler Years with Twins. And so that was a natural, it didn't sell as well as the first but it sold well. Then I did three, total flops. Now, in my opinion, here's why. Same market, same demographic, but the demographic wasn't just moms of twins or multiples. It was all moms. So now I was competing with Stephanie. I can't remember her last name right now.
Anna David: Yeah, Baby on Board. Stephanie. She's a friend of mine. Taylor, Stephanie. Or something?
Liz Lyons: Yes, Sippy Cups are Not for Chardonnay. Yeah, it was the book that came out right around the, plus Jenny McCarthy, she had her books, every but all the celebrities and the people had their books coming out. And they were on the Today Show and what was mine? Right? Am I alright, no press. I had no not so and I had no email list.
Anna David: That's interesting. You know, we always talked about the riches are in the niches. I always thought of it like, you know, what I really learned from Ryan Holiday, which is you drill down on a niche, and then that those people feel that there's a book that's written precisely for them. So they start recommending it, but I actually hadn't thought of it that your competition grows to the most popular authors that exist if you're not niching down.
Liz Lyons: Well, and to be fair, because I'm kind of comparing apples and oranges. If I had known how to communicate with the 30,000 people, you know, who had purchased the first and or the second book, I could have sold a lot more books. I mean, Ryan Holiday, who I think is magnificent, has always been more, back then and sometimes even now. But back then I didn't have a business mind about being an author. I wanted it to sell. And I liked the check that came in and I felt creative. But again, I was raising four very young children. So I wasn't thinking about what I have loved to get on the Today Show or do something with it. And did I try to do it absolutely. But I wasn't. I wasn't as knee deep in it, as I am now. And even now, to be honest, my knee deepness is not about promoting my own books. It's about helping other people write theirs.
Anna David: Exactly I mean, I don't know about you, but I basically write books in order to stay on top of the latest and try techniques out that I can try on clients. Do you think that's an interest?
Liz Lyons: That's very interesting. Yeah. I mean, when I wrote my last book, The fifth one, it was really something I wanted to say because it was something that I was experiencing as an entrepreneur. And it was a bunch of stuff that had been on my mind for a while that I had figured out how to think about differently and have a different perspective on and and I wanted to say, but I do think a lot now that I'm book coaching, I think a lot now about how did I write all those books? You know, what was my process for doing that? And I incorporate that.
Anna David: What I think that you said that's really interesting is that, you know, it has to be something you're interested in exploring when I was on the traditional publishing, like God do a book a year path. I was writing about stuff I didn't really care about, which is crazy to me. And I released this podcast episode today with Paul Angone and he was just talking about, you have to be so passionate about this, that you're willing to talk about it for years and focus for years. And I have written books where I don't feel like that at all.
Liz Lyons: Well, because, and here's the thing is that from, admittedly, I've not been traditionally published, but from what I understand it, because I know a lot of people who have, it's more of a business over there. You know, it's like, what cover will sell what content will sell what voice will sell what topic will sell what controversy will sell. And so that's why sometimes people, not all authors, but some authors get quote unquote roped in to writing a book that they're not super passionate about, or they write a book that they were passionate about. But then once the editor gets a hold of it, and makes it into what they think is marketable, all of a sudden, this isn’t even my book anymore, it doesn't feel like my book anymore. And therefore it's hard to talk about it and promote it. But that's something I stand very, very firmly on. And this is something you and I have talked about, and I believe I'm gonna let you correct me if I'm wrong, of course, but I'm pretty sure we share this opinion. If you're gonna write about, please let it be something that you're super passionate about talking about for as long as you're passionate about talking about it. If you decide in six months, or three years or 10 years that you don't want to talk about it anymore, totally fine. That's when your sales are going to drop off because somebody else is talking about it.
Anna David: And it's ironic. Well, I mean, when you said this thing about traditional publishing, it's more like a business. But I've never really thought about it like that. But the business is for the traditional publisher, because they don't think about it at all, as a business for the author, which is why they're capturing the email address. I mean, they're not really capturing email addresses with Amazon anyway. But the idea is, you know, when a book is finished, they don't want you to know, the number one thing that people want to do when they finish a book, if they finish it, is connect with the author, not connect with a publisher. Why would they care?
Liz Lyons: And that's what I say all the time. People don't buy books from publishers, so people will come to me and they'll say, Well, Elizabeth, I really want a traditional publisher. And the main reasons why people want a traditional publisher, in my experience, are they think there's a huge advance. Yeah, they think that there's huge marketing and connecting. And also they don't understand the timeline, they don't understand that it's going to be three years, if not more, depending on how long it takes to get the agent etc. But when they talk about marketing, I'm like, this is such a huge misconception, because people don't buy books from publishers, they buy books from authors, especially in the day of social media. Yeah, when you can actually connect with those authors. Nobody's out there connecting with Penguin on social media.
Anna David: I know. And it's interesting, Jennifer Armstrong, who I had on the podcast, who has a New York Times bestseller, she's like, I think you've got to just think of them as a printing service, you're just going to be disappointed if you think of them as more than that. So how did you start getting in touch with your readers and getting your newsletter subscribers and all of that?
Liz Lyons: Really, that started when social media started. And when there just became a way I mean, I went through all the like, rigmarole that we all hear about, you know, have a lead magnet and have the word funnel, I have a visceral reaction. And it's not good, because it makes me think of funneling cattle into a pen. But I understand what people are saying when they say it. And the idea is go out and find them, which is easier now than it's ever been, and then offer them a reason to stay connected to you, which is not in my experience. Like it depends on your genre to be clear. Yeah. So I don't work with fiction writers and their opportunities for connecting with readers are very different from nonfiction or memoir, because it's more character based. And it's more story based, whereas especially with nonfiction, it's more self development based.
Anna David: And it does seem like a massive generalization. It's far easier for certain genres of fiction writers to churn it out and to really have their business model be backlist and giving a perma free one book so that they get the series and all of that. And I do think it's much harder to churn it out, if you're doing nonfiction.
Liz Lyons: It's a completely different approach. Like you can almost look at it, I think of it. Most people don't realize that on Amazon, the paperback store and the Kindle store are two different stores. Even though they merged together, they are two different databases on Amazon. I think of this in the same way. When you're a fiction writer versus a nonfiction or a memoir writer, it's two completely different you're all writing books. But the approach to marketing and the like you said the perma free on the first one and then building up a backlist and getting people involved in the next character and doing pre orders and all those sorts of things, which is what people do very successfully in the fiction realm is wildly different from the nonfiction and the memoir realm. And especially in the nonfiction realm. So many of my clients, at least, are looking to build their business, which revolves around it's either based on their book or their book is an extension of something where they're already coaching, teaching, guiding whatever verb you want to use, to other people.
Anna David: Absolutely. And that's the same with ours. But wait, okay, I do want to go back to one thing. What do you think it was with your first book, just straight up beginner's luck?
Liz Lyons: You know what? The truth is, I don't know for sure. What I suspect. I don't think it was beginner's luck. I think that I hit without realizing it. I like that whole preparation meets opportunity thing. And it's like I hit the opportunity. Because there were no, there were, there were only a few books on the market about expecting twins to begin with. And they were all at the time quite like, your life is over. They weren't you know, and this was when Vicki I vine was really big with her Girlfriends Guide stuff, and honestly Anna, that's what I wanted. I was like Vicki, why couldn't you have had twins and written the girlfriends guide to twins, because that's the book I need right now. But she didn't. And so I just, I, I saw that as an opportunity. And I think that there happened to be a lot of people who wanted that. And the other thing was, it wasn't just book orders. Unbeknownst to me for a while there were hospitals ordering in bulk. Because they were running what was called Marvelous Multiples, which was a program that had been put together by a nurse who was also a mom of twins that was being offered by different hospitals. And the hospitals were ordering volume and giving the book to all of the participants in those classes.
Anna David: Don't you think that was your big thing? I mean, do you know how many sales there are?
Liz Lyons: I don't, I don't because the only way to get that information is through Bookscan. And even Bookscan is unreliable when it comes to off market stuff. Like it was all through the distributor I was working with. And I just if you had seen, I mean, my reports from a distributor every month, we're 15 pages long.
Anna David: Wow, So have you tried to reverse engineer that and be like, I'm gonna write a book that I know, institutions can bulk order?
Liz Lyons: I haven't because and it's an interesting question. And I guess the answer is because right now the answer is because that feels formulaic to me and I don't write in a formulaic, you know, I'm not.
So there are certain modalities that say, here's how you can figure out what kind of a book will sell, you can go out on Amazon and you can see what people are searching for. And if you know a lot of people are searching for this certain thing, then you know that if you write a book about it, it will probably sell well. But that is just an approach that has never felt good to me. I write, stuff just comes through me and. That's how I write.
Anna David: Interesting. I know I've read those things. I've read those and it literally be like, lots of people are searching for kids playing tennis. I've never played tennis, but I'm gonna write a book about that. That was really effective for a while. I will say I use it and I teach it which is you know your book and I mean, I got this from Dave Chesson. So start looking on Amazon to see how it auto populates because you're already reading the book. So include sections that people are already searching for. I do find that really helpful.
Liz Lyons: I find that really helpful too. And another thing that I find very helpful is recognizing what the keywords are that people are searching for and making sure that those are in not only your book description, but if possible, your reviews.
Anna David: Yes. By the way, your author bio, the whole thing, the whole thing? Yeah. So by the way, remember we said, Of course you remember it was yesterday, we're going back and forth about gotta find an exact angle for this episode. And of course, because we have so much to talk about, we really haven't gotten into the angle. Well, we're kind of verging on it now. Which is, what do you put in your book? That was the angle we decided, how do you basically come up with it? I don't know, your table of contents?
Liz Lyons: Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the things that I find, and I hear all the time holds people back from actually writing their book, because, you know, my clients are doing the writing themselves. So they are like, I have a story, I have something to share, I either have a story, like my life, or I have a process if we're talking about business. And sometimes there's a little bit of crossover. But where they get stuck most of the time is it's like, I'm so overwhelmed. So they do what's normally suggested or often suggested, which they do this big brain dump, and one of two things happens, either it's 75 pages long. And they can't figure out how to make it all come together with a nice bow. Or it's like four things. Because they're overthinking it. And they're trying to think through like, should I talk about that? Or should I talk about that?
Well, I don't know, have I been working on that long enough to actually position myself as an expert air quotes on it. And so that's where they get stuck in figuring out what do we should include? And what do we not include? And when you're ghostwriting, which you're intimately familiar with? Obviously, you guide them through that process of figuring out well, what is the you know, what is the table of contents, and I'm working on a ghost writing project right now. And that's something that had to happen was, you know, what are those, but that's where people get really stuck, and they don't progress from there. Because they come up with some story pun intended about clearly I shouldn't be doing this, because I can't figure it out.
Anna David: So how do you guide them? What's the process?
Liz Lyons: Well, it's different for nonfiction versus memoir. So nonfiction in my world is much more tactical. What do you want to say? First of all, what is the thing that your book is guiding people through? Because it's not a whole mess of things. It's not everything you've ever done? It's like, what do you want this book to help a reader overcome? And then what are the steps that you take people through? And more often than not, with that sort of a book? If the author is operating in integrity? They have gone through, that's the process they created for themselves? So it's like, take yourself back three years, five years, whatever it was, and identify what were the steps that really worked for you? What were the things that you needed to hear and know, back then? And then that's kind of where we start to get clear on that.
Anna David: I loves it. It was always interesting to me, when people differentiate between nonfiction and memoir, I was like, it is nonfiction. But you know, it's interesting. Rob Fitzpatrick, who I recently had on the show, was talking about how to book. How to versus memoir. Because really, that's what, that's what we're talking about. And so is there anything else about like, okay, take it back six months, five years, however long it is that you developed this process, and you're now explaining to other people, what do you do next? You go, okay, so for instance, I'm doing a book right now about how to plan and promote a book. So this is different, because I'm taking podcast interviews, and I'm doing it but like, how would we do that? How would you guide someone through that? You go, okay, so what was your starting point?
Liz Lyons: Exactly. You know, one of the things that I find very effective is for authors to write a letter to their reader first. And more often than not the reader is them, who they were three or five years ago. So essentially what you're doing is you're getting outside of yourself and outside of your I have to be you're getting outside of your perfectionist tendencies in order to say dear whomever name them if you want, here's what I know to be true about you. Here's where I know you are right now, here's what your fears are. Here's what's keeping you from moving forward. Here's what you're really really good at. But here's where you're stuck. And I have great news. Like again now we're going into like the typical copy editing stuff, but right or marketing, stuff like that. Good news is there's a path. And one of the things that's really important is that authors not hold themselves as the savior to the reader.
So all you're saying is here is a path, you're not saying here is the one and only path that takes the pressure off everyone. But here's the thing I want to share with you, my process that I use to get through this and/or, that I utilize, when I'm helping my clients, or however you do, whatever, get through this. And here's what we're going to talk about. And you start to get really clear, and you don't have to get into the nitty gritty of it at that point. But what you're doing when you do that, is you're creating the bubble. Okay. And then it just comes down to what goes into the bubble. Like you're creating the hub of the wheel, and what's in what's encapsulated in that hub.
Anna David: Do you have a certain set number of chapters that you recommend?
Liz Lyons: I don't, I think most nonfiction ends up between like 12 and 18 chapters, and it just depends on you know, I don't subscribe to a word count. I think anything under 40,000 words, or under 35,000 words is a pamphlet not a book, I’m kind of a stickler about that. Maybe 35,000. But I don't believe in adding words, just to add words. I think that when you're really connected to helping, that's what a book really is about, is serving. So when people come to me, and this doesn't happen much anymore, but and they say, Look, I just want to hit the bestseller list for five minutes, so that I can say I'm a best selling author, and that's going to sell me tons of books and make me millions of dollars and make me the sought after expert on every stage. That's not the right person for me, you know? Yeah, I know. You know, I know we share this. So when you're really looking to serve another person through telling your stories, it's not hard to get 40,000 words, 50,000 words or even 60,000 words. It's just not.
Anna David: But I know, on a personal level, I like reading shorter books now. I hate to say it, but I do.
And studies are showing because it just means you can read more, and some authors are just going on and on and on. I find self help has never been my thing. And it's like, I always feel like the first chapter says it and then the next 10 are repeating it. But that's me.
Liz Lyons: You know, I think that often is the case that often is the case. And if you don't have enough to get yourself to, you know, something solid, I mean, 80,000 words is such an old, old paradigm, because it's what was the average back in the day for traditional books, mostly fiction based. Yeah, or mostly, you know, fiction, but I think there's always an exception. So there are a lot of people who say, “well, I don't like to read long books.” And you have to kind of dive into why that is. Because when those people find a book, that's 250 pages long, that is just chock full of amazing information and stories. They read it. So it may not be that they don't like reading long books, it may be that they don't like reading repetitive nonsense, number one. And number two, if there's someone who wants to be like, well, I read a book a week. But in order to accomplish that goal, they know the book has to only be 97 pages. Well, then there's their motivation.
Anna David: Right. Well, okay, so we have to get to wrapping up. Do you have any final advice for somebody who, I guess who wants to write how to book, what they should do?
Liz Lyons: I mean, whether you want to write how to or memoir. And to be clear, the distinction between the two for me is that when you're writing what I call transformative nonfiction, or how to call it, whatever, you want to, you want the reader to take an action; there is a very specific action that you are giving to the reader with the hope that they may take it; when you're writing memoir, you are not attached to what they take from the story. Yeah, that's to me, is the difference. But I think it's really important, and I've always said this, to just understand why you really want to do it. And then what's the why under that? And you do the six layers or whatever deep of why? Because as with anything, once you really uncover why you want to do it and what you want to get out of it, you can execute it more efficiently. Whether that's write it yourself, hire someone to write it for you, write a 30 page ebook, do a novel, like whatever it is.
Anna David: I love it. So if people want to reach you what's the best way? And let's just also quickly say all your offers because you have courses you have coaching. Go.
Liz Lyons: So, I've minimized, I've simplified.
Anna David: So you still have courses?
Liz Lyons: I have one. Yeah.
Anna David: I think I've told you I'm so frustrated by trying to sell courses. It's just, you know, when the beginning of the conversation you were like, is this masochism or is this determination. That's how I feel about trying to sound like you guys, my Courses are so good. And you don't find them?
Liz Lyons: Yeah. And I feel exactly the same. And I know your courses. And you know mine, I get it, I think for me, so I have the book writing accelerator, which is my 12 week intimate group program. And it's a coaching program through writing nonfiction, or memoir, writing nonfiction, and memoir is an experience period. It's not something that in my world, we sit down and do on a weekend, it is a full on experience. And you're learning about yourself as you're as you're writing the book period. And then I have my course, the only course I have now, which is how to publish a book, how to self publish a book that can be sitting next to any New York Times bestseller and be indistinguishable and quality. So those are my two things.
Anna David: Well, so people can take those courses they can sign up for your coaching. You know, you just launch a few times a year?
Liz Lyons: I do the next one which launches in July. We start in July, and it goes for 12 weeks. And I usually do two or three containers a year of that. And then the publishing course IS evergreen.
Anna David: And then of course they can get your books?
Liz Lyons: Of course.
Anna David: And so where can they find you online?
Liz Lyons: The best place is Elizabethlyons.com. And that'll take people out to the course sites and the coaching site, wherever they want to go, but the hub is Elizabethlyons.com.
Anna David: Well, this has been such a delight. I'm so glad we finally did this. And you guys, thank you as ever for listening. Go find her. So good.
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What to Include In Your Non-Fiction Book with Elizabeth Lyons
Elizabeth Lyons is the creator of the Book Writing Accelerator and a five-time author whose first book, which she wrote because she couldn't find another book on the topic and really needed it, sold over 20,000 copies.
As someone who helps aspiring authors write and publish books, she's become a bit of my comrade-in-arms the past few years, where we regularly text each other questions, concerns and the occasional (or not so occasional) gripe.
We have so many feelings and thoughts about publishing, in fact, that in this episode we delve into beginners luck, navigating self-publishing and much more before we get to the meat of it: what to include in your non-fiction book. She breaks down how to start (you write a letter to your reader [genius!]), how to approach your Table of Contents and how to see it through to the end.
Did I mention she's a mom of five and super funny?
You'll like this one, I promise. (Who are we kidding, you like love all of 'em!)
USEFUL LINKS:
RELATED EPISODES:
The Debut of Launch Pad with Dave Chesson
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TRANSCRIPT:
Anna David: This is so long overdue. Would you not agree?
Liz Lyons: I would totally agree. It's so funny because right when you messaged me, I had been thinking the exact same thing, that I need to get you on mine.
Anna David: You came and spoke to my class. And I get that confused sometimes with oh, this person has already been a guest. But so we quote unquote, met early pandemic I would say. Where I noted your existence, and I did what I will sometimes do and I say, “I need to know this person.” So I reached out and I said, “Should we know each other?” And you basically said, “Yes.” Is that how you remember it?
Liz Lyons: I mean, who remembers anything from two days ago? Like I barely remember, did I eat breakfast today? I don't even know. But yes, that rings true?
Anna David: Yeah, it doesn't ring false.
Liz Lyons: It does not ring false.
Anna David: So, and I thought, Oh, my God, we do such similar things that we need to take over the world together or do whatever. And it's, and it's been glorious, on several levels, A, that we refer to each other, clients, because we kind of offer different ish yet similar things. And B, just to have someone to go to text and go, whoa, do you deal with this? Right? Yes, right. Yes, yes. Yes, I do.
Liz Lyons: And you know, what I love about it, too, is that we do similar things. And as you said, we do them slightly differently. And sometimes it's really reassuring, I think, in any space to recognize that at every there's a devil at every level, so to speak.
Anna David: Oh, tell me more.
Liz Lyons: Well, just meaning that it doesn't matter if you're offering a free course, a $47 course, a $1,000 course, a $25,000 package, $100,000 package, when it comes to just managing expectations, setting expectations, getting really clear about what a client is looking to do and whether or not you're the right person to help with that. It doesn't matter. Right? So you have packages at levels that I don't have packages at, and we still talk about some of the same things.
Anna David: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, sometimes I just, I feel like I've sort of given you this talk, it's like, my, the, the people who pay the least are the most demanding, and the people who pay the most or the least demanding. And I don't know if it's part of some, you know, 8020 principle, or just that having clients is the most fascinating experience in expectations. What it's taught me is when I haven't been a good client doesn't actually do that to you, because I just had a surgery. And I try to think of it the way that my clients think of our service when they come in, they don't know anything about it. What I know, I forget they don't know. And so it's constantly knowing that what you're dealing with is people's fear around the fact that they don't understand. And they shouldn't because.
Liz Lyons: And that's what I say all the time. Because you and I both deal with incredibly, you know, successful, confident, and I don't just mean success in terms of their bank account. I mean, they know of what they speak, they are confident and who they are. They walk with a certainness to the whole thing. And yet, sometimes they feel like there's something wrong with them, because they can't figure out this book writing and publishing thing. And that's what I say all the time is why would you know this? Like, why would you know what the surgeon is going to do with your intestines? It's not something that you have an interest necessarily in spending time researching.
Anna David: Right. That's why you've hired us. So let's talk about your journey. Totally different from mine. Let's also talk about how you have five children and I really don’t understand, but go on. Okay, so it starts with you looking at, I want to publish a book, let me look into this traditional thing. What happened?
Liz Lyons: Kind of right. So it started with, you know, finding out I was having twins and always having wanted to write something, not being sure what was I actually capable or qualified to write. Because I didn't have a degree in writing and all the things that people back then this was 2002 said you had to have. So I find out I'm expecting twins and I want a book that basically doesn't exist. And so I think maybe I can write that. And the first thing I thought to do was go traditional because back then that was the only thing I mean, that was the only thing to do really. So I tried and I queried and I queried and I queried some more and everybody was like nope, your market's not big enough. That's all I heard and this was before Amazon, social media. It was just all based on the market. Like, how big is your readership? And the feeling was that because my readership wasn't in the potentially millions, that I didn't have a viable product? So I thought well, I don't like the word no, I've never liked the word no.
So I thought, well, how hard can it be? Right, famous last words. So I did go initially with I guess what you would call a vanity publisher, you know, and it didn't go great. Because as we were just saying, I didn't know what questions to ask. So when I was told things, like, we're going to do this for you. And we're going to do that for you. I was like, Oh, my god, that's amazing. Not really realizing what that meant. And didn't mean. And so it became clear very quickly that I was on the losing end of this deal. In this particular case, because I was, I was fronting all the money, which is a fine business model, in my opinion, for book publishing, or really anything else. But they were keeping still, like 70% of the profit. I couldn't figure that out. So, it just didn't make any sense. So I quickly cut ties with them, and then started all over on my own. And that's where I figured out step by step by Google and then it did well.
Anna David: It's interesting, I was just reading Jane Friedman's hot sheet. And there's been this huge exploration of what they call hybrid publishing, which hybrid publishing means two things. It's what we do, where people pay us in order to do the work for them. And it's also when you pay somebody, and they take a percentage, and nobody in this report has any judgment about what we're doing. But there's great judgment about that model.
LIz Lyons: And I agree, I'm not gonna lie, I have great judgment about that model. And that's exactly why I don't run my publishing house that way.
Anna David: It seems like a terrible idea, even from a business standpoint for them, since most books sell 300 copies, because they’re setting themselves up for people to be upset.
Liz Lyons: Not only that, the accounting end of it, the administrative end of it for the publishing house, I have to imagine is insane. Because I know what it is just for my books, yeah, I'm just checking my own personal books, the books I've written and published and what they're earning on all the different platforms each month, and some pay 90 days and some pay at 30 days. And then there can be returns, if you're with, you know, IngramSpark, and you therefore are distributed to bookstores or whatever. And so all of those things come into play, and to figure out what you owe an author number one, and number two, for the author to look at that report and have confidence that it's correct. And I'm not suggesting that it's not correct. I'm just saying that I know, having worked with a wonderful distributor way, way, way, way back in the day before Amazon, to get my books in bookstores, I would get their report at the end of the month, and we could not figure out if it was even right.
Anna David: Right. I'm very challenged with reports and numbers anyway, so I don't even try. I've never looked at my book sales ever, ever, ever. I just take a check if it comes. So okay, you get everything back from this company, and you figure out all the things which back then must have been extremely challenging.
Liz Lyons: Extremely. Yes. I mean, that's an understatement. Because it was really, I don't even know if I was just a masochist or extremely determined. Because when I think back now, there's so many resources, they're almost too many resources, which is an opposite end of the spectrum problem for people. Because you can google deep dive all day long and never really know which approach you quote unquote, should choose. And so but that's what I did is I just kept diving and figuring it out. What's an ISBN? Do I need an ISBN? These people are saying, I don't need an ISBN. Does that feel valid, you know? And really just finding out to be honest, who my mentors in the space were, like, who, who's who was I listening to? And then if I trusted them, and I did, I took their advice, and I went from there and if it worked, it worked. And if it didn't, I pivoted again.
Anna David: Then was Jane Friedman, the only voice or she wasn't even there doing it.
Liz Lyons: Yeah. Back then I didn't know of Jane Friedman. And it's funny. I am so excited to see the hot sheet in my inbox this morning. So I learned about Jane Friedman, probably six years ago because I think Jane and I don't want to speak for her. But I feel like she's pivoted a little bit. She was very much more in the traditional space, puzzles and things like that. And that's not the space I've ever been in. Because ever since going indie in 2005 I suppose. I don't follow some agents now because I'm still interested in what's going on in the traditional space. I follow Jane, Jane is an absolute unbelievable wealth of information.
Anna David: Future podcast guest, just secured her.
Liz Lyons: Oh, good for you. She's, she's remarkable, remarkable. And, one of the things I really like about Jane...this is going to become the Jane fan show...is that she sits fairly squarely in the middle, like, she doesn't tell people you should do this, or you should do that. She just presents information as it becomes available to her. And I really respect that.
Anna David: It's funny, because when I first stumbled across her, you know, my big, my big heartbreak and publishing was when Judith Regan was fired, you know, she acquired my book for a lot of money. It's all exciting. And then she's fired by a woman named Jane Friedman, who was right under Rupert Murdoch at Fox. And who now I think does audiobooks. And like, she was the focus of my ire. Because it's like, I'm not gonna focus on Murdoch. And so it was like, and then I discovered Jane Friedman's an expert on publishing. I mean, literally for five years. That's who I thought it was.
Liz Lyons: That's funny. That's a great story.
Anna David: Oh, I wrote a piece that she published on her site. And when I pitched her I was like, by the way, I thought this was you for a long time. So who were the following back then? There were those dudes, there's that JT something like there was a guy that really made a lot of headway. He made a lot of money as an indie author. And he was one of the first I can't remember his name, people I discovered. Sorry, what his name was Barry, something.
Liz Lyons: Oh, that rings a bell, though. So Admittedly, I had blinders on. So I don't even remember, because to call them my mentors actually is probably a little bit of a misstatement, because it's not like I was following. Nobody had newsletters back then, we didn't have social media. I wasn't following anybody. It's just per se, when you did a Google search on, how do I know if I need an ISBN, for example, there were certain websites and resources that would always come up at the top of the Google search. And so I became uber familiar with those. And one of the first people that I started following very seriously, although this was probably after I had done at least two books, and maybe three of my own was Dave Chesson. Because he too, is just an absolute wealth of not just information, but tactical, like, here's how you do this.
Anna David: Yeah. I love him. You know, he writes his books under another name, because he told me he was the first guest I had when we switched this podcast to being about books. Because he's like, Well, I don't want to exploit the fact that I have a name in publishing. Bow down to him, it was Barry Eisler. I just Googled.
Liz Lyons: That name is very familiar.
Anna David: Yeah. And it's saying he turned down half a million in publishing contract for two books, and then went and did self publishing. And it's, you know, been terribly successful. So you figure it out, and you publish your book, and what happens, your first book?
Liz Lyons: So I published my book, and in my opinion, really, nothing happened, to be honest, because we didn't have Amazon. We didn't have anything. I didn't have an agent or a publisher telling me oh, these are your required sales. I was just getting a check every month and it wasn't earth shattering. It wasn't tens of 1000s of dollars, but it was, I mean, I was at that time, a mom of, I don't know, a four year old, two year old twins, and I think I was pregnant with the next one. Like, I was happy for anything, but it was more than anything. Right? I mean, you know, it was like, Okay that’s interesting. I mean, it was four figures. It was in the low four figures every month. And it was like, wait a minute, like, I'm not promoting this. I'm not, I don't understand. And so I didn't really have a handle at all on what the sales numbers were until several, probably years later, I had hired a publicist who was helping me get on radio and local TV and mostly radio. We didn't have podcasts yet.
And she mentioned a girl to me by the name of Jenna McCarthy, who is well, now she's in Texas, but at the time she was in California. And somehow she connected the two of us because Jenna had just written a book called The Parent Trip that was released by one of the big five traditional publishers, and she said, you know, you guys are so similar, you should connect. So Jenna and I connected. And then Jenna was mentioning my book to her agent at the time. And her agent went into Bookscan, out of curiosity, and said, “Oh, my God, she has sold more books than most of my clients who are traditionally published.” And at the time, the number was like 25,000 copies or something like that. And I was like, really? I was like, okay, and what's interesting about that, though, Anna, is that if that had been one and done, if I had only done that book, I would be sitting here telling you a very different story, because I'd be sitting here going, it's easy, right? Write a book with a niche market, and you just put it out there and it just goes.
Anna David: Don't you think the universe just doles these out usually in the beginning of our careers? Oh, it's like, I wonder if I'd never thought about this. Just the gateway drug. The universe is like, we're gonna give you this and you don't realize this is your blessing. You're like, I've always kind of deserved this. So here we go with my career. Right?
Liz Lyons: Right. I am raising all these children. Come on, I deserve something. Yeah. That's an interesting perspective. Because, you know, when I did Book Two, it was the sequel to book one. Book one was Newborn Twins, First Year with Twins. Book Two was Toddler Years with Twins. And so that was a natural, it didn't sell as well as the first but it sold well. Then I did three, total flops. Now, in my opinion, here's why. Same market, same demographic, but the demographic wasn't just moms of twins or multiples. It was all moms. So now I was competing with Stephanie. I can't remember her last name right now.
Anna David: Yeah, Baby on Board. Stephanie. She's a friend of mine. Taylor, Stephanie. Or something?
Liz Lyons: Yes, Sippy Cups are Not for Chardonnay. Yeah, it was the book that came out right around the, plus Jenny McCarthy, she had her books, every but all the celebrities and the people had their books coming out. And they were on the Today Show and what was mine? Right? Am I alright, no press. I had no not so and I had no email list.
Anna David: That's interesting. You know, we always talked about the riches are in the niches. I always thought of it like, you know, what I really learned from Ryan Holiday, which is you drill down on a niche, and then that those people feel that there's a book that's written precisely for them. So they start recommending it, but I actually hadn't thought of it that your competition grows to the most popular authors that exist if you're not niching down.
Liz Lyons: Well, and to be fair, because I'm kind of comparing apples and oranges. If I had known how to communicate with the 30,000 people, you know, who had purchased the first and or the second book, I could have sold a lot more books. I mean, Ryan Holiday, who I think is magnificent, has always been more, back then and sometimes even now. But back then I didn't have a business mind about being an author. I wanted it to sell. And I liked the check that came in and I felt creative. But again, I was raising four very young children. So I wasn't thinking about what I have loved to get on the Today Show or do something with it. And did I try to do it absolutely. But I wasn't. I wasn't as knee deep in it, as I am now. And even now, to be honest, my knee deepness is not about promoting my own books. It's about helping other people write theirs.
Anna David: Exactly I mean, I don't know about you, but I basically write books in order to stay on top of the latest and try techniques out that I can try on clients. Do you think that's an interest?
Liz Lyons: That's very interesting. Yeah. I mean, when I wrote my last book, The fifth one, it was really something I wanted to say because it was something that I was experiencing as an entrepreneur. And it was a bunch of stuff that had been on my mind for a while that I had figured out how to think about differently and have a different perspective on and and I wanted to say, but I do think a lot now that I'm book coaching, I think a lot now about how did I write all those books? You know, what was my process for doing that? And I incorporate that.
Anna David: What I think that you said that's really interesting is that, you know, it has to be something you're interested in exploring when I was on the traditional publishing, like God do a book a year path. I was writing about stuff I didn't really care about, which is crazy to me. And I released this podcast episode today with Paul Angone and he was just talking about, you have to be so passionate about this, that you're willing to talk about it for years and focus for years. And I have written books where I don't feel like that at all.
Liz Lyons: Well, because, and here's the thing is that from, admittedly, I've not been traditionally published, but from what I understand it, because I know a lot of people who have, it's more of a business over there. You know, it's like, what cover will sell what content will sell what voice will sell what topic will sell what controversy will sell. And so that's why sometimes people, not all authors, but some authors get quote unquote roped in to writing a book that they're not super passionate about, or they write a book that they were passionate about. But then once the editor gets a hold of it, and makes it into what they think is marketable, all of a sudden, this isn’t even my book anymore, it doesn't feel like my book anymore. And therefore it's hard to talk about it and promote it. But that's something I stand very, very firmly on. And this is something you and I have talked about, and I believe I'm gonna let you correct me if I'm wrong, of course, but I'm pretty sure we share this opinion. If you're gonna write about, please let it be something that you're super passionate about talking about for as long as you're passionate about talking about it. If you decide in six months, or three years or 10 years that you don't want to talk about it anymore, totally fine. That's when your sales are going to drop off because somebody else is talking about it.
Anna David: And it's ironic. Well, I mean, when you said this thing about traditional publishing, it's more like a business. But I've never really thought about it like that. But the business is for the traditional publisher, because they don't think about it at all, as a business for the author, which is why they're capturing the email address. I mean, they're not really capturing email addresses with Amazon anyway. But the idea is, you know, when a book is finished, they don't want you to know, the number one thing that people want to do when they finish a book, if they finish it, is connect with the author, not connect with a publisher. Why would they care?
Liz Lyons: And that's what I say all the time. People don't buy books from publishers, so people will come to me and they'll say, Well, Elizabeth, I really want a traditional publisher. And the main reasons why people want a traditional publisher, in my experience, are they think there's a huge advance. Yeah, they think that there's huge marketing and connecting. And also they don't understand the timeline, they don't understand that it's going to be three years, if not more, depending on how long it takes to get the agent etc. But when they talk about marketing, I'm like, this is such a huge misconception, because people don't buy books from publishers, they buy books from authors, especially in the day of social media. Yeah, when you can actually connect with those authors. Nobody's out there connecting with Penguin on social media.
Anna David: I know. And it's interesting, Jennifer Armstrong, who I had on the podcast, who has a New York Times bestseller, she's like, I think you've got to just think of them as a printing service, you're just going to be disappointed if you think of them as more than that. So how did you start getting in touch with your readers and getting your newsletter subscribers and all of that?
Liz Lyons: Really, that started when social media started. And when there just became a way I mean, I went through all the like, rigmarole that we all hear about, you know, have a lead magnet and have the word funnel, I have a visceral reaction. And it's not good, because it makes me think of funneling cattle into a pen. But I understand what people are saying when they say it. And the idea is go out and find them, which is easier now than it's ever been, and then offer them a reason to stay connected to you, which is not in my experience. Like it depends on your genre to be clear. Yeah. So I don't work with fiction writers and their opportunities for connecting with readers are very different from nonfiction or memoir, because it's more character based. And it's more story based, whereas especially with nonfiction, it's more self development based.
Anna David: And it does seem like a massive generalization. It's far easier for certain genres of fiction writers to churn it out and to really have their business model be backlist and giving a perma free one book so that they get the series and all of that. And I do think it's much harder to churn it out, if you're doing nonfiction.
Liz Lyons: It's a completely different approach. Like you can almost look at it, I think of it. Most people don't realize that on Amazon, the paperback store and the Kindle store are two different stores. Even though they merged together, they are two different databases on Amazon. I think of this in the same way. When you're a fiction writer versus a nonfiction or a memoir writer, it's two completely different you're all writing books. But the approach to marketing and the like you said the perma free on the first one and then building up a backlist and getting people involved in the next character and doing pre orders and all those sorts of things, which is what people do very successfully in the fiction realm is wildly different from the nonfiction and the memoir realm. And especially in the nonfiction realm. So many of my clients, at least, are looking to build their business, which revolves around it's either based on their book or their book is an extension of something where they're already coaching, teaching, guiding whatever verb you want to use, to other people.
Anna David: Absolutely. And that's the same with ours. But wait, okay, I do want to go back to one thing. What do you think it was with your first book, just straight up beginner's luck?
Liz Lyons: You know what? The truth is, I don't know for sure. What I suspect. I don't think it was beginner's luck. I think that I hit without realizing it. I like that whole preparation meets opportunity thing. And it's like I hit the opportunity. Because there were no, there were, there were only a few books on the market about expecting twins to begin with. And they were all at the time quite like, your life is over. They weren't you know, and this was when Vicki I vine was really big with her Girlfriends Guide stuff, and honestly Anna, that's what I wanted. I was like Vicki, why couldn't you have had twins and written the girlfriends guide to twins, because that's the book I need right now. But she didn't. And so I just, I, I saw that as an opportunity. And I think that there happened to be a lot of people who wanted that. And the other thing was, it wasn't just book orders. Unbeknownst to me for a while there were hospitals ordering in bulk. Because they were running what was called Marvelous Multiples, which was a program that had been put together by a nurse who was also a mom of twins that was being offered by different hospitals. And the hospitals were ordering volume and giving the book to all of the participants in those classes.
Anna David: Don't you think that was your big thing? I mean, do you know how many sales there are?
Liz Lyons: I don't, I don't because the only way to get that information is through Bookscan. And even Bookscan is unreliable when it comes to off market stuff. Like it was all through the distributor I was working with. And I just if you had seen, I mean, my reports from a distributor every month, we're 15 pages long.
Anna David: Wow, So have you tried to reverse engineer that and be like, I'm gonna write a book that I know, institutions can bulk order?
Liz Lyons: I haven't because and it's an interesting question. And I guess the answer is because right now the answer is because that feels formulaic to me and I don't write in a formulaic, you know, I'm not.
So there are certain modalities that say, here's how you can figure out what kind of a book will sell, you can go out on Amazon and you can see what people are searching for. And if you know a lot of people are searching for this certain thing, then you know that if you write a book about it, it will probably sell well. But that is just an approach that has never felt good to me. I write, stuff just comes through me and. That's how I write.
Anna David: Interesting. I know I've read those things. I've read those and it literally be like, lots of people are searching for kids playing tennis. I've never played tennis, but I'm gonna write a book about that. That was really effective for a while. I will say I use it and I teach it which is you know your book and I mean, I got this from Dave Chesson. So start looking on Amazon to see how it auto populates because you're already reading the book. So include sections that people are already searching for. I do find that really helpful.
Liz Lyons: I find that really helpful too. And another thing that I find very helpful is recognizing what the keywords are that people are searching for and making sure that those are in not only your book description, but if possible, your reviews.
Anna David: Yes. By the way, your author bio, the whole thing, the whole thing? Yeah. So by the way, remember we said, Of course you remember it was yesterday, we're going back and forth about gotta find an exact angle for this episode. And of course, because we have so much to talk about, we really haven't gotten into the angle. Well, we're kind of verging on it now. Which is, what do you put in your book? That was the angle we decided, how do you basically come up with it? I don't know, your table of contents?
Liz Lyons: Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the things that I find, and I hear all the time holds people back from actually writing their book, because, you know, my clients are doing the writing themselves. So they are like, I have a story, I have something to share, I either have a story, like my life, or I have a process if we're talking about business. And sometimes there's a little bit of crossover. But where they get stuck most of the time is it's like, I'm so overwhelmed. So they do what's normally suggested or often suggested, which they do this big brain dump, and one of two things happens, either it's 75 pages long. And they can't figure out how to make it all come together with a nice bow. Or it's like four things. Because they're overthinking it. And they're trying to think through like, should I talk about that? Or should I talk about that?
Well, I don't know, have I been working on that long enough to actually position myself as an expert air quotes on it. And so that's where they get stuck in figuring out what do we should include? And what do we not include? And when you're ghostwriting, which you're intimately familiar with? Obviously, you guide them through that process of figuring out well, what is the you know, what is the table of contents, and I'm working on a ghost writing project right now. And that's something that had to happen was, you know, what are those, but that's where people get really stuck, and they don't progress from there. Because they come up with some story pun intended about clearly I shouldn't be doing this, because I can't figure it out.
Anna David: So how do you guide them? What's the process?
Liz Lyons: Well, it's different for nonfiction versus memoir. So nonfiction in my world is much more tactical. What do you want to say? First of all, what is the thing that your book is guiding people through? Because it's not a whole mess of things. It's not everything you've ever done? It's like, what do you want this book to help a reader overcome? And then what are the steps that you take people through? And more often than not, with that sort of a book? If the author is operating in integrity? They have gone through, that's the process they created for themselves? So it's like, take yourself back three years, five years, whatever it was, and identify what were the steps that really worked for you? What were the things that you needed to hear and know, back then? And then that's kind of where we start to get clear on that.
Anna David: I loves it. It was always interesting to me, when people differentiate between nonfiction and memoir, I was like, it is nonfiction. But you know, it's interesting. Rob Fitzpatrick, who I recently had on the show, was talking about how to book. How to versus memoir. Because really, that's what, that's what we're talking about. And so is there anything else about like, okay, take it back six months, five years, however long it is that you developed this process, and you're now explaining to other people, what do you do next? You go, okay, so for instance, I'm doing a book right now about how to plan and promote a book. So this is different, because I'm taking podcast interviews, and I'm doing it but like, how would we do that? How would you guide someone through that? You go, okay, so what was your starting point?
Liz Lyons: Exactly. You know, one of the things that I find very effective is for authors to write a letter to their reader first. And more often than not the reader is them, who they were three or five years ago. So essentially what you're doing is you're getting outside of yourself and outside of your I have to be you're getting outside of your perfectionist tendencies in order to say dear whomever name them if you want, here's what I know to be true about you. Here's where I know you are right now, here's what your fears are. Here's what's keeping you from moving forward. Here's what you're really really good at. But here's where you're stuck. And I have great news. Like again now we're going into like the typical copy editing stuff, but right or marketing, stuff like that. Good news is there's a path. And one of the things that's really important is that authors not hold themselves as the savior to the reader.
So all you're saying is here is a path, you're not saying here is the one and only path that takes the pressure off everyone. But here's the thing I want to share with you, my process that I use to get through this and/or, that I utilize, when I'm helping my clients, or however you do, whatever, get through this. And here's what we're going to talk about. And you start to get really clear, and you don't have to get into the nitty gritty of it at that point. But what you're doing when you do that, is you're creating the bubble. Okay. And then it just comes down to what goes into the bubble. Like you're creating the hub of the wheel, and what's in what's encapsulated in that hub.
Anna David: Do you have a certain set number of chapters that you recommend?
Liz Lyons: I don't, I think most nonfiction ends up between like 12 and 18 chapters, and it just depends on you know, I don't subscribe to a word count. I think anything under 40,000 words, or under 35,000 words is a pamphlet not a book, I’m kind of a stickler about that. Maybe 35,000. But I don't believe in adding words, just to add words. I think that when you're really connected to helping, that's what a book really is about, is serving. So when people come to me, and this doesn't happen much anymore, but and they say, Look, I just want to hit the bestseller list for five minutes, so that I can say I'm a best selling author, and that's going to sell me tons of books and make me millions of dollars and make me the sought after expert on every stage. That's not the right person for me, you know? Yeah, I know. You know, I know we share this. So when you're really looking to serve another person through telling your stories, it's not hard to get 40,000 words, 50,000 words or even 60,000 words. It's just not.
Anna David: But I know, on a personal level, I like reading shorter books now. I hate to say it, but I do.
And studies are showing because it just means you can read more, and some authors are just going on and on and on. I find self help has never been my thing. And it's like, I always feel like the first chapter says it and then the next 10 are repeating it. But that's me.
Liz Lyons: You know, I think that often is the case that often is the case. And if you don't have enough to get yourself to, you know, something solid, I mean, 80,000 words is such an old, old paradigm, because it's what was the average back in the day for traditional books, mostly fiction based. Yeah, or mostly, you know, fiction, but I think there's always an exception. So there are a lot of people who say, “well, I don't like to read long books.” And you have to kind of dive into why that is. Because when those people find a book, that's 250 pages long, that is just chock full of amazing information and stories. They read it. So it may not be that they don't like reading long books, it may be that they don't like reading repetitive nonsense, number one. And number two, if there's someone who wants to be like, well, I read a book a week. But in order to accomplish that goal, they know the book has to only be 97 pages. Well, then there's their motivation.
Anna David: Right. Well, okay, so we have to get to wrapping up. Do you have any final advice for somebody who, I guess who wants to write how to book, what they should do?
Liz Lyons: I mean, whether you want to write how to or memoir. And to be clear, the distinction between the two for me is that when you're writing what I call transformative nonfiction, or how to call it, whatever, you want to, you want the reader to take an action; there is a very specific action that you are giving to the reader with the hope that they may take it; when you're writing memoir, you are not attached to what they take from the story. Yeah, that's to me, is the difference. But I think it's really important, and I've always said this, to just understand why you really want to do it. And then what's the why under that? And you do the six layers or whatever deep of why? Because as with anything, once you really uncover why you want to do it and what you want to get out of it, you can execute it more efficiently. Whether that's write it yourself, hire someone to write it for you, write a 30 page ebook, do a novel, like whatever it is.
Anna David: I love it. So if people want to reach you what's the best way? And let's just also quickly say all your offers because you have courses you have coaching. Go.
Liz Lyons: So, I've minimized, I've simplified.
Anna David: So you still have courses?
Liz Lyons: I have one. Yeah.
Anna David: I think I've told you I'm so frustrated by trying to sell courses. It's just, you know, when the beginning of the conversation you were like, is this masochism or is this determination. That's how I feel about trying to sound like you guys, my Courses are so good. And you don't find them?
Liz Lyons: Yeah. And I feel exactly the same. And I know your courses. And you know mine, I get it, I think for me, so I have the book writing accelerator, which is my 12 week intimate group program. And it's a coaching program through writing nonfiction, or memoir, writing nonfiction, and memoir is an experience period. It's not something that in my world, we sit down and do on a weekend, it is a full on experience. And you're learning about yourself as you're as you're writing the book period. And then I have my course, the only course I have now, which is how to publish a book, how to self publish a book that can be sitting next to any New York Times bestseller and be indistinguishable and quality. So those are my two things.
Anna David: Well, so people can take those courses they can sign up for your coaching. You know, you just launch a few times a year?
Liz Lyons: I do the next one which launches in July. We start in July, and it goes for 12 weeks. And I usually do two or three containers a year of that. And then the publishing course IS evergreen.
Anna David: And then of course they can get your books?
Liz Lyons: Of course.
Anna David: And so where can they find you online?
Liz Lyons: The best place is Elizabethlyons.com. And that'll take people out to the course sites and the coaching site, wherever they want to go, but the hub is Elizabethlyons.com.
Anna David: Well, this has been such a delight. I'm so glad we finally did this. And you guys, thank you as ever for listening. Go find her. So good.
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May 25, 2022
Hollywood Special: Turning Your Books Into Movies with Ben Mezrich
Ben Mezrich has sold over 10 million copies of his books.
And, by the way, that’s not even the impressive part. The impressive part is that he sells EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HIS BOOKS as a movie or TV show; in fact, if Hollywood isn’t interested in the treatment, he doesn’t even write the book.
Mezrich has gotten into this position because of a chance encounter with some MIT students, which led to his writing Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions, which led to Kevin Spacey snapping up the film rights before the book was even out, which led to the book spending over 60 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Then there was his book, The Accidental Billionaires, which David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin jumped on as Mezrich was writing the book and which, of course turned into the multi award-nominated movie The Social Network. (Mezrich is the only non-fiction author to have two adaptations open at #1 at the box office.)
He’s written numerous other books, including Bitcoin Billionaires and The Antisocial Network and is also a consulting producer on Billions. Oh, and his most recent book, The Midnight Ride, has an NFT component that already has over 3500 owners.
So how does this happen? How does a former struggling novelist become Hollywood’s go to guy pursued by designers who want to dress him for his book tours? And what is the secret to finding the sort of story that makes Hollywood salivate? It’s all in this episode.
TRANSCRIPT:
Anna David: Okay, well so basically you have the career that we all want, is what it comes down to. And yet you're not hateable.
Ben Mezrich: Thank you. I try not to be hateful. No, everything has happened in my career by accident and luck and timing. And there's been just a lot of really crazy moments. So I'm just happy and lucky and fortunate all along, and it's just been a blast. So I'm happy to tell you any stories you want to hear.
Anna David: I was reading, you know, you've been getting press for so many years. And I was reading this old story, I think in the Boston Globe about how Maybach flies him out to parties, and different people send him clothes and all of that. Is your life still like that? Was that true?
Ben Mezrich: And yeah, that's all it got crazy for a while. And, you know, I still get flown around. Like this weekend, I have two separate sorts of parties. I'm supposed to be flown to, although COVID Put a big crimp and all of that sort of thing. But yeah, when you do a book tour, there are definitely clothing sponsors that want me to wear their clothes and suits. But all a lot of that has to do with my wife, my wife is very, very good at cultivating these relationships and throwing these book parties and sort of a lot of authors come to me like, “How did you do this?” And I'm always like, Tanya did all that I didn't, I just sat in my room and wrote. And she's, you know, she had a TV show in Boston for a little while, she had a fashion line in Boston, she's done a lot of amazing things. So she's kind of cultivated this, this really great network of people. I mean, the other thing is I write books, for gambling type personalities, a lot of hedge funders like my stuff. So there's a lot of people in the finance world who read my stuff. And so, in that world, when there's an intersection between the finance world and the Hollywood world, where all of that craziness comes about, so yeah, it's been, Gosh, 15 years of crazy parties and stuff like that.
Anna David: Mostly, the writers who are on the outside be like, “Hey, could you let me in?”
Ben Mezrich: So I've been through that as well. I've had my battles with certain Hollywood types trying to get into the premiere of my own movie, there've been incidents like that, too. There was an incident with Scott Rudin, way back when, with The Social Network with Scott Rudin is a character, you know, himself. And then, and I'm sure there's lots and lots of stories about him. But in general, I've been very fortunate, I've worked with really amazing people. And I think that's the key is that the only real power a writer has is who they sell their project to. And once you sell your project, you have to assume that you have no power. So you want to sell it to people who are going to treat you like a partner, or treat you like you know, part of the team are going to take you on the ride with them. And so when I'm making my deals, it's not just the dollars, you're looking at who is buying this project and, and what do they want to do with it? And are they people you want to hang out with and are they people you want to work with? And I don't think I would sell a project today, to people I didn't want to hang out with. And that's different in the beginning of your career. At the beginning of a career you sell to anybody who offers but you know, you reach a point in your career where, you know, you know that it's really important, these relationships are more important than anything else. So you're always looking for that kind of special thing. Anna David: You know what's interesting. So Molly Bloom, who I've known for years, I heard her say that when she was going in, pitching Molly's Game, she had this epiphany: "Everyone's passing. I'm reaching too low. I need to reach higher." And that's how she got to Aaron Sorkin. And I think that's so interesting.
Ben Mezrich: I mean, I think that's really smart. Molly's story is as great as the movies. I've always, I always get asked, you know, what books do you wish you would have written? And that was one of those books that I would have loved to have written?
Anna David: Would you want to live the story that she lives?
Ben Mezrich: Oh, no, I just want to write it from the outside. I don't want to actually get involved with dangerous Russian monsters. I think that yeah, it's just a great movie and a great story. But yeah, I think there's something to that. If you can get to an Aaron Sorkin obviously, that's the dream. And the reality of Hollywood is it takes an Aaron Sorkin to get a movie made. It's extremely hard to start at the bottom in Hollywood and get something made. It happens but it's like a lottery ticket. 99% of the things you sell are never going to get made. And that's because it needs an A list writer and a list director and a list actor and anything less than that. And it's just a struggle. It's a continuous struggle.
Anna David: Oh, yes, talking to somebody whose book was optioned 15 years ago. And I'm like, “Oh, this is so awesome. I've got it made." They even hired a big writer to do the script. And then you get the email "Congratulations, your rights have reverted back to you" and you realize, that means "We're never talking to you again." So okay, so let's talk about your journey. So you started off as just a novelist in the same sort of, you know, terrible situation most writers are in. And then what happened?
Ben Mezrich: Yeah, so my story is, I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was 12 years old. So that's all I ever wanted to do. And when I graduated from college, you know, my parents were not thrilled with that choice. And so I basically locked myself in an apartment for a year, my dad said, “I'm not going to let you starve. But if you don't have any proof by the end of this year that you're going to make it as a writer, you gotta go to law school.” That was pretty much the conversation. So I wrote nine novels that year, I locked myself in a room and I wrote a novel a month, basically 400 Page novels, I wrote round the clock, I was writing 40 pages a day, just craziness. And they were all rejected, rejected, rejected, 190 rejection slips, had them taped to the walls, like a serial killer. It was just crazy writing. And eventually, an editor took pity on me, a guy named John Karp, who's a very famous, powerful editor. Now, he didn't buy anything I'd written, he said, “I'm not going to buy any of the crap you've been writing. But go read John Grisham and Michael Crichton and try to do what they do.” So then I started writing thrillers. And I wrote one book that was slightly better than the rest, and I got a literary agent.
So at the end of my first year, pretty much out of college, I had a literary agent, and I sold my first book and nobody read it. So I wrote about six medical thrillers, they were sci fi, medical pop thrillers. And they never, they didn't go anywhere. One of them was made into a TV movie. So I did have sort of that level of success in my early 20s, or mid 20s.
But my books were not selling, nobody was buying. And then I ran into this group of MIT kids in a bar. And they were going to Vegas every weekend. And it was just this crazy story that started going to Vegas with them. I convinced the main character to sort of tell me his story. And that became Bringing Down the House, which was my first nonfiction book. And it was going to be this little book, you know, tiny first printing. I had been paid less for it than I'd ever been paid for anything. It was a nothing of a book, because it was about Vegas. It was about cards. And this was before Vegas, and cards were interesting again, and I wrote an article for Wired Magazine, and I got a call in the middle of the night, phone rings. And it's a guy saying, “I have Kevin Spacey on the line.” And so back then that was a better call than it would be today. Let's just put that out there. Kevin Spacey back then was the biggest star in the world. And I get on the phone with him. It really was Kevin Spacey. And he said, I love this story. I want you to come out to LA. So I flew out to LA pretty much the next day. And I met Kevin and his producer, Dana Brunetti, Dana, right. And Dana was at the time Kevin's assistant.
This was that far back. And they're like, “we want to make a movie out of this.” And I was like, great. Seems like a great idea. And I asked him, “Well, how much are you gonna pay me?” And they said, “nothing, zero.” And I was like, “zero?” And at the time I was massively in debt. Because I had had all these books published, they all kind of failed. I had spent every penny I'd ever made. I owed a million $2 million. At 28 years old. I was vastly in debt. And, so basically, I went to my agent, I had an agent through the TV movie who had gotten me an agent. And I said, ''They want to make a movie, they want to pay me zero.” And he's like, “Well, let's see what we can do.” And the next day, he called me and said, I have an offer from someone else for $750,000. So I go back to Kevin and Dana. And I say, “I've got this competing offer now for $750,000. And what are you guys going to pay?” Dana's like, “Nothing, zero, still zero.”
I said, "So how can you offer me zero against $750,000?" And they said, "Well, if we gave you $300,000, right now, what would you do with it?" And so I was at a crazy period of my life, and I was massively in debt, and they knew all my stories. And I said, “I'd probably spend all of it.” And they said, “We're gonna do something better. We're gonna actually make this movie. And you can talk about Kevin and publicity, he's going to talk about you, this is gonna be great for your career.”
So we ended up taking that deal, turning down three quarters of a million dollars and freaking my agent out, and it worked. The book came out and I went on the Today show. And the book was a huge bestseller for a couple of years, and the movie, although it took a number of years to get made, put me on the map in an enormous way. And from that moment on, I actually have sold every book I've written as a movie off of the treatment before I've written a page of the book. So I've sold something like 25 movies, at this point, right off of a 10 page treatment. And one of them happened to be the social network project, which comes along a little bit later, we can get into that. But that's what started me off. It was really a phone call from Kevin Spacey in Milan, right, because of an article in Wired magazine, and it was my first time it became a feature film that actually got made, because there was an actor with an A-list actor attached, you know?
Anna David: So two questions. So the Today show was interested because Kevin Spacey is involved.
Ben Mezrich: No, I had actually booked the Today show. Randomly, this publicist at the publisher had gotten me it was, you know, the only real publicity I'd ever gotten, and then having to be a really big show. But I was able to talk about Kevin during it. And I think that was helpful. Who knows? Then I went on CNBC. And at the time, CNBC Power Lunch was a really big deal. And this was a book about gambling, and everybody who watched CNBC was a gambler. And so I think that the Today show, and CNBC together is what really made that book just go crazy. I remember it went to number one on Amazon. And it sold out in the first three hours. And it was one of those situations where they were just always trying to print books, because they were always selling and it just happens, you know, I think what was great about that story was it was the perfect one sentence. It was six MIT kids who took Vegas for millions. And it was an easy sentence for every news show, to throw at the end of a news report. So it was on every single channel all the time. And there's this group of MIT kids who took Vegas for millions. It's like the perfect sentence. And I think that easy sentences, what just turn that into some moment, basically. But on the Hollywood side, that movie really opened enormous doors for me, because I decided right there, and then that I wanted to have a Hollywood career. On top of that every book I would write had to be a movie. And so I basically became very close to my Hollywood agent at the time. And I said to him, “every project I'm going to do, we're going to come out here, we're going to pitch it all over town. And we're gonna develop these relationships with lots of producers and lots of studios. And that's the way I want to do books.” And that became the model for me. And so, even today, if someone tells me a story idea, I think it's great. I'll interview the people, I'll write 10 pages, and I will take it out to Hollywood. And if I can't get a studio deal, then I won't write the book. I won't, I won't even look at it. That's it, I'm done. So that's the way I do my projects now and have for 20 years.
Anna David: And knowing, as you said, how impossible it is to get things made. I don't mean to be woo woo. But it's like you made this decision. And it happened. And obviously you've got a serious feel for what people are going to respond to. But so questions, rumor is that like, so everybody wanted the social network. And so like they're like, oh, people went, the producer went to the 21 party and that wound up being Dana, is that true?
Meznich: So Dana, and I became very close. There's so many stories about Dana. Do you know Dana at all?
Anna David: I met him through Mike years ago. I think when he was Kevin Spacey’s assistant, or just became.
Mezrich: Yeah, Dana is one of those people that it's almost like he's a mythical creature. I love Dana. Dana is a genius. He's also terrifying. He can be completely insane. And I think if you talk to enough people, you'll hear so many crazy stories about Dana. But Dana and I were like brothers from the very beginning. There's no question about that. When I went out to LA that first time and Dana and Kevin picked me up at the airport, it was like Kevin's little Mercedes. And the first place they took me, we're driving along and I'm a kid from Boston. I mean, I've never been to Hollywood a few times, but I was not, you know, in that scene, and we're driving along and we pull up to this huge mansion. And I recognized it and it was a Playboy mansion. And it was literally the first place. They drove me. And we sat down and it was like movie night. And it was these moments where I think Dana really, really, we got along extremely well. And we definitely worked as partners together, selling I think, Gosh, eight or nine movies in a row we sold together.
But the social network was a really interesting situation. Because what happened with The Social Network was, again, a random moment. I had become known for writing these true stories. So I would get pitched a lot of stories. Every time some young college kid pulled off a scheme or somebody did a crime, I would get a call, they would either reach me on the phone or an email or something like that. And it was the middle of the night and I got an email from a Harvard senior. And it said, “my best friend founded Facebook and no one's ever heard of him.” This is in Boston, and I went out for a drink in a bar. And in walked Eduardo Savarin, the real Eduardo, and he sits down he goes, “Mark Zuckerberg fucked me!” Started the conversation like that, and told me this completely insane story. So I think this is awesome. I went and I actually found the Winklevoss twins on the internet. I just found him on Facebook. I started meeting with them. I started meeting with Sean Parker, and I wrote a 14 page book proposal, which I called Face Off was a horrible title. And I sent it to my agent. And he sent it out to I think 11 or 12 publishers, and it leaked onto the internet. So it leaked onto Gawker. Gawker printed my entire book proposals, something I'd never seen before. I don't know if they'd ever printed a full book proposal before. And everything went crazy. Facebook freaked out and was like, What are you writing? And they came after me. And I had sent it to Dana.
Because Dana and I were like brothers, I would send him every single thing. And we had sold eight or eight movies. By that point, we had sold all these books that I had written. That never got made, but we had sold, you know, a number of books together. And Dana thought it was cool. I do think Dana, I don't remember for sure. But I think its first response was similar to my mom's which is like, I'm not sure anybody will watch a movie about Facebook, but he definitely thought it was cool. But that day when it leaked on Gawker, Aaron Sorkin saw it.
And David Fincher saw it. And Aaron Sorkin called and said he wanted to write it. And David Fincher called and said he wanted to direct it. And so then you had Dana and Kevin, because Dana and Kevin, Ricky have already sent the proposal. So they came from their angle, they met with Scott Rudin, who came with the Aaron Sorkin situation. And Mike DeLuca, who was at Sony, MGM, and Amy Pascal. And that became the team. And so it was this incredible moment as a writer, like that's the dream team at that point in time. There was no better team of people. And to be frank, nobody else could have made that movie, because you were dealing with Facebook, you know, a billion dollar corporation.
You were dealing with huge egos, you know, people, people who are incredibly known for taking over a movie set, right. It was one of those just magnificent kinds of situations to get into. And, it was wild. And I was there for the whole thing. And it was great. And yeah, Dana. Dana was a big part of it. And, and, and DeLuca Mike, who is just awesome. I love Mike, I think he's one of the best people in Hollywood. And he had done 21 as well. So basically, you know, Dana and Mike were involved again this time. Yeah.
Anna David: Actually, I went to The Social Network premiere. I was living in New York at the time, and the New York Post assigned me the junk. And I interviewed Jesse, and did the whole junket thing. And that was some premiere, I still remember being like, Oh, they've spent some money.
Ben Mezrich: Yeah, I mean, they went all out. And I will say it was just one of those situations where they really knew that they had something special, like a kind of movie that's going to last decades. And it was a cultural moment. I mean, I don't think there was a single newspaper in the world that didn't cover it, or magazine or anything like that. It was just one of those things. And I think what's really interesting to look back on now is Facebook wasn't that big a deal before that movie, it was just this company. But what I saw, and I think what a number of people who made the movie saw was that this was a moment that was going to change all of our lives. And we were documenting it, we were creating the mythology of this world changing technology, which sitting here today, it's clear that we were correct, that Facebook has led to everything that's happening in the world, good and bad. And so it's just a spectacular moment. But for me personally, it was obviously life changing, and just such a ride. And accidentally, the book was Accidental Billionaires. But I think that most of my career has been things like that, where I fall or stumble into a story, and it just becomes something immense. So yeah, it's been wild, for sure.
Anna David: So finding the stories, you know, obviously you said, you know, people come to you, they're pitching you stories, but I'm assuming a lot of these you're finding on your own. How are you doing that? And what is the thing that you know makes it?
Ben Mezrich: Yeah, so the majority of my stories have been pitched to me. I will say only a few of them have ones that I've gone out and found. I basically sift through pitches now on Twitter, but whatever. I mean, something like the Gamestop Story, which I just wrote that book, I mean that everybody saw. So you could say I look for it, but I was getting tons of people writing to me saying you should be ready to be writing it. But in general, I'm looking for something that you can sum up in one sentence that the whole world will be interested in, that can make a great movie. So that's to have great visuals, it has to have incredible Shakespearean type themes, do it exotic locales, or that sort of drama, you know, conflict. I mean, it's the magic is it has to be a story that not everyone already knows. And yet everyone would want to know or be interested in it. And that's the tricky thing, usually something that we've all heard of, I mean, every day people will email me about things. I'm like, yeah, but there's probably 100 writers writing that story. Right now, I don't want to be one of a dozen Wall Street Journal writers trying to get this story. I want to have the main character come to me and say, Look at this crazy thing I did, and I realize, oh, man, everyone's gonna want to hear about that.
And that's what I'm really looking for. But it's got to be simple. It's got to have a big theme. And it's got to be the origin of something life changing. So the things that I've written about to me that have worked have been stories about big, big events are moments or technologies or shifts in the cultural moment, that even though my book was written 10 years ago, people will find a reason to read it 10 years from now. So that's hard. It's not easy. So when I look back on the books that I've written, I think Vegas and Bringing on the House is one, I think, you know, Social Network is certainly one. I think Bitcoin Billionaires is going to be one of those stories that people are going to, and the entire crypto world is built a lot on that story, which is really interesting. And as we make that movie, I think there'll be a big moment, I do think the Gamestop Story is going to be a big moment of a story. I wrote a book called Wooly about the wooly mammoth, coming back to life, and the scientist at Harvard is making one. And although I haven't found that story yet, I think that's going to be a big story in the future. So that's really what I'm looking for all the time is this big, kind of, but again, it has to be able to sell as a movie.
So I have to be able to write a 10 page treatment, that when I take it out to studios, there's going to be a dozen of them bidding on it. And, and I feel like to me, that justifies me writing the book, if I can't get and there's been moments where I've sent out a pitch that I just thought was awesome. And I haven't gotten the movie deal. And I put it aside and they say, you know what, I'm not going to write it. I'm not going to, I can't get excited about it. Because in my opinion, a book is a platform. The book is a story. And many writers feel differently. And I think that's cool, too. But for me, the book is a platform for this story that hopefully has a much bigger life than that. Because books are one component of it. I want to see a movie in a television show and I want to see all the magazines writing about it. I wanted to become something that the whole world talks about and you don't. It doesn't always happen, you know, it's happened two out of 25 books so far, but that's what I'm trying to do every time.
Anna David: That ratio for what you're talking about, which doesn't happen in most people's lifetime ever. Thinking about it, it also requires a certain not psychic skill but back when you know with the Winklevoss in Bitcoin was like, who cares about Bitcoin today? I'm like, what? So I mean, you are on to these things early.
Ben Mezrich: Yeah, I mean, and this goes back to Michael Crichton, my worship of Michael Crichton, I used to keep all of Michael Crichton's books on my desk. And I think what he was a genius of was picking something that two years from now we would all be talking about. And that's what I'm always trying to do, and it's hard, you can't really do it. But I think I get that feeling. You know, I get that tingle. That sense that something is really important. And with Bitcoin, you know, listen, people have been pitching me Bitcoin stories for years, and I've been turning it down. I'm like, I'm not interested. This is math. This is geeky. There's a bunch of weirdos sitting in their rooms. But then when I heard the Winklevoss, we were at the center of this story. It blew my mind because I was like, Nah, those guys, I can wrap the movie around. And as I started meeting with them, I spent six months just hanging out with them. I was like, Yeah, this is huge. It's a big moment in history. Sadly, I didn't go by a bunch of Bitcoin, because I'd be really rich right now. But I definitely saw that I knew crypto was gonna change all our lives. And so yeah, I mean, I think I do have sort of a spidey sense about it. And yeah, it's hard to sort of know what you can put your finger on and say okay, that's the next big thing. But it is something I'm always looking for.
Anna David: In crypto, the web 3 spaces. So you did an NFT thing with this latest book?
Ben Mezrich: Yeah. So now I have this. This is actually new and it's sort of separate from meeting the Winklevoss twins and becoming friends with them. They started telling me you got to look into NFTs is really cool so then I ended up launching an NFT project. That's going to be a movie I'm writing the script for it. And I dropped an NFT line which sold out and we're doing three lines of NFTs and anybody who owns the NFTs gets to own a piece of the screenplay I’m writing about the NFT space. And I'm hoping that becomes a platform for other writers to come on and drop NF T's and build their careers that way. I think the NF T is going to give writers and artists and musicians another way of taking a community, building a community and having the community support them. So this is the first time I've kind of stepped into something rather than just writing about it. And it's been really wonderful. And it's been incredible and fun. But it did evolve from the sort of Bitcoin story. Yeah.
Anna David: Well, what does that mean owning part of a screenplay?
Ben Mezrich: Yeah, it means that the people who own one of each of my three NFT drops, who dropped two so far, and the third one is coming, are going to get 50% of the screenplay. So I'm going to write a screenplay and partner with the community. We're going to try and make the movie. I'm going to sell it to a studio or I'm going to make it on our own. And the money that comes in is going to go back into the community.
Anna David: And so they don't own the rights to the movie in any way?
Ben Mezrich: No, they own the rights to the movie, they own an NFT that gives them partial, you know, ownership of the project, essentially. So it's not like they can say, you know, we want this star to be in or this star to be that kind of thing. But it does mean that if I sell it for a million dollars, half a million dollars goes back into [inaudible]. So it's an interesting model, and we'll see if it works. It's kind of brand new. You know, this is the Wild West, the NFT world. There's no real rules yet about how this works. And there's Neil Strauss, who's doing something Gary Vee, there's some other people trying to do something in its space. But this is the model that we think will work going forward. So we'll see what happens as I write the screenplay and see how it works.
Anna David: Yeah, this is actually I've been doing a couple of episodes on NF Ts and writers and really exploring that world. I didn't even know we were gonna get into it till I started doing my research. But in terms of the screenplay, you don't normally write the screenplays though.
Ben Mezrich: So I've written a few screenplays, I just wrote one, I had a book called The Midnight Ride that came out a few months ago, which actually sold to Spielberg and Amblin. And they let me write the first draft. So actually they gave a screenplay to Steven Spielberg just a month ago, which is a little terrifying and intimidating. I wrote a draft that I wrote for the show, Billions. So I was a producer and writer on that. So I wrote episode three of last season, season five of billions. And I've written independently, I've probably written about five screenplays at this point. So it's not the main thing that I do. But I've definitely written a few of them.
Anna David: And do you still lock yourself away when you've got the story. And you're like, bye, bye, Tanya. Bye, kids see in two months, like, how does that work?
Ben Mezrich: I mean, I listen, it's definitely gotten harder. So actually, in the beginning of the pandemic, I mean, I wrote two books in the first six months. I mean, I was really writing, you know, at a really great clip. Now, definitely, you know, I have a sequel to The Midnight Ride, due next month, which is going to be challenging. I think that yes, I, my process is, I spend a large amount of my time researching and doing the outline. So that's kind of the biggest time commitment for me is actually researching and talking to everybody I need to, to get all the information I need. And then writing a very stiff outline to kind of outline that. I know every chapter, I know what happens in every chapter, I know the page numbers of every chapter, and I never even missed a page. So I put together a really tight skeleton, then is when I start writing, and it starts off, you know, a few hours a day, but I don't write by time I write by pages. I'm one of those writers that believes, you know, you say I'm gonna write five pages today. And if I'm done in an hour, I'm done an hour and five hours, and five hours. So I start off with like six pages a day.
And then as I get into the heat of it, I'm up to like, 12 to 14 pages a day. And towards the end of that process, yeah, I lock myself up for a couple of weeks, and finish up the book. But it's always a struggle, as you know, writing every book is a struggle. And even though I've written 20, some five of them, it never gets that much easier. I know what works and what doesn't, I know how to write. There's very little editing for me at this point, pretty much. I write the book, I hand it in, it's pretty much done. The editor will come back. I mean, I do edit it. But the work is really the writing of the book. I'm not one of those people who edits, edits, and edits. I don't edit. I hand in the book that I finished. I don't edit my own books at all. So I write a draft. It's done. I send it to the publisher, then they'll come back with stuff, you know, and they'll be like this chapter, add something. Can you put a little bit more in there and I'll make those additions. But when I write to the end of my manuscript, I don't even look at it. I don't read it. I literally put it in the mail, I hit send. Which is crazy, right? But honestly, that started a long time ago with Bringing Down the House. I didn't edit, bring down the house once. It went to the publisher, and then the publisher had some changes to make, but I don't self edit myself. And it's weird. I can't, I can't, I can't edit myself. I'm a happy writer. So it's funny. I have my friend from college, this guy named Scott Stossel, who was my roommate in college. He's one of the people who runs the Atlantic Monthly. He wrote about My Age of Anxiety. Brilliant book. Yeah. And Scott is one of those writers who's miserable, who sits there. He's a genius, but he'll write and edit and write and edit. And it's just these years and years of misery. And, and that's, I'm the opposite of that. I'd like to do it. Yeah. Good. It's great. It's perfect. And I sent it out.
I think for me, the key is I'm not a perfectionist. I don't believe in being perfect. I don't want to be perfect. Good is good. And so I never try to perfect what I'm doing. I just want to get it written. So when I go on a story, I write it to the end. And then I send it in.
Anna David: Here's my question, well you’re writing a very clean copy, clearly. I mean, a lot of people's first drafts are like, Wait, what is that word?
Ben Mezrich: Yeah. I mean, if I went back to sort of 20 years ago, I'm sure it would have been worse. Now, at this point, I think I know what I'm doing. So yeah.
Anna David: My big question. And you've been so generous with your time we have to wrap up. But in terms of this outline, you are getting new sources as you're working on it, right? So the outline does evolve and change or...
Ben Mezrich: The other thing is I write very quickly, right. So, you know, eight weeks is a book, not a year. Yeah. So I do all of my research. Before I start writing, I've interviewed everybody I can get all the legal documents I can get. I've got all the information I can get. I will write the outline of that information. And then I start writing. So once I start writing, there shouldn't be any new information. If you know if it's a developing situation, like the Gamestop Story was a little different, in that I was writing it while it was happening. So yeah, in that respect that one, you sort of had to go back and not go back and change anything but it certainly evolved that there was writing it. But no, something like The Accidental Billionaires, for instance, I had written this proposal, I had done the research. And then Aaron Sorkin, David Fincher stepped in, but I hadn't written the book yet. So suddenly, I had this massive movie developing. So I locked myself in a hotel, I went over to the Westin Hotel in Boston, and Aaron Sorkin came into Boston. And I literally wrote 11 weeks, I wrote that book. Never really left the hotel. And I would hand him chapters as I went, so no, all the information was done before I start writing. The research stage is usually complete before I start the actual writing, because to me, the writing is like this, frenzied, furious, crazed, you know, six pages, 10 pages, 14 pages, 20 pages a day. Music blaring, the room is pitch black, it's like a rock concert to me that I'm performing.
It's like that moment where you could be godlike. I think that one brief moment in your life when you're not captured by all your anxieties. And then you know, whatever it is that doesn't work in your life. You just sit and you write in your creating. And for me, it's almost trance-like, so I don't want to have to stop for anything. Once I start writing, I do not stop until I get to the last page. Because I'm a big believer in that's where you go wrong. Right. So if there's research I haven't done yet, I just whizzed through it. And in the end, then we'll find a way to fix it in post right. I will not stop once they start writing the scene.
Anna David: You already absorbed everything. It's not like you're like, oh, Eduardo said bullet like it's in there.
Ben Mezrich: Yeah, I know, every chapter I know, every character I know. You know, I know everything that I need to know. I've got photos of every room that is in the story. I've got, you know, either blueprints from the internet or I've been there myself with a video camera. Like I do real crazy levels of research. And so yeah, there's no sort of saying, oh, shoot, I don't know what this is or what happened here.
Anna David: Yeah. So for anybody who's listening and dreams of having their book made into a movie or TV show or whatever it is. First of all, in terms of rights when you're doing it like this, how many rights do you need? Whose rights?
Ben Mezrich: That's a good question. So that's usually the way I look at it. That's the movie studios problem. So, if it's a public figure, you don't need any rights. You know, if you're writing about Mark Zuckerberg, or you're writing about the Gamestop story, you're not really going to need anybody's rights to do that. Certainly not for the book, when the studio wants to make a movie, they're going to need certain rights. If there aren't a lot of news articles about those characters. So for instance, for the MIT story, these are a bunch of unknown kids who played blackjack, a movie studio would need those rights. An author of a book wouldn't necessarily need rights. But I certainly didn't want anybody pissed off and unhappy with the story. So I sat down with everybody who I was going to write about and said, I'm going to write about is this cool. And I think for the main character, I did end up making a deal with him for his rights, to make it easier to sell the movie and that kind of thing. But usually, I don't think so much about that. But the other thing is, don't forget, I've sold the movie.
So the studio comes in pretty early, and starts talking to the main characters and figuring that out. I've also had situations where a producer will come to me with a story, and they've already locked up rights. That's what my book 37 Parallel about this crazy UFO hunter, Beau Flynn, who does all the rocks, movies, who did go notice bows wonderful bow came to me, he's like, I've got this great story, you've got to take a look at this. And I flew out to Colorado, and was out in the mountains hunting UFOs with this guy, and it was just an incredible experience. And that became, I thought, a really cool book. And so I didn't really think about, you know, the rights. I don't think about it. Because for the most part, I'm not writing about unknowns. But less of someone emailed me and was like, I have this incredible story. If I wanted to tell it, it would have to be a situation where they're on board, it wouldn't be the kind of thing where I go to them and say I want to tell your story. That's not the kind of writer I am. So for the people you're talking about who are like, “Oh, I saw this news, that looks like a great story. I need to go get that guy's rights.” I would never do that. That person would have to come to me and say, I've got this great story, I want you to tell it. And I would say I'd love to tell it.
That's all there is to it. I'll tell you. I'm not going to buy anything from you. I'll tell it, it'll become a big movie, you'll become incredibly famous. And we'll all win, that's the deal I'm looking for. But yes, the studio does often have to come in and figure out rights, but they don't actually need rights for a true story. They only need rights if it's not a true story about somebody. So yeah, it's complicated. I definitely would suggest that a starting out writer doesn't try to do that. I think there are so many great stories to tell, that don't necessarily involve buying somebody's rights. Why would you choose that? Unless you had a certain reason why you were going to write that story. But there are a million journalists out there trying to do those stories, right? And it's not like they're getting anybody's rights. If you open the Wall Street Journal tomorrow, there'll be a dozen stories in there. Nobody's been paid for any rights. If a studio decides to make that story, the studio will come in and buy the rights. But none of those writers got anybody's rights.
Anna David: Same with podcasters now.
Ben Mezrich: Right. Yeah, I mean, in terms of you don't need people's rights.
Anna David: They're telling all kinds of stories.
Ben Mezrich: Yeah. But eventually, if a studio wants to make a movie off something, they'll figure that out. But that's not really my role. So, yeah, I don't really think about it that much.
Anna David: And so well, this has been fantastic. I usually end with you know, how do you want people to reach you? But really, you only want people to reach you if they've got an incredible story. And they want you to tell it right?
Ben Mezrich: Yeah. I mean, I love people. I'm on Twitter. You know, I think that's the easiest place to find me. I have a Discord for the NFT stuff. So if people are interested in that, there's Benmezrich.com, or Ben MezrichNFT.com. But really, I think Twitter has become sort of the go to place for people to pitch me stories. And that's what people do. And I love young writers coming and talking about writing and stuff like that. So I'm happy to answer any questions anybody has. But I think it's a great moment. For writers. I think this is probably in my entire career. This is the moment where there are the most places to sell something. This is probably the golden age for people starting out and writing to me because there's more places to sell it than there ever were in history, and more places to tell a story than there ever were before. So, you know, there's streaming, there's podcasts, there's just a million different ways to do it. Self publishing and Kindle and Substack. And it's an infinite number compared to when I started out. You sent query letters to agents. That was much the only ballgame right, and by mail, you go to the post office every day with your stack. Right. So, you know, I think there's just a lot of opportunity now.
Anna David: Yeah, as my previous guests said, because of the NFT revolution. The writers haven't been celebrated like this since the Renaissance. That's what she said.
Ben Mezrich: That's a good way to put it. I like that. Yeah.
Anna David: Well, Ben, thank you so much for your time. Listeners, thank you for listening. And this has just been delightful.
RELATED EPISODES:
Making A Book Into a Movie with 50 Shades Producer Mike DeLuca
Selling Your Book as a Series of NFTs with Elle Griffin
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM
May 18, 2022
Hollywood Special: Making A Book Into a Movie with 50 Shades Producer Mike DeLuca
Mike De Luca has, arguably, more experience than anyone else out there when it comes to turning books into movies: three of the four times he's done it (for The Social Network, Moneyball and Captain Phillips), he has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and the one time he wasn't nominated for one of his book-to-film adaptations, it was for a little movie called 50 Shades of Gray. He's done several other million things in his career, including discovering Paul Thomas Anderson and David Fincher and running New Line studio at the age of 27.
But in this episode, we focused on the process of turning a book into a movie—including how producers find out about the books they end up adapting, how much control the author has over the movie and how much money they can make, among many other topics.
He also raved that Hollywood Book Directory is a genius idea and asked, "How could that not exist yet?" Great question. You can apply to join here.
RELATED EPISODE:
How Do I Get My Book Made Into a Movie?
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM
May 11, 2022
Ready-Made Book Special: Turning a Book Into a Course with Paul Angone
Paul Angone had an extremely unusual journey to success as an author.
First, he tried to sell a book. For eight years. Nary a bite.
Then a blog post he dashed off went viral. Very viral. From there, he was able to sell a book based on that blog post to a publisher. The problem was that he had to finish it in a month.
Well that book and the next have sold over 100,000 copies and launched a massive speaking career.
But that's not even why I wanted to have him on the podcast. I wanted him on the pod so I could Interview him about the process of turning his book into a course.
Listen in on this mega inspiring conversation about how courses and books work symbiotically—and how your reality may end up being even bigger than your dreams.
RELATED EPISODES:
Making a Newsletter Into a Book with Jeff Kober
What Are the Exact Steps to Publishing a Book?
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Anna David: Paul, thank you so much for being here.
Paul Angone: Thanks for having me.
Anna David: Okay, as I told you, I stumbled across you, because I was trying to find people who had successfully taken courses and made them into books. Somebody did a blog post about you, I reached out. Turns out your story is infinitely more interesting than that. And you have so much to share with my listeners. So tell me about your journey.
Paul Angone: Yes, thank you so much. Thanks for having me on, it is an honor being here. And I started as a 21, 22 year old thinking I was gonna write a best selling book. And then I quickly realized how difficult that is and how long of a journey it is. And I wanted to write a book about helping confused, broken hurting 20 somethings, because I was a broken hurting confused 20 somethings. So it was built out of this own passion of mine, but then I began that long, arduous journey of how do you get published. So I was working on this book, working on this book. I had every publisher around, turn me down. And this is over the course of seven, eight years. So there's a lot that goes into being unemployed, of working random jobs, of going back to school, getting married, you know, doing life, but always kind of keeping this dream of, “I really want to write a book someday. And I really want to help 20 somethings, and there's really not that many books to do that. And I think this is important. So I'm going to keep leaning into this.” So the long and shortened story of it is, I ended up ending the contract with my literary agent, because typically, you need the literary agent to get you in the game, they're one of those gatekeepers that still plays an important role. Yeah, but I just saw the writing on the wall, because every publisher would say, “we like your book, we like your voice. But we can't publish an unknown. Yeah, you're you're you're nobody, you got to build a platform.” So that's when I started hearing about platforms. So I started my website called allgrownup.com.
Anna David: Grown spelled G R O W N.
Paul Angone: That's right, growing, like you're growing pains. And started blogging. You know, this is when blogging was a big deal.
Anna David: What year was this?
Paul Angone: Gosh, that is a great, great question. Let's see, I started 3/8/2011, because I thought it was really funny that three and eight added up to equal 11. So that's how I know.
Anna David: You know, Paul has got an interesting sense of humor. You find that funny.
Paul Angone: I made postcards too. Literally, we just had our first child, and I have memories of my wife and I making little postcards to mail out to our friends for a website launch. This is us trying to do the best we can. So I blogged for a while and realized that blogging is harder. And finding an audience online is not just easy. After about a year of doing the blog, and again, I've been working about eight years on this. Making very little money, working a full time job in marketing now. And just doing all this at six in the morning, or at lunch or late at night. I wrote an article called 21 Secrets for Your 20s. I just threw this article list up. And before I did that my wife and I had a very serious discussion of, “when is enough enough?” “When do you need to quit?” “When are you beyond being stubborn and beyond being passionate? And now you just got to see the writing on the wall.” Yeah, that's not going to happen. And she was right. And I was like, Yeah, I'll give it a few more months. I was at my deadline. Back against the wall,l type experience. I just threw up this article, this list 21 Secrets for Your 20s not thinking much about it. And then it went crazy viral. And mainly through the social media platform of Pinterest, which I wasn't on, really.
Anna David: So somebody saw it, some confused 20 something, and posted it on Pinterest. And it just went crazy.
Paul Angone: Crazy. They posted the 21 Secrets for Your 20s blog image that I created within like three minutes just threw it up. Yeah, they posted that image. And I was literally having that moment, which I never experienced before, one where I was refreshing my screen. And you could see this share totals, like jumping by 50. By 100. I mean, it was happening right in front of my eyes. But then also my website started crashing, which I didn't know that could be a problem. I've never had that issue. So I'm in the back room of my marketing office pleading with my server to, “please put me, this is the time that I've been hoping for for eight years.” Where publishers were continually telling me, “prove it, prove it, prove it.” And now it was happening. Yeah. So long story short, an author friend was excited and put me in contact with their publisher. So a blogger, author friend, who I had been networking with for years, was like, “Hey, I've signed a deal with these guys. I think they would love you. Let me introduce you two.” And I pitched them the book I'd been working on all along, because I've been working on the same book for years. They said, “No, we don't want to publish that.” “But do you have something else? Because you got so much momentum going on right now?” So I really fell into the idea. I actually remember talking to Jenny Blake, who a lot of people know, great author, friend of mine. And we were even brainstorming, and it was like, in that conversation, we were like, “Well, how about you do like 101 Secrets for Your 20s?” It's got its own kind of brand and momentum. Yep, turn that into a book. And the publisher loved the idea. They gave me a month's deadline to turn that blog post into a book. And I'm not over exaggerating,
Anna David: That's so rare, but they just capitalize on the momentum.
Paul Angone: And that I mean, they were an old school publisher, but they were thinking, Yeah, especially my acquisitions editor, and if you can find an acquisitions editor, and there's a whole other story that is aligned with you, that's thinking the same way you are, I mean, it's like magic. Yeah. And so I just, you know, basically it was 9, 10 years of waiting and struggling and building a foundation. Yeah. So that when a viral moment happened for me, there was a lot to land on for readers. It's that whole kind of like, creating an overnight success and 10 years. Yeah. And it wasn't like I was an overnight success. It wasn't like everybody knew who Pauling Dhoni was all of a sudden, but I finally had that foot in the door type moment where I got paid a whopping $5,000 for my book. That was my advance for my book.
Anna David: How much did you earn in royalties?
Paul Angone: Well, so since then, so that's why I also encourage people, who cares about your advance? It's great to have guaranteed upfront money, don't get me wrong. But to be able to pay back your advance quickly, especially for your first book, to not have that pressure. I feel like yeah, and then and then also, so 101 Secrets for Your 20’s comes out, and it had marginal success. It wasn't, it wasn't a New York Times bestseller. It wasn't blazing through 10 20,000 copies within the first two weeks. It was a long game, became a perennial seller. Then I just kept putting in more work into doing interviews where I can, speaking engagements, just building it as much as I could. And I think within the first year, it sold 10,000 copies, which was great, which I was over the top. I mean, because again, people that aren't in this world, they don't realize how hard and how unusual that can even be, you know, everybody just thinks like 10,000, who cares? But since then, it just kept slowly building, it found its home on Amazon, which was a huge help. With other books that were coming out at the same time, like, The Defining Decade and Adulting, similar type books in the same space.
Anna David: I keep thinking about Adulting. I remember I read that.
Paul Angone: Yeah, and none of us knew each other. But it was that moment in time where all of us were feeling the same thing in different ways. And they are in New York, with big New York budgets. We're helping my smaller publisher budget. Yeah, because I was wearing coattails. We're all on the coattails of each other really.
Anna David: It’s the customers who bought also.
Paul Angone: Yeah, exactly. So we were linked up quite a bit. And especially defining decade because she had just done NPR [inaudible] and then she had a TED talk. So she really went crazy with sales. So then you have my little 101 Secrets for Your 20s getting saddling, you know, saddle up right next to her and being buddy buddies. And that was a huge help to me. So long story short, it was like five, six years after that book came out, that I then got into Target, got into Sam's clubs and airport bookstores, I didn't really have any retail placement for five, six years, that is really unusual. It's really unusual. And I totally get that. But what it did start with that, you know, turning a blog post in the book. And that's how it started.
Anna David: And to be clear, now it's over 120,000 copies, and there's over 1700 reviews on Amazon.
Paul Angone: Yeah, it's so wild. You know, and that's when you say like, your dream, you know, obviously, your expectations like they can get dashed and crashed and sped up so many times when you're pursuing something that's important to you. Yeah. But then there's also these rare occasions where it will go far beyond where you ever would have expected, you know, to where, like, even a small little anecdote like I have, you know, foreign translations, which is always wild to me. I have bootleg copies of a couple of my books in Iran. And I probably have my most passionate fans in Iran, and they've done a documentary about me. I mean, it's just, I mean, they've come to my house. I mean, it's because there was a filmmaker that he felt like his life got changed by reading about Buchan, Iran, he came to the states and now he's a filmmaker. So he wanted to make a documentary. But it was just so wild. Like , how much hubris would I have to say, “Well, I want to write a book that's going to impact people in Iran, who are 10 year young years younger than me. And I know nothing really about their culture, or what it's like to be there. But I really want to do that.” That would be so unfounded and so foolish to think I could do that. And yet, that's been one trickle effect, of sticking with it, of being stubborn and being passionate about what I was writing about. And then just running full speed once that momentum started going, just trying to leverage Yeah, every little bit of success I had, because it took me so long to get any of it at least it felt like that to me, that I just was like, I'm gonna leverage every little thing I can possible.
Anna David: That's so you said so many things that are interesting. I mean, I think there's so much to the surrender, the conversation with your wife, where you're like, you're right. And I believe this is a spiritual thing. The universe is like, okay, you've learned your lesson. And what a testament to the non overnight success because you had the skills to back it up. You had the experience, you had all of the things. I'm still waiting for my breakout success. My career is a testament to just consistent BS, I haven't had the A plus. And you know, and so I think also, this is such a thing about writers, it's so easy to look at someone else, and go,” oh, I want that.” Like, we're so all of us are so lucky to have any piece of the pie. Like I used to kind of go, “Oh, I didn't get what I deserve.” What if I got more than I deserve? What about that? So you have, you know, Iranian documentary, you have your books. And I want to see a lot of the people that I talked to say, Oh, I really want to do traditional publishing because I want my book in an airport bookstore. Somehow, airport bookstores have gotten fetishized. And Hudson will take money. You know, I think it's 10 grand. So get your book. And by the way, I bought Adulting in an airport bookstore. There you go. I know I never buy books in airport bookstores, what’s the big deal? People think it is a big deal.
Paul Angone: Fun full circle. Getting into Target, I never dreamed I would get in to Target. It's really hard to get into Target. And my publisher is a smaller publisher. So it was like one of two books, or three books that they probably have ever gotten in a Target, you know, so I'm a real it was a real rare occasion. But then people would discover you in Target, which was fun. I mean, because books are phased out. They're not just shelved. And so I have people like finding me for the first time Instagramming me while they're still in the aisle of Target and showing me their shopping cart and like, I'm loving this book, so it was a real surreal experience. But again, it didn't start like that at all for me. Yeah, I mean that was literally like 15 years from, I'm going to write a best selling book, and then seeing that first book in Target was a 15 year journey. And there was a ton of surrender. I love how you said that. I mean, over the course of time, there were so many seasons of complete surrender. And really figuring out okay, what am I really in this for? Which I think all authors, I think, if we're gonna keep doing it, we all come to that place where we really fully understand. It's not about that, that sexy dream that we maybe once had.
But when we get down to the heart of it, that's what's continuing us to keep. So I always asked, you know, 20 somethings especially, or anybody struggling to figure out what they want to do you know, what is something you cannot not do? You have to do it. It's so meaningful to you, because it's so ingrained in your story, and in your failures, and your own pain and your passion. And it's all coming together for something really special. And you're going to be willing to go through way more obstacles and way more rejection and no’s than anybody else. That's maybe trying to tackle the same thing. And then I've had other books, I've done four books now. And each one has its own story. And I'm working on number five. But not all my books have been commercially successful. I still had some that didn't sell as much as I hoped. Even with one book that has been successful, each book has been its own story really.
Anna David: Yeah. Well, so then let's talk about turning so you turn the second book into a course or how did that work?
Paul Angone: Yeah. So long story. I ended up publishing the book I'd been working on all along, it was my second book. And it was called All Grown Up Searching for Self Faith and a Freaking Job. It's like my memoir, and the publisher that rejected me three times. yours before, ended up publishing that book and not realizing they had rejected me because it was all different people. And I did not tell them that they had rejected me until after the contract was signed. Then I said, By the way, you've rejected this book tons of times before, but none of you realized that so the joke's on you.
Anna David: It just shows that rejection is not personal. It was just platform.
Paul Angone: And it wasn't even permanent. I mean, they literally rejected me three separate times, only to be the publisher that published me. And then my third book, we decided, well, let's make it a series with my first book. And we'll do 101 Secrets for Your 20s. Let's do 101 questions you need to ask in your 20s. And again, I kind of follow the same model, in the sense that that was a blog post, where I wrote 11 questions you need to ask in your 20s. And it did really well. And so I mean, that's the beauty of, you know, what I call market testing, to put it in a big business sense, your business terms, your market testing your ideas. So you're seeing what the audience is resonating with? And I really took that information and said, Well, gosh, people seem to really dig this idea of questions as well, what questions do I need to be asking? So let me make that my next book and become a series. And then that is how my first book got into Target was I had the new book that was tied into my first book, again, leveraging the craft, and everything that I can. And then they pitch both books together. And they meant they brought both books in. And so then I had two books in Target, and had success. And then that third book, I also then turned it into a course. And a lot of the material the questions were in my course and vice versa, it was kind of all inner interweaved together.
Anna David: And so how did you actually convert the book into a course? You have 101 questions, yes. And so how is that a course?
Paul Angone: Yeah, so then my course became signature sauce calm. And my whole metaphor was, is that we're all chefs in the kitchen, in a sense, and we're all bringing these ingredients together that are unique to us, where we live our story, our values, our strengths, our skills. And we're putting together this flavor that the world needs that the world is hungry for, that is unique to you that hopefully, people are gonna be lining up at the door to have. And so within my course, I have 10 ingredients that I feel like go into your signature sauce. So I was basically trying to take my books, and go one step further. So there was more of a deeper interaction and engagement level. So where I could take it, I was basically doing it as a group cohort. And so smaller, where I would take like, 40 to 50 people. And we would go through it together. And I would jump on a one once a week call.
Anna David: Yeah, I was checking out your course, it looks like you still do that, you still do a weekly call?
Paul Angone: Yeah, so I have done it. It's ebbed and flowed, you know, there's been some seasons where I've been more heavily involved in the course. And then some seasons where people can self select to join, and just go through it at their own pace. So it's always open. So sometimes they do that.
Anna David: And it becomes worth it, if you have 10 students, it's not worth your time, even though you really want to help people. At what point does it become, quote, worth your time? How many students do you need?
Paul Angone: We can price our courses all differently. And that's the beauty of courses. I've heard of Steve Harrison, a guy who helps authors a lot. And I've heard him talk about, you know, people know what to pay for your book. People don't know what to pay for your course. It's more subjective. And so there is a beauty in the sense that you can have different price points for those different levels of engagement. And they might think, you know, $500 is a steal or $1,000, or $100. And even at $100, well, that's like 10 times more than they probably are paying for your book. Yeah, so that's cool. So for me, it was like 25, 30 people. If I had that amount, it would be totally worthwhile to me.
Anna David: And it is kind of more research, hearing what they have to say.
Paul Angone: Exactly. And to hear that real life discovery, where they're not just maybe even emailing me reactively to something I've written, but I'm experiencing it with them. It's almost a little bit like a speaking engagement, which is another part of, you know, how the business gets leveraged into engagements. Is that real time interaction, which we just don't have, for the most part as authors, when we're writing our book, when we have our head down, and we're just working on the book. So to have that real time kind of engagement is really helpful to see. Okay, what is actually working? What is meaningful? And what is something I need to dive into deeper, maybe even later on, that's your next book or your next speaking engagement.
Anna David: And so what advice would you give people who want to either turn a course into a book or turn a book into a course?
Paul Angone: Oh, that's a great question. I think at the core at the heart, it's got to be something that’s obviously extremely meaningful to you like you. I think a lot of times you've had to have personally gone through the frustration, the hardship, the obstacles you've overcome, in a sense, you haven't had that you haven't even had to completely overcome, I don't think any of us have ever completely overcome. But it's got to be so meaningful to you that you're going to be willing to go through the time and energy and hardships to create something really of value, and that's meaningful. And then I think all along the way, whether it's a book into a course, or course into a book, it's really getting that feedback, tapping into those feedback mechanisms that you can to just like a comedian would, right to, they're going to try to work on their our content, you know, they're our talk. And they're constantly whittling it down with every engagement with everything to get to the real heart of okay, what is my strongest hour? Yeah, you know, I think we're doing that as course creators, as authors. As bloggers and podcasters. Whatever medium you're taking on, you're getting that feedback mechanism, your market testing your ideas, to figure out okay, A, what am I most passionate about giving my time to? And B, what’s seemingly resonating the most with my audience? And do those two align? Or how do I make them align? If I can't see how they align right off the bat?
Anna David: So if you're going from course to book, it's easier if you're doing cohorts, and you're having, you know, live experience with people so you can see their reactions. But otherwise, do you think it's taking the modules and converting them into chapters? Do you have any advice for that?
Paul Angone: Yeah, I think it could work that way. And mine is not super straightforward either, where the name of my books, 101 Questions You Need to Ask in your 20s. And let's be honest, Your 30s too, was my subtitle. And then my course is called Signature Sauce. So for that one, I didn't even carry over the same name. I felt like within the course format, I can wrap my mind around like 10 ingredients. Here's the 10 things we're going to work on. And then these questions infused into those ingredients. So I retailer it, yeah, in a way that I felt fit a course. The best. And for the course, too, I did get help. So I had a great couple, Heath and Alyssa Pageant, who they're our viewers, and they have RV books. And RV campgrounds are great. They're entrepreneurs, podcasters, and great people to check out. But they helped me. They lived with me for like five days. And we just filmed and they helped me with. Okay, what is this? You know, process? What do we need to make into our course? Is this working? So I did even have real time feedback from other creatives and professionals. So I was not trying to do it in a silo. Yeah. Which was helpful, because that was my first foray into building a course. I didn't know what I was really doing.
Anna David: Yeah. And they were friends of yours, or they moved in to help you?
Paul Angone: I paid them, you know, so I paid them. Yeah. So I paid them to come film. And to come edits and graphics. I mean, they were a one stop shop as a couple. And I don't think they're don't don't hit them up now, because I don't think they're doing this as much now. But finding those people, I think, was to make that investment. Yeah. And it was like, well, in one course, you know, if I launch, you know, 3040 people, you know, figuring your breakeven points, and it makes complete sense. It's like, if I launch one cord, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pay all the expenses, you know, right off the bat. Yeah. And then from then on, it's gravy. So it only made sense for me to invest my own finances into the building of the course to make it as good as I could.
Anna David: And that's what we always tell people about books. You can find people, you know, who will write and publish a book for $5,000. You can find people who will do it for $500,000. But invest in that, you know, if you're going to write your book yourself and you can't get a publisher, invest, don't just go throw it up onto Amazon. This has been so great. So if people want to find out more about you, reach you, where's the main place they should go?
Paul Angone: Yeah, allgrownup.com is still my home base. And again, GROWN allgrownup.com. And you can snag free chapters from all my books. If any of these books sound interesting, you can get free chapters.
Anna David: And you have a free course?
Paul Angone: Yeah, so you can take a taste test of the Signature Sauce course, where you can do three modules, three lessons. I think, though, that's called Getting Unstuck. And so you can sign up for that through signaturesauce.com. Or just find me at Paul Angone. And if you can spell Angone, good luck, with that you're better than most people because it's a hard Italian name to spell.
Anna David: I’m glad you pronounced it for me so I can do the intros.
Paul Angone: My middle name is Anthony, so I could be Tony Angone, if I wanted to be a true Italian.
Anna David: Mobster alert. Okay, well, Paul, thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure. And you guys, thank you so much for listening.
May 4, 2022
Ready-Made Book Special: Making a Newsletter Into a Book with Jeff Kober
While Jeff Kober is a terribly successful actor—having appeared on The Walking Dead, Sons of Anarchy, Shameless, New Girl, NCIS: Los Angeles, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, ER, 24, The Closer and Criminal Minds, among many other shows—it is only one of the many things he does. In fact, although he's a good friend that I adore, I will admit right here and now that I've never seen any of his acting. Sorry, Jeff! But that's because I think of him primarily as a gifted meditation teacher and writer.
And I am selfishly so grateful that he recently turned his daily newsletter into a book, Embracing Bliss: 108 Daily Meditations. See, for many years, I read his newsletter religiously every morning before meditating and I pretty much curse Jeff every day for making me have to look at my phone to access it. I'm an addict, people! I can't help but get sucked into some stressful email or Instagram rabbit hole when I was just hoping to take in some spiritual truths, Damn it! Well, now that he's made these brilliant daily thoughts into a book, I have no one but myself to blame if I go down an internet rabbit hole before meditating.
You can grab your copy of his book of daily thoughts here. You will not regret it—I ordered multiple copies because I plan to give it out as gifts. But before you order it, do listen in on our conversation so you can learn about his process for turning pre-existing content into a book; it involved spreadsheets, consultations with a colleague and a whole lot of reflection on what people respond to (spoiler alert: musings on relationships and love).
RELATED EPISODE:
How Do I Use My Book to Get Email Subscribers?
CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM
April 27, 2022
Writing a Book in Public with Jesse J. Anderson
Jesse J. Anderson's journey to bookdom is unlike any other guest I've had on the show.
For one, he's not launching a book to help build his business.
Also, that book—Refocus: A Practical Guide to Adult ADHD—hasn't launched yet. In fact, he hasn't even finished writing it.
Why, then, you may ask, would I have him on the show?
Well, part of the reason is entirely selfish: he's writing a book in public and I want to write my next book in public so this is simply a shameless attempt to get some intel.
If you're wondering what "writing a book in public" even means, you may want to go back to the Rob Fitzpatrick episode, where he breaks down the process he documents in his book, Write Useful Books. If you don't have that kind of time, I'll tell you: it's essentially getting feedback from your readers while you're writing the book. Jesse is in fact doing it using software Rob designed for that very process and, as of this recording, he's about three-quarters of the way done with writing.
Jesse has also built up an impressive Twitter following by releasing Twitter threads of book chapters—a topic he dove into in detail.
When he's not writing books in public, Jesse is a designer and developer who has made it his mission to help others better understand what ADHD really is.
USEFUL LINKS:
TRANSCRIPT:
Anna David: Thank you, Jesse for being here.
Jesse Anderson: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. This is great.
Anna David: The reason I reached out to you originally is I am fascinated by this idea of writing a book in public. When I reached out, I didn't know that you were in Rob Fitzpatrick's community. And it happened. So basically, you and I communicated on Twitter, maybe 20 minutes later, I had Rob on my show, just, “Oh, you're in touch with Jesse.” It all happened very fast.
Jesse Anderson: Yeah. Yeah, I found Rob's book, I guess, almost a year ago, it was in the summer when I actually don't remember when it came out. But this past summer was right around the time I announced that I was writing a book, and I found his book kind of at the same time, and it's been a great guide. Really great book, you got to get it. Write Useful Books is the name of the book. And yeah, I got the book, and I joined his community. And it's been awesome. Yeah, just sort of getting that accountability. And I heard that he was gonna be on your show. And I was, “Hey, I just talked to you. Just talk to her on Twitter.” So yeah, that's funny how that all kind of came together right at that last moment there.
Anna David: I know. I was like, Rob, does he think I just literally asked everyone around him anyway, I got it. But you know, you guys have already heard me recommend Rob's book and you've heard that episode. And if you haven't, oh, my God go back. It was like a masterclass in the book. So I am in the process. And I hope my listeners are too, to consider writing a book in public after learning about this process. So walk us through the steps. You read Rob's book, and you go, “Oh, my God, I had no idea. I should be getting a lot of feedback from people.” Is that what happened?
Jesse Anderson: Kind of, yeah, so I first heard of the idea of writing and public from Arvid Cole, he writes, like technical books. And he had done that writing and public. So I'd heard of it from that. And I kind of thought, well, that really makes sense for what I'm doing. So I'm writing a book on ADHD. I was diagnosed five years ago. And I’m hyper focused on learning all about it. And I kind of acquired all this knowledge. And I didn't really do anything with it, other than learning how to run my own life. But I actually another connection you had Nicolas Cole on here a while ago.
Anna David: I know, I saw that you did Ship 30.
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, so that really kind of sparked all this for me, I don't even remember why. But I joined the Ship 30 for 30 challenge about a year ago. And I didn't know what to write about. I'm a designer. And so I thought maybe I'd write some stuff on design, I didn't end up doing any of that. So the challenge is writing something, an essay every single day for 30 days, which is wild. But I ended up writing several things about ADHD because I had acquired all this knowledge. And it really started to kind of resonate with people. And because I was writing and shipping every day in public, I was getting all these little bits of feedback. And I was hearing from people. And then I was hearing from other stories of people that had ADHD and kind of learning. Oh, you know, when I'm reading, learning about this stuff, I think, oh, everyone that has ADHD is like this. And then I'm learning Oh, no, it's not the same way for everybody. There's kind of all this variability within having ADHD. And so when Arvid Cole, when he was writing in public, I really thought that makes a lot of sense for me, because I know a lot about it, because I've been acquiring this knowledge. But I don't know everybody's situation with living with ADHD. And so by writing in public, it really allows me to get all this feedback, while I'm doing it, just like writing on Twitter and creating threads and getting people replying to that. And then yeah, back to Rob's book. So I read his book, and then that just sort of cemented the idea, Oh, this is perfect. And he has, you know, they have the software to help this book, which makes it really easy to get lots of feedback directly in the book that you're writing. And that's sort of how it's been kind of this wild process over the last year. But yeah, it's been great.
Anna David: Yeah. And Nicolas or Cole, he's a friend of mine. He's amazing. And he didn't have that program then. I mean, he had his about three businesses ago, that's just sort of how he operates. And we just caught up recently, and he was telling me about Chip 30. I didn't really know but yeah, I mean, what he always talks about is somebody who comes at being a writer cool, you're competing against people like him who put out material every single day. So this idea that alas, we all have, oh, I'm just so like, great and by the way listener, you are great, but like it's probably not just gonna go viral. It's day in day out work which not only gets us better at our craft, but also helps us build an audience. So I'm curious because I was thinking of getting Rob’s software. But for right now it's bundled with the community, right? And I sort of have an ego and I'm like, I'm not going to join a writer, I run a writer's community, are you kidding me? But I really want that software. Because really what he talked about is it encourages people to kind of give you negative feedback, because inevitably, people sort of feel badly and they want to be supportive. And so, I saw you have basically a table of contents out there. Is that all you've gotten feedback on so far?
Jesse Anderson: What do you mean all I've gotten feedback?
Anna David: Well, so when I went to your site, it was like, Okay, so I'm doing this in public. And here's my TOC. And then there was feedback on that, but have you so that's all that I saw, but I would have to join your group in order to see more material? Correct?
Jesse Anderson: Right. So the way I'm doing it, I'm kind of doing releases, kind of, I will get a draft, you know, because when you're first writing, I've never written a book before. So this is all kind of new to me. And I'm figuring it out. My first draft, I made the promise myself, like, I'm never going to show people this very first, the crappy first draft or whatever you want to call it. I don't want to show that to people, because then it's going to stop me from writing it. So I had to make that promise myself. And then kind of once I got through, I probably was like, 50% of the way through that. And then I really want to show this to people and really start getting this out there because I want this out in public. And that's sort of when basically I spent like a week of like, I'm gonna frantically get it ready this week, to help this book so I can get people to look at it. So separate from that I was doing the thing, you're talking about a table of contents. So at my initial announcement of the book, I said, “Hey, I'm gonna write this book, here's some of the topics I want to cover, please suggest your own.” And that table of contents basically tripled, or maybe even quadrupled, from what I originally listed.
And so at that point, it was yeah, it was just people seeing what I wanted to cover, and then sort of submitting suggestions for additional things. And there's some emails back and forth, like people would say something, and then I would interact through them. And so that part of it wasn't entirely in public. So I was talking with people to understand what they thought was important for the book. And then now that I've done two separate releases on the helpless book. And then the other thing I know, it's kind of chaotic. That's kind of how my whole process is a bit chaotic. So I'm kind of jumping around a little bit. But another thing I'm doing is I'm taking chapters for the book. And I'm like, I'm not really announcing that these are from the book, but I'm just releasing those as a thread. So the chapters of my book are really short. They're kind of like a Derek Severs book where they're probably like two or three pages. So that's kind of a very, very similar model that I'm taking in my book, because my audience has ADHD, and they don't want to read, I know, myself, when, when a chapter is like, 12 pages long. I'm counting the pages I have left to get to the end of that chapter. I need that marker. So for me, like the dark servers, books were really easy to read. Because I was like, “Oh, I can read this chapter. Oh, I can read another chapter.” And so that I have that kind of same focus for my book. But yeah, so I've taken some of those chapters and just released them as a Twitter thread, like, wrote it up, divided it into tweets, and just posted it without saying, Hey, this is from my book, because it's sort of like a rough, early version. And then I get a ton of feedback from that, which has been really great.
Anna David: So interesting. We should mention, so you went from 1200 followers on Twitter to like over 12,000? How many do you have now?
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, I'm at like, 37,000 now I think 7000?
Anna David: And when did the mammoth transformation take place? And how did you do it?
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, so it was kind of a slow, steady growth, being in a Ship 30 for 30 community, I did that for three or four months in a row. And you get sort of each, each month or each session, whatever, when they add new people, a lot of those people follow you through. So through that I probably gained, I don't know, 2000 to 3000 followers over kind of a six month span. And then around December, I was at around 12,000. So it kind of has been the slow steady growth throughout the year. And then this New Year is really when it's just sort of like exploded, and part of that has been this year has been when I've been releasing those kinds of chapters as threads a little bit. And then I've had a few of them that just you know, kind of go viral and have, I don't know, like 50,000 likes and then when that happens, because it's not just like a clip kind of tweet that went viral. It's actually like, Hey, this is good content. I think I get a lot more people that follow when that goes viral because if someone's interested in that, it makes sense for them to follow me. So yeah, it's really sort of exploded in the last like three or four months. Yeah.
Anna David: When something goes viral do you go well, I should write more about that in my book, then?
Jesse Anderson: Sort of, I kind of have the tricky balance. LikeI said, I don't want to have a 20 page chapter. The whole goal of the book is to be like, I don't know what it will be. But I want it to be like around 120 pages. Because I know for me, so many nonfiction books are 250-300 pages, and I read 30% of them. And then I hit that wall where I'm like,” woof, I don't know if I can finish this whole book.” So my goal is very much to kind of hit that 120 page range. So when I get feedback from people, like when, yeah, when those tweets go viral, there's lots of comments. I think a lot of the secret to the success of the growth I've had is, it really does feel more like a community than an audience. Like it's not, “Oh, hey, all about Jessie. It's more like, hey, Jesse's sharing this thing about ADHD.” And then a lot of people comment and reply about that thing. So it kind of becomes almost like this. It's like this conversation. It's like a forum within Twitter when these tweet threads go viral. And so because of that, I'm learning through what people are posting on there. And then I try to find the bits, is this conversation really important here? How can I find the small version that's really helpful to get in the book? So I think that a lot of what I tried to do is try to take a complex thing and shrink it down to, how can I communicate this? Well, and you know, a couple paragraphs versus a couple of pages or whatever.
Anna David: Oh, cool. I was just in contact with Derek Sivers, not to brag. I heard him speak at an event. And then he sort of said, anybody from this event can contact me, such an amazing guy.
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, he's replied to a couple of my emails too, very cool guy.
Anna David: Yeah, he loves emailing strangers. He said that during it, I was like, fantastic. So the way it works, I think you mentioned two times, you've sort of delivered it as a manuscript to your team. Is that right?
Jesse Anderson: Yeah. So it's, I mean, it's not even really a team, I kind of have an email list of just I just sort of asked publicly, “hey, who would want to read my book early?” And so because I have a pretty large audience, like a lot of people responded. And so I've been able to, which is great. And I feel really lucky and privileged that I have that, that I have a bunch of people interested in the book. Because of that, I've kind of segmented it. So I took 50 people and sent them the first draft. And then and then for the second draft, I picked another 50 people. And I told them about it. And I also told that first 50 People like, “Hey, I know you already read it, but if you want to read the newest version, it's available now too. And so some of those people kind of came back to see the changes and add additional feedback. And yeah, so I kind of have a big list of other people. I think what I'm going to do is one problem I had in the past is like people get it and they're really excited.
And then they don't do anything, which I know you've talked about before, you're like, “oh, they really said they wanted to do something, and then they're not actually taking action.” So I think what I'm going to do is send out sort of email to all the people that have shown interest, and sort of ask for another opt in of, “Hey, I'm gonna release this draft, and I need feedback within a week. So if you're able to do it, like this isn't disqualifying you from future ones. But if you can do it this week, then press this button.” And I use ConvertKit. So I'll add a tag to them or whatever. And then I can send them a specific email. I don't know if that'll work. But that's sort of my plan for the next draft of, maybe I can get people to be more likely to jump in, if I can get them to opt in and then immediately send them that link. Yeah.
Anna David: Yeah. Because it's human nature. Yeah, I'd love to help. And then right, yeah, we're all busy.
Jesse Anderson: But I've done the same thing. So I told her that I don't blame them at all. But it is, you just don't know who's going to be able to do it. And you that feedback is so valuable. I want to make sure I get the people that are able to do it within a reasonable timeframe.
Anna David: What's interesting about it is it almost is, remember Nielsen Families, like they give a box to a family and my mom was picked at one point, which was crazy, because she didn't really watch TV. And I'm just like, that's crazy. Well, it's like any study there, you're using one person to represent, you know, 1000s or hundreds of 1000s. Because the logical brain goes, Okay, so you're gonna ask 50 people, but how many people have ADD and how many people do you want to read your book? Do you know what I'm saying? You're just sort of hoping for the best feedback from the people who are interested in that topic.
Jesse Anderson: Yeah. So kind of like you said, the Help Helpless book really does help get good feedback, because it really cues people I found, because right now the software is only on desktop and not on a phone. A lot of people read the book just on the phone. And I said, if they did that, too, like that was great. Just email me the feedback. And the feedback I got via email was much less helpful. Like some of it was great, but it was just very, this is great. I love the book. This is awesome. It's gonna be amazing. That's great. I love the encouragement, but I need to know how to fix things. So the people that were giving the more concrete feedback throughout the chapters, there's almost nothing that someone said, where I was like, “Yeah, I'm going to implement that exactly.” But there were clues. So I would see that multiple people would say this part was confusing. And so it wasn't like they gave me a solution. But if I'm sending it to, you know, only 50 people have read it. And multiple people are saying this part is confusing, there's probably a better way to say that. And that's kind of how I've treated it. It's not like having a development, developmental editor, or someone that I'm sending, please help me fix this book. It's just like, what are the little problems you have with it? So I can, I can try to go in and fix those and be more clear with what I'm communicating.
Anna David: Right. Right. So does it require the feedback givers to have the software?
Jesse Anderson: |No, so it's just a web app. So, it's very similar to giving someone a Google Docs link, but with a few extra features.
Anna David: Right, right. And one thing that I read that you had said, at one point, you know, you have this newsletter, you have a 50% open rate, which is amazing. We have the same size newsletter. So I got committed, I was like, Whoa, so do you attribute that to you having firmly established, this is what I write about, and they are interested in that? What do you attribute that to?
Jesse Anderson: I mean, part of it is I'm very intentionally short. So my newsletters it's a weekly newsletter, and it's very short. I basically have, I'll include a couple of resource links, and then like, like, 200 words, or something that most people can read in just like a couple minutes. So it's a very quick read, and I think that is a big part of it. And I'm very consistent that way. I don't know my newsletter, open rate definitely didn't start like that. Early on a lot of my newsletter subscribers came from Tik Tok because I had some Tik Toks that did really well. And my open rate was much lower than, but since I've sort of grown a lot more on Twitter, which I kind of treat as my main platform. Even though I'm on Instagram, and I'm on Tik Tok. Twitter's definitely kind of where I mostly do content. And since my growth has happened through there, that's when kind of the open rate Shut up. And I don't totally know, I feel like I've been lucky and have a lot of success. And I don't necessarily know how it is, I don't know, I'm the lucky Twitter Person of the day or whatever. And what's that?
Anna David: I don't think it's that, because it's piecemeal. You know, you're not just like a guy who got lucky one day and went viral, like you're doing it. And that's what I think is a really interesting message. You're being strategic and you're being intentional, that it may not happen overnight, but it's happening. And it's only going to grow.
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, and I think a lot of it does have to do with just being really, I try really hard to be really authentic and vulnerable. I talk about stuff that, you know, for most of my life, I was embarrassed of. Different ways that act in the way my brain works and things that other people would see and say like, oh, man, you're kind of a stubborn jerk, or whatever. And then just explaining how my brain, like how it feels, to me, it's like, I don't feel like I'm a summer, stubborn jerk or whatever. But I feel like this is what's happening in my brain. And by talking about that, I think other people that also have been hiding those feelings, or that way that they felt, connect with it. And that's, I don't know, it's kind of weird to talk about a stubborn jerk like that. That just happened. I happen to think of a recent tweet that was about that. But it's, yeah, I think just like exposing the kind of those vulnerabilities that a lot of people also have hidden it really kind of helps people connect when you have ADHD, especially if you're undiagnosed, like you just you just feel so alone for most of your life. Because you're like, I know my brain works differently and I don't know why. And I don't know how to explain it either. And so I think now that more and more people are discovering that they have ADHD, it's like 90% of adults that have ADHD are undiagnosed, so it's pretty rampant. And now that more and more people are discovering that and then hearing somebody, you know, bring words to a way they've always felt they really connect with that. And I feel like that's really what I've been able to do well this last year is just sort of bring words to that feeling that a lot of people have had.
Anna David: Well, and on that note, you know, I saw that you did this annual review, and I'm sure I know, this is like something I've heard about people doing, but yours was the first I read. Is that something that you've done for a while? Where'd you get that idea? I mean, you're being really vulnerable and honest in that?
Jesse Anderson: Yeah. Yeah. So I haven't done one before. Because I mean, basically, it didn't have any audience before. I've had a blog for, you know, years and years. But no one really ever read it, which is I know the thing Cole talks about, you write a blog, and no one ever comes to it, what's the point of humans doing it? Whereas writing in public really, like that's where people start to see it. And so I had seen several people that had done an annual. They're like, annual report or whatever. I'm blanking on his name. Do you edit this?
Anna David: We love to be real there. I feel like there's someone who's known for that. Who cares? Somebody google it? Not you. You guys can Google, it doesn't matter. We're talking about Jesse's. So you decided...
Jesse Anderson: Okay, I just looked it up, it’s Nathan Berry. So he does. ConvertKit. Yeah. So he had done an annual report. And I'd seen a few other ones. And that sort of inspired me, I was like, I should do this. This will be fun to sort of recap the year and recap. It's helpful for me to look back on this next year and kind of see what worked last year, what didn't work, what do I want to focus on? And so, yeah.
Anna David: And so in it, I think it was that's where I read that, you know, you've done a little bit of speaking and you've been going on podcast and sort of emphasizing that is that stuff you want to emphasize once your book is out?
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, so I, I'm, I think so, I've loved being a guest on different podcasts. Like I love being able to just sort of talk about specifically ADHD but also sort of this process of what I've been going through the last year, because I'm not a writer, prior to this year. My career is in design and development. And I've been doing that for, you know, 15 years or something, and not been a writer. And so all of this is kind of new to me. And I'm just sort of figuring it out. And it's a blast, my ADHD brain loves it. It's all this brand new dopamine that I didn't know was available out here yet, and I don't know what it means long term. People have asked me before that, what does this mean going forward? What are you going to do? And I don't know, like, I'm really enjoying this writing process. And like I think a lot of authors, like I'm writing this book, and I'm like, Oh, this is another book idea, I want to do, oh, this would be another one too. So I have all these other ideas that would be really fun to do. And I'm also launching a podcast called ADHD Nerds, which is just going to be like a 30 minute interview show with other people that have ADHD. So I'm gonna be doing that soon.
And I kind of don't know, there's no end game in mind. Other than, I love what I'm doing. And I love being able to teach people about ADHD because it was so impactful for me, finding out at 35, oh, this is why my brain does things this way or this different way. Where I have this unique take on things. And I love being able to help other people like being part of that story for other people of realizing like, Hey, I'm not just broken. I'm not just, you know, selfish, or lazy, or spacey, or whatever it might be like, there's actually something neurological happening. And when you know about it, you can really change things for the better for you. So I'm enjoying being an advocate for that. And I just kind of just sort of follow wherever this goes and enjoy it a long way. Yeah.
Anna David: Yeah, that's interesting, because most of the people almost always, it's about like that I talked to you here. It’s usually, how is this book going to play into your business? How is it going to help you get clients? How's it going to help you get, you know, and it sounds like you're open to it, you're certainly open to being hired as someone to go speak about ADHD?
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, I've done. So I did a talk. I've done some tech talks in the past, like I said, as a designer developer, and I did speak at a couple of virtual conferences last year about ADHD, and I love that. So that's definitely something that, like speaking, is something I'm interested in doing. Eventually, like I said, we'll see kind of where all this goes. But that's definitely something I am interested in chasing down and seeing if that may be a future for me.
Anna David: But you don't want to coach people?
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, speaking of coaching, I took some training courses for ADHD coaching, it's something that I think I enjoy Speaking more broadly to people in less on a one on one basis. I think there's so much value in that for sure. But I don't know if that's me. And I haven't shut the door on that. But I've sort of paused, I took the coaching courses on that. And then sort of pause, I don't feel like this is necessarily where I'm headed right now. In the same with, I know, there's a lot of people you have on the podcast where they get into consulting. And that's where there can be a lot of money like, “Hey, I wrote this book.” And now you can hire me to consult, and there's a lot of money there. And I don't think that there's anything really there that makes sense for me. Yeah. And that's why I'm just sort of continuing to create content and seeing where it leads for me.
Anna David: So what shape is the book in? Do you have a release date? Where's it at?
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, so the book right now, I would say is roughly 80% done. And the remaining 20%, I know what it's going to be. I just, you know, haven't sat down and forced myself to write it out. But I would say it's 80% done to get to the point of like, okay, now I need a real editor to come in here and fix them, like copy editing and all that sort of stuff. I don't have a release date, I would love for it to be in the fall this year, like September, October. But I'm self publishing. So I know, there's a lot of things that I need to figure out to get to that in. So I'm sort of trying to line up now so that I can sort of see the end of the tunnel for writing the book. It's like, I really need to start lining up those things, and probably trying to schedule like future podcasts and stuff. Because I'd love to be able to do kind of the podcast tour and get the word out there around the time the book comes out. But yeah, so that's my goal is kind of fall this year, we'll see what happens.
Anna David: And then are you going to use the people who have been helping like your advanced reader team to do reviews and that kind of thing? Or have you not even gotten there yet?
Jesse Anderson: It's definitely something I've considered and want to do. I don't have any plans for that yet. And my my wife has been on like advanced reader teams for other books, just sort of like, you know, unofficially or anything, but I'm probably going to recruit her to take, take charge of some of that, and do some of that communication of getting people excited, and yet doing the reviews. Because I know how important reviews are. It's funny how you don't even think about it before. And now that I'm writing a book, I'm like, oh, I gotta get everyone I know to try and write a review. So that I can get past that hump where you never want someone to come to your book page, and then be like, ah, 17 reviews, that's not enough or something.
Anna David: I know. And you just don't realize until you release a book, how much it means and how quick it is to do one, you don't need to write a big frickin novel, just a couple sentences. So as we wrap up, what advice would you give somebody about, you know, sort of going from, I'm not a writer to, hey, I'm writing a book, and it's, it's evident in your face, how excited you are about it? And so what advice would you give somebody?
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, I think a lot of it is just, you just need to put yourself out there, like the building in public is, don't be like, don't be afraid to just write something and then see what sticks. And I know, Cole talks a lot about that, that's a lot of kind of the ship 30 philosophy is, just write about stuff and then see what people care about. I think it's so easy to think, Well, I'm not an expert in this, I don't, like for me, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a doctor, I don't have some education, background and ADHD. But I know a little bit more than a lot of other people. And so it's a lot easier to teach somebody kind of when you're at that level anyway. So really just, I kind of approach a lot of it from like, teach what I didn't know, six months ago. Trying to just teach just a little bit, you know, in the past of who I was, and that's really kind of been successful for me.
I think you don't have to become this high lofty expert of like, you know, teaching down to the masses, like you are just trying to teach a person who, you know, didn't doesn't know what you didn't know, six months ago, and sort of doing that. And I think another thing is, I've really come to understand that it's more about building a community than building an audience. And early on, when you're kind of like, you know, when you're nobody is building an audience, you're just trying to get somebody to look at your stuff. But it builds because you interact with them. And then it becomes like, Oh, I'm actually like, this isn't just a person that reads my stuff. This is my friend that I see like some of the things I post and like I reply to their things, and I get in the comments and all of that. And I think really kind of just thinking about it as a community really helps you change your perspective in the things that you write.
And so whenever I'm writing stuff, I write a lot of like, kind of quippy tweets. It's about random ADHD things. And I just try to think of how I would feel if I saw someone else tweet this thing, like, and what I want people to feel is like, yes, right on. I feel the same way. Like, I'm like this feels like we're sharing this experience together. And that's sort of like that. I try to keep that perspective in mind when I'm talking like not that I'm just sending down something, again, sending down to the masses, but I'm bringing people along. And a lot of times when I'll tweet about things, and I know, I'm talking about Twitter a lot, because that's basically where a lot of my writing starts.
Anna David: Yeah. I think it's really relevant today.
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, so a lot of the thing I do is, I will tweet a question, but with my own answer, so an open ended question. So like, there's this thing called, like, the ADHD tax, which is like, when you have ADHD, there's a whole lot of things that kind of happened, like you forget to pay bills, or things like that. And then you end up paying a bunch of fees on top of it. So people call it like the ADHD tax, because you didn't, because your ADHD causes you to do these things. And then it becomes more expensive. Yeah. And so I recently tweeted, and said, What are some ways that you pre pay the ADHD tax? And then I kind of made it a little thread and added like two or three ways that I do it. And then that kind of helps, because then if someone doesn't have anything to add, they're still like, “Hey, this is great. I'm learning from this.” Or if they do have something to add, it sort of helps build the community because more people start to add in their ideas. And then you end up like with the conversations that happen in the threads. And I find that a really great way to kind of help that community. Basically, I'm sort of presenting a topic to the group like, “Hey, let's talk about this today.” And it's great. And I learned so much through those as well.
Anna David: Fabulous, so can people who are listening still join the team, that community and give me feedback on your book, or is it too late?
Jesse Anderson: Yeah, so I have a let's see what the website is. I want to make sure I have it right. So you can just go to help. I'm so sorry. There we go. Just helpJessewrite.com gives you a place where you can sign up. So if you just go to helpJessewrite.com. Enter your email there. And probably in the next few weeks, I'll be starting my next draft release and inviting people to do that where I'll do, like I said earlier, sort of like, Hey, if you can do it this week, this is the week I really need people to join in. Yeah, like I said, a lot of the stuff I do is on Twitter, and you can follow me . It's just a first name, middle initial last name. So Jessie J. Anderson, and that's my username everywhere. So Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok and the website JesseJanderson.com.
Anna David: I love it. Well, Jesse, thank you so much. This was so informative. And y'all thank you so much for listening.
Jesse Anderson: Awesome. Thank you.
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