Charlie Hoehn: Write Something People Want to Read

0:00 The title is the most important marketing decision the author can make for the book. because virtually all books that sell more than ten thousand copies are driven by word of mouth. The title has to do a lot of things. When a person says it, it has to evoke curiosity, FOMO, some sort of emotional reaction. Whether it's intrigue or even repulsion in some cases, it should be almost a Tip of the tongue. That gets triggered regularly.

0:35 in conversation. An example we used was A Meeting Suck by Cameron Herald. Even if he didn't necessarily like the book People would complain about meetings, meetings were a constant. In companies And so this book would just kind of organically come up as like you ought to read this and it would just naturally be recommended. Welcome to the Knowledge Project. I'm your host, Shane Parish. In a world where knowledge is power, this podcast is your toolkit for mastering the best of what other people have already figured out. Today's episode will transform how you write.

1:16 and communicate. My guest is Charlie Hohen, the secret weapon behind bestsellers like The Four Hour Work Week and dozens of other books that have collectively sold millions of copies. While Charlie isn't particularly well known to many people, he's the book whisperer to the people in the industry. Whether you're crafting crucial emails, high stakes presentations or reports, or that book you've been meaning to write, Charlie breaks down exactly what makes writing connect. And convert. We explore everything from hook-driven titles that grab attention, to structures that keep readers engaged, to marketing strategies that make ideas spread. We also dive into the real trade-offs between self-publishing and traditional publishing, what actually makes book covers work or fail, and how AI is changing the game for writers. This conversation is packed with immediate

2:06 Immediately useful insight on how to make your idea stick, something Charlie has helped authors do repeatedly at the very highest levels. It's time. to listen and learn. There are too many podcasts and not enough time. What if you could skip the noise and get just the insightful moments, even from shows you didn't know existed? That's what Overlap does. Overlap is an AI-driven podcast app that uses large language models to curate the best moments from episodes. Imagine having a smart assistant who reads through every transcript.

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3:02 dot com How would you summarize what you do? I Help Authors.

3:11 go from idea to successful book. It takes a variety of shapes. You know, sometimes I'm helping them with the actual production of the book, sometimes just editing. Other times. Focusing mostly on the launch. I'm an author myself. I've done

3:27 twenty years in video productions, but it mostly it's a I'm just hoping not there's what their books. You're a three times, if I understand this correctly, New York Times best selling editor. What have you learned about writing that you wish more people knew? The best books are written for One or two. Real people.

3:47 On the other end. And a lot of authors write as though they're speaking to a huge general audience or to Their perceived fan base, the entire fan base. It's the fastest way, in my opinion, to Kill a buck?

4:03 Uh, because it's not interesting. They start speaking in terms of We need to do this. We should be like this. And it's like you're Who are you talking to? There's one person On the other end of that book.

4:16 Speak to them. Or speak about yourself. I learned this. I and if you want to apply it, you can do this. So the The most powerful interesting books

4:27 one real person in mind and the paradox is they tend to reach a lot more people that way. And that person can be the author. Are you making something that you want to consume? Repeatedly. And if you are, it's probably pretty good.

4:42 It'll find an audience eventually. Do you think most peop most authors are especially in nonfiction are sort of like working through the subject that they're talking about and that's the writing? Mark Manson. Like he cares, right? So the subtle art of not giving a fuck is sort of like him trying not to care as much. James Clear was really working on his habits when he was writing about habits and sort of like So you're writing the book you almost want to consume? Yes and no. So it's You have to become the embodiment of the book.

5:13 First. So you can't really write it. as though you're that person that you haven't become yet, or the person that you're becoming. You kinda have to write it from a place of I've already become this. I've already grown into this. And I'm the embodiment of this.

5:32 Ravakant had a great quote where he said, In order to write a great book, you must first become the book. I work on prescriptive nonfiction Exclusively. I don't help with memoirs, I don't help with fiction, just Like Business books. Self help, personal development, that type of stuff. If you think of the author

5:50 Their expertise is a ladder, right? And so they've climb so many rungs to where they are. If they're trying to write for people on their rung or above. It will not be a good book. They need to write

6:04 For the people below them. and address those people because they can pull those people effectively. Up to their wrong. They can't push somebody who's on their wrong up further.

6:15 You know what I mean? Because they're not there themselves. Is that the transformation for the readers like I start at X and now I get pulled a little higher. Yeah. And I might not reach the level of the author, but I'm moving forward or towards them. Yeah. Or I have a blueprint to get me there. How do you write for a particular person? Like what does that look like? Well, there's there's a variety of ways. One, you can be talking to them in real life, right? So a lot of authors who've written good books are like, Yeah, been coaching clients or consulting with these companies for years. I have this stuff down cold. I know the questions they ask. I know their their common emotional challenges, the technical obstacles they face.

6:55 Those that is a great way to write a book'cause like you know that person very intimately or that avatar. And um Other ways are y you can do it. Kind of online now. Um, you still need that.

7:11 Real Feedback though. from actually helping a person transform just to clarifying that, like i you could in theory Be writing for an online audience.

7:24 Right, and helping them with a particular topic and seeing Oh, they left a comment here. About this. They had a question about this. Okay. But when you go

7:35 to to write the book, you're not actually witnessing what they're going through. It's similar to for like software development. You think you have a good app. that you've developed and you're like, This is awesome. Cool. Go put it in front of somebody and watch them use it.

7:51 And watch how quickly they get stuck or they're confused or they're bored. It's the same with books. And so I I think it's important to get that real you know, personal feedback that you can see

8:06 Here's where this person is. Struggling, here's where they're succeeding. How does an author do that with their writing the whole book, right? So like you can't write the book, publish it, then get feedback and sort of like Okay, now what do I do with those? Um Well you can, but I'll I'll circle back to that. Uh

8:23 The uh My The m the method I encourage is Teach it in real time. first. And ideally you're somebody who's already transformed numerous people, at least three.

8:37 with the transformation that you're trying to codify into a book. So Um generally speaking, you ought to have coached, consulted, helped

8:49 at least three people achieve the transformation you're you're trying to make into a book. You can In theory, publish a book. And then It's it's see where people are getting stuck, see their reviews and then adjust the book. afterward. I don't recommend it. It's not as

9:09 It's not a strategy that most authors will stick to, but like Howellrod, who's based here in Austin, he did that with the Miracle Morning. And so in the first year he promoted that book, sold like thirteen thousand copies or something like that, uh, which is Quite good for its first year. with every negative review that he got

9:29 He went back into the manuscript. And made revisions. So that that feedback couldn't be given again. So that review couldn't be given again. And he just kept doing that until The negative reviews stopped. And to date it's sold millions of copies.

9:46 Uh I think in he said in year six it sold its millionth copy. But he he stuck with that book and he was like I really believe in this. I'm gonna keep modifying this as though it is software. I'm going to release V one, V two, V three, V four, et cetera. Most authors don't do that. One of the reasons that I d I in reluctant to advocate for the traditional publishing processes

10:10 Like your book is set in stone there. If you're lucky Get a ten year update. You know, the ten year anniversary, but you're you're not gonna touch that book again. What's your take on the pros and cons of sort of self publishing versus publishing? What are the considerations? that you look at when does it make sense, when doesn't it make sense, how do you think about that? I agree with my buddy Nat Eliason's um

10:36 take on traditional publishing he and it's a very Simple. lens to look through. Uh overly simplistic, I guess, but if

10:46 you can get a publisher to give you a one hundred thousand dollar advance or more. You should probably do it. I mean, if you have millions of followers, uh a hundred thousand's not enough, but like you get the general concept. You want them to have enough skin in the game to take you seriously. You want to get as substantive as of an advance as you can to actually to you know

11:10 put some money into doing the book as well as you can and launching it as well as you can. For ninety five plus percent of authors I talk to, I tell them it doesn't really make sense for you to do that. There's a number of reasons. Most authors care about financial ROI. We can start there. Granted, the worst way to make money Where the book is by selling lots of copies um

11:34 Uh with a but with a traditional publisher, they're gonna be taking you know, I think it's upwards of ninety percent of your royalties. It may not be quite that high, but I I remember talking to James Clear. Uh, and and we were talking about how much you would have made had he gone the self publishing route with Atomic Habits and I did the math and it was like, Oh, it's about three X more.

11:58 per copy. But would he have sold as many. Exactly. Would he have sold as many? It's a great question. We'll never know. The distribution Is much higher. With the traditional publisher, right? You're getting into retail stores, that's not an easy game as a self published author.

12:14 But my argument is Over ninety percent. I believe it's it's at minimum of eighty percent of books book purchases are through Amazon online. So if you're applying the eighty twenty to book sales Self publishing typically typically makes sense. You should invest in making the best possible product.

12:35 Um Other things to consider with traditional publishing, what a pro is like they'll assemble your team. Your production team so they'll help With editing. Uh they'll they'll prevent you from getting into legal issues in their editing process. They will uh help you design the cover.

12:54 The con is I've seen their processes. It's not that Mary seen the cover of my books. Like you know how terrible it can be. I w I won't say a a bad word about your book.

13:07 Um but it yeah, I mean what is your what was your experience actually? I don't know, the whole thing for me started in twenty eighteen when the New York Times wrote this article about me calling me out as a a spy who helped people on Wall Street. And within Seventy two hours after that became public. We were the n I was the number one story on the New York Times dot com for two days. I had all of these Inbound

13:33 Contracts basically from publishers. No book title, no book. A lot of money. And I was like oh God, I don't even know what to do. I don't have an agent at this point. And so I remember Nicky from Portfolio had come to one of my events in twenty fifteen or twenty sixteen. And so I just reached out to her. And she's one of the people sort of like betting on this too. And I was like Hey, can we chat like as friends, right? Like not as you as an editor trying to buy a book, but

14:04 I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know like who to talk to. I need an agent. Like do I even want to do this? Do I don't have a book idea and so I finally ended up interviewing a couple of agents, got an agent, and then uh the money was I mean it it made sense in in my case to do it, but I didn't take the money and use it. I just sort of like put it in the bank. So this was a weird thing too. Like as an entrepreneur I don't want a boss. And for four years, I basically felt like I had a boss, right? I would get this email, you know, at the start, it's like this trickle once every two or three months.

14:36 And it's like, Where are you at on the book? And I'm like, I I don't know. I haven't even started the I don't even have the idea yet. You know, like I have some ideas and then all of a sudden towards the end it was like weekly, you know? It's like Where are you at? And uh finally I was like, Do you want your money back? Like I'll just give you your your check back and we can just call it a day. Uh, because I don't want The pressure. It's gonna be done when it's done. I know I agreed to a timeline. Covet happened. Timeline changed. Um And

15:02 The process from there was actually pretty good. Like Nikki's an amazing editor. She added a lot of value to the book. There's pros and cons to it, you know, I sort of ended up with a cover that I I don't personally like I don't think it did the book justice. Sort of like the titling could have been better. And I don't know what I don't know the first time. And so I'm relying on the recommendations of sort of the publisher and they do know. I mean they have a lot of data

15:27 I don't know how accurately they use that data, but my experience was pretty good. And I know people have different experiences with publishers, but we also got worldwide distribution. We're in like twenty eight languages now. And I don't know if that would have happened if I saw public I might have made more money, but the goal wasn't sort of make Money. distribution, how do we pull people back into our ecosystem? So when I think of like Farnham Street as a An ecosystem. Remember that Disney map from like the sixties? It's like theme park characters.

15:57 It's like well, I want this to reach people that I haven't reached yet. And then I a certain percentage of those people will come back to the website and a certain percentage of Those people listening to the podcast. And how do I pull people into our ecosystem? So I lifted the book as like

16:13 I don't wanna make any money on the book. I really just wanna grow the business and get better at what we're doing because if we get more a bigger audience the optionality for the future is huge. And the optionality is we get better guests on the podcast. We get more advertising revenue, which doesn't come out of any individual pocket, sort of comes out of corporations in a win-win way. They're reaching An audience that's hard to reach. We have one of the smartest audiences on the internet. And so like this is how I thought about it, which is like, how do I just maximize my optionality? And I don't know if that's right or wrong,'cause we never talked before I published. I wish we had. I would have changed the cover. So when the paperback comes out, we're definitely gonna do that. So do it like what you said is a common thing is just wanting to raise the visibility and create

16:59 opportunities or bring more opportunities in. So it tends to be like raise visibility, bring in opportunities, grow the business, leave a legacy. tends to be with with non fiction. I'm curious with your cover in the title. What was the process with How did how did you end up there? Where you're publishing a cover and a title that you're not crazy about. Well, the subtitle

17:22 Came first. Actually so I had the turning ordinary moments into extraordinary results and I loved it. And then the title was like ten people basically brainstorming a title from my agent to the editors to people who work at the publisher. And we're just back and forth until you know, we're like Weeks away from printing. This is where it gets really tricky, right? So it's like

17:44 Yeah. everything in my body and I'm writing a book about decision making and you know, I'm like This feels push and I'm like trying to pull back, right? And I'm like, slow down. Like it doesn't matter if we hit this deadline. It doesn't really matter. But they're like, No, we've got the book, like you're booked into the printing queue. You're like this is happening. And you know, effectively it's like we will take over one way or another, and the book is no longer yours. And you sort of get this message and it's like well I wanna slow it down. I wanna test it. I wanna sort of like

18:13 Figure it out. And I wanna come up with different options. Didn't have time to do that at that point in time. So the process sort of like you get to a certain point in that now, had that been three months earlier, I totally could have stopped it before it was sort of like booked into printing, before We had the buyers buying it, before the bookstores have bought it, before the sales agents go out, you can sort of slow it down. But once that process gets rolling, You're sort of at the whim of them and you do the best you can given the situation. Right. Now, having written a book, if I write another one,

18:44 That we all take a different approach to that whole thing. So you lost creative control, which is like a common thing. Well, sort of. Yeah. I I I mean, effectively that's what happened. I mean that sounds a little You know, on a continuum, it sounds probably very far right. Right. Where it's like slightly more pulled in than the screen. You were a participant, obviously in in a and you were the main But once they accept your manuscript, title or not, like They can pretty much do what they want with it. Extracturally. Yeah. And that's like two entrepreneurial people. I find that that is very difficult oftentimes. And like obviously you and I are friends with people who thrive in that and like have done extraordinarily well. Ryan Holiday, you you mentioned

19:31 Tim Ferris, James Clear, like These guys have And continue. to do well. I'm not taking anything away from that, but I have seen the other side as well. Where entrepreneurs are

19:43 Dumbfounded. by decisions made by their publishers or like creative control being taken in a way that they're like this actively hurts us.'Cause both sides have pros and cons and both sides can be done wrong. I do want to say like most people screw up self publishing. Yeah. They don't do it well. And so traditional publishers are right to stick up their nose to self publishing. But it's like to your point, if it's your first go round as an author and you don't know what you're doing. the likelihood that you'll step on a landmine that hurts your book during the self publishing process is

20:15 Even higher. than if you're working with the traditional publisher. Well I've done self publishing too. Right. So we took the great metal models. I create a publisher effectively from start to finish where we created content. We got creative, we laid it out, we found printers, we printed, we found distributors, we stored, we monitored storing, we fixed the updates, we're constantly doing Kindle revisions. It's a lot of work. Yeah. It was like

20:43 a full time person, if not more Just from a maintenance point of view for four bucks, let alone Sort of like doing any other books. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot. It's also expensive up front up front, it's totally. I was paying eight dollars a like people don't understand the economics of self publishing from a hardcover perspective. Sort of like audio and Kindle are great because the margins are good, but from a hardcover perspective, we were paying eight dollars US, seven dollars US

21:10 Approximately for printing. We were charging thirty dollars for the great metal models on Amazon, which means we get fifteen. Then the distributor takes uh approximately three dollars per book. Then there's shipping costs per books, there's storage costs per book. By the time like the hardcover sort of worked out, I think we made like fifty cents to maybe a dollar a copy from a hardcover point of view. And it wasn't worth doing, but like we weren't doing it for money. We were just we wanted these books to exist, still do. It didn't make sense from an economic ROI point of view to do what we were doing in any way, shape, or form. You know, I would a high production value. But I would argue that like the perception of shame After doing those books. was elevated. Well, I don't know. Like we didn't originally we didn't even have my name on them. It was like that's right. Like it was all about the ideas. We basically created this niche

22:05 Encyclopedia. of big ideas. And that that's what it is today still. I I mean it's morphed into something hopefully they get better distribution, but So we created this niche idea and it came from talking with Charlie Munger. Yep. And I was like, Oh, I'm gonna I'll do this. Like where why doesn't this exist? Did you actually talk to him? So yeah like just a very quick side note and I I I don't mean to cut you off. Um

22:29 My uh one of my good friend's moms was the CEO of uh John's Man Bill. And so she would hang out with Warren Buffett and stuff, and I was like begging her, please tell Charlie Muger when he was live to publish a book on mental model. That would have been amazing. Yeah. Yeah, the closest he came was I guess the psychology of human misjudgment, which if we had a fifth book in the series, like I wanted to tackle psychology, but we couldn't do it as well. So he actually gave us permission to distribute like the accurate version of his talk. Right. As a bonus if you sort of get if I was publishing a fifth book, that would be

23:07 But I can't. No. By any shape or form. I wish he would have done what we did in his words with his ideas. I mean, we did the best we could. Right. It took seven years to create four books. Oh my gosh, dude. Yeah, d there was you and I think Michael Simmons did a course on mental models and it was and it was like I'm grateful you guys did that. Oh yeah. Yeah. Munger all he did was uh poor Charlie's almanac.

23:34 I feel bad even saying that because he's so ridiculously great. So wish that he had done that while he was live. Me too, a hundred percent. And so like my name wasn't even on it. I don't even know if it was in the original version. Like and it was all co author. We had multiple people, we had no bylines, we're we're not into like that stuff. is more like the economist, right? Is like let the ideas stand on their own. Uh, and we did that for three versions and we had three different people working on those versions. And now, you know, it's sort of my name is on the cover, but there's Massive contributions from everybody else. Sometimes I'm the least of the contributions, but from a sales and distribution point, it makes sense to have my name go first. Cause we can't fit all three names on the cover the way that we design them. And like the covers actually look really good for you. Yeah, they're great. So where do people go wrong in self publishing, you said Lily.

24:23 Where to begin? Uh I think it there's there's a lot of places they go wrong from the reader's perspective. I would say the the they typically Don't Have a good cover. And so they immediately kind of shoot themselves in the foot.

24:40 Traditional publishers will typically put out Solid covers. when you're self publishing and you've invested a bunch of time and money and you haven't made any money on the work And it comes time to putting a face on the thing.

24:56 Yeah, a lot of self published authors are like, I'll go to Upwork or I'll d I'll hit up my designer friend who puts together PowerPoints and I'll pay them five hundred bucks. And it always results in something unremarkable. You have to pay An artist. A book cover designer specialist.

25:14 to create the boldest thing that you possibly can. So so go deeper on that. Like what is a book cover artist know that most people don't. What makes a great cover for a book? And does cover matter. No yeah. So th this would probably be a uh conversation you'd want to have with like Pete Garceau, who did Adam Grant's covers, James Clear's covers. He's he's uh brilliant. uh or Zoe Norvell. She she created a a great site called I Need a Book Cover.

25:44 And it's just a directory of the top cover designers in the world who consistently work with the big five publishers. So they're specialists. In cover design, not in general design. Like they just do covers. What does that mean? Like what are the nuances to cover design? I reached out to Pete Ashley because I was like, Oh, for the paperback. Right. But we're we're years away from that. But for the paperback I was like, I want to work with you.

26:10 I think it was Ship Kid, the guy who did the Jurassic Park cover, uh effectively said something like It's uh it's uh haiku all in on one page or something, but it's it's basically the embodiment of the entire book. within an image that you instantly understand what the book is.

26:33 Trying to communicate in a way that Compels you to pick it up. and read the dang thing. Which like when I say it sounds like kind of mechanical because I'm not a designer. I'm not I don't pretend to be one, but I've talked to enough designers to realize like this is a real legit specialty and it's similar to YouTube.

26:55 Where the right thumbnail Versus a average mediocre thumbnail that's clearly been created in Canva by the producer of the video. The right thumbnail will outperform A thousand X.

27:07 Yeah. And it's and I'm not saying like a cover will make or break a book. That's not true. Like the the book has to stand alone as as a good product regardless of the cover. So I don't want to sound too cross. Yes. And it's it's gotta evoke the right feelings and uh from from the target reader. Like your target read and it should be aligned with the story of the book and everything. So like There's there's a cover, um by uh an

27:36 I th I think he was in the FBI or CIA, but he was he was basic uh basically a guy who would Build rapport with people in other countries and flip them, like make them into informants. So it's a very social or di very specialized social skill to be able to do that. Very difficult. And so he wrote a book, I think it's called It's Not All About You or It's Not All About Me. And

28:02 This cover looks like it was created in Microsoft Word. And it's It's the classic like White three D clay you know, the image uh with like

28:13 Very basic arrows pointing out from it. It's an Awful cover. But it's actually aligned. Because he wrote the book for people in the military. Right. And people who weren't trying to appeal to a mass audience. No. But the book was so good that it ended up reaching a lot of people, but like It was for the target reader.

28:34 And they were like okay, this is exactly what all military presentations look like, this level of design. A worthwhile expense that instantly communicates are you legit? Or not. Uh are is this a good book? It the covers a direct representation of all quality inside. Yes. Okay. Absolutely. I wonder if we could go through like what makes some of the most popular books like great covers. And this is again a conversation more with a designer, but I think they're tend to be they tend to be iconic.

29:07 Uh in in that It is bold and differentiated. A lot of cover designers find themselves being given d creative direction of like I just want it to look like

29:20 Yeah. Right. I just want it to feel like that. Useful. on some levels of like Hey, kinda stay within these guardrails.

29:31 And It's it's also helpful to give a designer like, Hey, these are covers that I hate. Right. Right. There's there's kind of genres of of cover design like You'll see um Yeah, uh kind of Malcolm Gladwell type, rational optimist type where it's

29:47 It's all white. And there's like one Little image. And then the rest is like kind of an elegant Seraph font. Right. That's that communicates this is an intellectual book.

30:01 So you can give them kind of guidelines to stay with and to communicate this is that type of book. Right. If you're if you're wanting it to be too derivative of everyone else, it just kind of blends into the C. So I think great covers often are iconic and bold

30:18 In that They're they're Claiming the the most courageous representation visually. that the author could possibly put forward. So like ha then

30:32 Title Subtitle Subtitle Promise Sort of Well, Waddles important titles. Like what goes into a good title and subtitle. Title is the most important marketing decision the author can make for the book. Because Uh it's uh

30:50 Um virtually all books that sell more than ten thousand copies are driven by word of mouth. The title has to do a lot of things. It is um the it when a person says it It has to evoke Curiosity, FOMO, some sort of emotional reaction, whether it's intrigue or even like repulsion in some cases. It it has to be fun and easy to say. So like I always struggle with that.

31:23 uh FBI book that I mentioned. I always forget the title. I cannot remember it, but it doesn't really matter because there's a story that I'm telling with it. But with the title It's It's kind of like a um it should be almost a Tip of the tongue.

31:39 thing that comes up That gets triggered regularly. in conversation. So it this dovetails a little bit with what you what you've written about or like the problem you're attempting to solve, right? So Um Uh an example we used was um like

31:54 Meetings Suck by Cameron Herald would always come up, even if you didn't necessarily like the book. People would complain about meetings, meetings were a constant. In companies And so this book would just kind of organically come up as like, Oh, have you read You you ought to read this and uh it would just naturally be recommended. Authors also

32:17 kinda need to take into consideration like what are the tip of the tongue conversations that are gonna be happening Uh and how does this sound? when it's being recommended. So a title can't be embarrassing to say. either. Like play it away.

32:32 A book that I wrote is like Played away. I originally was going to my working title was like How I Cure My Anxiety, which was like Saying that is a mouthful It sounds like an attack if it's recommended to you.

32:47 You ought to read How I Cred My Anxiety. It's like Well, you're making uh it's almost like you're making a statement about the other person and yourself when you say that. Yeah. If you say read meetings suck, it's like I'm not saying meetings suck. But this book might be arguing the testing titles in person and saying like, have you read this and watching the person's reaction, like do their eyes glaze over? Are they curious? Are they leaning forward? Like these are important things that you kinda have to measure before

33:16 Title is the thing that you should take a lot of time, invest resources in figuring out and gathering some data. Is this going to How do you test it? I uh my process I'll I'll tell you After

33:31 after I tell this quick story about Tim Ferris. So Tim and I worked together for years and one of the stories he told about the four hour work week, which I would Still argue is in the top. five titles of all time in the non fiction space. Um

33:45 He did tons of testing. He he tested like I don't know, thirty to fifty different title ideas. A lot of them he'll admit were bad, you know, stuff like the chameleon millionaire, you know, the uh drug dealing for fun and profit. And like and he tested them at the time on Google ads. And so he would just see which had the highest click through. in the four hour work week I think had a to

34:12 Two X over the second place. highest. So he had some data to s to stand on. Other ways you can test is like Uh Is there a phrase that you're constantly using with clients if if for your book. Do you find yourself constantly leaning on this one phrase and that's like the unlock

34:32 phrase for them. That's the one that they're like, ah I always I always return to this. Okay, that's memorable. Good. The process I use, I I have like a list of criteria Uh that I lay out Which is like Fomo

34:48 Fun to say. memorable. It's it's like seven criteria and I rate them all on a scale of one to ten. I plug it in I d I kinda made my own GPT book title score. So now I just punch in Here's all the title ideas and it'll spit out.

35:05 Here's its score. And here are the top ones. It's not perfect, right? It's not a guarantee, but it gives me some sense of like, Okay, these these ones are strong, these ones are weak. Anything that is under a score of fifty it tends to be like that's probably not gonna perform well. And then after I do that, I put them through pick foo. Dot com. P I C K F U dot com

35:27 And that allows you to do real quick testing with audiences and polling and to see their feedback on why they like a title or why they dislike a title. So An example was um I was I was working on a book that I was trying to uh I was trying to figure out should I call this paid to play? Or Fuck work. I d I pulled

35:48 On Pickfield. And uh F work. Performed pretty well, but when I dove into the data, all of them had the wrong expectations for the book. That can kind of be solved with a subtitle. But not really. It's showing that Oh, all these people want like a funny book about venting about how much they hate work. I'm not writing that book. That's not what this is at all. If that's their expectations going into this.

36:12 That's going to equal negative reviews. Because you're not meeting the expectation. Precisely. Yeah. You want to get that data. You want to test your assumptions. With stand up comedians, they'll sit and write a joke. Right. And then they'll be like, That's pretty good. And then they'll go perform it in front of ten audiences and they're like Oh, my assumptions were wrong. Yeah. This is off just enough. Yeah, and I think uh the title needs to be treated with that same kind of respect. It can't just be uh

36:41 Oh that's uh I like that like No, you you need to test it. How important is the structure of a book once you so you've got a title, you've got a cover. Now it's structure. This is like the thing I geek out on a lot because I think this is the thing that If you over index on structure, you'll you'll be in a really good spot. Like I can I can send a self-published author confidently

37:05 off to do their thing. If they over index on structure. So What I mean by that is You should be spending a ton of your time You don't have to decide on a title till like the very end, really. You can be playing around with it forever, but like you should not write a word.

37:22 until you have solidified your table of contents. And your table of contents is the thing. It is the structure, the makeup, the foundation of your book. And so the the exercise that I like to do With the table of contents. How do I take My one reader, my perfect target reader

37:43 From zero to hero. What are the exact steps? And it tends to be like the big milestones, there'll be two to four of those typically. So if you look in table of contents of best selling books, they're typically divided into Two to four parts. Often three, so I just as a general rule, I'm like just do three parts, right? So three

38:03 Big milestones that help them go from zero to hero. Within each of those parts. You have these sub steps. Right. these little things that they have to do during that major milestone to ensure that they get there.

38:17 Or you have questions that they're going to a ask during those phases. So you take your table of contents. And Then You spend

38:29 A bunch of time talking to real target readers showing them your table of contents before you write a word. And you say which of these is a hell yes. Which of these is a eh? And which of these is like

38:43 Not relevant. And that's the data you gather on early. And so Like bloggers do this by writing articles and they see, Oh, that one kinda, you know, that took off that headline and then that content is really strong. Cool. That's potentially a chap. The table of contents is this is the menu of the book. Do you want to eat here or not? If they say hell yes to everything.

39:06 You have a really strong book on your hands. And it makes the writing so much easier after that because you're confident that you can help the person you're trying to reach and it it doesn't feel like guesswork. That's so interesting. I mean, this is one of the big mistakes I made writing Clear Thinking is like I just sat down and wrote it like a blog article the first time and then the second time and the third time. And even now I was like the the actual structure that I would do today is different than the structure in the book. But I felt like it had been published for two or three weeks and then I was like Oh, I missed it. Like I know exactly what it should have been at this point. How did you know what was like the aha moment where you're like ah, that's how it should have been. Well, I like the idea of showing readers. Uh I think you know

39:49 I didn't have a structure. I wrote the book. I deleted it. I Hada loose structure. I wasn't confident with it, wrote the book, deleted it, and then I sat down and I was like I'm gonna do that thing, Ryan told me to do and like gonna structure the book and I sort of came up with something that made sense to me, but I I never verified it with a public like even my editor with anybody else. And so I came up with it, but I have all this knowledge about the subject in my head. Right. Which is different than where the reader meeting the reader where they're at and taking them from, you know, you said the word zero to hero.

40:23 But like that's different than positioning it for where they're at. I would not change the content. of the book, but I would change how I structured the content of the book. And I think it would have made it um an easier read for people. Um, because I do think structure does some of the lifting for you. If you let it either a headwind or a tailwind.

40:44 And in my case it's probably neutral, but it could have been a tailwind. And I don't think I nailed it, but what's the difference between like if you're looking at a structure and I give you like four or five different ones, like what's the difference between A good and great structure. Mm-hmm. It's good question.

41:00 Well I'll t I'll say to that point. Um I had an author come to me recently. And he was told like Hey the the publishing house that I'm working with, they gave me

41:13 this as like the template to write my book. He said, I d I feel like I I don't know if it's a good book or not. I'm too close to it. What's what's What's your take on this? And I looked at it and within a few pages I was like Dude, you I'm sorry, your publisher screwed you because there's no structure here. The table of contents was literally like It looked like an afterthought, like a thing, here's what you fill in after you're all done. It's the exact opposite. It'd be like

41:42 Uh we're building a house, so I want you to start picking out Light fixtures. And like your furniture. It's like what are you doing? Like, no. Your publisher

41:55 Made a very bad move that wasted you a bunch of time and now we have to figure out how to structure this and like that takes almost as much time as just like rewriting the thing. Actually once you nail the structure. Because then you just do a substructure, like what does a chapter look like? Right. And then you can sit down and it's really easy at that point. Yeah. Sort of write it out. Well not easy, but you know what I mean. Right. It's easier. And so it's I'd imagine it's pretty similar in like songwriting, right? If you don't know the concept of a bridge and a chorus and like all the it like These beats. You have it and you're just told write a song.

42:33 You're probably gonna write a terrible song. But if you have the structure that you can lean into, it will at least be more representative of what humans process. Similar with stories, right? You talked to a storytelling expert recently. story structure's always the same, pretty much. It's Once upon a time and every day until one day And because of that, and because of that, and because of that, until finally

42:57 And ever since that day. Right, or it's the three act structure, you know, climax resolution, all that stuff. I think the best structures Quite simply. Are what? The reader wants.

43:10 What the reader wants and needs. And so you can't get that if you're guessing. You said it yourself. You you have the curse of knowledge, of expertise. And so you're so close to your topic. What is remarkable to you is confusing to who you're trying to reach in what's Boring and trite to you is

43:31 fascinating to who you're trying to reach. And so if you're not Having this be a An interactive communal process of producing a book, you're shortchanging yourself. And so this is another like

43:45 common assumption that people have, we all have like the the idea of Hemingway and JK rolling in our heads of like this is how to make a book where they're hold up alone There being a torture genius grinding through and like Yes, that is how you can make a book. If you're a really good writer, you can do that. But I think people should lean more toward Brene Brown's production style, where she actually will come up with like her talking points and rent an Airbnb

44:17 Bring her girlfriends and a bunch of wine and and be like, can I just like present this to you for a day or two? And then they talk about it. They give her feedback and she's like oh okay, that works similar to stand up comedians, right? And so I think The uh

44:33 Yeah. structures are co created rather than isolated. By the author. Created in isolation. Man, I wish we had met before I published that book. What about chapters? I mean they these in nonfiction books they seem almost formulaic now. Yeah, they are. Here's the story.

44:52 Uh, here's the point I'm trying to make and here's like a summary. You know, that's sort of the why does that work and is there a more effective structure. Yes, you should lean into a formulaic structure for chapters when you're writing it. And I want to differentiate differentiate between writing and editing. Writing is getting the clay on the table. Editing is shaping it into the sculpture, right? And so when you're writing Yes. lean into this structure. You have a hook.

45:21 Something that grabs the reader, usually a story or a bold statement that feels novel or even dangerous, right then you have your thesis, which is In this chapter I'm going to yada yada yada. Then you have the body, which is just Making up all the points that you're trying to get across. And this can go on for a long time. This is the meat of the chapter. And then it's

45:45 Key takeaways. And Segue. Into the next chapter. If you follow those five beats, like you have a solid chapter. Thesis, body, structure.

45:58 Link. Takeaways segue. And you can you can open the chapter with a hook. Or I'm or I'm sorry, with a quote that can come before the hook if you want. You can pepper quotes throughout, doesn't matter. But When you're writing yeah. Follow that.

46:12 Formula. There are other slight modifications, but generally speaking prescriptive nonfiction books tend to fall within that structure very consistently. It's in editing where you can make the chapter really sing. And so Um Yeah, like we were talking about video before this, right?

46:29 Uh Similar in video. It's shooting in okay, I want this act first, I'll shoot in this next act, this next act. Just because you have the structure of the story that you're telling in the acts does not mean people want to watch that video. Right. You now need to edit it to retain their attention.

46:49 And keep them going through it. And then in a book's case. You're doing the exact same thing with your editing You're you're editing it in such a way That They are

47:01 Not only staying engaged They're they're taking action and implementing when you want them to implement. They are highlight stuff, like it feels important. They're they're Maybe even taking pictures of stuff. It's like you have these key points. That y you know

47:19 Similar to software. When the reader gets here, I know they will do this. Talk to me about editing. So we have at this point we've got a cover, we got a structure, we got a chapter. And then We have a book, so we have a series of chapters and so we have a rough draft and rough manuscript. Should we allocate

47:39 our editing time like eighty percent of your editing time, you have a hundred blocks of editing, right? Like no matter what, it's a finite amount of editing time. Should you allocate eighty percent of that to the first like fifty pages and then you know, twenty percent to everything thereafter. So I think it's like the average person I think Amazon released this once. It's like they read fifteen percent of a book. the sixteen percent of a book and they get the all the stats from Kindle. They know exactly where people drop off. Just like YouTube gives you like here's the drop off point. Spotify does the same thing. Amazon doesn't give that to authors, but there's drop off points. And so should you allocate your editing time equally across the book or

48:18 Up front. Up front. A hundred percent. You are correct. It's it's the YouTube hook. It's the it's the retention graph. It's the exact same with books. And so With a book, if you assume That Maybe sixty percent of readers are gonna read the introduction.

48:37 A hundred percent. of of people who open the book Are gonna read the first page. Of this book. Can I get them?

48:47 to read past this first page and Sheer the message in the store the the best possible story that's the embodiment of what I'm trying to communicate with this book. Can I sear that into their brain so that they can recall it five years later. James Clear Uh, with atonic habits, which is a great example because sold fifteen plus million copies over the last few years, been number one on Amazon overall.

49:13 Five years. Yeah. He starts his intro. With Uh

49:19 a a general recommendation I like to make, which is like Put them in the most intense moment of your life, basically. Put them in in a situation where they're like, Oh my gosh, like you grab them by the throat and it's like this was a personal thing that I went through. That's the introduction. That's an opening hook. In his case, I think he got hit in the face with a baseball bat and he was He had to deal with like Fly for Fly for Life or something like that. I can't remember. So you're you're like

49:49 Well Okay. But that's just the introduction. The the whole purpose of the introduction is just to sell you on reading the book. That is it's the sales page. Convincing you this will be worth my time, which is you've got smart readers. The thing that they're gonna value the most is is this worth my time? Yeah.

50:09 The First story in chapter one should be the encapsulation of the message that you're trying to get across. It should be the most memorable. It should be the thing that you're like, oh yeah, of course. And so Like if you look at great TED Talks, uh Simon Sinek.

50:26 If you just watch the first two minutes of his start with why. He does a dead simple draws three circles that anybody, a five year old, could remember and then draw and show their friends, like instantly gets the point across. Similarly, that's that's what you can aspire to with prescriptive nonfiction. What I think James did so well in Atomic Habits is he frontloads the book. with the best stuff. And a lot of authors make the mistake both self published and

50:56 Traditional. W they'll bury the best stuff in the back of the book. It's like what percentage of your readers are even getting to that? You know, they'll they'll start with theory of like, here's how we got here. You know, here's the history of this topic. Can you believe the history of the Well guess what? Like I'm trying to change my life.

51:15 And I'm busy. I mean I have it right. Make it practical. Let's go, dude. Yeah. Like hit me with your best stuff right here. If you want to spend some time Pointing out the stakes of how important this is. Cool. Like Let's talk about that. Like

51:33 I'm on this journey. I signed up. Let's go. Don't make me work for it. I love that. We've talked about a lot of numbers, I think so far. We we've had like ten thousand, hundred thousand, million bucks. We we've used these milestones. How do we think about those in terms of percentile? So like what would be a ninetieth percentile and ninety ninth, and I'm imagining a million is like point zero zero one percent. Point zero zero three. Of all books ever published, right? Like so so what would be the ninetieth per is that like ten thousand copies? I'd say ninetiet is a thousand copies, probably. So you're in the ninetieth percentile if you've sold a thousand copies of your book. Yeah.

52:11 Most books do not sell there's a great article called No One Buys Books and it breaks down what the Department of Justice forced all the big publishers to like reveal their sales numbers on books. And it was like, Oh wow, this is shocking. These publishers are taking the the funds from books book royalties that they published fifty years ago to fund all these little projects, right? And the vast majority of them don't sell a dang copy. Part of that is authors neglect marketing and sales and they just kinda uh like they don't do it

52:45 In the right sequence or whatever. Other parts of it is People didn't even want those books. Like the market doesn't demand them And the book wasn't good enough to take off on its own. And so it's it's a mix of variables, but yeah, like the average book sells less than a thousand copies over the course of its lifetime. And so my focus with clients I work with is like let's get you to that threshold as efficiently as possible. Anyone can do it if you're doing the right sequence of things.

53:13 Most authors don't do it. It would be a thousand for ninety percent. Okay, so what's a hundred thousand? Hundred thousand, um, that that I would probably Put at ninety eight I I I'm just making this up. I don't know the exact but like ninety eight, ninety nine percent for sure. All books ever published. For sure. There's five hundred thousand books plus published every year. That's crazy. Twenty of them. sell a million copies and most of those are fiction. You know, nonfiction tends to not

53:42 move huge volumes. Have we lost track of sort of like what numbers mean? Like I think of this politically when we toss around billions, but In the context of books, I'm thinking like People are like ten thousand books. That doesn't sound like many. I got twelve thousand Twitter followers, you know, like How But it doesn't translate like ten thousand is a lot of books. It's a lot of books. Yeah.

54:04 Especially Um if you've written one that actually impacts those people that they actually read that they actually implement and use to get real tangible visual change in their life. I mean that's what ultimately propels these books to do well. That can be scary too. Like I've gotten uh two emails now from people who've read the book and they're like, I broke up with my fiance after this book. And I'm wow, oh God.

54:33 Well, d you you ultimately did them a painful favor. Maybe. But I've been like reading this going, Oh boys, like what have I done? I would I would absolve yourself with that girl because they'd made that decision already. But like we talk about inertia and how you take over a relationship. Yeah. So you end up just sort of progressing, but you're not consciously progressing. Right. And they were like, Yeah, I realized like this was just Happening. I was like, Oh God, like So these emails of the usefulness, they they they don't always put a smile on your face. True. But our brains unfortunately are hardwired to pay attention to the negative, right? So Palercoans are what what is an email that you were like stoked to get?

55:13 From a reader. Well, you know, I have this weird thing and just being a little bit vulnerable here. I don't hear compliments. And like my mind Like you reject them or they just have to or what? My mind turns off. Interesting. I'm working on this because like I I I do want to I think at some point Like if you wanna dive into the roots of it, it's like somebody used it against me or took

55:36 took it away, right? Le used it as power Which remove my freedom. If somebody says something nice about you and You know, you believe it. Then you want them to keep thinking that. And so if they're manipulating you, it becomes like a source of power.

55:50 of them over you. Well, this is how I I don't know. Like I'm working through this because what happens with me is like the minute I I think I'm predictive, right? Like the minute I think somebody's saying something nice about me. My brain turns off. Like it literally just passes through. But on the other hand, You have a program that says this is not helpful to me, it's going to be nothing. You know, like and I might love the person, I might respect them a ton, but like I oh, this is good news. Like I don't need to hear the good news. But on the other hand, it's not. This isn't a self-worth issue. It's literally like this is not useful to me. No thanks. But I have a predatory almost like instinct when somebody's saying something negative. It's like what are they saying? Is that true? Is it not true? Like how can I use this piece of feedback to is there a hole in my boat? Is there

56:34 Yeah, do I need to Fix this leak. And so it's like always skewed towards the negative. And I've talked to people about those, like even James is like I remember the negative reviews. I've been positive Remie. Yeah. So it is a common thing. I don't want to act like you're you're completely normal in the front that you pay more attention to the negative than the positive. Are you that way in like Sports and stuff are are you w you'll you'll only negative, only negative. It's almost only negative. Yeah. I would

57:02 Encourage you to consider It it sounds like a super boring book. Have you read The Inner Game of Tennis? Yeah. A long time ago. I've probably been at the wrong time. Yeah. I mean, you sing with kids. Right? Like you you're a dad, so d do kids flourish under negativity criticism or under reinforced positivity. It's obviously a balance carried and stick, but like if it's all stick, it stops to work.

57:32 Imp anyway, I don't wanna go too reads on this. It doesn't impact my happiness in life. My satisfaction. Like if I see a five star review on Amazon. I'll read it, but it like has no doesn't stick if it's a part of you like Yeah, yeah, I know. No, not at all. It's just sort of like this isn't necessarily useful. And please don't go leave like negative reviews. Do you want me to read them and like assimilate the And so she works for any compliment. in life, right? It could be like you've hosted a good party. As soon as somebody's like, Oh, I had so much fun like my brain

58:05 And I'm still paying attention. Yeah, I'm in the moment, but I'm like, Oh, this isn't As long as it's not like a self worth issue. Like one of my best friends, like he for a long time he would reject compliments because he was like, You're wrong. Oh you know, like that's not and so now he has to at like repeat the compliment. Yeah. Sit with it and uh but yeah, that's not your case. Talk to me about lists. Uh like a lot of authors have the goal of making the lists, right? So the most common ones being the Wall Street Journalists, which went away, which was a pure bestseller list. For people who don't know that was statistically Yeah. Books that sold the most, regardless of publisher, no editorial.

58:45 control the New York Times list, which is the only major list now these days that people think in their minds in their minds. That they hold equality. Right. And that's an editorialized list. And so a lot of people set their goal as like I want to be a near town's best selling off there. I've Helped authors hit the list in various capacities, um, some a little bit, some like very intensively. I've had authors come up to me and say,

59:15 My goal with this book is to hit the New York Tim number one New York Times, sell a million copies and get on Oprah's couch. You are gonna be disappointed. Yeah, the joke I make is it'd be easier for you to do six months of therapy instead. Because a lot of I want to hit the list is at its core.

59:35 I want to be validated as super legit. I want You know, it's it's it's similar to the traditional publishing in in some ways for some authors. Not all authors, right? But some want to just be picked. By

59:52 the taste makers and say you're good. There is a validation. Yeah, absolutely. There's validation. But I would argue that like It's it's so Let's get into the logistics before we get into like the psychology, I guess, of it. So I hate

1:00:09 hitting the New York Times bestseller list. In in how much effort in logistical Headache. That comes with it. You have to sell um If you if you're going like in an average time of year, anywhere between probably ten to twenty thousand copies, a safe place to bet is fifteen thousand copies. So

1:00:31 You have to sell fifteen thousand copies right out of the gate. How many copies did I say the average author sells over the course of their lifetime? Less than a thousand. Most week sales, fifteen thousand. People try to manipulate it, but you can't. It's very difficult to do. You can but it's very difficult and it's it's just uh It's a pain. Like there are service providers out there.

1:00:56 Who will funnel your bulk orders. Let's say let's say you do pull it off, right? You sold fifteen thousand copies. Uh you know, that's times like Thirty bucks, right? So You have sold

1:01:11 Four hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of books. That's a lot. Now you have to hand that money to a service provider. Who will then funnel it through certain retailers who will make it look like they aren't bull quarters and that they're geographically distributed across the United States. They need to coup those fifteen thousand copies with as many individual addresses as they possibly can and then send those books to those people. That alone

1:01:42 Is just ridiculous, right? Because you have to you have to communicate like these are legitimate sales. There are other service providers and and I'm reluctant I'll d I'll say Rory Vaden. He's he's great. Like he knows what he's doing. I'm reluctant to mention other service providers because this space of will help you launch your book and hit the New York Times is filled with people who will charge you Hundreds of dollars and not guarantee a thing. Like the New York Times

1:02:11 Is Pretty dang sophisticated. Well, they must be on to this, right? Because the worst thing that can happen to them is like people gaming the list. Exactly. So they need to have reputable choices and they like They were sued by the author of The Exorcist years ago. And they were it was a big lawsuit. He said you're you're withholding

1:02:33 Uh because I'm I'm outstelling, I think I can't remember his name, but You he's selling tons of copies and they won the lawsuit because they're like it's an editorial product. It is not a pure sales list. We get to decide. And so political things can come into consideration with the New York Times and them curating. Right. Are you a minority? Are you a doctor? Like these are actual factors that influence whether you're on the list. I guess nobody knows, right? It's like it's nobody knows how the Google algorithm works. Nobody knows at the end of the day, there's humans on the other end being like Should this be on the list or not? I think it was Dave Ramsey who sold sixty thousand copies

1:03:15 At his lunch. And didn't hit the list. Well think of the psychology of money. It never made the New York Times by selling list. Ryan Holiday didn't hit number one on New York Times until his ninth book. Yeah, I mean but that He was trying to manipulate this as he was very but not not on his book, but he had talked about all the ways he had manipulated media. Oh the for his first book. Yeah, but why are they going to validate him at that point? You know what I mean? Like if I'm in the New York Times, I'm like I'm not i this is what I've heard. They have screwed over enough politicians and billionaires with their books at this point that they had to come up with a set of criteria that guaranteed you hitting the list. Not necessarily number one. Interesting. But they can put you at number eight, number ten. The criteria in this again is uh it put a big asterisk of Charlie probably doesn't have this r right at all. But it's a certain number of copies sold through

1:04:14 certain retail people uh or retail uh that geographically maps Um It is a percentage of those being ebooks. Not audio books, ebooks that have been read a certain percentage. Oh, interesting. And so you can't just buy a bunch of ebooks and they all register as zero percent. Where has to actually be a sign of you're manipulating it, right? Correct.

1:04:38 Yeah, okay. Again, New York Times, they got a budget to set up some sophisticated trackers and they've had this list for many decades. So a mix of traditional PR, legacy PR. So like You're on radio, newspaper, TV shows that are hitting a certain number of regions in the United States. You're hitting all these markets. Okay, that tracks to the number of sales that you have. Digital interesting. A certain number of and this is this sure guesswork, but like A certain number of uh blog articles that have come out, a certain number of podcasts that have come out, a certain number of Facebook engagements, Twitter engagements, like And I mean comments and reshares, not just like likes.

1:05:25 Right. And so It has to basically map They have to be able to see on a holistic level Is all this tracking with the minimum number of sales that we require. Ali Abdal, I d I don't know how many copies he sold, but it was it was under fifteen thousand at his launch. It was a lot, but it w it was under like the general recommended This is the other thing you have to take into account is which month are you are you releasing the book. If you pick December,

1:05:52 Like my client Cody Sanchez, who is, you know, very confident she can hit it. Um but I was like Dude, like this is the worst month you could pick because you have to sell double. It's a book buying detail. Whereas August is like for nonfiction. Atomic Habits will sell fifty thousand copies that month and like it's been out for five years. Good luck. Hitting number one in December. Yeah. Selling twenty

1:06:20 Thousand copies. Versus fifty thousand. It's Exponentially harder. That doesn't guarantee you anything either, right? Like twenty thousand. You can do as much as you possibly can. Um But yeah, I mean y you're right. Things things go wrong too.

1:06:36 Not everybody's publisher's like Keen on you working with these service providers who who do these services. It's so much And I think it's just kind of not worth it. And so that's one of the one of the reasons, frankly, I like the self published route. Is you don't have to play that game at all. Like it is a political

1:06:56 Logistical nightmare. And I will say to people who hit the list, like congrats, it's hard to do. And uh you're probably gonna make whatever investment you made into hitting that list back. But it won't be because of the list. It will not be because of the near it will be correlative. In other words, all the marketing that you had to do to get it on there, marketed you in your business, and you will reap the benefits of that. There's a great video by Anna David uh about the called The Truth About Hitting the New York Times bestseller list. She's hit it and she's like

1:07:28 It was the brokest I ever was. Oh, you know I I think she wrote a Yeah, she wrote a memoir, I think. And she was basically like look, it didn't change my life. I eat out on the title and whenever I can, you know, and I'll t I'll say it for the rest of my life. It's a legit credential. So I made it

1:07:47 Yeah. Uh through luck. Right. Like just totally didn't. Didn't follow the publisher's advice on like how to go about it. Had a big list. Yep. You know, sort of just marketed it to the list, but didn't do bulk orders, just said, Hey, you buy one copy, we'll give you the pre order bonuses, not by ten or a hundred or a thousand. Like it was just sort of Low key and it was awesome. If I make it, I make it. And if I don't, like I can hold my head high. What was your number? How many did you sell? I'm not gonna reveal that. Oh.

1:08:14 Can you give a range? Yeah. Uh but so like I made it. And The only change that I saw really, and you're right. Like you do all the work beforehand. Like I did all the work when I was like

1:08:29 What's the key message of this book? Like how do I market that to my audience? How do I get people to read it? How do I write a good book? And the only thing that really changed was the distribution in the physical stores. Mm-hmm. They moved it from like the shelf of like new to like a New York Times section for like a week or two. Yeah. And then it like goes back to the Whatever. I think we made it

1:08:51 Twice. Maybe three times. I think it was twice. I felt good about it. Like that was something where I was like oh I have this this thing that I can't I didn't know you could buy it. Like a I I can't buy. Somebody's given me this thing and for the rest of my life I'll forever be Sort of like

1:09:08 A New York Times best selling author, which is kinda cool, but it doesn't You know, my signature block in my email doesn't say like You are Times best selling author, it's just shame. Right. There's a clip of Jim Carrey where he goes up and he's he's introducing an award and he's like I'm two time Emmy winning Jim Carrey

1:09:27 And he's like when I dream at night I think about being three time I mean winning Jim Carrier because then I'd be enough. Yeah. And so I think It's it's a cool credential, like you can you can add it to your thing. Uh to your list, but Um I will say the traditional publishers, yeah, Codies with portfolio, right? So like they definitely push you to to try not to I would say they don't cross the line in terms of like manipulating it, but they're definitely trying for you to hit that list. I don't know if internally

1:09:58 They have some sort of incentive or bonus or something if their authors hit it. But they definitely like they gave me a whole bunch of ideas. And I was like, I don't like that. I don't think that's like high integrity. I don't know. you know, it might be right, but it's not something I wanna do. I don't feel comfortable with it. So like I rejected a lot of the the things that they were sort of trying to get me to do. And they weren't crossing a line into like illegal. It was just things. They made me uncomfortable. Yeah. Like it's like, well, if I was the New York T I'd just put myself in their shoes. I was like

1:10:29 And I knew I was doing this. That's probably detrimental to their thought process on an editorialized list where it's like they're trying to come up, you know, I'm like What are the reasons that they would exclude you, but what are the reasons they would want to include you too? And yeah, we I didn't put a ton of thought into it, but I'm lucky because I have a big audience that I've built up over a number of years, so it's a lot easier for me to to do that.

1:10:54 Right. And well like think your your brand has a has a prestigious reputation, right? Like Farnum Street is known as kind of catering to a very Smart. audience. The New York Times that's like a good association with them. Right. And so I'm not saying that's why they put you on the list necessarily, but I certainly it's something they took into consideration of like oh the shooting actually love to see like any book little in mind. But like watch the algorithm in process, right? People involved, uh like

1:11:25 What are the considerations that that'd be fascinating to watch? It'll never be revealed. It would be in but like at the the the whole my whole feeling on these lists is like you're not writing it for the list. You know, like you don't you don't make a movie to win a trophy. You don't play a sport to win a trophy. Like you do it because it matters to the people that you're trying to serve. Am I helpful to the reader? Right. And I don't think hitting the list equals you will get stronger visibility and reach more people. for for any significant period of time. The list is a byproduct. uh it should be a byproduct. You can do stuff at launch and you should in like I don't advocate not doing your best at your launch but it's kind of like how b Bo Burnham's like if you can live your life without

1:12:11 Being famous you should. I think if you can write and publish a book without chasing a New York Times bestseller list or any list, you should. You shouldn't be chasing anything, right? You should be feeling just your headers. How do you serve the best book possible for Exactly. As a writer How do you see the impact of AI? The cost of writing

1:12:32 dropped ten thousand percent with the advent of AI. Which like historically it's been over a hundred dollars for you know writers to to write. Um And then it's just Dropped precipitously.

1:12:47 A few years ago when ChatGPT came out, I would stay up after I put my kids to bed and I would just see what it could do. And it w became very clear very quickly that hey, this isn't a great writer. It can be kind of an okay editor. Where I had an unlocked

1:13:06 was realizing Oh, it's really good. Uh Cleaning up transcripts. And if you give it a clean input, a clean structured input.

1:13:17 It can do. Some Crazy stuff. So take this and make it into a chapter. So now the Yeah. plug my stuff or anything, but I d I I developed a process called first draft in a week.

1:13:31 Where we over index on structure. We get all the clay on the table as efficiently as possible. By using AI on the back ends, like there's no interfacing with it, but like you feed it the right transcript. Right. And it will just spit out a book following all these prompts I've laid out using Zapier and Chat G P T and Claude and Airtable and all this stuff. But it's like magic. It's magic. It's and there's been these book in a weekend programs forever. And they produce garbage. The way people are thinking about AI right now, I found in publishing there's two camps. There's one that's like sticks up their nose at it. They're like it's a parlor trick. It's garbage. And to those people I say,

1:14:13 You don't know what you're doing with it. You haven't experimented enough. to to make that claim. If you're making that claim, I guarantee you you have not put in the hours and run the experiments. To the others who are AI enthusiasts. Uh they're like

1:14:28 Let's strip away the creative process entirely and generate books in fifteen minutes. And it's also a disaster because they're going off Minimal inputs. And they're like fill out a form and you can create a book. Isn't that great? It's like no.

1:14:44 It's embarrassingly bad because AI sucks as a writer. It's not a good writer. I don't know if I agree with that. And I'll tell you why. So I put My editor Couldn't tell. And to date no reader has correctly guess the paragraphs that are

1:15:04 Completely generated by air. Keyword paragraphs. Yeah. You didn't write a chapter. No, I did it just as like a fun thing would be like a nice Easter egg circuit. That's my point. Yes. It works for A paragraph or two, or three even. But once it hits a certain point, it stops being good. And you can run it through zero gpt.com and it will show you

1:15:25 This percent was written by AI. Oh, interesting. It can tell. And the data on this is Readers will As soon as they detect its AI. Their retention Drops.

1:15:36 In half. If the exact same paragraph is presented to a reader, I say it's AI generated, the retention drops. No, and if you say it, if they detect it. Oh, if they detect it, it'd be you have read blog posts and articles, I'm sure, where you're like, Oh, this is AI. Yeah, a lot of them know. Right, right. Yeah. Exactly. And so if it doesn't feel human If it doesn't feel conversational and accessible People won't read it. And so that's what I mean by it's a bad writer. It can do a little bit, it can't do the whole thing. Where do you see this going, though? Because I mean, this is the worst it's ever gonna get at writing. Yeah, I don't know. Ironically I don't know uh if it'll be able to thread the needle For hundreds of pages. I don't.

1:16:17 I I I'm not sure. But for now what I do know is You can Produce a book that is conversational accessible written entirely by a human being. But leveraging AI in the right way to produce it ninety percent faster. At ninety percent less. So how do we leverage AI for right? I mean, with my kids, I'm like

1:16:37 You need to do the work yourself and you could submit what you wrote to AI and be like, Where's a week? Where's it like what am I missing? Yeah. And I keep the full history because I'm like if I ever have to go to the school and sort of like Ardu. Because the school is like anti AI and I'm like, This is ridiculous. Like you're growing up and that's like telling me not to use Google. Don't use calculators. And so I'm like, You can, but I need the full chat history. Right. So that if I ever have to go to the school, it's like here's what you said, here's what happened. But like how do we leverage AI from a writing point of view today? The ways that I have found that I really like are for um Idea generation. structures suggestions.

1:17:17 Oh Often Tell you. Chat GPT or Cloud. Yeah.

1:17:23 Which Clyde, by the way, I found is the strongest editor. But it's not Perfect. Uh Uh I'll say um

1:17:32 Interview me. On this one question at a time for up to five rounds. Until you can come up with the strongest whatever I'm going for. Because People I think are

1:17:45 either not very good at or d or just don't want to go through the whole process of of laying out here's the precise context. AI's way better at at like let's pinpoint precisely what I need to do a decent job. So if you want to draft something, I would do that as the precursor move. It will yield better results pretty consistently. My favorite use is it what I baked my process around is cleaning up transcripts. Because conversational is eight times faster than sitting and typing. And it is um

1:18:19 It very rarely do people get talkers block. They get writers block all the time because the reason people say But I'm I'm such a better writer than I am a speaker. It's like yeah,'cause you get to edit while you write. And you're so much slower too. And you're also hitting imposter syndrome, perfectionism, you're hitting these emotional landmines that are effectively emergency breaks on your process. So

1:18:42 I say do it conversationally, but structure it. And then use AI to clean up those transcripts and retain it in your words. You can crush with Putting out content. That's crazy. Yeah.

1:18:56 One thing people don't understand about AI that I teach the kids is like you can actually get AI to generate a prompt for you that you can feed into AI. Yeah. I found this better because I'm like summarize a podcast. And I'm like, well

1:19:11 I'm writing, you know, summarized a podcast four word prompt and I was like well one day I was like okay well You need to write me a prompt on what matters. that I can feed into AI somewhere and it writes back like five or six sentences and it's like a way better job oh yeah summarizing The podcast and what I was doing. What have you learned about prompting? Yeah, this is it that's precisely what I do too. I say, Give me the ideal prompt that will achieve this outcome.

1:19:36 That's that's really what like AI is better at communicating with itself than you are. So just Prompt it to do it. People just Don't

1:19:46 tend to experiment with this stuff. I think we're probably in a small segment of society that actually is of like A lot of people have used Chat GPT, they know about it, et cetera, but i it kind of in the same way that a lot of people know about Bitcoin. People aren't actively using it all the time. There i i you might be around people who are, but The vast majority of people aren't. And so I d I don't know, we're in such an exciting unique time where w it's like all you have to do is play around with this stuff on a regular basis. Like that's all you have to do. Just see if you can like break it or impress yourself or whatever.

1:20:21 And um exciting things come from that. Let's switch gears to marketing. What strategies are most effective when it comes to marketing? Most authors lose at marketing because they they miss their shot during the production process to like So the seeds. Uh with their readers. Here's the typical journey of a of a self published author releasing a book in the eyes of their friends. Their friends receive an email one day. Hey, I uh wrote a book. It's out today.

1:20:49 Please buy it. Please review it. please share with your friends. And their friends are like, Where the hell is this coming from? Haven't heard from you. Uh or d or their business contacts.

1:20:58 And so no one takes any action. Because all of a sudden it's just being thrust upon them that you're in charge of my success person that I haven't really connected with at all. And has no idea and has no idea that I'm making this book or why they should even care. There's zero emotional investment. into the book. And so I say most authors lose because they could have been co-creators with their readers. They could have done really simple, easy things.

1:21:27 That would make the reader Feel like Oh, this is just as much mine. as it is the authors. Send a survey to your list and say, I'm writing a book on this topic. What are the two questions that you have on this that if I answered them it would make it worthwhile. Or what are the two biggest pain points you have in relation to this? The two things that you're most stuck on that if I helped you with this, it would be amazing.

1:21:51 That's an easy one to start with. Right. Another e in just announcing it. And s in like hinting at it. movie studios do this, you know, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on movies. How

1:22:04 It it's never like hey the movie's out right now. You should go see the dark night. It's like no, they teased like little behind the scenes photos. They had little whispers the whole time, and then you finally got the trailer. And the trailer was a big event, but the movie's still not coming out for months. There's this whole build up of Building anticipation and teasing and whispering. That Authors neglect. And so you could also send out Hey.

1:22:30 Here's some title concepts I'm thinking about. Can you vote on these, right? Get them involved in that. You don't have to do pick food. That's another alternative you can do. Hey. I just got my I'm I'm thinking about doing a cover Uh, this is where where I'm at like just sharing updates and being like this is where I am in the process of this. Uh uh even sharing like uh today was horrible. I've uh this went wrong.

1:22:56 Like they're not on the journey with you at all unless you are sharing those types of things. And it's normal to want to resist those during the creation process, but it's a lost opportunity. Right, because you could be Letting them in on showing how hard you're working on this or Or sh showing that you value what they care about. You could be using helpthisbook.com, which is a service for beta readers where you can upload chapters or your whole manuscript and see data on

1:23:26 What they found confusing, what they found valuable, insightful, boring. You can see with very clear Data Where they're dropping off. in those chapters, right? You can you can show them multiple cover concepts and have them vote. Do you think I I love the idea of going out and being like, hey, I'm running on this topic. What are the two things that I need to include or what are the biggest problems you face here? Do you think you can do that at a chapter level or do you do that at a hundred person? So you Oh, I have a chapter on focus. Like what are the

1:23:55 Yeah. Yeah. W my point being, the more involved you can get your community into them feeling like, Man, this is really a thing. The easier promotion is because when when you When you pre launch they're buying copies of your book. They're actually talking about it. They're like, this is I'm I've been so excited about this for months and like

1:24:18 It's a natural thing. It doesn't feel weird, it doesn't feel forced. They're like in it with you. So so we have pre launch, we have launch, and then we have post. So like What do I do during launch and what do I do post launch to sort of make the book evergreen or constantly like bring it up without being obnoxious or Yeah. So the all defined pre launch to um you're building up hype. You're like the movie hasn't come out. You got the trailer, you got people in Veste and then launch. Like the movie's out this week. The movie is out right now, today.

1:24:50 Yeah. What changes from a marketing perspective? I'm d I'll I'll answer that. I just want to make one point about the pre-launch and the launch. These are the two windows where sales will spike. So the announcement of the book, basically, that it's up for sale, and then the announcement that it's officially live. Those had the two highest conversion rates for sales. So Authors need to optimize for those by offering You know, basically

1:25:15 It there's a saying it's uh people will buy what you're selling when you start selling what people are buying. If you can package buying multiple books with services or products that you know people are already buying from you, it makes it easier for you to sell a bunch of books during those winters. Basically it's easier to sell a lot of books at once than one book at a time. And to coup it with something that you know people will value and purchase. So like Coaching calls. You can just package those with buying three to ten books or whatever. During the pre launch it's having that infrastructure set up so that they can Buy more than one copy, basically.

1:25:53 And then sending emails just Leading up to it. And then closing it out. It is boring product launch the crude blocking and tackling. Yeah. It's just setting is setting up those emails. And seeing them throw. Yeah. And it's similar with the launch, but my philosophy on launches is um if you're self published, if you do not care about lists.

1:26:19 Your launch should be your victory lap. Right. It should be the least stressful week. The pre launch is is where you determine like, Hey, I'm I'm gonna set a a goal. That's modest, but It's it's a bit of a stretch.

1:26:34 I'm gonna hit it. And I'm gonna go into launch week knowing I sold a thousand or two thousand copies or five hundred copies, whatever. And when you get to launch week, it should be a celebration. Right. You're not stressed. It's a you just achieved a huge milestone. I know so many people who watch like launch week at like every minute of like they're so stressed. Yeah. It's it's horrible. An intellectual baby has come out of your body. And you're

1:27:00 Like yelling at it to like grow up. You know, like be a fully formed adult. And it's like Dude, like celebrate. Like this is this should be a blissful week that you're celebrating with friends, with family, with peers. You just hit a bucket list item that most people never accomplish. Celebrate. And so That's my emphasis during launch week. You can do an event. And uh if you want it to be a big thing, if you don't

1:27:26 Doesn't matter, but I I I firmly believe the launch week should be as enjoyable and low stress as possible. And so what about post launch? So like book came out, it's like a week later now. How do I As an author published with a Publishing house or self publish. How do I remind

1:27:45 people that already know about the book, that the book still exists, that I haven't bought maybe Or how do I let new people know about it without being re like I think we've all been on those email lists where we get like thirty email a book. It's like I got the hint. You know like create products you want to consume. So Like if you got ten emails about my book and like they were dedicated emails with no other value add.

1:28:10 Like I wouldn't want that as a figure. Right. And so like how do we do this subtly? Like who does this really well? Like what can we learn from them? The launch week the only metric I care about is Reviews. Is hit. Hit a certain number of reviews based on the number of copies. So one percent of copies you have out in the world, try and aim for that.

1:28:31 The number of reviews. Um It's a good metric. Uh because then you lay the foundation for the book converting indefinitely. Um They're converting well. Um

1:28:42 So what do you do to to set up kind of an evergreen system? Um You you said it Uh which is Set up an email sequence, but have actual value from the book be delivering it. So it should be like standalone stuff from the book. So for play it away.

1:29:02 Um I Set up a ten day series. helping people who are struggling with anxiety. And I've restructured parts of the book so that The quickest wins were first.

1:29:15 So it was like I know somebody who's anxious all they want. To start is give me a pill. So I'll recommend that. couple supplements that actually make a difference when you're in that state.

1:29:26 And then we're gonna go on to a little bit bigger stuff. And it's gonna be a ten day journey taking them from zero to hero. And in each email I mentioned this is excerpted from the book. I like that because it's like I'm offering value. It's a subtle It's not overbearing. It's not sort of like buy this book right now. It's an automation sequence so that I d I added it to a blog post that was doing really well for years. And so I think thirty thousand people or something went through that series is uh this is an excerpt it from the book. I think it was like every third email I would be like, if this was helpful. This is from Play It Away. If you wouldn't mind leaving a review, that'd be great. I have a three times higher conversion rate.

1:30:08 from sales to reviews than a typical book because of that. Interesting. It sold uh plenty of books too. So Um I think it's just You you set up that system that's effectively like a car wash. that cleanses the person who signed up and and introduces them to the best parts of the book and encourages them to to grab a copy if they want.

1:30:29 But then you move on. It's in your ecosystem now. So you should be focused on Let's keep creating and let's keep doing stuff. And you can be the person who Keeps pounding the drum the same drum for years and years, but like Most creatives have other things they want to say.

1:30:46 Uh, so let opportunities kinda come to you. Keep putting yourself out there. Uh but Move on. You know, to like that that is my philosophy. What what I I kinda like about books and podcasts, at least if they're done in a certain way, is that you do all the you fight up front. You do all the work. You launch, you have your systems and processes in place, you can go, you can earn money while you sleep at that point.

1:31:11 Like this conversation, hopefully people are listening to it in ten years. All the work's done, all the editing's done, all the costs are already incorporated. And then hopefully it just like keeps adding value to people, but you do that by not talking about topical things, by sort of being classical. What else do you think goes into like creating an everlasting book. Obviously

1:31:33 Content matters. Structure matters, title matters, but like what makes a book shareable. I wrote an article that m basically breaks down the twelve test that consistently determine whether a book will sell a million copies or not. It's not comprehensive, but it's gives a good idea. The big ones are Like Does this transform the reader in a visible

1:31:58 Way that other people want to talk about and ask about. This is why a lot of diets will take off is because it literally changes the body of the person in such a remarkable. Wait, oh let me tell you about this diet, I just I'm doing carnivore, I'm doing keto, I'm doing and it's like which diet's right. It doesn't Doesn't matter. They all transform the person. Like even David Goggin's book can't hurt me. So which is a great book just on its own. But

1:32:27 He used exercises in there and inspired people to do what he does and so they would physically transform. I saw this uh uh consistently with a lot of books is like do they provide a a quick transformation that The reader wants to talk about and the people around them can't help but notice and talk about Ray. The other things are Uh has this kind of hit A Zeitgeist of uh where it's kind of a contrarian Message.

1:32:58 during a time of Peak. people grappling with this, it's kind of unexpected, or it goes against what most other books are saying. Um so let me give an example. So Uh I thought Mark Manson's uh book

1:33:15 Yeah, the subtle art came out at a time of peak social media. awareness that this is creating a lot of mental health issues. It's like it's too much. It felt like too much. It felt like it was finally under the under the microscope of like how bad is this problem really. And Mark came in.

1:33:36 With a Proven. Mass Market Product.

1:33:41 Buddhism and he millennialized it. He made it through here's what's happening in the Zeitgeist right now. I don't know how intentional he he was around like this is this I guess I think he he Hit at a perfect time. for that book. long time clients, Tucker Max. He came out with I hope they serve beer in hell.

1:34:04 At a time of kind of like Peak. College partying awareness, I guess. No one had done that type of book before. It was like contrarian for its time. And so it was novel and unique in a way. I almost wonder if you could maybe this is a great idea for people listening here looking for book ideas, like go back to like the nineteen twenties, nineteen thirties, like what are the best selling books? How do I take that concept and sort of like reposition it for today's world where we have the core concept that still exists, which is timeless? Like you filter for sort of like, Buddhism or something that like this is enduring. It'll be talked about every

1:34:41 I don't know, hundred years, thirty, forty, fifty years, like go back and then you take that concept and then you write about it now. Mm-hmm. But you're really just positioning the exact same thing for today's world. It's possible. The challenge with it is the zeitgeist changes faster than ever now. And Uh it's it can be kind of a dangerous game to play the topical thing, but I hear you. If you can root it in timelessness, this is uh this was one of the tests I say, is it timely and timeless. Right. So like Mark's book wouldn't have worked if it wasn't rooted in a timeless concept. People who write about like Trump. You know, when he was in office in like a tell all

1:35:23 Sales go up. F crashing down and never return ever again. So what else goes into making a book shareable? You you had a list of things. Um

1:35:34 uh again, uh is the author the embodiment of the message. I think there's a lot of books out there where the author And this is uh part of the problem with the creation process if they isolate themselves. The author's trying to project that they're somebody that they're not. They're hyper aware that this is gonna be read by people and so they want to put on this false bravado and act like they've achieved more than they have and it's like no one wants that. Uh, it's boring. We uh humans that have really good B S detectors, we can tell when you're

1:36:06 Effectively lying to yourself. We sense it, right? And not even consciously. Like we know when somebody's walking towards us and they're sort of like suspicious. Yeah. And we're not consciously paying attention to it. We just feel it. But the same way we feel Like it comes across, but in not in a way that is necessarily quantifiable. Right.

1:36:24 But you feel it when you read it. Same as oh, I feel this is AI generated even if I don't go to like Just I can't prove it, but I feel it. And the minute I feel it I discount it. Yeah. And one of the guys who's really interesting to watch in YouTube videos Is uh Jordan Peterson because he'll say something and you'll watch him check in with how he feels about what he just said.

1:36:47 And he's like that didn't feel authentic like you can see him being like that wasn't authentic and he'll pivot and say it in a way that he's like that's truthful to me. May not be the truth, right? But it's truthful to him. A lot of the stuff he says It feels uh solid, right? And substantive. Well what are the that maybe a different direction on this is like what are the tips and tricks that you see authors doing today that you're like, Oh, that's really clever.

1:37:16 I was like, Oh that's that's uh clever way to go about that. Interesting. was seeing Oprah and Tim Ferris produce books That were interview based. Oh yeah. You know, tools of Titans. And I forget Oprah, I think has done a couple like this. And maybe that format was uh

1:37:35 common before, but I just didn't notice it. I don't really know. I remember thinking that was a a very clever way to produce a book that was fun. sustainable Um And not a huge heavy lift. I think it's a really hard to pull off for the average person. Oh you've got to be a media. You have to have an audience like listening to your interviews before you sort of do that. Exactly. I've seen other people try and do that and it doesn't it doesn't really work. It's kind of

1:38:06 Yeah. small segment that can do that. I uh you know, I've been most impressed. Ur Ryan Holliday and I we started our careers at the same time and we're kind of on we were kind of on similar tracks. He's always wanted to be an author. I've always wanted to be just like an entrepreneur who does creative things. I've just been super impressed d just watching him through the years. It's been awesome to see his Like just steady beat of the drum coming out with books.

1:38:34 People. don't necessarily know or remember about him is he started writing marketing books. Yeah. And I think to this point he's written like three, maybe four marketing books. And they just don't perform as well. Yeah. What he did though was he created a category for himself with stoicism with kind of a dead Or uh obscure topic.

1:38:55 And he revitalized it. And we were just talking about that, like going back, taking a subject. Yeah. Right. Putting it in position for today's world. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Somebody might be able to do that for Epicureanism, who knows? But I thought it was a Really cool to watch. Him.

1:39:13 Test Test notice that that's a thing. Yeah. And then basically create this blue ocean category for himself. That would be like the ultimate tip and trick. And that's actually on my list is does this create or revitalize a category. Interesting. And so if you can do that It's like winner take all scenario. Tim Ferris did this with lifestyle design. Right. And so like Tons of other books came out after him on lifestyle design and businesses, but he'd already won because he he'd like m name that thing.

1:39:47 It was a new thing. Lulu Lemon did it with Athleisure. Mark did it with the subtle art too, because remember all those books came out after with like fucking the title. Right. He created a category that swears on the cover. Yes. He was the first uh uh that I noticed that did that. Creating a category's difficult and there's a good book uh by these guys called The Category Pirates called the twenty two I think it's called the twenty two laws of positioning. Or it might be the twenty two laws of category design. That

1:40:18 Buck. I think uh was really smart of them to write because Um, category design is super important. Positioning super important. It's not intuitive. It's not Easy. It's similar to like coming up with a book title where you're like, I know this is the most important thing I could do. Yeah. I it's not something you can just snap and figure out. You gotta really sit with it. You just don't sit down and Yeah, I mean I don't anyway. Right. It comes with a lot of experimentation.

1:40:47 And I think that's the ultimate tip and trick. Experiment in public, see what hits, and once you've found an oil well, just drill. Keep going. Yeah. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. We always end with the same question, which is what is success to you? It would have been a different answer several years ago. But success to me now is just uh a house full of love with my kids.

1:41:11 For sure. My kids and my wife. And uh that is my daily marker of success. What changed you had kids or I had kids. For a long time I was just career focused. I I felt like I was good at what I did and then I had these narratives around having kids. Pulling me off of that track and Um Yeah, it's just realigned my values.

1:41:36 Mm. Thanks for listening and learning with us for a complete list of episodes, show notes, and transcripts and more go to fs.blog slash podcast or just Google the Knowledge Project. Recently I've started to record my reflections and thoughts about the interview after the interview. I sit down, highlight the key moments that stood out for me, and I also talk about

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1:42:28 The Farnum Street blog is also where you can learn more about my new book, Clear Thinking. turning ordinary moments into extraordinary results. It's a transformative guide that hands you the tools to master your fate. Sharpen your decision making. And set yourself up for unparalleled success.

1:42:45 Lear more at fs.blog slash clear. Until next time.

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