Category: SELLING

Ep 11: Influencer Hacks From a Seasoned Pro with Chalene Johnson | Recap Episode

This episode serves as a recap of the ground which renowned influencer Chalene Johnson covered in her recent conversation with AJ. If you want to learn how to be unique, visible and disruptive as an influencer, you should definitely tune into that episode. Today, AJ and Rory highlight the main points they felt Chalene made. […]

Ep 10: Influencer Hacks From a Seasoned Pro with Chalene Johnson

So Chalene is one of my newer friends and I love this woman and I love her husband. And I love that they work together and of everybody in this whole space. I feel like in many ways me and AJ like their relationship and dynamic is really similar to me. And AJ, we’re, we’re partners. We’re best friends. We both work in the business and I mean, I don’t even know where to start to, to describe Shalene. She’s a New York Times bestselling author. She’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for being in the most fitness videos. She sold millions of videos, have millions of followers, her and Brett have sold multiple companies. They know everybody and she has a huge online following and she’s just awesome. And I think you’re gonna, you’re gonna get to see that. But she’s, she’s also very versatile, I think. You know, so she just had a new book come out called the one 31 method. She had a New York Times bestseller called push. She has a conference actually that I spoke at, which is how the first time we met was I spoke at her event for marketing impact academy. And so anyways, I think you’re gonna love her and Chalene thanks for making some time for us. We’re so honored that you’re here.

Heck yeah, I would miss that. And I love the topic, so I’m excited.

Yeah. So, so first of all, foundational question, you know, brand builders group is about reputation. That’s, you know, what we say we study reputation, where does it come from? How do you build one? What makes them fall apart? And just, you know, to start off the conversation, what, what are, what do you know, when you hear the word reputation, what does that make you think? What, what are your philosophies about how you’ve built one? Yeah. And you know, just kind of free flow on that concept a little bit.

Yeah, well, a couple of things. When I think about reputation, I think about integrity. I think about the things that I look for in terms of a reputation. So I think there’s always like kind of a public reputation that a lot of people have. And then there are, because we’re, we’re so savvy and because with social media you can dig deeper and you can actually look at our political candidates, you can dig deeper and figure out if a person’s if what they’re putting out there is legitimately who they are. So your reputation, the way I view it is how do people know you? Like what are you good for? You know, like if somebody is looking for a particular solution to a problem, who’s the person they’re thinking of first? You know, and, and that’s the person usually has got the best reputation and or top of mind, right? So reputation is also how, how well known are you? Cause there may be someone who’s better at solving this problem, but people don’t know that person. So they don’t have quite the reputation. For me personally, I’m, when I think about my reputation, I’m always thinking about integrity. Hmm.

Hmm. I love that. And that, that that’s probably one of the big Epiphanes for us was realizing that reputation is not just being great at, I mean, it’s being great at what you do. It’s having integrity, but it’s also having people know you because if they don’t know you, they can’t, they can’t do business with you. And you have a lot of people who know you. I mean, you’ve done so much stuff. I mean, you’ve like infomercials, infomercials. You have millions of social media followers. Like your podcast has had like north of 20 million downloads. I mean

What,

What do you think you do that makes so many people want to connect with you and to know you and not just like hear about you, but engage with you for the longterm and then, you know, how, how does someone else build that?

Well, see, it’s a two part answer. I think when you said so many people, how do you get so many people? That’s time. And I wish there were a shortcut to that. It’s time in doing the right things along the journey. But I am today who I was for the most part, you know, 20 years ago. But I didn’t have a lot of people looking at me because time, right? So it does take time. It takes persistence, takes consistency. It takes, you know, being good for it. Again, when people shoot like every single time they know what to expect. And then aside from that, it’s realizing that the more you try to be like somebody else in your industry, the less unique you’ll be. For me, I, I think it’s really important that you, you look at people who are successful, who maybe there’s something about their identity or their brand that you relate to, but I don’t think that should be somebody in your industry.

I think that’s when you get August. A great example of this is for me, when I got to a place in my career where I was trying to be known for like 20 different things, I really desperately wanted to create workshops for women to learn how to start their own small businesses from home and be able to stay on with their kids. And I was a new mom. My son was like two years old and I was trying to hold these, I was trying to hold events in hotels because that’s what I saw like you know, other business leaders doing. But I wasn’t known for that and no one was showing up and I was spending a fortune, this is kind of even before social media is spending a fortune trying to promote these through direct mailers and advertising and you know, you name it other than social media and it just, it wasn’t working me and I realized, okay, there’s all these different things I’m trying to do and trying to do fitness and I’m trying to be a paralegal and I’m trying to write an ebook and I’m trying to start a personal training franchise business and I want to teach these seminars to women and I also want to create workouts for health clubs.

And at a certain point I realized like I just have to focus on one, I need to be known for one of these things. And I didn’t pick the one that I was the most passionate about. Interesting. I think the one I know and, and so I don’t know, I think that advice kind of varies based on your situation. But for me, we broke and so I needed to go with the one that provided me the quickest opportunity to be known. And at that moment it was fitness. And so I decided I was going to go. I was going to, I wasn’t going to get rid of everything, but I was going to scoot you to the side of my plate for a little while until I could be known for fitness. And once I was known for fitness, then I felt I had permission and the eyeballs I had the ability to, a platform to reach other people with these other things.

I wanted to do one at a time, by the way, two, you can’t do them all at once. That’s another lesson I learned the hard way. But you know, once I, once I started realizing, okay, I’m going to do fitness full time, when I, what I did wrong, Rory, is I, I bought every exercise person’s videos you could think of and studied them and was not myself. I was trying to be them. It’s like, okay, so, so this is what it looks like to be successful in this industry. So that’s how I need to be in. And that just wasn’t working. And so my question is to, to really look outside of your industry at personalities or brands that you relate

And what was your big cause? Cause you, you know, I’d like you heard me talk about she hands wall at the event and like focusing and breakthrough and you’d be someone that I think of is a great example of that. Like you broke through in the fitness space and then, you know, since you, you have, yeah, there’s motivational speaking you do, you do teach women now, you know and other, you know, not just women, but people had at run their own business marketing impact academy and you know, like that course in terms of like, what you teach is incredible. Like I’m still working my way through it, but it was, it was so powerful that I was like, this is incredible. And I do want to talk about some of your social media strategy, but when did you feel like you actually broke through?

Yeah, that’s a really good question. For me, the way I would define that is it’s able to kind of sustain itself. Meaning I’m, I’m making some money from it. I have a certain amount of notoriety and not that you can ever set it and forget it on any part of your business, but it’s to a place where it, it’s not losing money. It’s making money. It’s making decent money. I have, I have systems and strategies in place so I don’t have to be in it every day. And that’s when we started expanding. So we first started in health just serving health clubs and fitness instructors. And then once I felt like, okay we, we’ve, we’ve got a system in place, we’ve got trainers in other states, we have programs in hundreds of thousands of instructors now or 60,000 instructors at the time. We’re teaching this particular program before we branched off and decided, okay now let’s dabble in fitness apparel, which was, you know, kind of an offshoot of a branch and then, but we didn’t feel like we had the ability to do that until we were known for producing really great fitness content to the fitness community, not consumers.

How did you do it later?

So how did you, like how did you let’s say, cause I know there’s, I know we have some clients and brand builders and we have, you know, lots of people that are probably watching who were kind of in that fitness space and they’re like, yeah, maybe they have a few thousand followers on Instagram or something. And they’re going, how do I turn this into money? Yeah. cause it’s a long way from going, okay, I have some people following me and I’m like cheering fitness tips too. I’m doing infomercials, I’m launching programs. I have a fitness, I have an apparel line, I’ve got 60,000 trainers. So like she was like high level over view what that

It looks like I can but with a big asterisk next to it because I think it’s really important for people to realize when you’re looking at success, right? Success leaves tracks. But if those tracks are 20 years old, they’re not going to do any good. You know what we did? Let’s see. When we started that company in 1990 I think officially 1998 maybe 99, you know, and what we did back then is, I mean it’s almost 20 years ago is completely different from what I would tell people to do today. But yet I still see people studying the success of someone from 10 even 15 years ago when it’s outdated. It’s just, it’s not going to serve you today. Like, even starting a podcast, like today, I always tell people, you know, if you’re looking at so-and-so and they’ve got all this notoriety because they’re a podcast or, well, they started their podcast eight years ago, you know, so you’ve got to look at like, what do I need to do today?

And if I were a fitness person today, oh, I’d be so excited because it’s so much easier. It’s so much easy. You don’t have to have an infomercial. You can create your own. You don’t have to. As we did at the time, social media wasn’t even a thing. My space where I don’t even know what year my space came out, but many years after we started our business, so it was traveling, it was going to locations, it was finding the right kind of people and then placing them in different states and, and hiring people based on their reputation, not their bodies, not their knowledge of fitness, but their reputation and and know. So I think that’s still pretty true. Like, who you surround yourself with is a representation of your brand. It’s a reflection of your brand. So that’s what we did back in the day.

But today I would say for anyone who’s watching who’s, who’s in fitness, the things that remain true are to be consistent, to be 1000%. You not to look at what every, the worst thing you can do is look at what everyone else in your industry is doing because it will confuse you and it will water down your unique message, look outside of your industry. And that’s how you can become a disruptor. That’s how you can do things that feel unique. Not to mention the fact that it’s always depressing, I think, and discouraging to always be with like watching your competition. You just, you just, then you’re always going to be doing a comparison. But if you’re looking at somebody who you know, is, is someone that you like, but they’re not in your industry, there’s no envy. You know, there’s just admiration.

I love that. I love that. So let’s talk about the social media for a second. And the two things, I mean, I’m just amazed like your engagement and your realness is, is Eh, I assume they go hand in hand, but the, the two things systematically I’m wondering about, number one is your budget and two is your schedule because you produce so much content. Yeah. And Yeah. And you can, maybe you can pick which order you talk about the men, but it’s like how much money do you allocate towards creating content, promoting content, et cetera. So that’s like the budget and then the schedule piece of it of just like, how do you go? Okay. I mean you have over a million on Facebook. I think you have over a half million on Instagram. You’ve got six fingers on Twitter and like how do you keep up with all of this? I know you have a team, but at the strategy level, what’s your, yeah, you do. So

The most important piece probably is to understand that we have a lot of social media that doesn’t have my name attached to it that we manage. So on Instagram, we currently manage about 2 million. In terms of like my account and then other accounts that we own that relate to something that we promote, but they may not be, they may not be a reflection meat. For example. I call these things and this is something anyone can do and you can start without a budget, right? So let’s assume that most people watching don’t have a social media budget, but what they do have as a budget of time and one of the fastest, quickest ways to build an account today. Again, you don’t know if you look at what I did when I started on Instagram, that will not serve you because everything’s different. What we’re looking for on Instagram and how much time we have all everything’s different.

The quickest and fastest way to grow an account today is to create an account that is themed or what I like to call a feature account. So an example of this would be home workouts underscore the number four, the letter u homework outs underscore for you. That’s an account that we own. I think it’s like 400,000 followers and all that we do there is post repost other people’s content. So somebody posts up a a carousel video showing like five different exercise ideas that you could do at home. We repost it. So anyone who’s looking for, you know, creative ways to get fit at home, we’ll follow that account. They don’t have no has anything to do with me or that my team manage it per se. It’s just content that serves them. It’s the kind of stuff that they’re looking for. So now why would we do that?

Well, number one, people are less likely today to follow an individual personal brand on Instagram because we don’t have time. I’m not even, I’m following my sister and I, I haven’t even seen her posts and like two weeks, you know, there’s so many people that we really know and we really like. We don’t even see their stuff because frankly, I hate to say this, but it’s just not that interesting. It’s interesting, but it doesn’t serve us and we’re looking for things on Instagram, on Facebook, on Pinterest that serve us. Either they entertain us, motivate us, educate us, inspire us. And if it’s not one of those things, we don’t look at it. And the algorithm is determined by your activity on the app. So if you look at your explore page, you’re going to see, it’s going to be very obvious for your interests are, you know, sometimes embarrassingly obvious what your interests are.

But so we grow and spend a lot of time, we spend a lot more time growing those other accounts than we do. My personal account. So let me give you an example. So Rory, if, if I were a, let’s say a a therapist, I’m someone who does, you know, normal talk therapy, it’s going to be next to impossible for you to grow a personal brand on Instagram next to impossible because how does that serve anyone? Right? Like it’s, it’s a person. We just don’t do that as much anymore. It happens, but not as much. However, if you know, okay, someone who’s looking for an online therapist is like they’re dealing with things like Ma and maybe you specialize with people who deal with post traumatic stress or anxiety and depression. Well then I would start an account that’s got really relatable, either funny videos or means or like really moving posts to kind of post to go viral and I would repost those so that this whole page would be devoted to either uplifting or intel.

You know, the types of posts that are very enlightening, the types of posts that someone who’s dealing with anxiety and depression or post traumatic stress, they’re going to see these posts and go like, that’s what I needed today and I would grow one of those accounts. Now your next question might be, well then how does that therefore then build your own brand? Well, what are the allows you to do is you control that. That’s your, you own that media outlet. You own it, which means you can do stories and it’s in the stories where we go deep. It’s in the stories where we want to know like, okay, well who’s behind this? You know, it our, our know at the moment, and this will all change a year from now, but at the moment your, your profile or your, your page where you’re posting let’s say again on Instagram is, you know, it’s a little bit curated.

It looks nice. There’s some thought process to it. Some people they really curated, but when you want to know who someone really freaking is, you watch their stories. So when someone’s like curious, like who’s behind the stage, that’s when they’ll watch their stories. That’s when they’ll look at your story highlights. And that’s where you have the opportunity to promote a, an opt in to build your email list, to promote a Webinar, to promote a free resource to promote your business, whatever it is. So think about for everyone watching, if you’re trying to build, continue building your own personal account. Go as I do. Continue building your own personal account, but start another Instagram account of what you can. Almost outsource all of it and think about, okay, the person who I’m trying to reach, what are they looking for? Like what’s serving them today on Instagram? And repost that type of content and it’ll grow so fast. We had two accounts in the last six months that we did from zero to 10,000 with this exact strategy.

Ah Wow. So, and then so talk to me about the outsourcing part. Cause that’s Kinda the overwhelming part, right? Is like oh my gosh, I don’t even have time up with Instagram and just the schedule in general. Like how frequently should you go live, how frequently should you do a story? How frequently should you post on your feed? And like, you know, four different accounts like

Yeah. And I, I don’t know if that’s going to be useful to your audience because most people don’t have four or five different accounts. So even our calendar and our schedule is like [inaudible]. Like it would overwhelm you, but please know this, it didn’t happen overnight. It started with one part-time temporary person when we didn’t have the money to hire anyone, but we couldn’t afford not to have help. You know, people always say I, I can’t outsource because I can’t afford to. And I always say, you can’t afford to, cause you haven’t had faith in others. Like when you have faith in others, you have to believe that when you invest and empower other people, that’s what allows you to grow right now that the ceiling is directly above your head. And, and I it because I was there for, I don’t know how many years I just refused.

I felt like it was, I felt like it was lazy of me. If I could do it myself, why would I outsource someone to do that? I felt like it would take more time for me to explain it to somebody else. A, B, we can’t afford, we’re not making any money. How could I hire someone to help us when we’re not making any money that does. But we will when we met, we will when we’re, we’re making money. But at a certain point, I just realized I’ve got so much stress and we ain’t gonna make money until I hire someone and have the faith. I have to have the faith in God and the faith in someone else that this is what we need. And that’s why I say part time temporary. So I think the place that you start is by giving yourself permission to give this a temporary try. Look for someone just part time just to help you with social media and create a long list of all the things that they can do and understand that even if you hire like the best person on the planet, they’re going to be able to do half of it.

Okay.

[Inaudible]

Okay.

You still there shoving this of the tens of thousands of entrepreneurs that I’ve worked with, the ones who come back year after year to our live event, the marketing impact academy, and still have a brilliant idea, still have everything they need, but they’re still baroque are the people who can’t accept that mindset and the ones that come back and like I like dude, all my, we met our first million this year. It is crazy and I’m actually living a life. And those are the people who while they were broke, because that’s when you need it made their first hire. No, it’s mindset when it comes to outsourcing, you know? So I could go into detail about our calendar. But I think that would overwhelm people because, and I also don’t think that’s the right step. I’m, I’m a big believer in not giving people steps that aren’t useful to them in this season.

And I think most people watching this season that you’re in is either making your first hire your outsourcing or, or doing additional outsourcing, going to the next level. Like now maybe you needed a strategist or someone who’s really good at web development or marketing or copywriting, like who is your next hire? If you’ve already, you’ve already wrapped your head around that mindset. Who is it you need next to take you to the next level without it diminishing your life? Like I’m all about like, you know, it’s not about money for me, it’s about life. I don’t want, I don’t want to work hard. I want to do what I love and live more. And that means I’ve got to empower people. That was that. That is so true. And that I think our

Lives changed the day a j said this out loud one time. I don’t remember when it was, but she was like, she was like, I don’t need more money. I just need more time. And like when we just embraced where it’s like we just want less stress, we want less complexity, we want [inaudible]. It’s just like, but we want to still impact people and all these dreams. And you, it’s like you always have to have that face first. And then the rewards for taking that risk is that you grow, you grow like just enough and a little bit more to cover that person. And then you take another risk and you grow just enough and a little bit more. And then one day you look around and go like, I actually have a team and we have a, we have a real business here that operates.

Yeah. Makes real money. So for those people that are looking for a specific strategy for Instagram, like how often to post, how often to go to stories, how often to do ige TV, how often to go live because it’s a beast. Like let’s, let’s talk about it. Instagram has turned it into, oh look, she only has one hearing on look good. Look at that. I wonder where the other one, I didn’t even notice it. You know. Well, we should put it on this year because this year is hidden. Standby everybody. We have a fashion photo. The, all of that, like Instagram has become a beast in a good way, but it can be really, really, really overwhelming for people. But the potential there is amazing. So we, my team, I’ve got a team, right? Like I can’t say that I do all this. I’ve got an amazing team and every quarter they release all of the research that we do about Instagram because it changes that often. And we were released a free report. It’s called Ige hacks, or it’s our free report that we do. Once a quarter. You can go to shaleen.com forward slash Igg hacks and it’s a free download.

It’s awesome. Just like yeah, I was going through it about like to how much the carousels matter and things like that. And I was like, Gosh, I had no, like, carousels weren’t even on my freaking radar. And I think, I think there was something in there that was like the only comments that count have to have at least three characters and more like there was all this stuff in there that I saw that I was like, oh my gosh, this is so helpful. So we’ll put a link.

Simple things, little simple things like how often to post. What, just by putting one little sentence in your caption turns the, the engagement boost it by 70 to 80%. And even how do you use Ige TV? That’s a relatively, it’s not a new feature, but how the, the latest release from Instagram where they allow a, a snapshot of that just show on your profile. Like that’s a game changer and how to do that. Like how to tweak the caption instead of titling the video using that to ask a question. So you get engagement. Like little things like that make a huge difference.

Yeah, that is awesome. So Shalene johnson.com/ige hacks, right? That’s where we go for the report. Okay. Is that where people should go to connect with you or is there anywhere else additionally

Swam? Yeah. Yeah. Good Instagram. Follow me on Instagram because I, you know, I, I’m obviously not gonna have a real life conversation from my website. But if you send me a DM on Instagram, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll see it. So, and I, I really, I outsource all of my other accounts. So you know, we’ve got a bunch of different, as they called them themed accounts on Instagram and they’re all handled by a team of amazing social media experts here at team Johnson. But my personal account, I handle, and it’s really important to me because that’s how I connect with the girl I’m serving the guy I’m serving like that I can get their feedback, I understand their language. If you look at those conversations, that’s when you can, that’s when people will tell you what program they want next for you. They will tell you about your reputation. They will tell you about your brand. They will tell you what people think about you. And, and I can’t think of anything that’s more PR. It’s priceless. You don’t have to pay for our focus group in, you know, 15, 20 years ago we would’ve had to pay for a focus group and send out surveys. Now just asked, do a survey on Instagram. You’ll have your information five minutes later.

I love that. And, and so here’s the last thing I want for you to talk about because I think it’s easy for someone to look at you and like, oh, I have this great family and all these followers and look at this. But there was a, there was a real lifetime where you and Brett almost in make it as entrepreneurs. And I remember hearing some of those stories that you guys have been through. Some you’ve been through some tough times and you’ve been through some background of backup against the wall times. And I, I’m always, you know, whenever I do this, I’m always thinking about the person that you know is listening to this cause this is free. And maybe that’s like, this is their last, this is the last thing they’re listening to before they just like throw it in and you throw the towel in and wind it down. And you know, if somebody is in that place right now where they’re feeling that discouragement or despair or feeling like, you know, I don’t, I don’t know that I have what it takes. Can you just talk a little bit quickly about, you know, how, how have you been through some of that and, and what did you learn kind of, what would you say to that?

Hmm, that’s a really good question because I always fear that somebody does need to throw in the towel on an idea that isn’t working and it’s really clear to everyone else and they just don’t want to be a quitter. You know what I mean? Like I worry about that person a little bit. So I’m not of the mindset that you never quit but make an informed decision. Right. Like, if you know you have what it takes or your idea has what takes and it’s just a matter of time or the right people or the right knowledge of the right resources, well then don’t give up. But, but seek wise counsel, I mean the two things that have helped our business the most are investing in coaching people who will tell it to you like it is that I’m paying you to help me be better, better in business, better in therapy, whatever, better as a person, better as a parent, whatever it is I’m paying when I’m paying somebody and it’s the, they have a vested interest to help me do better.

I know I’m going to get really good advice and probably honest advice that your friends and family members may not be qualified to give you. I would say coaching and then number two. So I guess these both relate to people and that is hiring, you know, and, and again, one temporary part time, person at a time and sometimes that first person doesn’t work out, keep going, you know, pick the thing that’s giving you, that’s taking up the most time, that really doesn’t need you as much as cause I know you think everything has to be you. Rory, when Brett and I were at our very lowest we were own $460,000 in debt, I know. Tell me about it. And that’s how I discovered it. Like I literally stuck my head in the sand when it came to our finances. We were really disconnected.

You handle all that, I’ll handle all this, I’ll make the money. You manage the money. And then, and I, I knew that we were struggling, but then when I wasn’t getting the answers I needed, I started doing some investigating and you know, knock the wind out of my sails to find out. My husband had a really serious gambling addiction and needed treatment and we were looking at bankruptcy, you know, I went and met with a couple of extras. So like, you know, you need to file for bankruptcy and then we have to figure out how to take out some personal loans to pay back some of these characters. And we just decided together, I mean I’m really giving you like the shortcut version, but it was ugly and nasty. And there are times where I’m like, okay, well if he doesn’t do this, I’m gone.

Like, you know, literally even with two small children, I just, I, when I say integrity, this is what I mean by that. I don’t worry about anything because I know what I’ll do. I don’t know what’s going to happen. No matter what does happen. I know who I am and therefore I know what I will do. I don’t have to worry about what everyone else is going to do or how they’re going to react because no matter what happens, I know who I am. And in that moment I had to remember that it could go a lot of different ways and I just had to re go like, okay, if it goes this way, I go here. If it, if this happens, I’ll do this. And they’re all consistent with who I am and who we are. As a couple, long story short ended up being the greatest blessed thing to our marriage because then my husband got into therapy, I got into therapy, I finally, I finally knew who my husband was and you know, we could have thrown in the towel then we could have both gone back to our full time jobs.

But I was positive, positive. We could make it work if we, if we could get on the same page. So I would say if you just, you really know in your heart of hearts that you can make this work. If you just have the right people, resources or skills, then go get those things. Go get those things. But don’t be afraid to invest in wise counsel because you know, I’ve had great ideas, I’ve had great ideas, I’ve had businesses that were kind of making it and have hired coaches are like, all right, this has to go. I know you love this lean, but it has to go. And then when they lay it out, like here’s how much stress it’s causing you, here’s how much money, it’s not making you. Here’s the potential even for where to work. And then when you look at it in black and white, you’re like, you’re right. It has to go. And sometimes the people closest to you either don’t want to be honest, don’t want to dim your light, don’t want to hurt your feelings. But in the long run, if you’re able to separate yourself, like it’s not a reflection on you, it doesn’t mean you’re not a good person. Doesn’t mean you don’t work. It means this idea isn’t consistent with the life that you want.

I love that. And it got so powerful to be able to separate your ideas from your identity and to just, you know, manage ideas on their own merit. And, you know, meanwhile know that your identity is rooted in integrity and you’ll make it. And if you really know that, I mean, that speaks to me. It’s just like go get the people, like it’s, you go, go get the teams, you know, do the, you know, do the ads, do the videos, like hire the copywriters, like get the coaches cause you and that’s, yeah, it’s all face. So. Well, thank you for sharing that story. I know that that’s, yeah. Intimate story of, of a time long ago. That was a very, very real challenge though. And thank you for your inspiration and for making time here, Shelly. I know it’s really, really hard to catch you these days and we appreciate you so, so much.

Oh, I’m excited. It was great to be here.

You are awesome. And J and I, you know, appreciate you and Brett and your encouragement and support of us so much and we just, we wish you, we wish you the best.

Alright. I just want to say thank you. Thank you for serving so many people in my community. I just, I hear such amazing things about you and your team and how much you guys really care and the personal touch. And you know, we’re in an age where most people, myself included the way that we work with people is through online courses. You know, people kind of go through that themselves, but you guys have something really special. It’s really unique what you guys do. And I think it’s part of why your reputation proceeds you like you are the guy when it comes to personal branding. And we sure do appreciate what you guys do over there. Thank you so much.

Ep 09: Becoming a Bestselling Author and Successful Speaker with Jon Gordon | Recap Episode

This episode serves as a recap of the wonderful recent conversation we had with bestselling author, Jon Gordon. If you haven’t yet listened to that full interview, do yourself a favor and go do that! In this recap, AJ and Rory each highlight three points that stood out to them from Jon’s words. We cover […]

Ep 08: Becoming a Bestselling Author and Successful Speaker with Jon Gordon

I have to see how you, this man has become one of my friends over the last couple of years and really a mentor at first from afar and then a colleague and now somebody that we consider a close brother in Christ and a brother in many ways. In terms of what we do. Jon Gordon is a bestselling author, like a real bestselling author, like the kind of best selling author that sells thousands and thousands of copies of books every single week, not just like once every couple of years. And, uh, he is also one of the busiest speakers in the world. Uh, we’ve shared the stage several times, you know, he’s the author of the energy bus, the carpenter training camp power, positive leadership. Uh, the power positive team is one of his newer books and he’s been featured in pretty much every major media. The today show, CNN, CNBC, and you know, he speaks on amazing stages, works with lots of professional sports teams, the Dodgers, the Falcons, um, big companies, southwest airlines, the clippers, Miami Heat. So He’s just awesome. He also graduated from Cornell University. You know, he has all these like impressive accolades, but I think he has a great story that we’re going to enjoy hearing in terms of how he got his whole start as an author, speaker and just the reality of what that looked like. So Jon, welcome. But it’s thanks for being here.

All right, great to be with you. And now I get to ask you for advice all the time.

Well, so when I really want to hear how you got started in this, cause I think like you are when I say, you know, a real best selling author, I say that kind of jokingly, but it’s, it’s also very true. Even even, you know, people who are New York Times bestsellers, they might be on the list for, you know, a few weeks or a couple of weeks. But I mean you’ve got books that have been on there like weekend and week out in the top 10 for years. And I think, you know, when someone looks at you and you speak on these big stages and you know you’re featured in all this media, how did you get started? Like what are the early days look like and can you just give us like a high level overview of the timeline between who John Borden is today and how long did it really take for that to all happen?

2002 I said I wanted to write and speak. I knew that this was my calling. I was miserable, negative, unhappy. My wife honestly almost left me. I knew I needed to change. I asked what I was born to do, writing and speaking came to me. I said, all right, I’m going to start doing this. And I literally just started writing a weekly positive tip in 2002 I want it to be more positive. So I started writing [inaudible] research and ways that I could be more positive and that sort of sharing that with others. And that led me to then get a following started with my mother, my brother, my best friend from college, Sears. So we had five subscribers to the newsletter initially and that became our primary source. Now everyone has a blog, social media. Back then there was no blogs there, there weren’t any social media accounts.

And so I was sending out this weekly positive tip that I started with the facts and then we moved to an e newsletter. Constant contact was our, our first a provider of that early on. And that’s what started this journey of just sending out these weekly positive tips. And then I would reach out to people and say, Hey, I want to write and speak. And I tell everyone, create an overview of the talk you want to give. Create a brand around that talk, you know, something that is memorable and then share that overview with various people where you want to speak. And I would send this one page out and I would literally tell friends, Hey, I’d love to come speak to your company. I would tell sports teams, I’d love to come speak to you. You name it. I was sharing that I wanted to go speak and I did about 80 free talks when I first

so tell me about that like part of it. So you, you kinda like whipped together this one sheet, you know you don’t have like a lot of people don’t have a lot of money when they’re starting. So it, was it super fancy or was it kind of just like a word doc? Like did you have someone design it up for you and make it,

I had a designed, it was a one pager that started as a word doc and then I, I had it designed by a graphic designer to make it look nice and I even created a website with everything I wanted to be in do. So I had events even though I had no events, I had media. If I had media section, even though I didn’t have a media, you have to start acting as if, so I put up this website as myself as a speaker and then I initially became internationally known because I had one friend in London, so I was internationally known. And

so you are selling like you were selling it, like you were selling it but you were so were you, you were just like sending out emails, stuff like you just be like, y’all want to go speak to the Atlanta Falcons and so you just go to their like, I mean at that time they didn’t have websites but you would just like find an email and just send it and hey, I want to come talk to your team

number and email, phone calls, a ton of ton of emails and there were websites back then so you would, you would contact them via their website of their marketing person or the event planner for this event. But that didn’t really lead to a lot of events, you know, doing the outreach like that really didn’t lead you too much. I have hundreds and hundreds of emails still in a folder that I have saved of emails that I sent out. Hey, I’m John Gordon and I’d love to come speak at your event or to your company. But a lot of it came through friends. I had a friend who worked for the Jacksonville Jaguars. He was in charge of sales. So I spoke to the sales team and now the Jaguars was, was now a client. Then I had a friend at Cingular wireless. I spoke at a sales meeting. I now had Cingular as a client.

That’s how long ago it was. There was a company called Cingular wireless that um, I think it’s not Verizon, but, but I did that. And so one thing led to another and then I went on a tour. I went on the tour, one of my first book came out and that allowed me to go around and start sharing a message and I, through the newsletter would say, Hey, I’m going to be in these cities. And five people showed up and 10 people showed up in 20 showed up. We never, a lot of people that showed up, but some shows,

what can you this, what year is this?

2005 2006 at the time. And then [inaudible]

five years later, it’s just like they still like four still like three, four years later you’re going out speaking for free and five, 10, 15 people are showing up.

Yes. But I did have a restaurant at the time. I opened up a Moe’s southwest grill, second mortgage, second mortgaged our home, $20,000 in credit card in order to try to pay the bills that would then allow me to write and speak. And at first it didn’t go well, but then the restaurant started making money. So I had this restaurant making money and now I’m doing events here and there, maybe two or three a month was what I was doing, but I’m building the brand. I’m speaking as much as possible. I’m doing the newsletter that’s growing, but I sold the restaurants in 2005 knowing that I needed to do this full time, but I wasn’t making a lot of money at the time, but I knew I needed to do it. So I gave up the restaurant business and I was making a few hundred thousand dollars a year off the restaurants. They were doing pretty well, but I knew I needed to sell them. So I sold the restaurants and said, okay, I’m now going to focus on this. And that’s where it wasn’t going well. But I then had a lot of time and energy to start thinking and

your item, I’ve found that to be true. It’s like you either have time or you have money and so it’s like if you don’t have time it’s because you have money and you can hire people to do stuff or you have money but you don’t have, or yeah, you have money but you don’t have time. So you hire people or you have no freaking money and that’s because you have all day to like sit around and do some stuff and get some stuff done. And that sounds kind of like where you’re at then

and exactly. And my wife said, what happens if this doesn’t work? Like when I wanted to sell the restaurant, we cannot sell these restaurants. I said, there, there are no other options. We have to go for it. There are no other options. I have to do this. This is my calling. I have to do it. And I wrote the energy bus in 2006 after selling the restaurants, about six months, seven months later, walking and praying. The idea for the energy bus came to me and when I wrote that book, I knew I had something that I was going to really focus on is this book now brought me to the corporate business market. And my goal was to start speaking on leadership and to businesses in a bigger way. And this was the book that I felt would propel me forward. So, so did

you write the book first? Did you do an a book proposal? Did you have an agent? Did you like what, what, how, how did that, how did that happen? Right. Like I want to write a book. You’re walking on the street and you know, God goes, Hey, here’s your book. You know? Okay, great. I have an idea. There’s a long way from that moment to a book that sells 2000 copies every single week.

Yup. I started writing the book right away. Okay. I wasn’t waiting, I wasn’t writing a proposal. I wrote the book first. I tell people this all the time, don’t think about the proposal. Don’t think about who’s going to publish it. Actually write the book first when you have some that you can hand to a publisher and say, here is something I wrote and then you add a proposal to that. It’s so much more powerful to have something concrete and so I wrote it first and about three and a half weeks I have to give God credit. There was a lot of divine inspiration writing that book and then we pitched it out though I found an agent, we pitch it out to a bunch of publishers and got rejected by almost all of them except one. John Wiley and sons agreed to publish this book, but it wasn’t right away. I was getting rejection after rejection, after rejection being told my dreams not going to happen full of fear, anxiety. What happens if does doesn’t work? What about our future? I told my wife, sell the restaurants, which we did and now I was betting on this and it’s not going well and I’m getting rejected. I remember those were some of the scariest times in my life.

So then what now and I as a first time author, did they, I don’t imagine they came and gave you like this monster advance and said, hey, you know, here’s a half a million bucks. Like we think this is gonna end. All your problems are solved. It, it, it, I mean, I’m, I’m guessing it was still, you know, they gave you a deal. You, you took it and then you just like went all in to make it work on, Huh?

Yeah. Well we have to back up a second. I did do two other books before that, but these were books that were more self development books, more mental, physical, emotional energy kind of books. One was called energy addict. I don’t even really talk about those anymore. In other words, 10 minutes energy solution. A small publisher out of Atlanta Along Street press publish this book because he got my newsletter and said, I think this would be a great idea. I want to get behind it. He winded up not doing a good job, had a lot of issues there. I got the rights back. Next thing you know a penguin parish g agreed to take it on cause I was getting on the today show. So they took one book on and then said, all right, let’s do the other one. We did those two. The second one I did a failed miserably and that’s when I made the transition to, alright I know I’m here to talk more about business.

I’m moving away from self development away from the self-improvement mode. I changed at the time I got, I became a follower of Jesus. And so for me I was, I was really more in a different state of mind. I really in a many ways was a different person. And so the energy bus represented this different person, this, this, this platform. And I was going out that I knew that this was the work I was going to do for the rest of my life and the other two are my past. So, so I had the failure of the second one. And so it made publishers weary to want to take me on. But John Wiley and sons said, you want to take it on but we can’t give you much money. But we wanted to do it. And so Shannon Vargo agreed to take me on for boss said, if it doesn’t go well, it could be your career. She said, no, I want to do it. And so I said, let’s go. And so it was pretty much all in in terms of I’ll take whatever you got. I don’t really care about the money, I just want this book out there.

And then when that happened, like we till you finally get this deal and you know, we have a similar story about how we got the deal for take the stairs and uh, it was, it was a long, long road. But what did you do for that first launch? Cause that books still sell. I mean it’s been 15 it’s coming up on 15 years. That book still sells. Like did you, what did you do back then when you were just starting out to like get the word out about that?

Yeah, we were, the energy bus was number 10 last week in the Wall Street Journal Bestseller list. It came out in 2007

that is so awesome. I love, I love, I see it every like every time I look I’m like, gosh, it’s still there. Like just crushing it.

It sells several thousand copies a week. It sells more every year than the year before I think about it. I’m now 48 I wrote that book when I was 35 and I now am speaking still all over on a book that I wrote when I was 35 yet with so much more knowledge and wisdom and things I’ve learned over the years, which is what my new books represent, but it really is cool for that book to still do what it’s doing and it’s a special special book. People really connect with it. I have to say one thing, it’s funny that a lot of people say to me, you know, I’ve heard that before, or oh yeah, that’s just, you know, that’s, that’s accepted. I had a friend of the, they said, yeah, it’s accepted. And they heard it before because it’s been out for 13 years. So they don’t know that the energy bus has been that long.

That’s why you’ve heard of before. And again, it’s sold 2 million copies. So in the United States, so a lot of people have have, have understood this. So when it first came out though what I do, I went on a 20 city tour, paid for myself, our good friend who you know as well, Daniel Decker was selling into advertising at the time. I had the most restaurant and he was telling me into our advertising for my restaurant. We became friends and I was going this tour and I said, Hey, I’m going to this tour. I need someone to help you PR, do you want to do it? I can pay you this much a month. He said, yeah, because I really loved the whole book thing and author world. And now as you know, Daniel is one of the top book launch people in the world. And so he basically helped me launch this verse book and I was going from city to city again, just sharing the message, getting on some local TV shows of you radio shows. Everywhere I went we were doing an events in libraries or a coffee shops, some universities, but it wasn’t very promising. The most people we have were a hundred people in Des Moines, Iowa, and they thought Jeff Gordon was coming. That’s why they showed up.

Well, I mean, we’ll take it, we’ll take it if you buy some books, like give me a car.

So I get home from that and that’s when you know, again, I put everything I had and it was exhausting and I was tired and I didn’t know if the book was going to do well or not, but I knew that I just went out there and I gave everything. I had to share the message in this book. And that’s what began this journey. That was now 2007 next thing you know, Jack del Rio gets a copy. The coach of the Jaguars, he reads it. I get a call from him out of the blue, he wants me to come meet with him. I go meet with him. He asked me to speak to his team. I was fired up. I said, I’ll speak to your team if you get everyone a copy of the book. I was really bold. I just said it like that. He said, I’ll get everyone a copy. But you got it. He did spoke to the team and that began this journey of all these sports team started to read the book and use it with their team.

Wow. So I mean a lot of this stories interesting like a lot of these early speaking gigs and even Daniel, it’s people close to you. Like you were, you were leveraged, like people close to you or helping you. You were hustling, you were sending out messages like you were doing. All that stuff is. Um, so, so when you, so you went and spoke. So was that, would you say that was like your big break or did you, did you have a moment that was like, let me, cause that’s a lot of hustle. Like in your story, very, very similar to two hours and and to a lot of people, I think you know this, this, we’re interviewing lots of people in a similar story. Was there a moment where you had like a big break, like a big breakthrough?

It wasn’t one moment. It was a series of moments because a TV show or radio show would lead to a speaking engagement. We’re a school district reaching out from that tour. I went on principal, a principal saw me and invited me to speak to their school. A business person saw me. Next thing you know, I’m speaking Adele. So it was one thing after another of people seeing you in one place. I tell people all the time, you gotta get out there and do it. I called the big guy years ago before they were great summits like this and I said, hey, I want to be a speaker. What should I do? His name was ed foreman. Ed Foreman said, speak, speak everywhere and anywhere. The more you do it, the better you get, the more people will hear your message and it will spread from there.

If it’s good. And so I knew I just needed to get out there and speak and I want to tell people that’s what you gotta do. Don’t worry about making a lot of money early on. Don’t worry about your wall. I have this value. Go do everything you can early on because you need exposure. Yeah, people need to hear your words and your message. And the way people get booked is through people seeing them or hearing about them or hearing them on a TV show or radio. That’s how it happens. Now with social media, it’s about people seeing you on social media. You know you’re a speaker, you put a video up, you share, hey, I’m interested in doing speaking engagements. Let me know if, if you like to have come speak. There’s a lot of ways to do that now, but you have to put yourself out there and just get out there. As you create the demand, your price will go up as more and more people want to book.

So can you, so talk to me about social media a little bit because I think there’s a lot of speakers who you kind of come from the old school and, and, and this, you know, it’s a lot of, uh, like they’re speaking a lot. They’re kind of hall of Famers, they’ve had solid careers and it seems like now the big trend is a lot of the people who are getting the big speaking engagements are the ones with the big social media following. And, and you do both, like you have a, you have a very large social media following. Um, which clearly is something that you kinda like built along the way. But what, what is your attitude about social media or your mindset or like how do you use it? How do you use it to get speeches to sell books? Like do you not really ever mention that and you just try to provide value or like what’s your whole overall philosophy or strategy with how to use it?

Yeah, I think you’ve got to use every medium possible to promote yourself and what you do. And so I don’t have a huge following on Instagram. Only say 40,000 people. And some might say that’s pretty good, but not compared to a lot of people who have hundreds of thousands, if not millions. There’s a lot of big Instagram names out there that maybe they’re getting some gigs, I don’t know. But I believe that the more you can build your platform with sharing value, providing value to people, sharing tips, sharing advice, really sharing the message that you know you want to share an and and creating bite sized chunks so that people can digest it so that you can give them little tips here and there. A lot of people who are doing this in a, in a, in a great way, Lewis Howes, right Bey Dros is doing a great job with this other people in social media doing a great job.

And so you’re just sharing a lot of good tips and a lot of value. People naturally gravitate towards you, but those people may not necessarily go to events, they may not hire speakers. So there’s a combination that has to happen here of the social media. But then also you have to be seen as someone who can be brought into these corporate events, to these business events, which I know you do a lot of, and I did 86 events last year. I did probably 90 something the year before. I make over $1 million every year in speaking, and I’m not saying that to brag on myself, but over the years of being heard and being hired and then people reading my books and then see on social media, it all contributes to it. Some people seem me on social media and they see a clip, they get interested. Some people now read a book and they want me to come speak.

So again, there’s going to be a lot of of ways that you’re brought to the event, but by providing yourself, by putting yourself out there, by providing value, that’s how you’re going to get gigs. I’m a big believer in showing clips of you speaking and Keith Johnson does a great job of this. I show a lot of clips, little clips where you providing value, you’re sharing a message and people can see that on social media. I believe you should say, hey, just spoke to so-and-so today and you show a picture of you speaking to so and so. So people know this person is a speaker. Cause a lot of times you may be a social media personality, you may have a great book, but people don’t even know that you speak. I get that all the time. People say like you do speaking engagements, I, I cracked up when I get that this book or Hey, um, can you do this event? We have $500 Oh you know, I’m not $500 anymore but I can provide you with a $500 speaker who is part of my team. And now I have some younger people who I’m mentoring and I am helping them get out there sharing their message.

Is that probably that the primary way you monetize? I mean, so you, you, you like your business model. Just it, if you look at the various revenue streams, cause you know, some people are probably watching a thing going, yeah, you know what? Like I don’t think I want to be a speaker. You know, I got really young kids. I don’t want to be on the road or or whatever. But it, is that the primary way that you generate revenue?

For me it is. For me it’s speaking. It’s also writing books and my royalties, which I get a significant amount of royalties. I’ve been fortunate that way where that’s a revenue stream for me. I didn’t start writing books to make money. I didn’t think I would make as much as I’m making over the years with writing books. It’s a blessing. But the speaking is what I’ll do no matter what. Like I just love doing it. I’m building a training that we have consulting. There’ll be a point where I don’t need to speak up. I don’t want to, I actually don’t need to do. I could probably do half of the event. So if I ever have that I do. But why do I do more? Cause this is what I’m called to do because I love to do this. If you’re not called to do it, maybe you just love the social media part.

Well good. And then you’re more of a media type personality. And then what you’ll do as a mastermind where you’ll provide an online university, an online school, some other way to monetize a podcast that makes money. There’s different revenue streams down for people. This just happens to be mine where you’re like, we have positive university as a podcast, which I can’t wait to have you on. But in terms of of that, we’re not looking to monetize with that. We’re looking to provide value with that. If something comes from it. Great. Our newsletter over 200,000 subscribers now started with five. We never monetize that in terms of sponsorships or anything like that. But we share my books in it. We share their trainings where we have upcoming. So in a way it is monetized. But again, the goal was to always provide value and now you look back and go, Oh wow, we were doing something smart and didn’t even know we were doing that. But that’s, we were doing.

Yeah, I that so, well that’s interesting to see how it’s all sort of grown. Is, is so, so talk to me about, you know, we, we study reputation, right? Like that’s what we have now set at brand builders group is like it’s really reputation strategy and I think, you know, building a personal brand as sort of somebody who wants to monetize their reputation. How do you think this, this kind of this work of like developing your speaking skills and your writing skills, how do you think that applies to the corporate world? Like indeed, do you think it’s important for like corporate executives and people that sort of have a social media presence this day? Like even if they don’t want to be an author or speaker or, or do you think now it’s not really, you know, if you’re like a corporate person, they’re not really doing it. I mean just this more of just, I’m just interested in your opinion about how you know, social media clearly as a part of our profession and our industry, do you feel like it is trickling in a significant way into like the regular corporate career and that like a corporate career person should be building their sort of personal brand and following? Or do you think it’s really just for the person who says like, you know, I want to spend my life like being a messenger sort of a thing?

Great question. You know, I believe we all have a presence now online and it’s about wherever you want to take that presence and share that presence. So some people won’t go on Twitter, they have no interest in Twitter, but maybe they’ll post on Instagram or linkedin. Everyone’s on Linkedin in the corporate world now. So in a way you develop a presence that way. So I really do think it depends on what you want to do. I know a lot of football coaches who are in the media all the time, but they don’t have social media presence, social media presence. Sean McVey, who’s 33 doesn’t have a social media private presence online. He’s not into it. And so it just depends for each person. I don’t think it’s necessary, but it just depends on what you want to build and what you’re here to create an and what you want to share.

Pete Carroll is very big on social media, always engaging with the fans that way. Some people do not want to do that in the corporate world. You have to be careful, right? Because what you share on social media, you can come back to bite you. So you want to make sure whatever it is you’re doing on social media, why am I on here? What message do I want to share? Like what’s the medium in terms of that that I’m going to use and, and then what message you want to share with that medium. And I think it’s important to understand like the purpose of why you’re on the first place. Would you want to do with it? Who Do you want to reach and the impact that you want to have. But I don’t believe it can hurt you if you’d do it the right way. I believe that can only help you if you build a presence and a reputation. Your social media shouldn’t be a conduit for your reputation to reach the world.

Hm. Yeah. Amen. So, um, alright, so, so w w w one, one little thing. I got one last sort of question before I asked you that though. What do you, um, like is there any, any where should people go to connect with you to like learn more about John Gordon and you know, what’s the best way for them to hook up with you?

John gordon.com is probably the best way. My website junk. We’re not Khan, but Instagram and Twitter, I need more followers on Instagram. So at Jon Gordon 11 at j o n Gord 11 Twitter is the same thing at Jon Gordon 11.

Okay. And so here’s the last, my last little thing, John is, so going, going back to let’s say like 2005, like some of those dark moment where you’re like, I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to build this brand. I’m not sure if this is really, you know, your wife is like, oh my gosh, what are we doing it w w what piece of advice would you give to somebody who is like in that moment right now, sort of experiencing that self doubt or not having the win or just, you know, they feel the calling, but like the results aren’t there yet. And is there anything that you kind of either wish you would’ve known then that you know now or anything that you would say directly to that person out there with, with the dream who’s like walking through that valley right now?

First and foremost, it’s gotta be driven by your purpose. We don’t get burned out because of what we do. We get burned out because we forget why we do it. So you have to have a why in this. Your purpose must be greater than your challenges. So what is your vision? What is it that you want to create and why do you want to create? What is your purpose for doing this? It can’t be, I just want to have a great brand. I want to be famous because that doesn’t last. You will face adversity, you will face negativity and setbacks, but your belief, your positive energy, your faith and your purpose must be greater than all the challenges. Again, this is stuff that I share with everyone, but especially if you truly believe you have something to share and you know that you can make a difference, I believe you have an obligation to get out there and share it because people can benefit if they don’t hear it from you because you will say it in a unique way that hasn’t been said like that before.

They haven’t been, they haven’t heard it in that way before. You know, Rory, your message may be similar to mine, but the way you say it, the way you convey it, there’ll be people who resonate more with you than with me and vice versa. That’s the way it is. That’s why there’s a lot of different stations on the radio. It’s about sharing it in the way that you feel called the share it and people receive it. So I believe that you just have to persevere, fight through it, and understand that it’s going to take a lot of grit. And what is grit? It is driven by love. It is fueled by optimism and belief. It’s inspired by vision and purpose, right? And ultimately there are times when you want to give up, but it’s also revived by resilience and kept alive by good old fashioned stubbornness and a desire to prove oneself and also a fear of failure that continues to drive you. So if you’re afraid, let that be a good fear that continues to propel you forward. So you don’t want to fail, but don’t allow the fear to consume. You know that the love of what you’re doing and the love and the purpose that you have for sharing it and making a difference, that’s really the greater energy that will take you forward.

I love it. Well, John Gordon, my friend, my brother, I’m so glad you made the journey and thank you for sharing Sharon, a little bit of the history here and we just, we appreciate you and your work. Um, so much so. Thank you for the encouragement,

Roy. Thanks for having me. And you know what? It’s easy to talk about this now, right? I always try to put myself into position of what was I thinking then? What was it like then? Because you look at us now, we’ve had successful books. I’ve sold 4 million copies, I think over a million a year speaking. I never thought I’d beat to this. Wait, but to that person that’s starting out, you have to have the vision, the belief that it’s possible. So I was trying to think about, did I ever expect this? No. And that’s the thing. You don’t expect it. You just gotta show up every day and do the work.

Ep 05: Becoming a Number One New York Times Bestselling Author with Gretchen Rubin | Recap Episode

This episode is all about giving you the best of our recent interview with the awesome Gretchen Rubin who has multiple New York Times bestselling titles! If you’ve ever wondered how authors manage to hit that enviable list, this episode will give you the most important thoughts from our talk, including the main considerations such […]

Ep 04: Becoming a Number One New York Times Bestselling Author with Gretchen Rubin

RV: (00:01)
Well, I am excited to introduce you to Gretchen because I think that this is a pretty rare chance to get behind the scenes with one of the most prolific writers in the world. Gretchen Rubin, many of you probably know, I mean the happiness project was like the major number one bestseller forever and ever. It still sells like crazy. She wrote happier at home. She wrote the four tendencies, which is when I think our paths cross because we were kind of like into that self-discipline space and that’s how we met. And I have just adored her and admired her work. I think she’s a fantastic writer, truly the consummate professional. And she has sold more than three and a half million books. And her books are also in 30 more than 30 different languages. And so she is like, you know, really, you know, she’s a speaker also and she does other things. But really I think her writing was the thing that broke her through she hands wall. For those of you that follow us and you know, we talk about breaking through the wall. It was her writing that, that really did that. So I caught another personal favor. I called in and Gretchen, thank you so, so much for being here.

GR: (01:10)
I’m so happy to be talking to you. Thanks for having me on the show.

RV: (01:13)
So, you know, we’re making a little bit of a pivot with our personal, our personal brand. You know, we’re, we’re still talking about discipline and, and you know, those kinds of things. But we’ve shifted to really talking about reputation and studying what creates reputation. And so I’m interested just like off the cuff, what is your definition of reputation or what do you think of, or like, do you have any personal philosophies about how you think of reputation and how you’ve built? Because you have such a huge reputation in like a, you know, the writing world and then also speaking world. So I’m just kinda interested in like your random philosophies on the concept of reputation.

GR: (01:55)
Well, that’s really an important question because reputation, like if you use reputation as a lay person, you think of it as kind of like your integrity or sort of like, you know, do you have an honorable reputation? But if you’re using it in this context, it’s a little bit more like your voice or like why are people coming to you? You have a reputation for talking about certain things. And so for someone like me, I have a reputation for talking about what, I mean that was sort of a big question, which is like, well, what is my subject? What do I write about? And I had the act at one time sort of think hard about like, okay, I wrote a book about Winston Churchill and I wrote a book called power money, fame, sex. And I wrote a book called the happiness project. Like what am I, what am I talking about?

GR: (02:33)
And I’m like, I write about human nature. That’s what interesting. That is my subject. And I think my reputation is I am somebody who writes and thinks and talks and engages with people about the subject of human nature. Now, I have to say, I had this very kind of striking conversation with someone who’s super smart and has an outstanding reputation in herself. And she said to me, Oh, well you can’t say human nature’s your subject. Like that’s too big. And at first I was like, oh, I guess I can’t do it. And then I like, like a week later I’m like, who is she to tell me what I can and can’t do if I say that my subjects, human nature, my subjects, human nature and a deed, my subject is human nature. So one of the things that I do as part of my reputation is I’m always thinking is what is what I’m doing consistent with this reputation of what my interests are.

GR: (03:21)
And I’m also trying to show my idiosyncratic truth as Gretchen Ruben, an individual person walking around. So I’m obsessed with a collar. I live in New York City. I came from Kansas City, Missouri. I’m really close to my sister who lives in La. I wear s leisure all the time. I drink a lot of diet coke. Like, there’s those things about me that are very particular, and then there’s my subject. And so I’m always thinking like, am I putting that out into the world? Because I do think that a certain kind of clarity helps people to engage with you and to feel like, well, if I’m interested in this or I’m in this kind of mood, this is the kind of person that I would turn to. And you have to sacrifice certain things, like to have that kind of clarity because there’s things that like, maybe you’d be interested in talking about that, that just sort of, you know, you have to think like, is this going to kind of broaden and deepen my reputation? Or is this going to muddy and kind of divide my reputation? Not that you want to fall asleep, limit yourself, but I, I do think that a certain kind of coherence is helpful for, for, for an audience to engage.

RV: (04:23)
So did you like human nature? That’s really interesting because yeah, I see the intersection clearly now.

RV: (04:33)
But did you, it sounds like you kind of clarified that after. Yeah.

GR: (04:37)
A couple of books and yeah, yeah. After many bucks I was like, what’s going, what? Like what am I? And then I read this weird book called Profane Waste, which is very strange and it looks completely different from all my other books. Unless you say this is a person who really is studying human nature, then it makes perfect sense. And you’re like, of course this is like a very tiny spotlight on a very kind of surprising and almost mysterious aspect of human nature. But it makes perfect sense that I would be interested in that. [inaudible]

RV: (05:08)
So do you think, do you think someone, cause this is, so this is one of the things we kind of help people do. We said we call it finding their uniqueness and we are, we are often, we look both in their past for hints as well as to the future of who they feel called to be. And kind of at the intersection we go like, Hey, this is, this is sort of your uniqueness.

GR: (05:26)
Do you, do you think

RV: (05:29)
Like how important is it to find that theme like that? [inaudible] Do you think people should try to know beforehand or do you think it’s okay to kind of stumble down the road in your career and then you look back and you go, there’s going to be some consistent through line and then you and then you find it? Or would it, does it even matter that you found it? You think you could have just gone on without knowing human nature was the umbrella?

GR: (05:52)
Well, I think it’s important in terms of presenting yourself because people will say like what your books looks. It looks weird and different from each other. How do you explain that or I think it does help you understand and kind of like almost algorithmically. Like who am I? Like? Like if you, if you go to publish a book, for example, they will say, okay, you’re writing this book. What is the comp meaning? What is the comparable book to the book that you’re writing? And here’s a hint. If you say there is no book like this, that’s not good. Because what you’re saying is this book, because I’m so unlike any other book, we don’t know where to put it in a bookstore. We don’t even know how to think about it. And so you want to be thinking about like, well, who are my allies?

GR: (06:30)
Like one thing about social media is you really want to find the people who are interested in the same kinds of things you are and you want to support them and shine a spotlight on what they’re doing. And then hopefully they become interested in you and turn to you and turn a spotlight to you in and your allies and you’re engaged and you’re, you’re like part of a community that’s interested in something. Whereas if it’s, but it’s kind of hard to know what that is. It’s Kinda like the whole world, you know? It’s like, am I writing? What sports am I writing about foreign policy? It’s like, you know, it’s like, okay, well I don’t, I don’t know how to think about you in an intellectual way and an intellectual framework in a world where I kind of have to know what I’m thinking about.

GR: (07:06)
Now it’s interesting like do you need to know before or after, whatever. So I mean, in my case, I am a very productive person, so I have, I’ve almost compulsively putting things out I would say. And so I had a lot of stuff that I’d put out kind of before I even knew enough to be thinking about what I was doing to ask the kind of questions that you’re asking and talking about frankly. And, and so then I could look back and sort of see like, well, like the evidence told me something about myself that maybe I didn’t have an insight into. Would it have been better to have a sense in advance? I don’t know that I would’ve known in advance, but had I known in advance, that might’ve been very helpful. I really think that in the end, the most important thing is that you’re moving forward.

GR: (07:50)
If you’re creating things like, look, something doesn’t work, then that tells you something. I think sometimes people, they throw some spaghetti against the wall and they, and they, and they get more and more interested in the spaghetti that sticks. And they find that that’s where they’re growing an audience and that’s where they’re sensing excitement and growth and then they go deeper and deeper in that direction. So I think if you kind of can’t tell what it is, maybe you want to start creating and often you might find, well some things come much more easily or some things are kind of endlessly fascinating. When I started writing the happiness project, I let it got led into it because I was like, this is vast, this is limitless. I could never come to the end of my fascination with this subject. And indeed I never have come to the end of my fascination with this subject. But there’s other things that you know, you kind of run out of interest in. And so part of it I think is if you don’t exactly know what it is, start putting stuff out there and then you might also see that certain things get you much more engagement. If you’re really finding that other people are very much more interested in your ideas about one thing than another, then that also will probably be really useful information. I love that concept of endlessly fascinating cause that’s a different answer for each person

RV: (08:56)
With the a hundred percent. But that is such a clue to your uniqueness and like what your, what your thing is. So so let’s talk about just like book sales. Cause you, you know, there’s, there’s like these different echelons of bestseller and you’re like a real, real bestseller. How do you sell a lot of books? Like what do you, what do you think you, you know, is it, is it, you got to have the big social media following and the platform, do you have to have the big publisher? Is it all about what you’re writing? Is it the way that you write? Is it writing for an audience of which there’s a big target, you know, a number of people that fit that demographic or psychographic. Like what do you think is the difference between the books that sell a lot and the ones that don’t?

GR: (09:42)
Well, you’ve, you’ve mentioned so many things that are, that are significant. And of course for every book it’s kind of a little different story and a little different profile. I mean, one thing I would say, I say this, I remind myself of this and I remind everybody I know who’s a writer of this. There are many ways for a book to succeed and a book can be a wonderful success without getting anywhere near the book, but the bestseller list. And so to kind of pin all your hopes and to feel like a book goes to success or failure depending on that metric, I think is very shortsighted. And also that is a metric that there’s a lot of things that go into it that you can’t control. It is not like a pure number. And so I, you know, so it’s a very important metric and I have to say I think about it all the time.

GR: (10:26)
That’s not the only thing. So if you get a lot of exciting speaking engagements, that’s great. If you really deeply engage with a small group of people, but for whom your, your book is like massively interesting or exciting or groundbreaking that works for you. If this becomes the platform or the springboard for another project that is going to end up being more important. Or if it’s, you know, novelists often talk about like the, the novel that’s in the desk drawer is it sometimes you have to write something that’s like completely doesn’t succeed in order to set yourself up for the next success. So sometimes something that is just like a big failure is what you need to learn the lessons that you need for success. So there’s many things, there’s many ways for a book to succeed that said it is nice to hit the bestseller list.

GR: (11:09)
And I will say that it is very, very difficult for a self published book to hit the best seller list. That’s just, there’s many ways for a self published book to succeed. They can make a ton of money, they can have a ton of readers, they can lead a book deals. I mean like TV deals or movie deals. They can lead to regular traditional book deal. There’s like, there can be tons of fun. You can go to conferences. It’s just, it’s just the bestseller list is not set up for that. And obviously some books are of more general interest than others. And I think you have to know, like I have a friend who was writing a book about transracial adoption. Now her book could have been wildly important, exciting thought provoking. She could have gotten excited, you know, become an expert, been invited to conferences.

GR: (11:55)
Is that going to be a bestseller? No, because there’s just not enough people who are interested enough in transracial adoption because it wasn’t even like a memoir about like her profound story. It was like, it was very much kind of about the nuts and bolts of it. And so it wasn’t even like this is going to be amazing memoir, like educated. This was like, this is like how it looks like this is what you need to know if you’re about to embark on a transformation. So that’s a limited audience or you know, or like you’re writing a book about arthritis. I mean probably it’s going to be hard because how many people are interested in that now? There’s always an exception to every rule. So I’m sure people are thinking like, oh, but what about this book? But in general you want to be thinking about, is this a book that, that, that you could conceive of a lot of people reading it.

GR: (12:41)
Now the good news is, is that if you know the actual numbers of books that you have to sell to hit the New York Times bestseller list, say, or it’s tiny, you’re like, how is it possible? I mean, if you sold 15,000 books in the first week, it would be huge. It would be enormous. You would almost certainly hit the list depending on what else was on the list. Because part of it is the list changes. The number of books that you have to sell to get on the list depends on what the other books are and what list you’re on, fiction, nonfiction, self help, et cetera. It will be huge and you’re like, don’t even know 50,000 people in my own life. Like if everybody in my family and like one friend buys it, like, isn’t that like a lot? It’s like, no, it’s not.

GR: (13:20)
It’s hard. And like it’s a, you’re like, we live in a big gun tree. How is it possible? It’s really possible. So this is one of the reasons that you see so many writers these days pushing preorders because a preorder means that you can push and push and push well in advance and then every single book that’s sold in the preorder period hits that first week. It hits at one time. So for almost everyone unless you’re in an exceptional situation, which you can imagine what that would be your first week is when you would have the best chance because that’s when the PR preorders would land. So if I’ve had a hundred people preorder and then 15 people by this week and 15 people buy it next week, well I’m going to, I might hit the list this week because that’s when I have the total number. And also, you know, it is, it’s the, the, the list is not cumulative. The list is like what’s happening right now. And so you could sell over the long term, sell B, B, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. But kind of never get onto the list if it’s just like this slow burn over the long term. So part of it is kind of the weirdness of how the list is determined. It’s, it’s the, it’s the, I’m an Amazon. The Amazon list is the same way. It’s, it’s a acceleration, not absolute numbers.

RV: (14:40)
Yeah. And what would you say, so, so for, to help people understand this, the, you know, like you mentioned 15,000 would be a big, you know, that would be a, a very big launch week. Beyond that

GR: (14:53)
What do you think you have to, what do you have to sell every week typically to kind of land on the list? Would you say that’s very, very hard to determine because there’s a lot of secrecy. There’s no, there’s no transparency around the list. And I’ll suppose I said it really depends on what is on the list. So for instance if, let’s say you’re writing a, like, just like a regular nonfiction book, the Thall if you pay attention, because also one thing to remember is that the publishing the publishing world goes by cycles. And so certain books tend to be published at certain times. So it’s not like random distribution. So books that have to do with anything related to like New Year, new, you tend to be published in like the second half of December or early or very early January because they’re trying to get that new year, new media push and kind of this, you know, store things and people really do care about new year, new you like the like I have the happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast and we see a spike of our listeners at new years.

GR: (15:52)
And on my website and in my book sales, I see a spike because people are like the happiness project. It’s a year long project and how to be happier. It’s January, I feel like having a happier year. So and then, but then you see and in the fall is often a time for like what they would call like a big nonfiction book. So, you know, if there’s like a big, a biography of a political figure or a big political book or like a big work of you know, foreign policy or something like that, they often will come up. They’re trying to kind of set up for the Christmas season. So that’s a really competitive time. Like if you, if you’re selling on that list and then there’s the fiction list and nonfiction lists, then there’s I, what do they call it, like self-help advice, how to, yeah.

GR: (16:36)
On the, let’s say miscellaneous device, how to, yeah. So all those lists are different and depending on, and then, and then you could have a book that’s just like a giant, a giant a giant seller that is just dominating the list. I remember when my book happier at home came out. I, I was, you know, really wanted to stay on the list and Julia tiled, I think, I think Julia child had just died. And so there was this huge surge of interest, or maybe they had released a new edition of the joy of cooking or something. But anyway, there was this and I’m like, really? Todd was one of my spiritual masters so I’d be grudge nothing to Julia Child. But I was like, Dang it, she’s long gone from the scene and yet these taking a slot on this precious list, I would feel the child would like go below me.

GR: (17:20)
But there she was popping up in advance and you know, or something like that. A TV show will come out and like Marie Kondo show premieres on Netflix and now Marie Kondo is back on the list even though she’s been off the list for awhile. And so all these things come to play. You can’t control that. You can’t control what’s on the list, but what the numbers that they’re selling are going to affect how many books because the top, like the top 10 that’s only the top 10 selling. And so if somebody is in there who is selling more than you, but then you’re going to get pushed down, even if the number that you’ve sold would have meant that the previous few weeks you would have made it onto the list. And so there are always, there’s always people who are like in a different week I would have hit the list, but I was in this really super competitive list.

GR: (18:01)
And then it’s a whole thing too about like who publishes what date. So publishers will pay a lot of attention to like are comparable books coming out on the same date as you because they want to see if that’s going to affect the list. But I have to say really this affects very few writers. The fact is it’s extremely unusual at the New York Times bestseller list or the Wall Street Journal or the USA Today or any list. Not so unusual to had an Amazon like number one bestseller in a category. Cause there’s so many categories. But again, I wouldn’t get over focused on this if you’re, if you’re like, because I mean like I know a thousand writers, very few of them have had the New York Times bestseller list, even ones who won Pulitzer prizes and stuff like that. So

RV: (18:44)
Wow. Yeah.

GR: (18:45)
You know, it’s just, it’s hard because it’s a very certain kind of game. And as you said, there’s like certain kinds of books that tend to do better or have it, have it easier and not everybody wants to write that kind of book. And so it’s kind of like you can think about it but don’t get overly preoccupied with it because it’s not necessarily gonna be the right metric to keep you on track to being, you know, building the reputation and voice that you want to build and put out to the world.

RV: (19:18)
Well, and for most of our, our clients and, and even, you know, this was the case with, with us and it’s, it’s interesting like you talk about our second book, you know,

GR: (19:27)
W w

RV: (19:28)
With, with take the stairs, I think our, our best week was like 13,000 units or something huge. That’s, yeah. Which was, yeah. Which was, which was a big one. But then our second book we had, we had a couple of weeks at like 4,000 and missed and didn’t hit the list. And I was sort of, I was sort of surprised by that. But it, you know, it’s it, I think that’s the, the key thing too, like you say it’s, it’s not the ultimate metric and most of the people here, it’s like a book is a vehicle to speaking engagements or to selling their membership site or their coaching program or consulting or whatever. But so just ask you specifically though, because you’ve had so many books stay on for so long, is there anything special that you think you’re doing to do that or is it just kind of the combination of, you know, great writing and then engaging with your audience and you do a great job at this on social and then you know like having the podcast and your email list, I mean, is there, is there anything more to that or is it just kind of like you build for a long time and you put out consistent content to keep your audience?

RV: (20:33)
Like,

GR: (20:35)
I mean I wish I had some secret sauce, but it’s like you say is the long game. And I will often say to people who come to me for advice, I’ll be like, do you just want to write one book or maybe two books? And this is like, because you want it to support your speaking thing. Because if you’re doing that, then there’s certain ways to do things that will help you and then certain things you don’t have to bother with. But if you really want to make a career as a writer and like you see yourself writing six books, eight books, anyone you want to build and you want to build an audience and build an audience and there are other things that you would want to do which are going to be kind of a pain to set up and that are going to, are going gonna require kind of consistent maintenance, not huge maintenance.

GR: (21:13)
I think people would be surprised if they see what I do. Like I’ve built it up piece by piece over such a long period of time. I think it’s seems much more overwhelming that you would think that it actually is because I did it over so long. But like I started my blog in 2008, you know, and so so I think, I think you want to know what your aims are because your aims are different. That said, I would say that I believe that one of the most important things that a person can do is to create an email list. Email is the way to have a direct connection to your audience. Everyone else, everyone else is in your way. Facebook’s in your way. Instagram’s in your way. And by the way, Instagram is Facebook. Twitter is in your way. A Pinterest is in your way.

GR: (22:02)
A podcast is much more like an email because it’s going write it in there and there’s so much broad distribution of podcasts that’s more like sending someone an email because you’re giving it right to them. But the thing that’s great about email too is you know something about people. So you, if you have email, like I use convert kit for my email management like I can do geotargeting. So let’s say that I’m coming to speak, I’m doing an event in Boston. I can geotarget people in Boston. So I’m not spamming my whole audience with a mark with a message that’s not interesting to them. Whereas if you’re on Twitter, you know you’ve got to do that. You like you can’t be a specific and you know, Facebook and Instagram offers certain kinds of power and certain kinds of nuance and like those are fantastic tools.

GR: (22:50)
I’m not knocking them as tools, but email is what you have, you control. You don’t, no one’s ever going to charge you for getting well, I mean your, your email provider is going to charge you an, and that does get quite expensive, let me tell you. But it’s a direct connection. And with something like preorders you can start driving people to preorders early and you can say you know, and you can kind of explain to people why it matters because a lot of times people are like, oh, now that I know that it would really help worry out if I did it. Okay, I’ll go ahead and I’ll go ahead and Prereq or I don’t usually preorder it cause I don’t like, you know, it’s just like, then it’s just feels like, why am I doing this because, but but I get it, you know?

GR: (23:26)
And so I always say to people, even if it’s not clear to you what you’re going to do with people’s emails, just keep them in it like a spreadsheet somewhere. Just keep them, and then at some point, I guarantee you, you will be like, Dang it, I wish I had that email list. Oh boy, I do. I’ve been keeping that thing for two years. And then, and then you spam people, you GDPR compliant. Of course, you always say to people, I’m emailing with you because we’ve had some kind of contact before. Unsubscribe. I don’t want to, you know, spam you. But a lot of times people were like, oh, I’m interested, you know, or I’ll, or I’ll, I’ll stay, stick around and see if I’m interested. And then of course, it’s about providing value to people so that they do want to stick around.

GR: (24:09)
But like one thing that I did and then there’s other things you could do. One thing I did, which people had told me, I mean Kinda conventional wisdom told me to do this is have a quiz, like a quiz. People love taking quizzes and the problem is like, what’s your, your quiz is going to be. And I’m like, have you created and blah blah blah. Well, I had this book, the four tendencies and I created a quiz and, and a, it was super challenging. It seems like it’d be very easy to create a quiz. But like my thing, it’s actually four categories. Are you an upholder, a questioner? Obliger or rebel? And you can go take this quiz it, quiz dot Gretchen rubin.com if you want to. It’s free. 2 million people have taken the quiz now it’s great. And, but the thing that is really true, so it was very, very hard, very, very burdensome and went through many, many iterations.

GR: (24:56)
Both because I had to like make the thinking as crisp as possible because it’s easy to get somebody down to two tendencies. The problem is how do you have a question that will break out the four anyway, it was like melted my brain. And then you have to create it in a quiz form. It has to be pretty and it has to work and whatever gave people a little report. It’s not simple, but it really generated emails for me because I p I would give a report to people and they would be intrigued. And then I’d be like, if you want to learn more, you could sign up for my newsletter. And people would be like, okay, I’ll see what she has to do. And then I’m like, and then if you want to read the book, you can read the book. Or if you want to listen to the audio book, here’s a clip.

GR: (25:33)
Do you want to listen? Maybe you want to buy. So then I’m in a conversation and, and like, and at every point I’m like, I want to add value and I want to show people what I offer because if they want to go deeper, they can go deeper. So something like a quiz, if you can do it is great because that’s a way to pull people resources. Oh here’s a, here’s a like I did a, I love children’s literature. So I made this list of my 81 favorite works of children’s literature and young adult literature and everyone still on this like, Hey, if you love children’s literature, here’s a list. Or Hey it’s Christmas time. If you need a list, here’s the list. And people email me and I’m like, Hey, do you want to sign up for my newsletter? Or one thing that I have, I have like a regular newsletter with its, you know, my version of what a lot of kind of author newsletters are.

GR: (26:15)
And then I have something called the moment of happiness newsletter. I love quotations that I’ve been collecting quotations for my whole life. And so I thought, well I always am wanting to and whenever I write a book, like my editor makes me cut out like nine tenths of the quotations cause there’s just way to incantations. It’s like really kind of gums up the works. And I thought, well, I’ll have a way to put these out in the world. I’ll do a moment of happiness newsletter. It is such a joy to me to pick the five that are going to go out that week and like I check it and it’s like, oh, this is so fun for me. It’s a way to share beautiful content about created by other people. These are not my quizzes. These are other people’s quotations with links to books, which I hope people will be interested in instead of like maybe they’ll read and I think it’s value.

GR: (26:59)
I love quotations. I’m constantly doing stuff, reading, stuff like that. So it’s fun for me. It’s fun for my audience. It’s a kind of value and it’s also a way to engage and to create goodwill, to show myself as someone who’s willing to show shine a spotlight on others, not just constantly promoting myself, which is super annoying, but shining a spotlight on other work that I admire and, but it’s a way to remind people like, Hey, I’m here. Maybe you’d like to read my book at last. It’s been 10 years. You’re going on a long car trip. So guide by the audiobook, you know, or whatever.

RV: (27:36)
So yeah. Well I love that. So I wanted to, so going back to, so a couple of things that you’ve talked about there. So number one about the geo targeting you know, we built, we build a lot of the funnels for our clients and do like a [inaudible] and stuff and just for plan. Yeah, it can be complex and just for everybody to know convert kit is the only tool that I know of that does that Geo, it’s like an amazing feature where they’ll take the email address and do the geographic zip code. It’s one of the things that I love about them and it’s like, that’s, I don’t know if anyone else, you know, we use infusion soft and click funnels and you know, Kajabi and there’s all, you know, we’ve used several of them, but convert kits. The only one that I know of that does that, and I’ve always thought that was so brilliant. And I, it’s interesting to hear you say because if you’re doing book signings or any type of public events or you know, like if you’re a musician and you’re like doing, you know, any type of touring. Yeah, I love that. I did want to ask you about the quiz. Was there a was there like a tool that you finally used to help you, like deliver it where you could, you know, actually get your hand around all that? There’s a lot there.

GR: (28:47)
Okay. So here’s a beautiful story of how social media is really valuable and making allies, not competitors is valuable. Okay. So I used a company, a brilliant, amazing company with a fantastic team called a perio. How did I hook up with a perio? Okay. Back Up. And I was writing about habit formation and somehow online or somehow I connected with this guy near Ale e y a l who wrote a book called hooked, which is all about how technology can kind of detect us. And so since I was writing a book about habit formation, this was quite interesting to me, like how he thought about it. And somehow we started getting engaged with each other because we were interested in the same subject because I was out there putting my ideas out there. He was out there pudding and he self published his book cooked first and from that it did so well sell, published that.

GR: (29:38)
Then he got a book deal with a traditional publishing house and he’s a rebel if you know the four tendencies, he’s a rebel. He’s one of my kind of touched on rebels. And so anyway, so then he had a conference, he had this habit formation conference at Stanford and he’s like, hey, you’re writing about habit formation, would you like to come present at the conference? And I was like, well near yes I would like to come present at your conference. So presented this, talking about the four tendencies and this guy comes up to me and he’s like, this is amazing. I am absolutely fascinated by this. We think you should have a quiz. We could create that quiz for you and we’ll do it for you pro bono cause we’re just so interested in, whoa, it was amazing. And like they are like the breasts of perio.

GR: (30:19)
And the thing that was like, the story about it that I like is that it’s, it’s, it’s, you can’t predict where things are going to go. It’s sort of about putting stuff out there and showing up and being interested in being engaged. And and so I, I w I, I think eventually I probably would have gotten to the quiz. Just because it’s such obviously a quiz thing, like you’re one of four categories, which one are you, I mean it’s like, you know, perfect kind of thing. And then also it’s not like which friends character are you? It’s cause I argue that they really are distinct in a way that you can test and that is very predictive and also very stable and whatever. So the quiz, like it was possible to create that quiz. I just had to figure it, be creative and Effient imaginative enough to figure out how to do it and then have the squirt properly and everything.

GR: (31:10)
And so I d I didn’t have, cause I had them, I didn’t use a tool. I’m sure there are tools that you can use online that would help you create something like that. It’s not something that I learned how to do and mine did get quite complex by the end of it, like how we were waiting different things and stuff. But I think that there’s probably much easier ways to do simpler quizzes that would be probably in this regard, just as effective. Yeah. Just from a, from a, from a list building. Yes. People love it. People love it. Yeah. I was thinking, I mean I think people are totally like cool with what kind of breakfast cereal are you and they’re just as likely to take that and then that’s your opportunity to be like, Hey, I know you’ve got a big kick in my whimsical thing about breakfast cereal.

GR: (32:04)
I also, right. You know, in a more serious vein about blah, blah, blah. Maybe you’d be interested in checking the camp. My newsletter. You know, it’s just a touch. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a touch point. And you know, and obviously it’s going to be something that is going to be reflecting of your voice, your, your, your values, your interests, because you want to be attracting to people who are going to for whom your work will resonate. And you don’t want to just like be random. But I was actually thinking about another quiz and it’s fun to think about them, you know, it is really fun to think about them. So, you know, it’s not, it’s not an art. It might be difficult, but it’s not boring to do. That’s Super Fun. And

RV: (32:39)
That’s what a good, what a good reinforcement there. Another close friend of mine she’s actually in the summit is Sally Hogshead and, and she’s got 64 categories or something, right? 48, 49. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. And Yeah, she built her whole career on this assessment that just like, she just goes deeper and deeper with it. And so it’s amazing. So, so what I want, I want to get your, your thoughts on another thing. So you said one thing, I love this, you kind of said this earlier, it’s like a theme of just keep moving forward. Just keeping gauging, you know, do things like shine the spotlight cause you never know what it’s going to lead to. Yeah. One of the other things that I feel like you do really well is you’re in the media. Like, I mean I feel like you get these mainstream major media hits pretty often. Is there any like secret to that or like is that just a good publicist? Is that just cause your books have done so well? Like is that relationship building? Like what, what’s the, what’s the media like philosophy?

GR: (33:49)
I think it’s all those things. I do think that it gets a lot easier when you’re at a certain level because people will just give your book a look. You know, it’s always like the breaking through it. It’s always like, is this, is this going to come to someone’s attention? Are they going to give it a close look? One of the things, if you’re being published with a traditional publisher one of the kind of harsh truths, and I’ve been on both sides of this is, you know, they have like their lead titles and that means that in a certain, in a certain season, there are books that they like, or like this is a book that’s going to be big and then their books that they have a more modest expectations for. And then sometimes they’re surprised in books that they didn’t have big expectations for do better.

GR: (34:26)
Like I think the happiness project started out with pretty modest expectations. And then as we were getting closer and closer, they kind of started doing more and more like you know, publishing more and more copies and stuff. So I kind of switched and mid, mid stream. And so in terms of the publishers, publicists and stuff like that, and like the mainstream media gatekeepers, I mean, some of it is like, have they heard of you? And here’s something interesting that I think is I think increasingly these big mainstream media heads maybe don’t necessarily move books as much as you would think many people have said, like you can get on a today show. It doesn’t sell as many books as you think unless it’s just the right book for just the right audience. Or you can be on the front cover of the New York Times book review doesn’t sell as many books as you made there.

GR: (35:13)
A really big, like a big story on NPR that really does move books that seems to be like the thing that, but those are those kinds of books for those kinds of readers. But the thing about the gatekeepers is the gatekeeper. Like once you do it, then it’s easier to do it again because you’re like the kind of person who’s done the today show, you know, and now they look online and they can see everything that you’ve done. And there’s more likely to be a newspaper article about you if you’ve been on TV and you’re more likely to be on TV if there’s been a newspaper articles. So all these things build on each other. One thing I will say is about video. I had someone who was a book booker at one of the major networks tell me that they will not book an author if they cannot watch video of that person online because they’re like, somebody could be a brilliant author and just be such bad television that it just doesn’t work for me.

GR: (36:01)
I’m here to have good television and I just want to see it online and like, could I have this person come in and talk to me? That’s not realistic. I don’t have time for that. Like is that even possible? Like, no, I just want to look in line and see like see an interview with this person. I want to see this person talkie. So one of the things I think, and I know it’s like a huge pain, if you don’t automatically have this kind of clip you really want, even if it’s just something that you did yourself and post posted it on youtube, you need to have a clip where they can see how you speak, how you present yourself, how you present your ideas. Obviously you want to sound smart and interesting and funny and all that. Because I, she said it was a deal breaker.

RV: (36:39)
Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. That’s interesting. But so yeah and I that that’s funny that you say that cause that’s, I’ve, I feel like I hear the same thing and that’s been true for us. I remember the first time, the first time we were on national TV, this is probably 2012. It was like BookScan jumped a thousand that week beyond what we were averaging before. But then I think when we were back on national TV, it’s like 2016 or something. Just nothing. No, no clear delineation of any, any movement at all. But you know, it counts for so many other things. Credibility. And speaking.

GR: (37:16)
Oh well that’s exactly what I was going to say. There’s many ways for something to succeed. And you could be on x morning television show and think, well it didn’t do anything in my book sales, but now I’m going to get that much more money for my next speaking engagement because they’re like as seen on national television. And people like, well that sounds cool. You know what I mean? All these things build. And I think that, you know, it’s not that one thing is gonna be transformative. I think it’s rare that it’s like, one thing is just like blows up. We all know when it happens because you see that happen. Cause it’s so, you know, because that’s what you see. You see when it, it goes huge or it goes viral or something, you know, like rockets to the top. But there are a lot of things that, that don’t have that.

GR: (37:59)
But it’s still really, really worthwhile. It’s frustrating. I mean, one of the things, one of the reasons like going back to the email list or something it’s very frustrating when you feel completely helpless to do anything about your fate. And I had a book that did not succeed called 40 ways to look at JFK. And when your book is a huge flop, what they tell you is it did not find its audience. So that’s looked at that and I had this feeling like there’s nothing I can do. I can’t make them put me on TV. I can’t make them review this book in the newspaper. I can’t get myself to on a radio show. Like there’s nothing I can do. And I’m like, I want to have things that I can do even if they don’t work. I want to feel like there’s something I can do to try to connect with people who are interested in my subject because I think there are people out there and how do I even let them know that the book exists?

GR: (38:48)
Because maybe they would be interested in it, but how are they going to hear about it? And this was way back when. I mean now it’s way noisier than it was, but there’s so many more tools to reach people. And so these, these outlets are fantastic. I spent a lot of times thinking about them. I do cultivate relationships and you know but it’s good to have things that you could do on your own. One thing I would say something that I have done for years and years and years and I really started this I will say altruistically but it turned out to be like really good Karma in the kind of selfish way is for many, many years, I would post six days a week on my blog. Now I don’t, I now on my, my, the way that I approached my blog is changed because blogging has changed, but I prefer many, many, many, many years.

GR: (39:28)
I probe. So what are the things that I started doing then and I still do now is every Thursday I will, or Tuesday used to be I’ll run an interview with somebody. It’s an author and it’s like I have a standard set of questions that I ask them. And then I also say, you can, you can make up your own question. You can just pick and choose the ones you want. You can answer briefly, you can answer long whatever you want. And what’s lovely about this is that a lot of times people will be like, Oh, I have this book or my good friend has this book. Or I’m representing a person who has a book that I think you’d be really interested in. And it’s a very easy way for me to be like, I would love to help out that person. I’m a writer, I know how it is.

GR: (40:03)
I would love to shine a spotlight on something that I think is valuable and worthwhile. But there’s tons of books that I think are interesting and worthwhile. And so I’ve created kind of a systematic way to, for people to feel like if I can be helpful to them in the, in the nicest possible way. And it’s good to do things to build goodwill. And, and same thing like with social media and things like that. You don’t want to spend all your time. I’m sure you’re talking about this all the time. You don’t want to spend all this time talking about yourself, promoting yourself. And a lot of times people say, I don’t want to use these tools because I don’t want to just talk about myself all the time. Like you shouldn’t talk about yourself all the time. Shine a spotlight on other people’s work books that you admire, television shows that you are [inaudible] documentaries that you admire, performances that you admire that like people are very interested in what other people find valuable. And so find a spotlight on that and then you’re a good citizen of the universe. And also it makes you more valuable to someone and more interested in what you have to say about your own stuff.

RV: (41:02)
Yeah, I amen. I mean, I started our old podcast. So yeah, this is the start of our new one, but our old podcast, I started it because every week I had an author friend saying, Hey, I have a book coming out. Can you help me promote it? And I was like, okay, well why don’t we just like turn this into a thing? Yeah. How you and I met and then, you know. Absolutely. And then it’s like there’s certain people that we would connect to other podcasts because we ended up the podcast or doesn’t, it’s just like this is the coolest thing ever. It was like everybody is winning from this thing. Yes.

GR: (41:37)
So you want to have allies, not competitors. Other people who are writing in your space are not your competitors. They are your team. And they’re like with habits. I’m like, you’re already about habits. I’m writing about how we’re all writing about habits. We’re the habit team. It’s not like if you win, I lose. You really like this whole idea of abundance and everything, it’s really actually translates in real life that love that. Yeah. Yeah.

RV: (42:03)
That is just, I love that. I mean that, that’s going to be one of the pullout quotes from this for sure is that other people in your space are not your competitors. They are your team. That is just solid. So on that note, Gretchen, I mean you are, you are so fascinating. You’re so smart. Like I could literally talk to you as long as you could stay here, but I know that we need to probably land the plane. Maybe we can, we can pick this up against some time, but where do you want people to go? I mean, we’ll put a link to you mentioned quiz dot Gretchen rubin.com. So we’ll put a link to that. Is that in anything else, anywhere else you want people to go that to, to connect with you?

GR: (42:37)
Sure. I have my podcast I weekly podcast that I’d cohost with my sister who’s a craft who’s like a big fancy TV show runner in Hollywood and that’s called happier with Gretchen Rubin. And every week we talk about how to be happier spoiler alert. It’s very practical and concrete. And then I mentioned my, my blog, which I’ve kept my, now I call it a site cause a blog sounds a retro, but my site Gretchen rubin.com like I have so much material there about all different kinds of issues, happiness and habits in the four tendencies. And then I also have tons of resources, discussion guides. If you want to read an excerpt of a book or you want to listen to an excerpt, a clip of an audio book or you want a time tracker, you want a nutshell guy to look for tendencies or, I mean I got 81 favorite children’s books I got, I got so many Gretchen rubin.com/resources or you know, you can just go to the site and poke around. There’s, there’s a lot of stuffs there. Yeah,

RV: (43:31)
I love it. So the last little thing you, Gretchen, is if there’s somebody out there watching right now and they are the aspiring writer, and I really resonate with that, that feeling of helplessness and knowing what that is like, just like guys, I, you know, I just, I can’t get any, I can’t get anyone to polish my blog. I’m not in control of this. And you know, if there’s somebody out there who’s feeling a little bit of that helplessness but they, you know, they really believe they have a message and they, they want to get it out there. What would you say to that person?

GR: (44:01)
You know, I would say the most important thing is to get it into a form, whatever form it is that you are choosing to use out into the world. Because there’s a big difference between the person who has a vision in their head and a person who has something that’s been turned into something that other people can engage with. Because until it’s out in the world, even if it’s imperfect you really can’t move it forward. You can’t learn from it. You can’t build something. It. And I think a lot of people can get paralyzed thinking, I have to make all the right choices. I don’t know, should it be MailChimp or convert kit? I should have put all all my effort into Instagram or is it really going to be, you know, where’s the like or is this being Instagram store free? I don’t know.

GR: (44:47)
It’s sort of like, you know, don’t, it’s all the things that we say, don’t get it perfect. Get it going. Don’t let the perfect be the end of the enemy of the good, you know? Exactly. Action is the antidote for anxiety. Put it out in the world. One thing that’s great about all this stuff that we’re talking about is that you, you’re con, it’s constantly changing anyway. You couldn’t keep it the same even if you wanted to. And so it will be very natural for it to evolve as you are understanding of your own subject and your own voice evolve. And also as your understanding of the tools evolve, you can always switch. I wasn’t on ConvertKit, I had to move my whole list over. You know, sometimes these things are a pain, but you can do them. You can rebuild your website if you decide it’s wrong, you know you can start a whole new podcast if you, if you want to start a whole new podcast, I mean, it’s better to like get it out there and start working than it is to have it in your head and think like, if I can’t get it, if I, if I don’t know what to do, I just better wait.

GR: (45:44)
Because sometimes clarity comes through the doing and through the experiment and not, and I think even the creativity I find that sometimes I’m worried that I’m gonna use up my ideas or I’m gonna run out and I need to hold back ideas. But in fact, I find that the more I pour out, the faster, the faster and the faster I pour things out, the more everything fills up again.

RV: (46:05)
Love it. Well, thank you for your encouragement. Thank you for your wisdom. As always. Thank you for your research and your insight into human behavior. We love that. We’ll link up to all of that. Gretchen Rubin, Ladies and gentlemen, you’re awesome. I appreciate you so much.

GR: (46:19)
Oh, well thanks. It was so much fun to talk to you.

Ep 03: How to Get 11 Million Facebook Fans with Trent Shelton | Recap Episode

On this recap episode, we bring you all the highlights from our great conversation with former football player, Trent Shelton, who has gone from pro athlete to building an amazing personal brand with almost 11 million followers on Facebook! What stood out from our conversation with him is his authenticity and some of his best […]

Ep 02: How to Get 11 Million Facebook Fans with Trent Shelton

Welcome back to the show, everyone! Today we are so happy to welcome a wonderful guest, none other than Trent Shelton! A former professional football player, Trent’s life had a major pivot a few years ago and since then he has managed to build an amazing personal brand with almost 11 million followers on Facebook! […]