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Diversifying Your Writing Portfolio | John David Mann · The Daily Writer

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_04: Hey friends, welcome back to the Profitable Writer Podcast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_04: If you're new here, my name is Kent Sanders.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_04: I'm an author and ghostwriter, and this is the show that helps you grow your impact and income as a writer.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks for joining me for this episode of our Summer Expert series.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_04: You know, if you talk to any career writer, meaning people who have a full-time career doing this, especially people who have been at it for a while, you will discover something really interesting, and it's this.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_04: The vast majority of career writers do several different things.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_04: In my experience, most full-time writers do a mix of client work in addition to their own writing projects.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_04: And it doesn't matter what specific kinds of client work they do or what specific projects they create for themselves, the common element is that they have multiple streams of income.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_04: I look at it like this: their careers are like diamonds that sparkle from several angles.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_04: And each of those angles represents a different line of products or services.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_04: And that's certainly true of my guest today, who is John David Mann.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_04: John is the author, ghostwriter, or co-author of dozens of books in multiple genres, including personal development, business parables, military memoir, and thriller.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_04: His many titles include The Go Giver, co-authored with Bob Berg, and The Fenn Thriller series, co-authored with Brandon Webb, which is currently in development for a streaming series.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_04: Many of his books have also been New York Times bestsellers.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_04: Now, in this conversation, which was a guest expert session for my profitable writer membership, John shares how he has developed a multifaceted writing career that includes collaborations, courses, client work, and much more.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: I was really inspired by this conversation.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_04: And even though I've talked to John a lot of times over the past number of years, every single time I talk to him, I learn something new.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm inspired once again by all the cool things that we get to do as writers, especially if this is your part-time or full-time business.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_04: So I know you're going to love this conversation just as much as I did.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_04: Before I get into it though, I want to encourage you to check out John's writing and his work at johntavidman.com.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_04: And that's man with two ends, johndavidman.com.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_04: He has one of the very best email newsletters for writers.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_04: Seriously.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_04: I always read it.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_04: It's fantastic.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_04: I subscribe to a lot of stuff.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_04: And his is one of the few that I simply must stop and read whenever it drops in my inbox.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_04: So make sure and sign up on his website.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_04: And with that, here's our conversation.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_04: Everybody, welcome to the call today.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_04: Uh today's July the 2nd, 2025.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_04: And yes, I'm just in awe as you are that it's actually July and that it's not still March or April or maybe even May.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_04: This year has flown by.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_04: But hopefully, like you, I'm super excited about the back half of this year.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_04: The first half of this year was good, but I'm really, really excited about the second half of this year is also.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_04: And I hope that you are too.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_04: So one reason I'm excited is I've got my friend John David Mann as our guest expert today.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_04: So everybody say hi to John.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_04: Give him a big profitable writer welcome.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_04: Uh John, I'm super thrilled to have you as our guest expert today.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_04: So thanks for joining us.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_04: You're welcome.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_04: I'll try this without glasses.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_04: Just me.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: Let's see what happens.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: No, I've got to use them.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_04: We're a pretty chill group.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_04: This is pretty pretty relaxed, but um, I'm hoping that you guys came with some questions today.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so I want to do some QA toward the end of the call after basically we do kind of like an interview conversation type of a deal.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_04: Now I know that you guys all read, or I I hope that you read um the 6,000 emails that I send out with call descriptions and what's coming up and posting the Facebook group and all those things.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_04: But just as a little refresher for those who aren't familiar with John, who I would be shocked if I would be shocked if there's anybody on this call who has not come across something that John has had his hands on uh in his career because there's lots and lots of really cool things uh all over the map, uh, which is one of the things that I appreciate so much about John.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_04: Um so let me kind of share with you my official uh this is kind of a condensed bio of John in case you're not familiar with him.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_04: Uh John is an author, he's a ghostwriter and co-author of dozens of books in lots of different genres, including business parables, military memoir, personal development, and thrillers, just to name a few.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_04: Some of the titles that John is, I would say, most well known for is certainly The Go Giver, which he wrote with Bob Berg, I think back in 2008.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_04: Is that correct when that came out?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: Came out beginning of 2008, yeah.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_04: And you're gonna have a hard time coming across anybody in business or entrepreneurial circles who has not read and loved that book.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um on a completely different note, though, a completely different genre, he's written a series of thrillers with Brandon Webb, who's a military author.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_04: And I believe that is is that still in development for streaming, John?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_04: You mentioned a while back.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: It it is sitting in Hollywood in development, uh, which you know is Hollywood code for God knows what's gonna happen, but it's it's it's cleared hurdles.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's being shown to A-list actors.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: So yes, it will be coming to the TV screen near you sometime soon.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, I'm so excited.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_04: I cannot wait to see that.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_04: I truly can't.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_04: Uh John is a New York Times best-selling author many times over.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_04: Uh do you happen to know how many New York Times bestselling books you have?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_04: Oh gosh, hundreds.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_04: No, uh four.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, so four, that's that's a lot.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_04: I think that's a lot.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_04: So because most most people, most people, a, have never written a book but want to, and B, most people who write books never reach that status.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_04: So I think that's really, really cool.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_04: So the reason I've asked John to be on the call today is because he has a multifaceted writing career that that has extended to lots of different kinds of books in different genres and in different ways of writing, whether that's ghostwriting, uh, writing a book with his wife, uh, collaborating with people on all kinds of different things.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm really, really fascinated by John's career, and we've connected on podcasts and other kinds of things before, but I wanted to ask him to come on this call today just to walk through how he's built this career and some of the different things that he's done and uh what's in store for his future.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_04: So again, John, welcome.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_04: Hopefully that intro was not too confusing to people.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'll say again, pleasure to be here.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: I did a book, uh, a book tour for my last thriller a couple years ago and uh passed through your neck of the woods, and and Kent was just like it's this master of ceremonies for for my favorite book event of the summer.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: So it's uh pleasure to be back.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, well, thank you.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: Virtually.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_04: We actually a few days ago we were driving in the area and we drove past the restaurant that we took you and your wife to, and I said, Oh, we've got to go back there because that was so much fun.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_04: So lots of good memories.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um, maybe let's start here.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_04: And I've I've I sent you a lot of questions, John.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_04: We're probably not gonna get to all these because I'm full of questions all the time.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_04: Um, maybe let's start here.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_04: I'm curious about your journey of how you actually became a full-time writer.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm wondering if you can walk us through your career trajectory that led you up to that.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_04: Because I know you at least I don't think you started out your your career with becoming a full-time writer in mind, if I'm not mistaken, but I could be wrong about that.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: No, I did not.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: I there were there was never a moment, there was never a day when I stood up and said, I think I'll become a writer.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I and I know a lot of writers, I have a lot of friends who are writers who, ever since they were a kid, like that's what they wanted to do, to be a writer.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I never had that.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I I regret that.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: I wish I had had, I wish I could say I've almost wanted to do what I'm doing right now, but it I kind of fell into it backwards.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um I was a kid, I was an entrepreneur.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: I got involved in a lot of different things.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: I was very involved in the in the nutritional world and in the entrepreneurial world, and I got involved in uh a company selling all kinds of nutritional products and organic products.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: And um whatever circles I traveled in, I always seemed to be the guy who put together the newsletter or or edited the interview or put together the poster.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: I was kind of like go-to sort of janitor of words.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_02: And um at one point I got interested in I started a uh a journal.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: It was actually based on nutritional and environmental issues.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: I was writing about the climate crisis back in the 1970s, 1980s, and um a friend and I started this newspaper together.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: And the day the first issue came out, my friend moved away suddenly without any announcement.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: So it was like mine.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I had to run this thing.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I I loved it, and it developed into a national magazine.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: Curiously enough, it exploded so fast that it drove me into bankruptcy.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so we can talk about that on a different podcast of financial management, but but uh I had the writing bug, and really what it was, I started another magazine uh in in uh for business people, for entrepreneurs with another friend, and that evolved and evolved and evolved and still exists today.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I was the editor.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so the short answer to your question is I edited a lot of other people's stuff.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: For two decades, I edited other people's stuff, and I discovered that I had a certain um, I took a certain joy in taking a piece of writing that was frankly not very good, because a lot of the contributors to our various journals were not professional writers.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: They were business people, entrepreneurs, small, you know, small business owners who had great experience and were crap at writing, you know.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so I would get these these articles that were like, uh, we can't even print this, and turn it into something that worked.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because often there were good ideas in there that they were expressed terribly.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_02: So my school was two decades of editing other people's stuff.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_04: Interesting.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I still recommend it to all the writers that I coach with, is that I recommend you know editing is a great way to learn the skills because you're not emotionally attached to the content, it's not yours.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh just to finish out that paragraph, eventually it got to the point where some of our some of our uh columnists were wanted to write a book and they needed someone to help them put the book together.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: So editing, ghostwriting, I kind of sidled into that uh for the sake of authors who came our way.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_04: So that and thank you for that, by the way.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_04: I didn't realize that that you spent so much time editing before you really got into doing your own stuff.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_04: I could definitely see how that that's a huge part of your development.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_04: I remember now I had a much shorter stint.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_04: Uh back when I very first started doing client work about 10 years ago, I edited for this site called the Goodman Project.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_04: For a couple years.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_04: And that man, that was a really, really good experience.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_04: And you kind of there's a sense in which you you have to have things in your life that give you optimism because when you're editing other people's stuff, it kind of makes you lose faith in humanity a little bit.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_04: You know, because especially if it's really, really bad.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_04: You just I don't know how full-time editors do it.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_04: Like, you know, we've got Karen and Mike here on the call, and and Rick, you know, these guys are editors, and I'm going, Wow, that's you really have to have a lot of emotional resilience uh to do that, I think.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_02: I I you know, I used to it's funny.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: I used to uh I would read a novel and I would get to the end of the book and you'd read the acknowledgments, and the author would very often would write at the top say, I want to thank my editor who is like an angel sent from heaven to to you know that's true.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I we I would think it's an editor.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: How yeah, how how how big of a deal can this be?
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: Until I was writing novels and got and got my own editor.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, oh, really?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: This woman was like an angel from heaven who took my stuff and just helped me make it so much better.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: And what I didn't realize was that I editors, in my experience, anyways, editors don't make my stuff better, they help me make my stuff better.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they help point out things that I need to do.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: They don't do them, and if they ever try to rewrite them, they're typically not great writers, although they they might be.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but but often they're not, but that but they're great notices, noticers, observers, strategists of the language.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so yeah, I am eternally grateful to my editors.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_04: I would love to dive into collaborations for a little bit because this is uh I feel like this has been a real hallmark of your career as a writer because you've done a lot of ghostwriting, a lot of collaborating with others.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm I'm super curious.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_04: Uh maybe this is kind of a two-part question.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_04: How did you first get into collaborating with other people as opposed to doing what most people do, which is kind of just starting out doing their own books?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_04: And then what what role do you think that that has played in your overall career?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_04: Just this whole because I think that you're really known as a collaborator.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_04: At least when I when I think of and you know that there are some collaborators slash ghostwriters slash co-authors who really um this might just be my perception, but I think some people rise to the level, like an elite number of people rise to the level where when you see that their name is attached to a book, you automatically know it's gonna be really, really high quality.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_04: And I feel like you're one of those people, truly, because it doesn't matter what the book is, what genre it is.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_04: I've got all kinds of your of your books in my home office.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um it doesn't matter what the book is, I know it's gonna be really, really good because your name is attached to it.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm curious if you can kind of walk us on that journey of how you got into collaborating with people and what role that that has played in your career.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: It may you're absolutely right.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: It has been central to my career.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's um uh there was a point.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'll get to that point in a sec, but of the 40 plus books that I've published, uh, you know, 39 plus, 38, I don't know, most of them have been collaborations.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: I am co-author.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there are there are very few books on which I'm the sole author.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, this is something that in in in this late stage of my life, I aim to change, by the way.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: I'm working on a novel of my own.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm putting out yeah, I'm putting out another book of my own uh on how to write uh later this year or early next year.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: But but mostly it's been collaborations.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: So it started as I described, you know, there would be people like when I was working at the the magazine, there was a kid named Cameron Johnson who was 19 years old, and he had started 12 businesses by the time he he graduated high school and earned his first million.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: He was an extraordinary youth entrepreneur.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: And when I I was I was it was my job to interview him for a c for a story for the magazine.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I I read his bio.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: I thought he's gonna be like some kind of snooty, snobby, stuck up kid.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: And he was delightful.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: He was the sweetest, most wholesome, most wonderful kid.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: I just fell in like with him.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I said to him in our interview, I said, you know, uh you should your book your your story should be a book.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so a year later, you know, we kept talking about it and we did the book.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I it was ghostwritten.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: And my name's on the I think my name's in the cover, it's in there somewhere, but it's like it's I wrote, I wrote his story.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: And uh a bunch of other people that I met through having edited articles by them, I ended up writing books that they wanted to write, but they knew they didn't have the chops to write them well.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, one called The Secret Language of Money with a guy who was a collaborator.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I I uh helped Bob Berg, who was a columnist in our journal a couple times.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: I edited one of his editions of his book, Endless Referrals, which was the book he was best known for at the time, nonfiction, how to you know, how to be a great salesperson.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: And um, so and Bob used to go around saying, John Mann makes my stuff better than writes my stuff better than I write my stuff.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: That was I think he and uh he approached me one day with an idea.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he wanted to write a parable, and it was going to be called The Go Giver.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: He had the title, he had the premise, kind of the concept, but he said, I can't begin to write this book.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: This is not, I write methodical how-to books.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: This has got to have you know the soul of a novel.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: I can't do this.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't want you to edit it.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: I want you to write it.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_02: I want to do it with you, and I'll make you a deal.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: You write the book, I'll market it, I'll promote it.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Shake.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we never actually did have a contract.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: Bob and I never had a contract.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: This is very bad.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: Don't do what I do.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm really shocked by that.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: I know it is shocking.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: We had a contract with the publisher, we had a contract with our agent, but we never had one with each other.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: We just said 50-50.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: And uh that's what we did.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: And my business, I kind of uh decided on a business model.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: I got to that point, I decided here's how I want this to work.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna partner up with people like Bob who know how to market their book and know how to promote their book, or who have a big audience, have a platform, and but they can't write the book.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'll write the book.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's my business model.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'll go in with people 50-50.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: And mostly, this is what I've done since then, with with lots of exceptions, but mostly my contract is my deal is we go in 50-50.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_02: I don't get an advance, I don't get a fee, I don't, I just I just plunge into the risk with you 50-50.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: We write the book and then try to sell it, and I get half of everything royalties, licensing rights, whatever, whatever, whatever.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's a it's a 50-50 partnership.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's changed, but mostly my goal, talk about profitable.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: My my my economic model was I was young, and I would rather invest in this book for the long-term residual and forego the upfront fee.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: So if I had a choice between saying you pay me$50,000 and I'll write a book and the book is yours, or you pay me nothing, you and I will write a book together, and then we'll split whatever happens$50-50, I'd go with the second path because that to me held the promise of long-term residual.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to build up a stable of books that would be paying me forever.
• 18:06
  unknown: Okay.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_02: It also meant that I participated 50-50 in the risk.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: What if we write the book and we can't sell it and we never earn a dime?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: I just spent six months or nine months of my life and earned zip.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I have done that half a dozen ten times, a a bunch of times.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um but anyway, with w in in Bob's case, you know, we wrote the book and we we got it, we got a two-book deal, we got a three-book deal, and uh it has worked.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that's been that's been pretty much my model.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Since then, since you brought up the ghostwriter to I have I have uh ghostwritten in the sense of I'm invisible in the book.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh, in some cases my name isn't even in the book.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_02: I've done that sometimes.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: The benefits that I get from that are just two.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: One is uh I get paid, and two is it's kind of it's gonna sound terrible to say this, good practice.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's like I I get you know, I I'm in another person's skin in their life experience, and I can I I know I'm sharpening my skills, I'm sharpening my pencils.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I'll be honest, it's not nearly as satisfying for me as a book where I can like a goalgiver.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: The goalgiver is 50% of its DNA is Bob's and 50% of its DNA is mine, because I was teaching leadership and sales management and stuff.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: So I it's all big, you know, two two guys mixed in a barrel.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um and the same with the thrillers.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Brandon is the military guy who's on the cover, but I write every word of the book.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's like I make up these characters, I make I write these action scenes, I make up this world.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the books where I get to stretch out my, you know, my arms and and my wings and and jump in fully as a as a creative author, and my name's on it, and uh I get to take you know to talk to people in the world about it.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's those are the ones that are more satisfying for me.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: But I've done the whole gamut from invisible to visible, and it it all you know it all works.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_04: It does seem like with the writers who are really successful in whatever they're doing, whether they are an editor, um, and I would put designers in this category, whether they are ghostwriting, whether they're out front, whatever it is that that people are doing, it seems like a big key to success is figuring out what really what really lights you up and leaning into that.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_04: You know, like you said, uh with Bob, you were looking for somebody who was going to be kind of the front-facing person.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_04: So you could do your thing, he could do his thing.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_04: And that seems to been that seems to be a formula that's really worked for you over the years where you are leaning into the things that give you joy, that help you find purpose, that are really fun for you, and you're kind of mostly avoiding the things that you don't want to do, and that's and collaborating with people seems to be a good way to do that.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_04: And maybe that's good career advice overall is lean into the things that you're good at and that you enjoy.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_04: Don't try to be a writer who is doing something that isn't in alignment with how you're wired.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm gonna uh reply with a resounding yes and no.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so yes in a way, and and also there's there's a deviation from that for me that has that has happened.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: So, first off, for sure.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think in one of your questions, you asked something about how do you choose projects, and you know, there's often a question of how do you I've got I've got to the place maybe 15 years ago or so when I was getting more people who wanted to do projects with me than I could do, which is a great place to be.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: And um I uh in other words, I started to be able to turn down projects.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: And um I really quickly found that even before that I found that projects that showed good mark good commercial, you know.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Promise that were engaging and interesting, but I didn't have a click with the person.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's like there was something about our values that didn't align.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: If I would try to do that, it would not end well.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I I did.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: I worked on with on a couple of books.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_02: I worked on a book with uh a guy that was just was the heir of Ogmandino, the the sort of the was meant to be the heir apparent book of the Og books.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: And the guy was had a very prominent standing in the Aug organization.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: He was he was uh this promise to be perfect, you know, just up my alley.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I worked on it for six months, and then I I fired him.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um because it he was not he was doing things that I wasn't happy with.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: And um sometimes I've been fired, sometimes I've I've done the firing, but uh every project that I've entered into where there were little warning bells in the back of my head or little pink flags, every one of them is blown up.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_04: Interesting.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: But the way I the reason I said yes and no was that it's it's something that's that's happened for me is this.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_02: You remember my original deal with Bob, you do the promotion, I'll do the writing.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I have gone out of my way to select co-authors who had a real handle on the marketing and promotion of their stuff.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_02: They were great speakers like Dan Burris, who is amazing as one of the highest paid speakers in the world, or Brandon, who owns a media company, and so forth.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um the idea being, ah, I don't have to mess with that nasty marketing promotion stuff.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: I can just do the ah word stuff and let them take care of that nasty part.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: And and that has really not worked.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: It worked with Bob beautifully.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: It worked with Dan Burris, it worked with David Bach, who is just like just like the perfect collaborator.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but mostly it hasn't worked because I've had a lot of disappointments where my co-author didn't pull their weight on the marketing side, didn't deliver results.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: And what I've I've come to in the last decade is you know what?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: That nasty, ugly marketing side, A, it's not really nasty, it's not really ugly.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: And also, B, I need to do that.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: I need to know how that works, I need to understand that.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I have friends who will say, I just write the novels, I don't want anything to do with the marketing with them.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: God bless them, I wish them the best.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't think for most writers that's a practical path.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: I know that it hasn't worked for me, it has worked inconsistently for me.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: So the last couple years I've been putting a lot of energy into trying to understand how how books make their successful way in the world and how I can do that myself without relying on a collaborator.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_04: So that's that's a great jumping off point, actually, to my next question, just talking about marketing and being more visible.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_04: So you mentioned a little bit ago you have four New York Times bestsellers with your name on it.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_04: How has be and I'm asking this question because there's a lot of mystique around not just being a bestseller, but a New York Times bestseller, which trumps every other bestselling title out there by a long shot.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_04: And I'm curious how that has impacted your career or has it impacted your career?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: I've heard people talk about how, okay, I got on the list and it didn't really do anything for my career.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_04: Other people talk about it as if it's it's really something that has helped them a lot.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_04: I'm curious what your perspective on that is and what your experience is.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, um, so yes, a couple of things that are maybe a little contradictory about that.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, the first thing is by the way, you said four books with my name on it.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: One of those New York Times bestsellers displayed my new book.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, okay, okay.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's called The Answer uh uh by John Assaroff.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: John Aseroff, very well-known mine guy and and and Murray Smith.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think my name is in there anywhere, but I wrote that anyway.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: I got paid for it.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: But I didn't get royalties, I got a fee.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_04: Man, dunk on it.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_04: And you don't know anyway.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_04: It's like you always have to decide, you know.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: Suzanne Summers did did a uh a blurb on it and said, This is the best explanation of the of the law of attraction that I've ever read.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I want to say, Suzanne Summers said this about me.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: Like, you know, three's company.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't say it because my name wasn't on the book.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um we were not allowed to watch that when I was a kid.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_04: My mom thought it was too risque.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, your mom was right.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, she was.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Really?
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: Shame on you.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: Can't um so uh has it made a difference?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I don't know if it's a difference that I could measure or meter, but to have in a bio, whether it's a paragraph or a line, New York Times best-selling author of definitely makes people take you more seriously.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_02: It is a credential that I think has value.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I'll also say so does Wall Street best-selling, Wall Street Journal, best-selling author, da da da.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh, USA Today best-selling author, da-da-da, and so forth.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: There are a handful of best-selling uh uh categories that still carry some weight, I think, and are and are worthwhile credentials.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's like having won an Olympics or having got an Academy Award or and um so that's the first thing.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_02: The second thing is uh it's a really funky goal, or it's a really funky title to have as a as a career goal, because trying to be a New York Times bestselling author is absolutely an exercise in frustration.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I I I co-wrote or I ghostwrote the book The The Slight Edge.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: Great book, which is probably my second best known after the Go Giver.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh, and you know, nobody knows that I read that my name is somewhere buried in the title page.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: People never read title pages, it's worthless.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um But uh Jeff Olsen, who is the who is my collaborator, my my my named author, he went to um oh gosh, what's the big uh uh big hybrid?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: Greenleaf.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: He went to Greenleaf, which is like the sort of the gold standard of of hybrid publishers, vanity publishers is what they are.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: And um, you know, you pay them 25 grand or 30 grand or whatever it is, and they absolutely promised they'd do this campaign that would get them New York Times bestselling, and it didn't, didn't work.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and he was so frustrated because he put out all this money to get that badge.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: He didn't get the badge.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: He got USA Today, and that's gonna have to do, Jeff.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: But uh, it's really frustrating to try to get to be on that list.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it almost has to happen.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's not frustrating to try to get to be very well read.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it makes sense to to make efforts to get lots of readers, to get broad circulation, to make a big impact, maybe to have a big impact in week one and month one to create buzz and word of mouth.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's all these strategies are really, really worthwhile.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: But whether or not they land you on the New York Times list is such a crapshoot that um that I don't recommend anybody.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: I my attitude about it is you we should be thrilled that we get it, but not hang our hopes on it, because then you could you know go to your grave at the age of 99 saying, damn, I never got that NYP.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um also, by the way, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, a lot of the others, they are much more straightforward in uh in how they measure.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: They don't have this, you know, Colonel Sanders secret recipe that New York Times does.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: And New York Times is very subjective, by the way.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: Brandon and I put out a book called Among Heroes, which by its numbers blew away in its first week a number of other books that landed on the list.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: But um people at the Times happened to be a little ticked off at Navy SEALs, at an expose that was going on at the time about what was happening in the Navy SEAL world, which Brandon had had a part in blowing the whistle on.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: He wasn't a part of the bad stuff, but you know, for purely political reasons, uh they didn't like us.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: So you don't get the list.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_04: Which you just you just kind of go, how does the how does the most well-known bestseller list in the world how did it get that way in spite of the fact that it is at least partially editorial?
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_04: You know, it's just sort of random and it's not really a numbers-driven thing.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know how that's the case.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not saying it should be that way, it just is that way.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: It just is just a fact.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way, Los Angeles Time, Los Angeles Times bestseller list, valid.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: And there are you know a handful, half a dozen or a dozen other lists that are worth citing.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the bad news is if you hit number one in an Amazon category, my own belief is you are better served not mentioning it than touting it.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um some people will be impressed, Amazon bestseller will be impressed with that.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of people in in the certainly in the literary world will be the opposite of impressed.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um they'll be kind of like, oh, I can't believe they did that.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because Amazon bestsell, and there are courses you can spend a lot of money on that will that will promise to deliver you an Amazon bestseller and you'll deliver because you can maneuver it so that they update the list every hour so that for a one-hour window, they you your book gets pushed to the top of some sub-sub subcategory.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, like how to boost self-esteem for one-armed window washers, or I don't know what, you know, uh Lithuanian garden care.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_02: And uh probably some of you have Amazon bestsellers, and I've been in an Amazon bestseller list, uh, and and so it's like it's nothing to be ashamed of, but but it's doesn't have a lot of value as a credential, is my point.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um so I probably said more about that than we need, but no, I I love it.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_04: That's enormously helpful, especially coming from you who's been on the list, but but there's some kind of caveats with that.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_04: But all things being equal, it's better to have the title than not have the title.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: It is, and um, and a bestseller list title is first of all, people bandy about the word bestseller like crazy.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it just it blows my mind.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I've been introduced as you know, John Mann, co-author of the of the New York Times bestseller of the Go Giver.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I was just introduced last night as the number one New York Times bestseller, John Mann.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, first of all, I've never been the number one New York Times bestseller.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I I've been way down on the list somewhere.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: Number two, the go-giver was never on the New York Times bestseller list.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: It sold over a million copies, but never in a single week.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: So it never got on the list.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um and my only point is people throw these terms around.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's very loose with them.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: They say it's a best-selling book, best-selling book, best-selling book.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't mean anything anymore.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: Unless it's the Los Angeles Times best-selling, or it's the USA today, is one of those things that are that are you know uh recognized as a as a certifiable credential.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: Last thing I want to say about that is having a best-seller cred is is handy.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't have almighty power, it's not going to boost your career in an incredible way, but it's it's it's useful.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: In the same vein, um, having a great blurb by somebody pretty famous is is uh can be valuable, can be it's worth pursuing, it's absolutely worth pursuing.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: It won't make the book a success.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's like just having having Lee Child on the cover of this of Steel Fear, my first novel, was such a coup.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_02: I I almost couldn't talk for a day when I found out that he was doing that.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and it's still a really, really valuable piece of of the credential for Steel Fear.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: But that alone doesn't, you know, make your book sell 10,000 copies or a hundred thousand copies or a million copies.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't even make your book sell a thousand copies.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: It just makes people notice you more, it just gives the gives the thing more stature and more credibility.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: But none of those things actually move more books.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's important to know because hey, we make our living by selling books.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's how that's how it works.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_04: So I have a couple more questions, then I'd love to get into some some QA.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_04: So we have a lot of people on this call who do various kinds of things.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_04: Not everybody on this call or who will listen to this on the podcast later, not everybody is a ghostwriter or is interested in ghostwriting, but most of the people who are part-time or full-time writers that I know, they do a variety of things, whether it's and it's usually some combination of they have their own books, maybe some courses and email list, but then they're also doing some kind of client work like editing or ghostwriting or collaborating or developmental editing or whatever it is.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm curious, John, when when people are thinking about their careers and what kinds of things they want to build, do you have any advice for people who are trying to figure out where do I put my time?
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_04: I've got my own stuff over here that I'm doing that has my name on it.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_04: I've got client work over here, I've got all these things that I could be doing.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_04: How do I figure out what the highest and best use of my time is?
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_04: And maybe where do I want to go with all this?
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_04: And maybe that's an unanswerable question because it depends on the person.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: But if you have any thoughts on that, I don't think it's unanswerable though, because so to me, there are kind of as a writer, um, you know, and we all know this, right?
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: Being a writer isn't like many other professions where you can just get hired and you know what you're gonna earn.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um uh being a writer is being an entrepreneur, unless you're a salaried staff writer for a magazine or you have some kind of salary, which is which is fairly rare.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_02: But mostly we are entrepreneurs.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: So the definition of an entrepreneur is you make your own, you make your own success, you make your own business.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so to me, that's kind of a two-part thing.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I would say the first thing that makes sense to do is to play around with the various possibilities and and decide, feel out which one area, if it were going swimmingly, if that supported me totally financially, if I did just that, would I be thrilled?
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_02: Would I be fulfilled?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: Would I be satisfied?
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_02: Would I be happy?
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I of course that's different for everybody.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, for me, I can tell you that that would be being a novelist.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know that until a few years ago.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: But that's that's like my most satisfying experience as a writer.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: But for others, it could be um, you know, having my nonfiction book uh uh, you know, represent the thing that I do when I when I consult or teach.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_02: Or it could be having two clients a year spend six months with each, and I get to learn something different every every six months, and I become an expert in many things, and nobody ever knows my name, but it it supports me handily and I have a blast doing it.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: It could be many things, but you figure out what's the thing that if it worked would make you happy, and then put you know, put that in the center of your desk.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then if that doesn't totally support you financially today, which for most of us the answer is no, uh for many of us the answer is no, for me the answer is no, uh, then figure out okay, what can I practically do to fit her on the side that's gonna that's gonna support my life and and push in the direction of doing that.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I hardly know any successful novelists, nonfiction authors, who live on the income of their books and don't do anything else.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, one of my favorite living novelists is uh Lou Burney, University of Oklahoma, who last year he wrote his book last year, Dark Ride was my favorite book of the year.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: My God, what a stunning novel.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um he wrote a couple years back November Road, which was on best book of the decade lists all over the country.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: Lou Burney teaches English in college, he teaches writing in college.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um and he loves it.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's what he it's it's what supports him month in, month out because his books are like shh, it's feast or famine.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_04: Um that makes sense.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: Although probably now at this point he's he's doing really with novels, but it w only a couple years ago he was just like nothing with novels.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um so yeah, I don't I don't think people ask me often, can you can you make a living writing books?
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: And my answer is usually something like you can aspire to that, and it is possible, but the smart move is to meanwhile have something else that allows you to practice your writing, but also puts you know bread in the larder.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: And that might be editing other people's stuff, it might be ghostwriting, it might be taking on clients, it might be writing marketing material, it might be.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: I have a coaching program for aspiring authors right now, and I'm developing that as kind of my my teaching and economic machine.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I have a blast and I learned so much from it.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: But the the impetus for it originally was I want to I want to help other writers get good or at least gooder, and also uh I I would like to pay my electric bill when I a year I don't have a novel coming out.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_04: I'm always surprised when I when I come across authors whose books I really love and who are really, really well known with their own stuff, but then I find out that they ghostwrote some somebody else's stuff.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_04: And I always think that's so much fun.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_04: Like uh there was an author who, and maybe he doesn't he probably doesn't want me sharing this, but I happen to figure to find out through like a third party.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_04: So this guy's a super well-known novelist um in a certain genre, and I found out that he ghostwrote somebody else's uh a book, like a nonfiction book for somebody else.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_04: And I was like, I had no idea they did that.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_04: And like one of the people that I follow is Ryan Holiday, does the Daily Stoic and a bunch of other stuff.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_04: He still goes to he still ghostwrites.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_04: I actually emailed him last year.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_04: I did not know that, and um he he he ghostwrites about a book a book every year or two for people, and so I emailed him and I said, I'm just super curious.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_04: He always responds to personal emails, which blows me away.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_04: I said, I'm just super curious.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_04: Why do you, with all of your success, I'm curious why you still ghost track for people?
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, and he replied back and just said, When something interests me, I do it.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_04: And I just thought that was the coolest thing in the world because here you have somebody who's at the top of the literary world, you know, but yet they still do client work just for the heck of it because they're amazing.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm working on a parable right now, and it's funny because I have a um a guy, uh Bob Berg had a friend, and he told me this guy wants to talk to you about writing a book.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Well, I'm not writing books for other people anymore.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Yeah, I know that.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_02: I told him that he still wants to talk to you.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: So he's a lawyer.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so he got on the phone with me and and he said, uh he told me all about what he wanted to do.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Hey, listen, I'm sorry, I gotta tell you, I appreciate this.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_02: Sounds great, but I'm not writing other people's books.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_02: The only thing I'm doing right now is writing my own novels and parables.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Well, that's funny because a parable is exactly what I wanted to do.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: I still don't know to this day if that's true or if he just made that up on the spot.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: But he was so persuasive and the and the story was so interesting.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_02: I wrote this, I wrote the thing.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it's it's in production right now.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: And then he he uh called me about six months ago and said, I got I got a friend who's a lawyer, he wants to talk to you about a book.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, No, no, I'm really not doing it anymore.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_02: He said, Can we just pitch you our idea?
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Of course you can pitch me our idea, but I'm gonna say no.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: And they got me on the phone, and I couldn't not write that book.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's so interesting.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm in I'm starting that book now.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: I I told my wife, I'll never do this again.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm doing it again.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_04: Until the next time.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so there you go.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: You know, Chris Pavone, this book, The Dorman, that is so huge right now.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: Anybody seen this book?
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's in the last month or so, it's been one of the huge, huge novels out there, The Dorman.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh takes place in New York City.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: Chris Pavone, enormously successful author.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: By the way, his Substack newsletter, which he just started, it's only like two or three issues, is really worth following.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's called A Working Novelist.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: And he talks about the business of the business of uh being a novelist.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's a great, great book.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: He started out for for years and years and years ghostwriting.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I worked on that.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I didn't either until I read his biography, his bio.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_04: I will I'll get his book and uh I'll probably invite him on the podcast or something.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_04: It's a Tour de Force.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_04: That sounds fun.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_04: I appreciate that.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um, one more quick question, and then I want to do some QA.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_04: I'm curious what other so John, you mentioned your uh your coaching program.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_04: I'd love for you to share about that, as well as any courses that you have active right now and your email list, because I think you have one of the best email newsletters on writing out there, truly.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_04: There's I subscribe to a lot of stuff.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_04: There's only three or four people's emails that I always stop and read.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Steven Pressfield is another one that I always read his stuff no matter what.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_04: I stop and do it, just read it.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yours is another one because it's just so good and you put so much love and care into it.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_04: So I'm curious if you can just share with us uh about your offerings, email newsletter, where people can sign up, and then we'll do some QA.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if I can if I can thank you, first of all, and if I can uh I love it when I hear that somebody likes my newsletter.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_02: I do, I truly do.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have a huge list.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um I have I aspire for it to be hugger, but it but it ain't.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's just what it is.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um at this time, it's growing.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh, I want to back into that with just a thing about promoting books.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I spent a lot of energy trying to become bigger on social media, trying to have a bigger presence, a bigger footprint.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: And it was just an exercise in frustration.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: And uh somebody, I don't remember who, some teacher of social media said if if you uh if you already have a huge following, then you already have it.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: And if you don't already have a huge following, you're not gonna get one, so don't bother.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: And it expresses my my experience of social media.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_02: Social media followings are a a deadly trap because social media followers are by and large not book buyers.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um Brandon Webb has over a million followers on social media.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_02: They have not bought the book, by and large.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's crazy.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: That blows me away.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: People on social media click.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: They like, they like and they click and maybe they comment.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: Which, you know, not even in English, but just a few words.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: And that's not to denigrate them.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: I do it too.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_02: I click on things I like, but I happen to buy books that look interesting because I'm a reader, but most people don't buy books from social media.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um organic posts.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: Ads is a different thing.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um advertising on social media is a whole kind of arcane topic in its own.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: It can be worthwhile, but it can also be expensive, and you have to really know what you're doing.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: To me, this the single most powerful, effective pathway to promoting a book, to building a readership for your book, is to cultivate and curate your email list, is to uh develop a sphere of connection, a sphere of followers, of readers with people in your email group, and to connect with them.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: Most newsletters, like you mentioned, newsletters, they're not newsletters, there's no news in them.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: What that really is, is they're kind of like a monthly or weekly love letter to your readers, or it's correspondence.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's like having a pen pal, but there's a few thousand of them.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that is the single most effective.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_02: I would rather have a hundred devoted followers in my email list than 10,000 followers on Instagram.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because I'll sell more books that way and they'll tell more people.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_02: Now, you can't probably make an effective career just on your email list.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_02: You have to supplement that.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: But that's to me, that's like de rigueur.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: Any author who wants to build a readership gotta have a simple website, author website, and a and an email list and a newsletter of some regul some consistent regularity.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_02: TikTok is probably the exception to the rule because book talk is a really, really big thing.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't seem to work for every genre.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: I've I'm not even on TikTok, but it's worked for some people.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_02: But um I think that email lists and newsletters are just so, so important as you know, central activities for authors.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's the base upon which you build everything else to effectively promote a book.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_02: So uh having said that, thank you for mentioning the newsletters.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's called Man's Search for Meaning.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's two ends in the man.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_04: And what what is your what's the URL of your website for those who don't know?
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_04: It's John David Mann, johndavidman.com.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_04: Are you still giving away I I could find this out in two seconds, but I'll just ask here, are you still giving away one of your you have a couple of books on writing.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_04: Are are those still your lead magnets?
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_04: Or is it something?
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: I stopped I have this, I have this book called How to Write Good, or at least Gooder.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: And um I put it out a couple years ago.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: It was really popular, but I put it up privately just through my email list.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: It was the premium for for getting on the list.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: And January 1st this year I I pulled it out again because I'm gonna rework that book, enlarge it, and actually publish it.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_04: Oh good.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_04: Finally, I've been waiting for you to publish this for a long time.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_02: So now the the the the premium you get for joining the list is just is the newsletter itself.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_04: It's just I'm excited to buy a print copy of that.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_04: I'm still a print, uh I mean, I love ebooks, audiobooks, but I'm still the print book nerd.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, yeah.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_04: That's exciting.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_04: Uh well, let's do some QA.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um, who's got a question for for John on writing, publishing, anything that we've talked about here today?
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_04: Gotta go look at the chat, shouldn't I?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Lynn, go ahead.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, hi John.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: I I was jumping in late because I had a client earlier, but um I was just wondering, your name looks really familiar.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: Are you on Substack?
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because I thought I saw one of your your something on Substack with your name on it.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_02: I see that thing in the chat too.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, um, I'm a late comer to Substack and I'm I'm on it and I love it.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's a really great environment.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's probably the best currently environment for writers.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm going to move my my own newsletter from uh from just being an email newsletter, move it to Substack sometime in the next six months.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of a uh complicated operation, but yeah, I'm that's where I'm going.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I really love Substack.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's great.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought I saw I thought I thought I saw you on there, so I'll make sure I follow you.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'm there.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: I think I've like I I've reposted like three things or something and liked two things, and that's like all I've done so far.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: If you join me, you'll be among the first five.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_02: People follow me, follow my nothingness.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, and you said you used convert kit for my email.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, convert kit, mailchimp, all of them, they're they're all great, they're all good.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and it just the whole the whole I'm gonna say science, I probably shouldn't use that word, but it the whole science of managing your email list and curating it is uh is like worth worth the study, a whole thing unto itself.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Dixie, you mentioned Tom.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_02: Tom Ruich, yeah, he he's he knows a thing or two about that.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's something that I knew I really knew nothing about a year ago.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um I just kind of started self self-teaching, but it's it's worth it's worth the effort, that email list.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_04: John, you and Dixie know each other, correct?
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, going way back.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, that that's what I thought.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_04: I I wanted to mention that uh because Dixie's is joining us here on the call today.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_04: I wanted to mention that.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_04: So I earlier in the call, I mentioned that I one of the ways that I got my start was by editing for the Goodman Project.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_04: And Dixie was one of my I guess I would call it um one of the editors above me.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not sure what the title was when I was doing that, and um it was such a good experience uh working with Dixie at the Goodman Project.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_04: I just I really fell in love with with editing and writing in a way that I hadn't before.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_04: She's one of the two or three best supervisors I've ever I've ever worked for in my life.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_04: So Dixie, thank you for all the help that you were way back in those days.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_04: It was really fun.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: You woo-hoo.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna do a reaction.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_04: Here we go.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_04: We're both local, both in St.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_04: Louis.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_04: St.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_04: Louis, go St.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_04: Louis, go blues.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_04: It's not even hockey season, I don't even know about it.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_04: St.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_02: Louis, this is an interesting uh factoid.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_02: St.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_02: Louis has historically been the single most um active, devoted community in relation to the book, The Go Giver.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_02: Don't ask me why.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_02: At least that's been my observation.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_02: Bob and I both observed this.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's interesting.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, fans here.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_04: That's it.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_04: It's the truth.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_04: Wow, that's cool.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_04: I love it.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, more questions.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_04: Who's got some more questions uh for John?
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_04: Well, we've got a few minutes left.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_02: You asked about courses I'm doing.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'll just mention this.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_02: I have this, I have it.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, didn't didn't miss that.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I have a thing which I I do a$37 course called Book Concepts That Sell.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I call it Book Concept Magic.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_02: And the idea around that, um obviously it was just to flush out people that I could get in connection with and maybe my newsletter and so on, but um, I came to the conclusion that the you know, I used to say that the the key to success, the success for a book was a three-part equation.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, compelling concept plus expert execution.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's the writing as well as the design of the book, the cover, and all of that, but particularly the writing, and radical exposure.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_02: Get it out in front of a lot of people.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: Concept, the execution, exposure.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_02: But I've kind of I've come to the to the conclusion that where I've changed that, uh changed that equation.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_02: So it isn't A plus B plus C, it's A times B and C, or maybe it's B and C to the A power, whatever it is, it's like writing quality and exposure are arithmetic.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_02: The more you do them, the better they are, the better the book is.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_02: But concept is logarithmic, concept is multiplicative, concept is powerful.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if a book has a really truly compelling concept at its core, it it's like that is what blows um the socks off.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_02: I just wrote my my latest newsletter just went out today, this yesterday, yesterday, Tuesday.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_02: And uh every month I pick a quote from a writer and I give that quote, I talk about the quote for a page or two or three, and then I give a little biographical sketch of that writer.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_02: And this month I did the joy of cooking, Irma Rombauer.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and you know, her story is amazing.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_02: She in the middle of the depression, they just sunk into the depression a few months earlier.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_02: The the stock market had crashed, the droughts were starting that would become the Dust Bowl years, and um she was a high society hostess whose high society had just collapsed.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then her husband shot himself in the head and died.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: So all of a sudden she's single, age 52, and she had to figure out what to do with herself.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_02: And um she ended up you know collecting recipes and made a book.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_02: But it was the concept of the book that blew everybody's socks off.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_02: The reason that it's today the most popular cookbook ever.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, almost a hundred years later, uh her concept was practical recipes for the ordinary, uh, you know, ordinary household, interspersed with chatty uh bits of wisdom on how to host and how to keep a household and how to cook and how to manage your house.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_02: Instead of these expensive recipes or dry recipe lists or all the other cookbooks that were out there, it was like nobody had done it.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_02: She did it.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's why it worked.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_02: She self-published for three grand.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_02: She put out uh uh you know three thousand books.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh look at it today, you know, 25 million or whatever it is sold.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: But my point is that if if your book doesn't have a genuinely compelling concept, no promotional effort will save it.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_02: Doesn't matter how well you write it.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: So concept is king.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_04: Love that.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_04: I'm not sure why.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I would highly recommend everybody check out John's courses at johndavidman.com.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_04: I've bought a couple of your courses, they're really good, and they're not too long, which is a problem with a lot of online courses.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_04: You get to the point and then the course is done, which I appreciate.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_04: Cool.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_04: Other questions?
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_04: We've got two minutes left here.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_04: Questions.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_04: This is difficult ones.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_04: This is a curious group.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I know they've got questions.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you're ad.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_01: And um like you know, you scroll and you you know, it's like two to three seconds, whether you like it or not, right?
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I um I loved what you said.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was like this guy has something.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_01: So she just wanted to let you know that.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I love everything that you've said about collaborating, because I like to do that as well.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: But how my question is, how do you focus?
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like go into deep focus.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_01: How do you do that as a writer?
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, thanks about that about the ad.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, yeah, people are scrolling, you gotta have to say something in two seconds or or or you're gone.
• 55:59
  SPEAKER_02: You did it, you did it.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, hey, well, that's similar to having a compelling concept for a book, right?
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's the same idea.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_02: The same thing is true in marketing.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_02: You have to have a compelling message or or you're lost.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_02: You've turned the page.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so to focus, um I first of all, I I take me a while, but I've identified the the time of day where I focus best.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm talking about not like editing something, which I can do anytime, or or correcting something, or doing some latter stage work.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_02: I can do that almost anytime.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_02: But in terms of writing something, starting something, you know, write starting a chapter or starting a blog post or starting anything or coming up with something, um I have to do that first thing in the morning.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_02: I have to do that before the day starts.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: If I get up and look at my email for 15 minutes, it's over, baby.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'm done.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's like my brain is gotten toastified.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so I have to just don't do that.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll get up and I'll make a hot tea or a cup of coffee and I'll putter around the kitchen for a bit.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_02: And but within a half an hour, I'm in you can't see this, but I'm on at my desk now.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_02: Over in the in the corner, there's a chair, a big comfy chair, and that's my uh that's my right brain chair.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_02: This is my left brain chair.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_02: I go over in that corner, and my computer is not allowed there.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_02: I take a pad of paper and a pen and I a cup of hot tea or hot coffee, and I'm sitting there.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_02: And if I got up early enough, ideally it's still a little dark out, and nobody else in the house is awake, and I sit down and the and I try to imagine that I'm sitting on the edge of a pond just before dawn, and the pond surface is totally still, and there's no sound, um, but you know, occasionally bird murmurs because they do that before they wake up.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I'm waiting for little fish to nibbles to pop up on the surface of the lake and snap at mosquitoes or whatever.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm waiting for ideas to bubble.
• 57:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll sit there with a blank pad of paper, and and you know, and maybe I know what I'm writing about, maybe I already have an idea left over from yesterday, maybe I have a page of a printout.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_02: But ideally, I don't look at that.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just there with a blank pad of paper and a pen.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I give myself the luxury of of not having any pressure and just saying, okay, now what's this chapter all about?
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_02: What what am I what do people want to know?
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_02: What what needs to be said?
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_02: What's the what's the question I need to ask?
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I try to get you know a little bit of that time in every day.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_02: I may only get a couple of sentences or a paragraph or two out of that, and later I'll go to my desk and write pages.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_02: But it's those couple paragraphs that that make it hop, that make the thing work.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_02: Oh uh everybody's different.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um sometimes, and this is a weird thing, sometimes I'll get to a point where I'm stuck.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I just I'll sit in the chair and nothing happens.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I have to go uh to the coffee shop and sit there surrounded by people I don't know and clatter I can't hear, and put headphones on in the coffee shop, or go grocery shopping with by myself with my car and just drive around.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes I gotta get out of the chair to for the for the brain to click.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_02: JK Rowling wrote all the first few Harry Potter books in them in the coffee shops of of uh right?
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, everybody everybody has their different uh sort of their different formula, what what environment works for them, what time of day works for them.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I I think you just have to find that and then uh put it on your calendar as an appointment, like a doctor's appointment that you can't miss.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_04: Well, John, thank you.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_04: That's that's fantastic.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_04: I love it.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_04: And Alan, thanks for the question.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_04: Good stuff.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_04: Well, thank you everybody for coming on the call today.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_04: Um, we're out of time, but John, I appreciate you giving us an hour and coming and bringing the uh the pizzazz and the inspiration and the knowledge and the wisdom.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_04: This has been really, really fun.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_02: My pleasure, man.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_04: You know it.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_04: Um, what's in in the 60 seconds before uh our call is over?
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_04: What's what are you working on next?
• 1:00:10
  SPEAKER_04: What can we expect from John David Mann in the next uh couple of years?
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I got the parable.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's called Truth Teller, and I don't know when it's coming out yet because I'm waiting on my co-author.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_02: But it's coming out probably early 25 or sometime early first half of uh 2020, uh 26 rather.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_02: That's a parable.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm working on another parable, which will probably be a year later, and I don't have a title, but that's gonna be about legacy.
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_02: And um, I am working on uh my first novel that's uh just mine and mine and nobody else's hean.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, you already heard this uh how to write good.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_02: How to write good is gonna show up at some point in 2026.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_04: Cool.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_04: If you need another beta reader for that, I'm I'm you know that.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_04: So it's a deal.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_04: I really, really like that book.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_04: It's good stuff.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_04: Well, thank you again, and thank you everybody for hopping on the call today.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, next week on our call, we're gonna be talking about how to AI proof your writing business.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_04: So there's some things you can do in your writing business that you know everybody's uptight about AI these days, but you don't have to be.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_04: There's some things you can do to AI proof your business.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_04: So we're gonna be talking about those next week.
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_04: That'll be a lot of fun and maybe a little controversial, then wrong with a little controversy now and then.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_04: That'll be fun.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_04: So all right, everybody.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_04: Thank you so much, John.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_04: Again, thank you again.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_04: Appreciate your wisdom and your knowledge and inspiring us all, like you always do, of course.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_04: So thank you all.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_04: Have a good rest uh rest of the week.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_04: Happy writing.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks again for joining me for this conversation on the Profitable Rider.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_04: I loved talking with John David Mann.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_04: And as I mentioned at the top of this episode, every single time that I talk to him, I just get inspired anew.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_04: Because, gosh, there's so many cool things that we can do as writers, and there's so many lessons that we can learn from top-tier writers like John.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_04: He's just really, really an amazing guy.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_04: And as I mentioned at the top of the episode as well, make sure and go to his website, johndavidmann.com, with two ends at the end.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_04: Johndavidman.com, he has one of the best email newsletters for writers, hands down.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_04: So go there right now and get on his list.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_04: It's really, really good stuff.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_04: On the next episode, we're gonna do something totally different and feature a conversation with Daniel Hayden, who is the CEO of Kickstart Accounting.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_04: And we're gonna be talking about a few essentials of accounting for writers.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_04: You do have a business, after all, and if you make money as a writer, whether it's selling books or doing other products or services like ghostwriting or editing, you if you make money, then this conversation applies to you.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_04: And we're gonna talk about some accounting basics that you literally cannot afford to miss because being profitable is not just about making money, it's about keeping more of the money that you do make.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_04: So don't miss that conversation, and I will see you then.