Latest / The Daily Writer / Dan Rockwell on Leadership, Storytelling, and Writing Habits

Transcript

Dan Rockwell on Leadership, Storytelling, and Writing Habits · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Daily Rider Podcast, where we bring you tips and inspiration each day to help you build habits for writing success.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: For more resources, including your free Daily Rider Starter Kit, visit DailyRiderLife.com.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: We have all kinds of amazing guests on this podcast.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, as you know, if you're a regular listener, but it's rare that I have a guest whose platform has been built on the very concept of daily writing.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: But since 2010, my guest has been blogging about leadership literally every day.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: Now he has a following of nearly half a million people across social media and his email list.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: His name is Dan Rockwell, and he's the genius behind leadershipfreak.com.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: He describes himself as freakishly interested in leadership, and I love that description.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: Dan is an Inc.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: magazine top 50 leadership and management expert and a top 100 great leadership speaker.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: According to the Center for Management and Organization Effectiveness, the Leadership Freak blog is the most socially shared leadership blog on the internet, which is a pretty cool claim to fame.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: And today Dan coaches leaders, he consults with organizations and delivers corporate and community presentations.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: He's also the co-author of the brand new book that he wrote with John David Man, which is a business parable called The Vagrant, The Inner Journey of Leadership.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: It is really terrific.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's a very quick read, super engrossing, and I love the lessons that it contains.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I hope that you're going to pre-order a copy of The Vagrant before it comes out on September 19th.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: Those pre-order for authors, by the way, are really, really important.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I will have a link in the show notes for you to go to Amazon and order your copy of it.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: Now, in this conversation today, Dan and I talk about the inspiration behind The Vagrant and why he and John decided to approach it as a parable as opposed to a standard nonfiction book.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I think as a writer, you're going to discover some great insights about storytelling from Dan.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: We also talk about the genesis of his world-renowned leadership freak blog.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: We talk about some leadership principles for writers and entrepreneurs, and also dive into his process for writing every day, especially if you're just getting started with a daily writing habit.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: This was a wide-ranging and really fascinating conversation, and I think you're going to love it.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: Now, before I get to that though, I got to give a shout out to John David Mann for connecting me with Dan Rockwell.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: John, thanks so much.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate your friendship and the connection to Dan.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_02: All right, without further delay, here is my conversation with the amazing leadership freak Dan Rockwell.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: Dan, it is an honor and a pleasure to have you on the Daily Rider Podcast.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: As I mentioned before we hit record, I've been following your stuff for a really long time.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I kind of feel like, oh wow, it's like you actually exist as a real person, not just some person in cyberspace.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome to the show.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: Good to have you.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Ken.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: I so appreciate you doing this.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited about uh what you're doing for people, and I'm I'm hopeful I can contribute.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm sure this will be a really fun conversation because you're not only uh an author, you also have been a blogger for a long time and you're doing all kinds of things that I think any writer would want to emulate.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: And really the first thing I want to ask about is how this story behind this new book, The Vagrant, actually came about.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I actually read it just a few days ago, and uh what a phenomenal story.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: I absolutely loved it.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I stayed up way too late finishing it.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I was gonna read half of it, then I was gonna finish it the next day, but I thought this is just too good to put down.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious where the inspiration behind this book, The Vagrant, actually came from.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it in in part it's my own life, and in part, it's the people that I coach and and work with.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I think that we have a wonderful, and I use that word sarcastically, we have a wonderful capacity to shoot ourselves in the foot.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so the story of the vagrant uh is the story of, as you know, a high-performing leader who shoots himself in the foot.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I had the idea of the story and actually tried to write it a few times, but I don't write in the narrative style.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just terrible.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: It just sucked.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was awful.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I started reaching out, as you know, and we we uh chose uh someone else to help.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: And how did that collaboration actually work with you and John David Mann?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: So he collaborates with a lot of people and in fact is well known as a collaborator.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: In the process of actually constructing the book, was it very much a back and forth thing?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: Was it kind of you had the idea, then he writes a story, and then there's there's a lot of back and forth.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: How did that process functionally work?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew John from uh the Go Giver series with Bob Berg, and uh I just reached out to him and said, John, I have an idea for a story.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I told him the story that I had in my head, and uh he listened to the story, he's a great listener, and he and when I was all done, he said, uh, I have chills, Dan.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do this.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so that was how quickly the decision was made.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was on that first call.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: I laid out the story, and and then we had uh probably three or four calls.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not, I can't exactly recall on, you know, when I was telling the story and kind of what I was think, where I was thinking it was gonna go, and he was listening and taking notes.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then he went to the leadership freak and just read a lot of my work to kind of get a feel for you know what I was about and some of the ideas that I like to talk about.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then he went to work at uh putting some of my stuff and the you know the basic plot of the story, which I gave him, uh, the basic plot, and and he put that all together, added some characters, added a few chapters.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: I like to say John took an eight-cylinder that was only hitting on four cylinders and really just took it uh to a new level, and now it's all souped up and ready to go.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh I I love reading it actually.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: That that's it's fascinating how you both work together on that.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm always interested in how collaborations work in writing because I know they can work all kinds of different ways where both both parties are doing some of the writing and they're doing their revisions and editing.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: At other times, one person, in like in this case, sort of has the concept, the other person is mainly doing the writing, and then there's revisions and editing and so forth.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: So that's really interesting.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: Have have you done this kind of collaboration before, or was this a new thing?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I've tried, but this is a new thing.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, I think the way uh John likes to do it is uh a very effective way.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've tried the write back and forth, and it's uh cumbersome and slow, and for at least for me, and and uh it didn't really work.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: I spent a year or so going back and forth working on something, and and uh finally I just said, uh, you know, we're gonna be dead before we get this done.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we uh we just put it in the hopper.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: But with John, uh, I mean, he's a writer and he's a narrative writer, and I acknowledged and acknowledged his uh skill and his uh experience in the industry.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's my first book, and so when I talked to him, I said, Look, I want somebody to hold my hand.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: I I mean, I've dealt with a lot of publishers, a lot of authors, you know, so I know all the horror stories and I know all of that stuff.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I said, John, you know, I just want uh I'm I'm just thank you for doing this.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited about it.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: I thought it was a privilege.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then um as he wrote the story, one of the things I learned from John, I thought it was fantastic, is um when your readers, excuse me, uh and the the pre-readers, you know, the the folks who give some preview work, when they say something doesn't work or doesn't make sense, they're almost always right.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: But when they when they make a suggestion on how to fix it, they're almost always wrong.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought that was like fantastic, right?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: They they uh they uh uh listen to the critics, but don't let the critics control the process.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so John and I did go back and forth on some things, you know, the way certain things were.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: But fundamentally, uh once he had the story down, uh, then he wrote a draft and sent it to me.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that went back and forth, I think, eight times, where it was back and forth many times to finally get the final version.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: So, why did you feel this was important to tell in the form of a parable or a story, as opposed to doing kind of a standard nonfiction book?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh great question, Kent.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for asking.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And really, the only reason is I had this story uh been bopping around in my head for a few years, and like I said, had tried to write it a few times because I love the plot twist and you know what happens with it.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I just could not really get it uh in a way that made any sense.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I just did, I just I'm learning how to write narrative style, but I had really no skill in writing, you know.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: My thing is get online, write 300 words, make them as direct and clear as possible, tell people what they can do and get out of the way, you know.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, and I'm I'm experimenting with narrative style, but uh I really needed John in my life to to take it to that that place.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so it was a story to begin with, and that's why uh that's the I gave you the long answer.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: The short answer is it was a story in my head, and I wanted to get it out.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Gotcha.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think there is there's something about this this parable or narrative format that impacts people in a different way?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: And and we're learning in a different way than a more traditional uh sort of a nonfiction format because a lot of there's been so many books over the past, let's say, 10 or 15 years that have been kind of well, longer than that, of course, but it seems like there's been an explosion in this this narrative kind of format for teaching things that have typically been relegated to straight up nonfiction.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm wondering if there's there's something about how our brains are wired or how we process information that that makes it it's almost like the pill goes down a lot easier because it's in a story format as opposed to kind of a typical nonfiction thing.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and uh this whole narrative or parable form, I'm not exactly sure, but I think mod, you know, in the modern leadership world, Ken Blanchard was hugely influential with the one minute manager, who he co-his co-author was a children's author.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: So fascinating because very simple stories.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I I love the idea of engaging the mind.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it's uh pretty hard to beat a story to engage the mind and then the heart and have those moments of aha, you know, those gestalts, those reflection moments, like, oh my word.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And and then we hopefully see ourselves in the story, and that somehow speaks to us.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: So um, I mean, I I love it.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: I actually love it.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I I read a lot of leadership books, obviously, but and I'm not a huge modern fiction reader, but I read I read uh poetry and I read uh I like right now Mark Twain.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um I like children's books.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: I like to listen on Audible to, for example, Charlotte Johansson does the best performance of Alice in Wonderland, really of any audible book I have ever listened to.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: But it is it's engaging, it's uh it uh keeps the mind going, and then you start to see yourself and it opens the heart and I think opens the mind, which uh I I just it's just wonderful.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: Just a great story.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my wow.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: I did notice at the end of the book, you and of course I don't want to give away plot and things like that, but it's interesting because you also have some discussion questions or questions for reflection.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_02: I I forget what exactly you call them, but basically questions to help the reader process what they just read about, so that it's not just a story, it also becomes something that's a catalyst for somebody thinking and reflecting about how do I actually apply this in my life?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I really I like it when when parable style books do that, as opposed to kind of just ending and you're kind of left to your own devices as a reader to figure out okay, what do I actually do with this?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: So so I just wanted to say from it, I was a college professor for many, many years before I got into ghostwriting and podcasting and that kind of stuff, what I'm doing now.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: But from the the teacher in me really appreciates that.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: So, so thank you.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: I thought that was fantastic.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: I asked Brian Tracy why he was a successful writer.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote uh Eat That Frog.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote, you know, a lot of leadership books, I forget how many, very, very popular and successful in that arena.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Brian, why are you so successful at writing?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: He said, I tell people what to do.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that isn't that great.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Just tell them what to do.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And and so at the end, you're right, there's uh uh exercises and discussion questions.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: And those are those are important to me.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: They're important to John.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh John puts the questions at the end of all the books.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we also I uh wanted to go at it from a little different angle.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: So there are some specific strategies for self-reflection and then how to take action that uh are important to me.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's a leadership freak is, you know, give me something practical to do, and I'm gonna go off and and do it, you know.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: And my coaching clients are the same way.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I have coaching clients, and it's like, okay, I want to figure out something to do, and when we get done, they get up and go do it.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: They want to, they're people of action.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd love to dive into the this idea of taking action because that's actually a great segue.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so I appreciate that.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: So the people listening generally are writers who are trying to finish that first book.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: Many of our listeners are trying to build a business around their writing and figuring out how do I monetize this and uh how do I actually earn earn a part-time or a full-time living as a writer.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things that I feel like I continually come across is that writers, and I know I'm greatly generalizing here, but writers as a whole tend to be, I think, more introverted, tend to be more introspective and kind of artistic minded, meaning that I think it's difficult for a lot of creative types like writers to think like a business person, to think like an entrepreneur, to be more assertive and to do those business-y kinds of things that really are required to build a business around whatever it is that you're doing.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have any thoughts for, I guess I would say for introverted writers who struggle with the business aspect of doing this?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: How do you go from being that person to then someone who's actually building a business around your writing, around your skills, around your art, those kinds of things?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: I know that's a really super loaded question.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: I have uh two quick responses to that.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And the first one is a general response, and that is get help.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the smartest thing I did for the vagrant is to go to somebody who was, you know, I respected and give them the idea and get help.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think perhaps an introvert, and I'm much more introverted than extroverted.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I like my own company.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I relate to that.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: So um when you when you're that way, you can kind of like need to process everything and get it all perfect, and then you put it out.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, I I feel like that's kind of death to creativity.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the first thing is is get help.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, my experience, and it's been 12 years for me now, and uh, although I never wrote a book, I made money because of writing.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I was totally surprised by that.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: I did not actually get into writing leadership freak thinking it was going to be a business.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was working at a local college at the time.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I I honestly the motivator for me in the writing process is when it began anyway, is I was afraid that I wouldn't matter.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's a very personal thing for me to say.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was doing wonderful things uh in the community, I was engaged, I was um, you know, it's not like I lived a meaningless life, but you go through a point uh like a midlife crisis where you evaluate your life and you think, I have something more.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that was motivating me.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think we ought to have a lot of midlife crises.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we, you know, thankfully, I didn't come out on the other side of it with a long chain, you know, open up my shirt and a convertible and divorce my wife.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: However, it gave me a chance to think about really what I wanted to do.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And leadership freak came out of that.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I just made I'd never done anything like it before, and so I made a commitment to write every day uh for a year and see if it got traction.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea what that meant.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: None.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: I the only thing I'd ever written were school papers and contracts and those kind of things.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: No idea what it meant to write every day.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I anyway, I started writing, and uh, so the second uh response I had to like, how do you turn this into a business is I'm probably not a model because I have been so fortunate.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: I just started writing, I chose some things, I'll take that back.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe one of the things to really think about is uh what you uh what you love for yourself and see if you can make money that way.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, and I'm sort of making this up here, man.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: So help me out, can't this is this is wonderful.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I do have some follow-up questions related to this, by the way.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: So so uh uh you know, people ask me, you know, how did leadership succeed, leadership freaks succeed, and you know, you have you have this large following and blah, blah, blah.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I and I was always telling them early on, I don't know, you know, I'm just putting it out there.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I thought I needed to get a better answer than that, sound smarter than that.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started saying, well, my strategy is be generous and see what happens, which is about as specific as I could get on that.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I wrote for myself.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: I have a short attention span.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: So the 300-word limit that I put on myself is obviously not for everybody, but it really works for busy leaders.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't plan it, I just wrote it for myself.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that when I went to a website, I didn't actually read everything, I scanned everything.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I try to set the page up so that you can go there and scan it and know if you're gonna if it's useful to you or not.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can then you can say, okay, I'll go back and read this.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So my goal, sort of like Google, Google feels like if you spend a lot of time on the you know searching uh, you know, for the same thing, that they're failing.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: They want to deliver to you what you're looking for very, very quickly.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to deliver, uh, I wanted to be like I like to read.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps, perhaps, when you think about how do you have influence, you then take some time to think about how you like to do things, and then you know, do that in ways that are useful.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Year and a half into the process, I was writing, I had no idea anything would come of it.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: I got an invitation to speak.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: I came home that day from the college and told my wife, we can make money doing this.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Both of us laughed.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: It just changed, but it changed our lives, you know.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: So as time went on and I was just being consistent, the audience grew, people would call me, I wasn't marketing.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, people would call me.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: I had I've actually had a consulting company in Philadelphia call me and say, Dan, we love what you do.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know what we could do together, but let's try to figure something out.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's how can you, you know, I mean, pinch me.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's like so wonderful.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's that had that has happened to me um, you know, on a numerous occasion, sometimes with large companies.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm not a good long answer.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a good example for like make a business plan, right?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And map this out and do your marketing.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm still terrible, terrible at marketing, awful.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't even, I hardly know what the word means, but um, I'm just putting it out there and I wasn't it.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Seth Godin, maybe who said, uh, you know, declare what you believe and see who follows.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody, one of you know, one of those guys said sounds like something he would say.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, I didn't know that either, but that's what I was doing.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it got resonant.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: People would say to me, Dan, do you have do you have like a monitoring device in our in our work environment?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds like you're writing for us.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was writing for myself, yeah.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, so anyway.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's actually a absolutely wonderful response because I mean, for a for a lot of reasons, but one of the interesting things that you mentioned, Dan, was the idea that this started just with committing to writing every day.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is literally the daily writer podcast.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: I do a daily podcast, daily email, daily blog post, all that stuff.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting what actually does happen whenever you just commit to putting stuff out there, regardless of what you think the response might be or might not be.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm curious how that, especially in the beginning, when you were you had an you already had a job, you know, it's not like you were looking necessarily to build this whole other thing, but what did that actually look like on a daily basis for you?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: When did you write?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_02: How long did it take you to write those on average 300 word posts?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, just if you can get into the details a little bit to help our listeners understand how did you actually do this on a daily basis?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm an early riser, so I started writing in the morning, and I don't do the same thing now that I did then.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Then I liked the pressure of getting up at five o'clock and saying, whatever I get done by seven o'clock or whatever it is, I'm gonna post it.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a there was a deadline and I just posted it.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Today, I hope I'm a little more mature as a writer.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I still like the short deadline.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't like long drawn-out things.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: I want to get her did and then move to the next thing.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you asked me on a typical day what I wrote what I posted that day, if you ask me in the afternoon, I would have to go and look.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't really remember because I've already thought about the next thing.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: So uh today, for example, I do happen to remember it is in the morning here when we're recording, but I do happen to remember I decided I wanted to just frame things in something you might do to make your day better right now, you know.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: So little things you might do.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so I already have like this title floating around in my head of uh 10 ways to make meetings better today, 10 simple things you might do.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that's bopping around in my head for tomorrow because I hate meetings, everybody hates meetings, and if you can add a little value there, so and if I can, you know, it'd be great if I could get uh that all done uh before the day's end today and post it tomorrow.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: So now that's not that happens 25% of the time, but I do try to get some basic stuff done, gives me a chance to think on it at night, you know.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was uh Hemingway, you know, the Hemingway method, right?
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: He talks about uh, you know, uh stop writing before you're all done and and you know, just write a paragraph that begins the next thing and then start the next day.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's there is something to that.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: I will sometimes get up in the morning because my body now is like ready to type, ready to go to work.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's the 12 years, I do it every day.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: I get up in the morning, and sometimes I will have the you know, two or three ideas that man, I have to hurry up and get them down, you know, because I say to myself, you remember that, you remember that.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: I never remember those things, you know what I mean, unless I write them down.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I have to, I write up with I wake up with uh certain things, and then uh off to the races we go.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, sometimes I'm not as bright as I think I am, but uh, when you commit to get it out there every day, it's like don't be perfect, right?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Just get it out there, do your very best, and uh that's the you know, that's the end of it.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Just uh get it, and so I do I get it out there that I forget about it, you know.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and here's something I do by the way, too, Kent.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: If I see like something on the page that doesn't seem just right, like a day or two later, I change it.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: People don't change your, you know, you put it out there, don't change no, no, I change it, man.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's like totally well, that's what they do.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's that's super common with entertainment.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I've heard stories of let's say, and and this is a very specific example I heard probably three or four months ago about oh, the Marvel Studios is working their uh VFX hardest too hard, there's too many projects.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: Therefore, when they put stuff out in the theaters, there are there are VFX that aren't really like actually entirely done.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: But they know when it goes on to streaming, they're gonna fix that stuff.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I find that that's kind of a that's not a commentary on Marvel, but it's just the idea that stuff is always being revised and updated.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: And my goodness, even before the world of streaming TV and movies, how many times would you see the same box set of of movies being released?
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: You know, here's this edition, here's this edition, here's this edition.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I love your idea of just going back and fixing stuff.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's such a simple concept.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and I think it speaks to this too, Kent, which I know you know about, and that is don't edit yourself while you're writing those early drafts, you know, because I used to do that, and and so by the time I was done, it was it was done versus today.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I start to type, and then I'll I'll I still have to stop myself and I'll start to and I'll think, mm, I don't know.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'll go back and do and then I'll think, no, no, no, just get it down there.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I get five or six hundred words, and it's fairly easy now to you know get down to that 300, and hopefully, and you know, my goal would be two or three sentences that have some punch that really grip readers.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'd love to write 300 sentences that like shock the daylights out of everybody every time.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: But if I could write two or three really great sentences uh, you know, in the morning, then uh I feel like that's that's a good morning.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: I want to take a moment and give a shout out to our sponsors today, the first of which is Plotter.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: Now, you've heard me talk about Plotter before.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: It is really cool visual book planning software for writers that helps you plan books in the same way that you think.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: It has a really cool intuitive visual interface that lets the creative process be what it was designed to be all along.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: And plotter isn't just for fiction writers, it's also a great tool for nonfiction authors, podcasters, speakers, and anybody creating content to help organize their material and their story points.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're ready to outline faster, get organized, and save loads of time in your writing, go to plotter.com to start your free 14-day trial.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's P-L-O-T-T-R.com to start your free 14-day trial.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: Also a big thanks to today's sponsor, Vellum.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now you've heard me talk about Vellum before.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: It is my go-to choice for book formatting software.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: Vellum gives you the power to build, style, and preview your book and have a ton of fun while doing it.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: Vellum is the go-to choice for Mac users who care about creating beautiful ebooks and print books, and they want to save tons of time in the process.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: Now, again, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've heard me talk about Vellum before, but it is absolutely the way that I love to format books when I'm doing a project myself.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_02: It is fun, it's intuitive, and if you're a Mac user, you simply got to get Vellum if you're gonna format at least one book.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: It will absolutely pay for itself in no time.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: You can pay somebody to format your book, and sometimes I do that when it calls for something really unique and special, but sometimes I do projects myself because number one, it's a blast to use Vellum, and number two, it looks really, really professional.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're ready to try a really great app for Mac for the Mac platform that is designed to give you a really beautiful ebook and print book, then check out Vellum by going to trivellum.com slash daily.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's trivellum.com slash daily.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: All right, let's get back to the conversation with Dan Rockwell.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious what what you think about this this concept, Dan.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: People ask me frequently, how do you how do you write something every day and publish it?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: Actually I don't, I I batch create it typically once a week.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: But I have found that actually writing a short blog post and podcast episode, typically mine are typically between two and three hundred words, something like that.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: I find that writing something really short every day for me is a lot easier than writing one longer thing once a week because there's way less pressure.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: And the way that I have personally have kind of dealt with that is I just shoot for doing B level work and everything that I do as far as the podcast blog.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_02: Because if I shoot for B, I I know that secretly my everybody else's A is kind of my B because I'm I lean toward being a perfectionist.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: So if I shoot for B, then that means it's good enough for like 99.9% of people and it's fine, and I can always edit later.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: Is that kind of how you you do that too?
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: You just try to do something that's this is pretty good.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's doesn't represent it's not like Shakespeare, but I want to get something out of every day that's valuable and helpful, and then move on to the next thing.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, Kent.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I I respect you for doing it.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think it takes a little bit of courage, a little bit of self-awareness, uh, a little bit of willingness to to put yourself out there and and uh uh you know, just do your best in that moment, realizing and knowing you're gonna oh my word.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: I go back and look at some of the things I wrote.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: One guy asked, one guy asked me one time, he said, Aren't you concerned about contradicting yourself?
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I hope so.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I hope I contradict myself.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, and I go back and I see some of the sentences I've written, and you know, I've been working on, I mean, diligently every single day, reading about writing, studying about writing, working on writing.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm intentionally.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: I have a notebook and I've I've got a bunch of books over here that I read on writing, and I'm working on it.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: I go back and thankfully I'm better today, but I'm not as good as I'm gonna be.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: I go back and look at this stuff and I think, oh, look at all those extra words.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, look at it, it's just not working for me.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: So uh, and here's a tip here's a tip, Kent.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if this might work for your listeners or not when it comes to like honing and polishing your work.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: I love Twitter.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's uh all my Twitter stream is most of the time, is uh, and by the way, maybe it's threads now, you know.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: I I was just gonna ask about that.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I did just create an account on threads.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm not happy with Facebook either.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's there, but they they have the platforms, yeah.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: But uh anyway, what happens is I'll I'll take some content from the blog post and I'll put it into a tweet.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then then when I look at it and I think about Twitter, all of a sudden I find ways to make that more concise, more impactful.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Now I don't change all of those in the post, but it's a way that I'm honing my writing skill by simply making sure to try to not just blindly put stuff in.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: And that's isn't that one of the beautiful things about a platform like Threads or Twitter is that it forces you to be really concise and and to basically do what Strunken White taught us a long time ago, which is omit unnecessary words.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: Take out stuff that that is detracting from the meaning, which is hard for those of us who like to write and we can produce content very easily.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_02: But cutting that stuff out, that's that can I think it's a bigger challenge cutting stuff out of something you've already written than it is to create a first draft of something.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: That can be well, it could kill your darlings or something like that.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that an expression?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, you're falling in love with your writing or whatever.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm glad you mentioned elements of style and uh E B White uh edited or revised uh Professor Strunk's book.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's is it rule 17 or rule 27?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: I forget, but it's omit needless needless words.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, he loves words.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it is.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, omit needless words.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: And and when White tells the story, he adds to what the the original handbook was.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: But White says, Strunk.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, he said, I can still see him.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: He was a man of few words, but he had to fill a time, so he often repeated himself.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: So he would he said it three times omit needless words.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: Omit needless words, you know.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, uh, but anyway, that's uh that's just gold, man.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Just gold.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I want to respect your time, Dan, but I do have a couple more questions kind of as we wrap this up here.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things that obviously has been a key part of your business is building a large following, email list, blog posts, those kinds of things.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_02: Can you talk about how the role that email and and blogging, those kinds of things have played in your business?
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_02: And even, you know, like creating income, giving you opportunities to serve people in different ways, different offerings, because people are very interested in how do you actually make a living as a writer in ways that are that go beyond like just selling books.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: And there's so many different ways we can do that.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and you know, and I I think like John uh just started up, John David Mann just started up a mentoring group, if you know.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I and apparently you you do that as well with writers.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I do this with leaders because that's what my content is about, you know.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I I don't necessarily write about writing, I write about leadership, and so that collects up those things.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh again, uh Kent, sadly or embarrassingly, uh I don't I don't have an email list except for what uh people subscribe to my blog and they give me their email.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's been sitting there, and all I do with it is I post to that list.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: I have never sent an email um soliciting business or or marketing something beyond the blog.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now I started putting a little banner at the bottom saying, you know, you could you could uh hire me to coach.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't travel and speak anymore, but I I still do the coaching thing.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: So um please don't uh follow my lead is as far as because really, I mean, I learned the term funnel, you know, a few years ago.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: It is like I don't have a funnel, you know what I mean?
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I just put it out there, and uh I just have to pinch myself, Kent.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, but and honestly, for your for your listeners, and you know this is true, dang it, just put it out there, get it out there now.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you know, get some help.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I would think if I were to start today, what happened with Leadership Freak 12 years ago would I would be a little blip on the screen, it would never happen again.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was just a convergence of very fortunate experiences, and it happened for me.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: I would never recommend, well, don't worry about marketing.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, if you don't want to ever want to be noticed or not make money, then don't worry about marketing because you know it's just part of the world.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_02: But it seems like that you've done by far the most important thing when it comes to marketing, which is putting out something that's worth reading, and you've done that spectacularly.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: So the other stuff seems to be kind of fluff.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, not I don't mean fluff, but you but you kind of know what I mean.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's there's all kinds of marketing strategies and things you can do, and you can totally get lost in the funnels and the tech stuff and the tools and the platforms and all that stuff.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: But if you don't actually have something of substance to say, then it's all kind of pointless.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: And there are a lot of people who do that, they'd have all the fancy bells and whistles, but there's not really a lot of substance there.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: And you seem to have nailed by far the most important thing, which is having something good to say.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you, thank you for saying that.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, something did come to mind, Kent, is that the reason I like social media is I don't have to wait for people to find me.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: I can find them.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: And early on, I recall now there are a few things that I did.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one is I started commenting on blogs a lot.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: I spent some time during the day reading other people's work and commenting.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, uh early on, I would I would go to Harvard Business Review and I would leave comments on Harvard Business Review and leave a link at the bottom unashamedly.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm probably maybe I should be embarrassed, but I I would leave a link to something that I had written, you know, that was relevant.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: And on a good day, I could get 70 or 80 uh uh links or hit hits from a Harvard Business Review article.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think you can you can help others and help yourself at the same time.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yesterday, yesterday was crazy.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking at some of Tom Peter's work, and uh I put something out on Twitter about the kind of people you need to hire.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you you never have to wonder what Tom thinks.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, he's saying, you know, hire nice people, hire uh, you know, and he has this list.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so I just collected it up and I said, I put at the top a little sentence which is typical my style, hire people, not tools.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's something I would write, you know what I mean?
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like sort of like boom, I want to try to make it like as direct as possible.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: Then I said, Tom Peters, and I put a you know, uh uh his handle there, suggests this, and I made the list that he had, just very, very short.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I just looked this morning and has has had 14,000 views.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: Tom responded, um, and people are talking.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably one of the most, if not the most uh active tweet I ever did.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now what happens is you you're honoring someone else, and in this guy, I didn't do it, so he would do this.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: We have exchanged messages a few times, but he did, and then other people retweeted it and their comments, and but here's the thing you can do that with anybody, you can you know tag them, you know, as you're not uh uh you know awful about it and just share their work and do your own thing too.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: I have found on Twitter, by the way, that not just a quote, but if I make a comment on the top, it's better.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna say something about it, and then I can do the quote and then you know, put it out there.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: But if you really want to get noticed, um, and and you don't have a platform yet, um, help other people, get yourself out there with them, um support them, encourage them, their followers start to see you.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: So you have, I mean, you have to pick, you know.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna pick uh Rihanna, I'm not gonna be, you know, quote Rihanna necessarily.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: I might, but you know what I'm saying.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not expecting her followers to follow leadership freak, but uh but help people um as as much as you can.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh maybe that goes back to that.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: I guess maybe Kent, it goes back to be generous and see what happens.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I don't uh I guess I don't do that quite as much as I used to.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: I I do like to have authors.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, man, two, three, four times a month.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: I have authors on the blog.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: They're the only guest posts I put on.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: But uh help as many people as you can.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, I love that.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely love that.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's so good.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, one thing I did want to actually ask you about before we wrap up here.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like I keep saying that.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: You're probably thinking, when is he gonna wrap this thing up?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, man, that's that's fine.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not in a hurry, man.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: Something that occurs to me is so I I love podcasting, and podcasting has changed my life in a lot of ways.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: And it just occurs to me, should you ever decide to do a podcast, I I would absolutely love a show where you're just doing an audio version of your blog every day.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like you have such a calming, soothing way of expressing yourself that gosh, I would I would love to start off every morning just listening to listening to Dan Rockwell do a three or four minute version of your your blog or something.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you ever thought about that, but my goodness, I think that would be a real hit if you ever do that.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: I thank you for saying it.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: I I don't do a podcast, people send me.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Can I can I be on your podcast?
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: They send me notes.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're like no, because I don't have one.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have a podcast.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: I do just post these raw videos on YouTube.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's practically embarrassing.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: But uh I uh I thank you for saying it.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I would love to perhaps we could talk sometime about how you're putting your podcast together.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to learn what uh you know what you're doing to make your podcast uh work.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: I did notice right off the bat two or three minute segments.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: There are two, you know, I when I went out to you know the podcast site, except for uh you had a point of grace person on, that was a longer conversation.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: You had John David Mann on, that was a longer conversation.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: But uh thanks for saying it.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, I'd love to learn from you, perhaps offline here off after this, to uh what you're doing.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: Happy to share what I know.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um the the general idea, kind of the the short story with that is that uh I could and I have done podcasting once a week.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_02: I've been podcasting for a long, long time.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_02: I started off doing once a week, and then about three years ago I shifted to kind of this format.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's a basically six little short episodes and one interview once a week.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_02: I love interviews because the connections and the conversation and all that, just like we're doing here now.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: But I sort of operate on the philosophy that I would I I really want to touch people every day with a little something, as opposed to giving one big thing once a week.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'd I want to be in somebody's ears every single day if I can, or in their inbox or uh blog posts or however they're interacting with it.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: And um, it's kind of like the Seth Godin thing of you know, writing something short every day, which is exactly what you've done.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: I I just I'm kind of a if I was gonna go into a different career, I might go into radio because I just really like it.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_02: It it it is a little bit of work, but it's not uh a vast amount of work.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_02: So but yeah, we can chat more about that later.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I I would look forward to that.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you would you you have a great voice for this, so I could I could imagine that uh you know working uh or does work, but uh you know they I think you you've you've said every day several times, and of course I write every day and you you write every day, and I think it keeps you top of mind with your audience too.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it always kind of freaks me out when somebody says, Well, I'm taking the month off.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like that's when I, you know, I go off for a couple of weeks, I'm working my tail off trying to get stuff done ahead of time because I don't want anybody to forget, you know, that I'm out there.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so you know, it's fear, whatever you want to call it.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the most noble motivation, but uh I, you know, I don't want people to forget, you know, hey, there's that leadership freak guy.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: What you know?
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the nice thing about having something out there every day is you have a ton of material to repurpose.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, on any given week, there's probably material in my own podcast that I am reusing for the second or even the third time.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_02: I just go back and I pick stuff that I like and I rewrite it or I retitle it.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody ever even knows.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_02: I don't even know what I put out yesterday, much less you know what I mean, which I think you kind of express that too.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the awesome thing about doing a daily thing.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I just started doing this a few months ago, and I had never done it.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I have like, I think it's um is a million and a half words out there.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it's like four over four.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many I haven't looked recently, but thousands of blog posts.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I have just started reusing images.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes quote, you know, I'll grab some little bit of content.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I'll take a whole post and look at it and rework it.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um I never really did it.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: I never really I don't know why, but um uh I think it gives you a chance to rework and rethink.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: And uh then you're like you're saying, your audience is so busy, they're not like they don't keep a mental catalog of what you wrote about over the last 60 days or whatever.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: They, you know, they're looking for something now, and then they move on.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_02: So well, my goodness, at this point, you have so many posts out there, you could you could almost put together a uh a year-long thing of every day, it's a little short thing, kind of like the best of.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you've you've got thousands of posts out there.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_02: You could, man, that I could that could actually be a multi-volume thing.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I got so much content.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: Not that you're wanting another book to think about right now as you're promoting the vagrants.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, actually, I'm all I'm well into that next uh process and uh totally excited about it.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, that's fantastic.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_02: That's fantastic.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Dan, how can people connect with you and learn more about the vagrants and all the cool things that you're doing?
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, Kent, thank you so much for uh taking time with me today and uh letting me uh share with your audience.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_02: My pleasure.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh if you Google Leadership Freak, I'm about it.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you you probably will find me.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: My email address is dan at leadershipfreak.com.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I'm on social media, so hit me up.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: Although occasionally I'm slow in responding to some of the social media direct messages and things, but uh you can send an email to Dan at Leadership Freak and buy the Vagrant when it uh when it comes out in September.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_00: And uh actually, I yeah, I'm not sure when you publish this, uh, but uh uh buy the vagrant when it comes out and uh let me know what you think.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: What's the publishing date of the vagrant again?
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: I believe it's September 19th.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, September 19th.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I will put this out a week or two before that, so that no, I'm sorry.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh when it comes out, I want it to be available.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll put it out that same week or the week after.
• 50:15
  unknown: Yeah.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_02: And that'll be in all the bookstores, Barnes and Noble, obviously Amazon.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's gonna be fun.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_02: When when that comes out, um, so whenever friends of mine put out a book, my little game that I play with with myself is I go to my local Barnes and Noble and a couple in the area to see if they have it in stock.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_02: And if they don't, then I ask them to to put it in stock just so I can kind of prime the pump a little bit.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I like it.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's fun.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's good.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: See, now you're you're being helpful, right?
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll I'll go uh in an airport uh to the bookstore, and when I see somebody I know uh on the shelf there, that one of their books, sometimes I'll take a picture and put it out on Twitter.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, just saw John Acuff's book on, you know, you know, whatever.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so it's good to try to be helpful, isn't it?
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Dan, thank you so much.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so glad that John David Mann connected us.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um I've been following your stuff for a long time, so it's good to kind of have a it's good to have a conversation with the person behind leadership freak.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm so honored and my goodness, I've took a lot of notes, and I know this is going to be really helpful to writers.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you again for all your amazing work and for the great insights that you shared with us here today.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's been a pleasure.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, my pleasure too.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Kent.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_02: Wasn't that a fun conversation?
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_02: I just love having guests like Dan, where we have these wide-ranging conversations, and I feel like I'm taking notes a mile a minute because I'm sitting at the feet of somebody who is so wise and seasoned, not just as a writer, but as a leader.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: So I hope you got as many insights as I did from this conversation.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: Again, a big thanks to Dan for making time to be a guest on today's episode, and a huge thanks to John Davidman for introducing me to Dan in the first place.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_02: So um two quick things here before I wrap up.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_02: Number one is I want to make sure that we support Dan and John in the launch of their brand new book, The Vagrant, it comes out on September 19th.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: There's a link in the show notes to pre-order it from Amazon.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I highly, highly encourage you to do that.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's a great story, it's a fast read, and I really think you're gonna enjoy it.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: So that's number one.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_02: Then thing number two is please go to Dan's blog, which is leadershipfreak.com, and subscribe.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_02: You get his email in your inbox every day.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's pretty cool.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to make sure and support our guests and what they're doing.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_02: And in this case, man, getting Dan's emails in your inbox every day is gonna make you a better leader and a better writer and a better business owner.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_02: So make sure and do those two things.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think you're really gonna have fun with those and it's gonna benefit you in a multitude of ways.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_02: All right, my friend, as always, I so much appreciate you listening.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_02: I know there's a lot of things you could be doing with your time, and I never ever take it for granted that you're spending time here with me on this podcast.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much again, and I'll see you next time.