Latest / The Daily Writer / Jeff Brown on the Art of Taking Notes and Writing “Read to Lead”

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Jeff Brown on the Art of Taking Notes and Writing “Read to Lead” · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: 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_00: For more resources, including your free Daily Rider Starter Kit, visit DailyRiderLife.com.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: As a writer, you probably spend lots of time, like I do, taking notes from conversations, books, meetings, and brainstorming sessions.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: But what do you do with all those notes?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you ensure that you have a system for accessing that information later on when you need it?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my guest today has thought a lot about this problem, and he's here to offer some really brilliant solutions.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Jeff Brown, and he's an award-winning radio producer and a former nationally syndicated morning show host.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: After more than 25 years in the radio and music industries, Jeff went boss-free in 2013 and launched the Read to Lead podcast, which has millions of downloads.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Jeff is also the author of the fantastic book Read to Lead: The Simple Habit That Expands Your Influence and Boosts Your Career.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: In our conversation today, Jeff helps us understand how to take better notes and get organized by understanding different note-taking archetypes and which tools are the best fit for each type.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: We also dive into the story of how he wrote the Read to Lead book with his co-writer, Jesse Wisnowski, how they found a publisher, and what impact having a book has had on his life and business.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before we get to the conversation, I want to let you know about Jeff's amazing course, Note-taking Mastery, of which I'm a student and which we also talk about at length in this conversation.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Jeff is graciously offering daily writer listeners$100 off the self-paced edition of the course, which includes access to recorded training sessions, QA recordings, a proven process for collecting and organizing your daily notes, and lots, lots more stuff.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: He's put together a really amazing resource.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're a writer, researcher, or really you craft any kind of content, I mean, my goodness, you're listening to the Daily Rider podcast.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you're doing all this stuff on some level in your life.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Anything that you're doing, I guarantee you're going to benefit from this course.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure and visit dailyriderlife.com/slash note making mastery to get$100 off the self-paced version of this course.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's really good.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a student of it, and I promised you're really going to enjoy it.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: So with that said, here's my conversation with the amazing Jeff Brown.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Jeff, it's so good to have you on the Daily Rider podcast.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was on your show recently.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now you're on my show.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: So this feels kind of almost like part two of a two-part series or something like that.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Glad to have you.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I am delighted to be here.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was excited when you asked, and so I'm looking forward to uh to our conversation for sure.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Did you ever read comic books as a kid?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: This is a totally I'm going off on a little tangent here, but did you ever ever read comics or or watch TV shows that were like superhero-based, those kind of things?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: I did.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um comics-wise, I tended to lean more toward the Archies uh or was that the right yeah, the Archie comics?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I read those too.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh less on the superhero side with regard to comics, but when it came to television, I mean, I'm old enough to remember the you know the black and white Superman television series and and you know Adam West version of Batman and that sort of thing.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I I loved that stuff.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: I remember my brother and I would argue over who got to be Batman, who got to be Rob, and we would take you know these dish towels, and my mom would put a safety pin and connect the dish towels around our neck, and that would be our capes, and we'd just run around and jump off furniture and all that kind of stuff.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the reason I asked is because I remember back when I used to read comic books all the time as a kid, they would sometimes have a storyline.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: They started one issue or one um one title, then they would say, Hey, to continue the story, jump over to this other issue next month of a totally different comic.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: So this kind of feels like continuing the conversation, you know, in a whole different line.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that metaphor breaks down somewhere along there.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: But uh it just came to mind, so I went with it.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So what can I say?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm really glad to have you here, Jeff.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have listened to your podcast for a long time and have respected you as a podcaster and author, and as a person who has a lot of experience in broadcast and radio for a long time.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: So so I sincerely am really glad to to have you on the the show today.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Talking about a couple of different couple different things.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about your Read to Lead book, which you co-authored and that came out was it was it last year, correct?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: 2021?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, August 31st.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's what I thought.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say 2020, but like most people, sometimes the last couple of years run together.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I can't quite place what year I'm in half the time.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk about that, but then before we do that, I'd love to dive into this topic of taking notes.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I confess I have never had anybody on the show talking specifically about this topic.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you have really drilled down into this, into your course.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I know this is a real passion of yours.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just wondering if you can give us some background on your passion about the art of taking notes and particularly your note-making mastery course.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Where did this passion, this topic really come from for you?
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it really was uh in part born out of the book writing process and then a popular question I get when I do uh deliver talks uh on content from the book.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was someone who had wanted to write a book for years.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you deal with folks in that position all the time.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: And keep hitting that brick wall of the blank screen or the blank page, right?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it's, you know, well, I want to write, and maybe I've got an outline.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: I know what some chapter titles are, and I want to sit down, okay.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna write to that chapter title, and it's just crickets, right?
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: What do I do?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't until I understood how to uh manage my personal knowledge that I sort of had a breakthrough with regard to that blank screen or blank page.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: I I learned that when the creation starts, really 70, 75, 80% of the work should already be done.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's possible via how you collect and capture, how you connect and organize, how you crystallize, develop, and distill your notes.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: When you understand how those three things work, when it comes time to create, that's actually the easy part.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now your job is simply connecting the dots or looking at these building blocks or knowledge assets that you you have amassed and simply connecting them via a cohesive narrative.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: The creation process just gets super simplified.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that breakthrough for me helped make writing a book possible.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh something I was very passionate about.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And as I began talking about the book and the content from the book, as I alluded earlier, that question I kept getting at every talk was uh somehow related to note-taking.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'd get some note-taking related.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: What's your advice there?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And as I began to sort of answer that uh really uh from the hip or off the cuff initially, and I began digging to into it more fully and uh sort of surveying my own uh tribe of podcast listeners and and book readers, I realized that this process, Kent, is is one that virtually everyone, it's almost a universal problem that we have um notes that uh are hard to find or are often of little use later when we do find them.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're siloed, uh, you know, stuck inside various notebooks or note capture apps and hard to call upon when we need them.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or maybe we struggle with the content that we consume and then you know understanding how to then distill and develop the thoughts that start with other people and make them our own.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um we might have numerous, as I once did, numerous, um handwritten notebooks filled with notes and then trying to find one and need it again are very, very difficult.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: And also very difficult to connect new ideas with exit ideas that I know exist somewhere in my notes.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, right.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then as I said earlier, creating with those notes and implementing on what you've learned because as we consume content, that's how we all learn and grow, right?
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: We consume other content, books and podcasts and and and videos and TED talks and articles on the web.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it's those and conversations and and presentations that we uh are present for, and all these things that we interact with are what gets our juices flowing and what helps us formulate our own thoughts and ideas and insights about different things.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And if if we're we're taking notes on that stuff and then not doing anything with the notes, we're not creating anything out of that, those efforts, then we we may as well not have consumed the content or done the learning and growing to begin with.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because if it's just up here, if it's just in our heads, the thing is, is is we don't know, we're not nearly as smart as we think we are.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: We might read five books on a subject and think we're an expert on that subject until we maybe present on it and people start asking questions and suddenly realize, oh, I'm not nearly as much of an expert as I thought I was, or even in just in conversation.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: And and a topic comes up we read five books about, and then oh, I got this, and we start talking about it, and suddenly we realize we're having difficulty expressing what we truly think and feel about that topic.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's in large part because we haven't taken the time to write our thoughts about it.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: Writing is thinking.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Boy, I could not agree with that more.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: There are so many things that this spurs in my mind.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: One of the foremost things is literally, so I run a group called the Daily Writer Club.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody who listens to this podcast, they hear me promote it on a regular basis.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we had a call, we just got off a call.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we're recording this on a Wednesday, and a couple hours ago we had a call, and one of the things we were talking about on our call today was this kind of I'm not gonna use the word cult because that's kind of strong, but that there's there's this kind of um ethos almost among some some segments of the author or writing community where there's kind of this obsession with pencils, certain pencils and pens, certain notebooks, uh certain little tools that, you know, oh, artist Hemingway used this one certain kind of pencil, and I've got to use this kind of pencil if I want to be a successful writer.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And there's almost this obsession with tools that help us collect things and take notes.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I love your emphasis on hey, let's let's take those notes, which is a great thing, and actually create something out of those because man, I I struggle with that myself too.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: I get sort of sucked into buying this latest cool journal or this pen or whatever.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really easy to do that.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Have you found that with authors in particular, that this really is a problem of wanting to collect things that help us to record and to consume, but then having a problem with our output?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah, and and I I certainly identify with that on a on a personal uh level um in for for so many years, uh early in the early going, taking notes, handwritten notes, and I still do take a lot of handwritten notes um at the outset, uh, but I understand that those if they're those notes are going to be useful to me, they have to eventually find their way to um a digital app that I use.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: I call it I call it my central hub.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but uh apart from that, I spent 15 or more years uh using uh an app, a beloved app by many, not by all, but uh called Evernote.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And um uh thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, I'm sure, still use that app.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: I used it for 15 years.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um until I realized it wasn't working for me.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: It had become a glorified web clipper.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I liked, you know, uh not much much unlike the tools, the pencils, and notebooks you're talking about, I was very much, you know, a victim of bright, shiny object object syndrome as it relates to apps uh in the late 2000s, you know, 2007, 8, 9, when Evernote came along.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so that to me, that was gonna be my notes app.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: What I didn't understand then was uh based on research I I've read more recently with regard to note-taking styles, is that the Evernote app for me didn't match my note take uh note-taking style.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Evernote is is set up much uh like our computer hard drives are set up and much like uh um Dropbox is set up.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's files and then there's or folders rather, and then there's subfolders, and inside those subfolders are your files uh of various kinds.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the the sort of top-down hierarchy, um the way a librarian might categorize books in a library, right?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and and and and stored in such a way that that most anyone needing to find, you know, uh uh something written about habits could could know to go in the habits folder, and there I'm gonna find stuff about habits, right?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and over time I realized that this wasn't working for me.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: And for years I thought I was the problem.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: I thought that it was there was something wrong with me that I just didn't think the way most human brains think or thunk or think.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: We'll go with this, which this isn't a grammar podcast.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right, right.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it's all good.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was like, which way okay?
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so eventually I realized that there isn't anything wrong with me.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just not using a tool that's conducive to my style.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and once I found one that was, that's when the sort of veil was lifted and the angels began to sing in the background.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh my gosh, this is incredible.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when, as I began to sort of lean into that, that's when I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel of I think a book is possible for for Jeff Brown.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: For a lot of years, I didn't think so because I never thought I was gonna be able to get past this hump of the of the blank screen, the blank, blank page.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Now I see the light at the end of the tunnel.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think I can do this.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting that you mentioned Evernote.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd I've been an Evernote, I would say extreme power user for about 10 years.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I had a light bulb moment when I was reading through some material that for your course, you talk about these four archetypes of note-takers.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized that I am totally a librarian, which I know is one of those archetypes, which I wonder if there's a connection between so I'm also an Enneagram type five.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure there's a connection between Enneagram types and maybe note-taking architect types and the way that we process the world and information.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: But I it never dawned on me that other people would have a different style or a different archetype to use your language in note-taking.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm curious if you can talk about those different styles or archetypes and and what those are and maybe what that means for us as we think about how to take notes better.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and it's interesting too, is I've uh welcomed people into to my course and live cohort version.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's two versions, there's a live version and a and a sort of self-paced-paced version.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: There was a gentleman going through the self-paced version, and he was like answering a poll that I had done, uh, ask uh describing each of the archetypes and identify which which one of these descriptions uh is you.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And his response was Um, you know, I I identify with this one over here.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: I identify with librarian, and that's what I've been doing.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I've been acting.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: But I want to be this over here because I look at my goals and I realize if I'm gonna reach my goals, I need to be that.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so part of this process uh uh of learning about these uh archetypes involves uh this in some for some people, like like this gentleman Frank, that you may identify with one, but you may also recognize that that's not where you want to stay.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: And and and that was that was similar to my situation.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll start with uh Indopatic Laura, we'll we'll start with librarians, and you just mentioned librarian.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Librarians enjoy, and this is a lot of people are gonna identify with this, especially writers.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, collecting, uh building a catalog of resources, and need uh you know, a note-taking system or tool that allows them to easily retrieve their ideas.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: So upon first blush, who wouldn't want that, right?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like something we could all say yes to, and and and again, something I said yes to for years.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's also architects, the architect archetype.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, this is all based on research done by Ann Lure LeCompf, C-U-N-F-F, uh at uh NES Labs, N-E-S S-L-E-B-S.com.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: And an architect, uh, they enjoy uh planning, uh designing processes and frameworks, um, and need a note-taking tool that allows them to easily structure their ideas.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh another one is uh Gardner, that's me.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um Gardner uh enjoys exploring, um, connecting various thoughts together.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think authors will certainly identify with this, even though they may have been in that librarian camp.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And they need a note-taking tool that allows them to easily grow their ideas, okay, and and the ideas of others they bring into that, to that central hub.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the last one is um these first three are, of course, we're talking metaphorically, architect, gardener, librarian.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: We don't need mean those in in the literal sense, but the last one you you can you can take figurative figuratively or literal literally, and that's a student, right?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh there's the literal student who maybe doesn't have a strong bent toward any one of these, or maybe they identify with several of them or or none of them or all of them.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh the student archetype is someone who's gathering information that's generally uh a shorter term orientation, like for a test or an essay or a class, something like that.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: They need something quick and easy and accessible.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's also for those of us who aren't literal students, it's what we default to when we don't have a lot of extra time.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: So as you hear about these archetypes, there's also um uh dozens and dozens of digital tools I could recommend based on those archetypes, but there's one tool I've landed on for each of them that I would suggest you start with and give it a month and see if it's gonna work.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're an architect, if you identified with planning, designing processes and frameworks, and easily structuring your ideas, that's architect.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: You might want to try an app called Notion.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Notion is another app I tried before I knew about archetypes.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't didn't jive with it.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: It just didn't work for me.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know again why at the time, because I didn't know about these archetypes.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um The Gardener, if you if if you said yes to uh exploring, uh connecting thoughts together, you need something that helps you grow your ideas, then you might consider an app like Obsidian.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Or a second to that maybe might be Rome Research.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: You might have heard of.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: But Obsidian's my favorite.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Librarians, my number one suggestion there, these are those who like to easily retrieve their ideas, they collect, they build a catalog of resources, hence the name librarian.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Evernote is probably the tool you should be using.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then for students, there's a couple of options, you know, for on-the-go students, uh again, literal, literally or figuratively.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you're in the Apple ecosystem, the Apple Notes app, if you're in the um uh Android system, Google Keep.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um if you're finding yourself in uh uh witnessing live presentations often or in classroom, literal classrooms, you might consider something for the iPad called notability, mainly because it allows you to either write, handwrite, or type notes in the app while recording the lecture or whatever, the the talk, the the presentation.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then it syncs that audio with what you wrote in that moment of time.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so makes sense.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Very useful for again the student.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: So architect, notion, gardener, obsidian, librarian, evernote, student.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: You've got your three choices depending on which ecosystem you're in.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: You've made my whole day because now I know I don't have to switch from Evernote.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: I have literally have, I think, probably close to 20,000 notes in there at this point.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you identified with librarians, so I do, and it and Evernote works for me, but I I felt guilty because I mean Evernote as an app has kind of been stuck in the mud for a while now.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they've really innovated for a long time.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: They were super hot seven or eight years ago, it was the big thing.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I've kind of felt guilty that I haven't explored anything else seriously, but now I now I've heard from Jeff, you are the expert in this, that I can just stay there for the time being and not have to go through all the pain of switching.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, one thing I would say, and and this was part of the problem, part of the reason Evernote didn't work for me.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I considered staying with Evernote uh when I learned of these archetypes uh initially.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not suggesting you need to rethink that at all.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but one of my problems for me was how I was using it.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: And and so I'm sort of uh giving some of the uh uh note making mastery content away here, but I'd uh no one I'd rather give it away to than you and your listeners.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so what I realized is 101 folders in Evernote, which is what I had, is is not useful.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's not helping.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: What do we tick tend to do?
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you're like this, but when I come across something that I want to keep, oftentimes it's web articles, but not always.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh what I tend to do, what most of us do is you go, okay, do I have a folder that already exists that this goes in?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're reading my mind.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Or how should I tag this?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm reading an article on habits, so I'm gonna put it in my habits folder.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's great until you have 101.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I literally had 101 folders when I last counted.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's not useful.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's not helpful.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: First of all, I think you can get away with with as little as four folders and and And I think you know, seven give or take three is is probably uh good for most folks.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it's little as little as four is as many as ten.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really all you you need.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: And a handful of those serve a more utility purpose and and and less of an organization uh purpose.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you need to get that in order.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have time to necessarily go into all that, but you need to get that in order.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you also, when you go to save something, you need to save it not with a mindset of where does this go or what is this about, but think about context.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Not where does this make sense for this note right now, but where do I want to find this in the future?
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I give you an example.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, when I was writing my book, it would not be unusual in the early stages for me to be um reading articles or research on habits with the thinking of I want to apply some of this research to helping build a reading habit, right?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: But then I would take all that stuff and toss it in a habits folder.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then I might read um productivity articles with the thinking that, you know, how can I help people read more in less time?
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: And all that stuff would go into a productivity folder.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then I might read about, you know, retaining or comprehending knowledge more readily, and that might go in a knowledge retention folder.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then when I go to write, all this stuff is scattered all over the place.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and and and and that's not very helpful.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's it's siloed in these in different folders, right?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: Not that I can't go retrieve it, but retrieval is much more difficult, right?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: So by this idea of thinking about where do I want to find this in the future, that might involve, say, in Evernote to to cite your uh your app of choice.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I've got a projects folder.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of my handful of folders.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And inside that projects folder is uh a folder called the Faith of Elvis, you know, for this this book you're working on.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then inside that folder would go those, and in my example, would go those articles on habits, would go those articles on productivity, would go those articles on they'd all be in the same place because those are all things I'm going to need to call on when I sit down to write.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that little shift is hugely beneficial when again you find yourself staring at what might otherwise be a blank screen or a blank page.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly you realize I've got all these things I've written in my own, my own thoughts, my own insights, my own ideas about what other people have said on these things.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's already there.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a starting point.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not starting starting with a blank slate.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not starting with a blank screen.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's I I've done the work.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: 70% of it's already done.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that just takes the the overwhelm off of you, especially when it comes to something like writing a book.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let me ask you about something I hadn't actually planned on, and this is all really helpful, by the way.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had never really thought about my note-taking style or ways that I could do it better.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, for as much time as I spin an Evernote, it never has occurred to me that there maybe is a different way to do it better.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that being said, I am reading off an Evernote note right now because for every podcast guest, I have my notes in here and uh correspondence and and all that stuff.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: So one thing that I have felt kind of guilty about the past few months is back in the earlier part of the year, I bought a remarkable two tablet.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you've seen these.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you have one.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: I have one.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: You have one, okay.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right around here somewhere.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking for it right now.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a couple friends who who recommended this.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: They said they loved it.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I bought one.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I, as a writing experience, I love it, but I couldn't really find a good place for that in my workflow.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: It just, it it was never something that was that useful to me, even though I really loved using it.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually ended up giving it to my son.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: He uses it for drawing and he does comics and all kinds of stuff.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious to what your thoughts are on a tool like a remarkable, where obviously you can write and it's digitized and it can create PDFs and all that stuff.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: How do you actually use your Remarkable?
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I guess my follow-up question would be: should we feel guilty if we spend money on something like that, but then we don't use it?
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because I felt kind of guilty to be honest with you.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, you made good use of it in the end.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: You gave it to your son, who I'm sure can can make it all worth it uh when it's all said and done.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I wouldn't feel guilty about that.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: I yeah, I I bought one for my wife for our anniversary last year.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_01: As she was going out of town with her sister, I I had purchased it a couple of months in advance.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, through a story I won't get into, she found out early what she was getting.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just went ahead and gave it to her, but she was going out of town.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I played with it while she was gone and fell in love with it.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and by the time she got back, I had one too.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so she bought me one for our anniversary, I guess.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, for so for my workflow, um, it kind of goes like this.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I realized that most uh the the first iteration of most of my notes on the content I consume, physical books in particular, starts with me wanting to write by hand.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's something I think, and and and studies back this up, for sure.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's synapses that are fired in your brain when you're writing your thoughts versus typing them, let's say.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so and so if you want to skip the step of writing and go right to typing, there's nothing wrong with that.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna judge you.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: But for me, that that writing stuff out, so so for me, the remarkable is what I use for my notes on the content.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: I consume what I would call and what uh Nicholas Luman, uh father of sort of the Zettelkasten method of note-taking, uh which we go into in the cohort, calls literature notes.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I read a book, and this can vary from a handful of pages to 40 pages of notes.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: I have a book I read called The Confident Mind, where I'm up in upper 30s on pages of notes, and I haven't finished the book yet.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so that can vary widely.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, some books I take more notes on than the other.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: I try to be very picky.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's in a book, right?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I wasn't probably as picky as I needed to be.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: But that's where those notes start.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh maybe the next day or a week later, I'll I'll go back to those literature notes.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll I'll, as you know, in the remarkable, you can highlight stuff in your notes.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'll go back through, and then I start cutting, I start whittling, and I begin to just highlight with the remarkable pen the things that are now still two days later, a week later, resonating with me, still giving me that dopamine hit, still making me go, ooh, yes, I want to dig into that.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: I want to study that further.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: I highlight those things, and it's those highlights that get transferred to my obsidian central hub, my notes app where everything lives.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've not put everything in there.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: I've still got the context if I want to go back to it from either the original source, which I'll link to digitally in my notes app, you know, to say a book.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'll link to it on Amazon if I want to go back to that.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or I've got the notes I took, the literature notes I took in the Remarkable.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: If I need more context later, but it's those highlighted sort of cream of the crop parts of the notes that are what end up in for me, my central hub.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's how I work Remarkable into it.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Others uh uh might use uh the ability for the tool, as you know, to take what you've handwritten and turn it into typed text that you can email yourself, which you could then copy and paste into your notes app.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: I don't do that for one very simple reason.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_01: Years ago in my 20s, for some crazy reason I'm not sure I understand today, I decided, you know what, from now on, I'm gonna I'm not gonna write in cursive.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna print everything.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I print everything in in in all caps when I print.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so when the Remarkable converts that to typed text, it's all caps.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it looks like I'm yelling everything.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the only reason I don't use that feature for transferring my notes.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: My process is a little more laborious, and it does take discipline.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, you I schedule time at least once a week.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: I have time set aside two for the end of the day or the beginning of the day to do this, but also once a week on the weekend, Sunday afternoons, I'm watching football or something, and I'll go through my the things I've taken notes on previous week that might be still in my remarkable and make sure I work on getting those out and into my central hub where I ultimately want everything to be because I want my newer ideas having the ability to connect with and talk to and surface sometimes serendipitously my older ideas.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Boy, that's good.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: That is such a well-thought-out system.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I had never thought about using a remarkable in that way to kind of go to your son and take it back.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: So now I'm like, how can I get this back?
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what I did is I actually bought a refurbished iPad because and I'm an I'm an Apple junkie, I have all the Apple gadgets and stuff.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of part of the whole ecosystem and all that.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um even though writing on an iPad is not nearly as as satisfying as writing on a remarkable.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll see what happens.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is not really helpful, Jeff.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: I I love this.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you've given me a lot to think about with note-taking.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now I want to kind of on the flip side, you know, you've talked about how note-taking is obviously part of of the creation of your read-to-lead book, which I have a copy of here.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, this is an audio podcast.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we do use video snippets of this on social media, so I will hold up the book here uh for sure.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to first of all compliment you and congratulate you on putting out a book into the world that's really good.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: And more than that, it's genuinely really helpful.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because as a person who consumes a lot of books, and obviously I'm a ghostwriter, so I'm involved in writing books.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: I I really try to pay attention to how much of a book is really, really helpful.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: And as I look through your read to ebook, I can't think, you know, if I was an editor, I can't identify any chapters that I would cut because they're all really good and they all are addressing things that are such a critical part of the reading process.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: So first of all, thank you for putting out a good book into the world.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: And really my follow-up question is maybe I have several, I'm sure, is can you walk us through the process of how this book actually came into existence?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, you worked with a co-author.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: This went through a traditional publisher.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: All of that whole process.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I find that writers are often really, really interested in how books actually come into existence through relationships and through your writing process and so forth.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: So if you can kind of walk us through that.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I had always thought someday I would write, or at least I desired to, and and supposedly 80% of the world feels this way, that I would write and publish a book.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I really wanted to do a traditionally published book for no other reason that than vanity, I guess.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, it's fun to work with a traditional publisher.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I just thought, you know, that would be fun.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't have to hire out all this other work, you know, it would all be under under one roof, and I could just write and and and everybody, somebody else would worry about everything else.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and as you all know, uh uh publishers are looking for people who have platforms and a built-in audience to sell books too.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's not their job, it's not the publisher's job to create uh an audience for you and find one for you.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so um when I started the podcast, I never thought of that as being the thing I would that would help me write a book.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: It just turned out that way.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I built an audience.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I had other ideas for books that I had stopped and started, and and and I would often get in the comparison game, and oh, somebody's already written a book about that.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, right, like there's hardly anything that hasn't been written already.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're gonna go to a publisher and tell them, I've got this idea that nobody's ever written about, the smart publisher will tell you I'm not interested because that's not proven.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a reason nobody's published about that.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: So next.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to kind of get uh you know past all that, and you may feel differently on that, I don't know, but uh a very smart uh acquisitions editor editor told me that years ago uh that if you think you've got a book idea that nobody's ever written about, a publisher doesn't want to hear that.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: So um that's not just me saying that.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, um, you know, I tried or started and stopped several different books, uh all around uh topics related to things like productivity and habits.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, you know, those books are a dime a dozen.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: They're everywhere, and some of them are really, really great.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it had never occurred to me, I'm being completely honest, it's gonna shock a lot of people.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: Six years or so into the Read to Lead podcast, it had never occurred to me to write a book called Read to Lead, a book as blows me away, as meta, and that was part of the, I guess, the the reason I hadn't thought of it.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: It just seems so meta to write a book about reading, to write a book about the power of books.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, you know, uh doing a podcast, and this has been done many times, doing a podcast about podcasting or something, you know.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's been done a few dozen times too.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: But it just, I never really thought about writing on that topic.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: I had all these other ideas.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh one day, uh Jer, uh Jeremy, uh Jesse Wisnewski.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hopefully he's not listening to this.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: Jesse Wasnowski approached Monday.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I I had met Jesse at a writer's conference put on by Jeff Goines years ago called the Tribe Conference.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've been to that myself.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: You've been to that.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh this was in I guess uh 2019, I guess, 2019.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he approached, we had coffee and said, Hey, I've got this idea about a book.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's called The Reader's Edge.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, I've got a literary agent and we ran it up to Flackpole and nobody wanted it.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the main bit of feedback and criticism I got was you don't have a uh a list, you don't have a tribe, you don't have an audience, you don't have a platform.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: The dreaded P word.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: The dreaded P word, yeah.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna get to it eventually.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, Well, Jeff, I don't know if you'd ever considered this, but you do have a platform.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like a book like this called The Reader's Edge is right up your alley.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: Would you ever consider co-authoring a book like that?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: And having hit the again the brick wall of the blank page, the blank screen numerous times, thinking that, wow, I could do this and maybe have help along the way, and not to have to carry, you know, all the buckets all the time.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: That that kind of appealed to me with all this other stuff I've got going on.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so I said yes.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I signed with his litter agent just a few months into the process.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, this was again late 2019, and then by early 2020, he was the litter agent was putting together a proposal that um uh that he was going to pitch to different publishing houses.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he he pitched them, and I remember sitting here at this desk I'm at right now, not long after he after he sent out his uh the proposal we helped prepare.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I've got a book here uh by Grant Baldwin called Um Successful Speaker, and there's a uh Michael Hyatt book sitting here.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember which one it was, maybe well, it doesn't matter.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: Michael's written several great books.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: It was a Michael Hyatt book, and it was a book uh sitting here um called Think Like a Boss or something like that.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um the author's name is escaped escaping me now.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I was looking at these three books, and I realized that all three, all three people I was about to interview and was preparing to interview, and who I had have great respect for, they were all on Baker, Baker books.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I said to myself out loud, I was like, hmm, you know, Baker would be cool.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember praying that.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's like God, if this is this is in your plan, Baker would be really cool.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, I there's a lot of books, a lot of authors I really respect on that imprint.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Totally, totally.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: Two days later, got a call from our agent, wanted to get with us on Zoom, and he said, We got a bite.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: Only one bite, that's all you need.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's all you need.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's one.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: People weren't gonna bid for read to lead, which we obviously had changed the title to in the interim.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but but we've got a bite, and that that publishing house is bigger books.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I about fell out of my chair.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: I bet you did.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we were excited.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: This was February of 2020, and they they sent uh, you know, an offer, and we immediately countered that offer, wanted a bigger advance, and we're having to split it two ways and some other things.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, totally, yeah.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: And um right after we countered COVID hit, you know, now it's March, and I remember thinking, oh, if we made a huge mistake, our our publishers are going to start backing off the gas pedal because the future looks so uncertain.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I went to the to the literary agent, guy named DJ Schnell, uh, who who's in Florida, um, great literary agent.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I expressed that concern.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, I don't think we're, you know, I think we're okay.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think publishers look at these as long-term investments.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: He's right.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so, long story short, they didn't call us back and say, now we've changed our minds.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: They they came back and uh went up 33% on the on the um advance, which I was really thrilled about, offered a first-year um incentive if we hit a certain amount of books.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry to say we did not hit that that number of sales, so we didn't get that bonus.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: But there were several things that they came back with.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: They lowered the threshold we had to hit to to get a certain percentage of royalties and all this kind of.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going into probably way too much detail.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: But um those were things they came back with.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: We said yes to that, and and now we're in May of 2020 for a book we were going to turn in on uh November the 1st.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: And on the eve of November 1st, we turned that uh in.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh six weeks later, we heard back from our literary agent with you know the sort of developmental edits.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Here's some things I think uh I would I would update, some chapters that need some more meat.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: Here's a chapter that you don't have that you need to add.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then two weeks after that, he leaves Baker.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we're in, we're we're fostered.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're we're suddenly, you know, we're an orphan.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: And um all that to say is is we is the rest of the process got expedited and maybe a little faster than I would have liked.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: But we had a date out there that we wanted to hit, and we did hit that date.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: That was important to us, so I can't fault Baker for that.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: But it did feel like, you know, for a for a time, like you know, we were in a in a system that just wanted to get us out the door, right?
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: No fault of Bakers.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't know this guy was gonna leave.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't fault the literary agent.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: I for the time that I worked with him, I loved working with him.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that's some of the behind the scenes of how that came together.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Jesse and I, uh, though we lived in the same town at the time, he ended up moving to his home state uh from Spring Hill, Tennessee, where I live, just a few weeks before the book was to law or to to to to to be launched.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so even though we lived in the same town, we only met once or twice that whole year plus we were working on the book.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so most of our writing happened in in a Google Doc.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that um sometimes one of us would write in another doc and then bring that into the Google Doc.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but that's how we that's how we did uh most of it.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, he wrote some.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote, so we kind of divided up the chapters.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna I'm gonna start with these, you're gonna start with these.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then each of us will look at the other's chapters and give our suggestions, our feedback, almost like a literary agent would do with developmental edits and add to them where we see we might need or should add to them and that sort of thing.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: So so with every chapter, there's there's both of us contributing most chapters one more than the other.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: So having been through this process with a with a co-author one time, um, if you were to to do a book that was totally solo, would you feel intimidated or overwhelmed by the idea of doing that, having been through a great collaboration with a co-author?
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think I probably would, though I think it would be easier doing it that way having written with a co-author previously, if that makes sense.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: Having a book under my belt, I think it wouldn't be as intimidating, but I still think it would be somewhat intimidating doing it.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's funny, I was doing an interview um with someone on a podcast last year.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, a couple of people that I interviewed with to promote the book said something similar, and they're both people who are in the self-publishing space, and they were like, you know, why did why did you choose to write with a co-author?
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's like the hardest way to write a book.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I didn't know that.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'd see I I would actually disagree with that.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I didn't, you know, I didn't have anything to compare it to.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so there's part of me in you asking that question that wonders, well, if I were to go off and do the next one solo, which is my intention, should that ever come about, um, would it be easier um or would it be harder?
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and and and and those people who interviewed me last year suggested it would be easier doing it uh solo.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a part of me that I know when I got the opportunity to co-write, when that was presented to me, something I had not thought of doing, not only not had I not thought of a book called Read Till Eat after my podcast, I had not thought of co-authoring a book.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but when that was presented to me, I was like, yeah, I like the sound of that.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's that's gonna make the likelihood of for me of this happening sooner rather than later a lot a lot higher.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of writers, if they haven't really collaborated with other people, they assume that it's gonna be like a one plus one equals two kind of a thing, where basically you both come with with whatever you have, and the result of your collaboration is going to be basically just kind of like double of what you would bring to it.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not really the case at all.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you have good collaborators, it's like one plus one equals three or seven or fifty eight, and it's just exponential.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Potentially so much better because you can play off each other.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: You hit you're more motivated, there's accountability there.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then with traditional publishing, you know, if you have a good experience there, I mean, my goodness, you're working with people at the top of their game who are complete pros at what they do and all those kinds of things.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously, there's a place for for independent publishing as well.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm a fan of of all of the above and all of ways of writing.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: It just depends on what you want to create.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, me too.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I want to throw a couple of quick more questions out there.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: I know I want to respect your time, Jeff, and I still appreciate you taking time to do this episode.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious your thoughts on to start.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm gonna this is a topic you you mentioned the book.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I've never actually asked anybody about this before on a podcast about books, but your thoughts on starting a book club.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: You talk about this in the book a little bit, and it's something that I have thought about doing sort of connected with my podcast.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's a really compelling idea.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, Oprah has her book club.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: Book clubs are a thing, they're totally a thing.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts on on the value of a book club and how someone could go could go about starting a book club that works and that people actually enjoy?
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a couple of settings to think about.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: And and so if if you're if you're in the traditional workplace, there's sort of the work book club, which I've been a part of.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of the talks I've given in the last year, I get a chance to talk about, you know, creating uh a book club at your place of work and and what that should look like.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: We can also talk about uh maybe as an independent creator, creating um a book club that you invite your tribe to, those on your email list or those who are reading your your works, et cetera.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have a particular angle from which you'd like to tackle that?
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: Is it safe to assume it's the latter versus the former?
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'd I would I would probably do it connected with my membership community, but also with the podcast.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think just to give people a way to, you know, like if I say, hey, we're we're all gonna read this whatever book it is this month, even if people don't if the even if they're not talking to others like in a group or or even chatting, you kind of feel like you're reading along with a group.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever heard of anybody who who's doing a book club along with a podcast?
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a thing?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: In a manner of speaking, I mean, I've I've done an online book club before that um I leveraged my podcasts to promote heavily, and oftentimes um uh the featured books each month would end up being somebody I'd interviewed on the podcast.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: Not always interesting, but but oftentimes.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it was like a$20,$25,$30 a month kind of proposition, depending on when uh you signed up.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the earlier you signed up, the better deal you got.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and and I don't know how deep in the weeds you want to go.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to talk about how to launch something like that as well?
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I'm not even really sure.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's just something I've thought about.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm just wondering, are there is that something that, you know, since this is a writing podcast and I run a writing membership group, it kind of seems like an obvious thing to do, but I've kind of struggled with even thinking, is this something people would value?
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of seems like they would.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the way I had mine set up, and it was a tight-knit group, I think uh I think I maxed out at a couple of hundred um at one point, and and then you know, long term it was this this tight-knit group of when I say tight-knit, I mean those showing up.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: We we had a monthly call on Zoom as part of my book club where we got together to discuss the book we'd spent the month reading.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't have to be a part of your book club, but it it can be.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was a part of mine.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: I like those interactions, those real-time interactions, especially why with my cohort I offer a live version in addition to the self-paste, et cetera.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that that tight net group could be, you know, as much as 50 people or or as little as you know, 15, you know.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and depending on the season or you know, wax and wane of the book or whatever.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so um now, every you know, everybody's paying to participate.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you don't show up, you don't show up, that's your call.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: But you you know, if you're in the group, you're still you know paying uh for for a meeting you're not attending.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but uh that was a part of it for me.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, having sort of a guide.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was not consistent with this, but but a guide that makes recommendations for you know, based on the month by by by the seventh, you need to be at this point in the book, or here's here's the suggested place you should be by the 14th, you should probably be here, etc.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: I I uh hired out a VA to help with things like creating a written summary where they would I would send them a Kindle version of the book via via Amazon, and uh they would sort of unpack it and create this sort of magazine style using Canva, a magazine style book, you know, seven to ten page written summary that everybody would receive um in the in the membership, maybe a week into or two weeks into the month as they're reading uh and diving into the book.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so you've got the book summaries, you've got the uh suggested readings week to week, you've got the live meeting.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um I would have uh an additional one-off uh sessions every now and then where I would bring in an expert um to talk about a particular topic, maybe one we'd recently read about.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: Someone like, for example, I can remember reading a book uh from um Jeff Sanders on productivity.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and then later bringing Jeff in to teach us uh you know from his book.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that was and and people particularly liked it.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: I was able to do this maybe once a quarter.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love, I would have loved to have done it every meeting or every other meeting, but I managed it about once a quarter.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: A particular book that we were we were reading, the author would join us for the discussion.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and we'd I'd love doing that thing at the end of the meeting where everybody, you know, on Zoom would hold up the book and we'd snap a uh get a screenshot and then share that on social media, and the authors love.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been in situations since my book came out where I've been on the other end of that, which has been a lot of fun.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: That is awesome.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: So so that's been cool.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: So those were kind of some of the the the um the plates that we're sp uh spinning in in my book club.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's other things I've thought about over the years of you know that could have made that stronger or better.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: I've even thought of relaunching it uh as part of my read to lead network, which is where you find note making mastery and some of these other courses that I that I offer.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and so I have have some thoughts about maybe relaunching that uh in in a slightly different format.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_01: But those are just some of the things I did uh to sort of uh you know give it what I felt was worth 20, 30 bucks a month.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh just a little aside here, um I remember having this idea for a membership site that as I mind mapped it became what I would call a multi-tentacle monster to the extent that I was overwhelmed by launching this membership site because of all the plates I'd have to keep spinning.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: Then I went to a mastermind, Aldi Mastermind uh in Franklin, Tennessee, that was being led by Andy Traub and Brian Dixon.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you know those guys.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: I do, you know both of them.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: But they they invited me to come along and to join the other folks that were there, which I very much appreciated.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I presented this idea to them and the the issue I was having, and Andy and Brian gave me so much clarity.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: They said, You've got this multi- this multi-tentacle monster.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: Take this one little tentacle that's a book club, and that by itself can be your membership site.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Really?
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's valuable, and they're like, absolutely.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to have all these other things that aren't related to that.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to feel like you've got, you know, like a this giant thing.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: It can be just that, and that's valuable.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_00: And they were right.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's really, really cool.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, but if you're doing a book club like that, you kind of have to define what type of book you're going to focus on, correct?
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it yeah, it this is where the podcast I was doing helped inform that.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I I interview strictly nonfiction uh well, I've made some exceptions.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've interviewed some authors of biographies before, and I I guess that's in the nonfiction category, but um, you know, business books primarily, right?
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh books that are going to, in my case, uh uh that are for learning and growth, and oftentimes for those in the traditional workforce, um, not all, or maybe those who want to go out on their own, books about entrepreneurship, that sort of thing.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: So the same kind of books that would be talked about on my podcast would be the kind of books we would we would feature in.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't have to do it that way.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, maybe yours is uh, you know, uh a fiction book club, or maybe it's you know, maybe it's all over the map.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I liked honing it in because that really helped people identify that clarity attracts versus the confusion of anything, everything compels, right?
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: Clarity attracts, confusion repels.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: So the more specific I think you can get, the better off you're gonna be.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: Boy, that's good.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I had often have oftentimes thought about what kind of a group that I would join.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I would totally join a group that just focused on classic literature.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of like all the books that we feel guilty that we haven't read, that we should have read, you know, as sort of citizens of of the world.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um I thought that would be kind of fun.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I'm gonna put some thought into that.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: I I appreciate you giving us some great tips about that.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I have a former podcast coaching client uh who launched a podcast that's turned out to be a hugely successful podcast called Ben Franklin's World.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a podcast about early American history.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I've not talked to Liz, the host of that show, about this, but if Liz were to launch a book club, I would expect Liz to launch a book club that focuses on books that are about in and around, you know, president's early American history, that's the revolution.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, Franklin, uh Washington, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: So and and and that sounds like a very, very narrow uh niche niche.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, she's done a podcast for for years now on that on that niche, and and and it's served her quite well.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: And as a former member of a book club that folk uh like an actual book club where they send you books in the mail, like the Columbia Record and Tape Club back in the day.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: I remember that.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um trust me, there are all kinds of books, hundreds on just that one topic, and you you can really zero in as much as you want.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I I could do a book club on something related to habits or writing.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, there's gobs of books out there related to those kind of things.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think you could boy, lots of good stuff here that we've talked about.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: Jeff, I appreciate you taking time to be on the the show today.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I appreciate all the value that you're adding to people through your podcast.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, through your book, which is phenomenal.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I also wanted to tell you that um you're kind of one of those people where anytime that that your name comes up in a conversation, people always universally 100% of the time they go, Oh, Jeff Brown, I love him.
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_00: He is so awesome, he's so great.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: I love his show.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, honor recorder told me that recently, which of course is how we kind of uh uh made the connection for me to be on your show and and everything.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: But but people people say that frequently.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um so I just appreciate your your emphasis on good relationships and putting out so much value into the world.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh been a blast.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: It would truly been a blast.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I appreciate it.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Kent, that brightens my day.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you did such an amazing job.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: I I told you this already of being very complimentary when you were on my show, and here you are on your own show, and you're still being complimentary, and I've got so much catching up to do.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm falling behind.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not at all, not at all.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: I do appreciate you taking time to do this.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, I really do love the book and and I'm excited to help spread the word about it and continue to do that.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: So um, one final thing where can people get in touch with you to find out more about your books, podcasts, note-taking, note making mastery, I'm sorry.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and all the things you're doing.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, jeffbrown.me is the new site for all the the read to lead network and the courses and all that, jeffbrown.me.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the podcast uh and and and book is all linked from there.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_01: But if you want to go to those sites directly, uh readeleetpodcast.com and readeleetbook.com for those resources.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then again, the the courses at Jeff Brown.me.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you, sir.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a pleasure.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: Wasn't that a fun conversation?
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_00: I could have talked to Jeff for hours about note-taking, about books and writing and publishing and organizing information, and I was really, really struck, particularly by this idea of note-taking archetypes.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_00: And as I mentioned in this podcast interview, that's something I had just never thought about.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: I never occurred to me that people might have different ways or archetypes of taking notes.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_00: But Jeff's thought this through very carefully.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, if you get his note making mastery course, he's gonna dive into that in more detail.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: But man, what a great conversation! I really, really enjoyed this.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: My main takeaway is we've got to get serious, my friends, about how we take notes.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_00: We've got to really think about how we're taking that information and what we're doing with it and where we're storing it.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds to me like my current system of using Evernote pretty much is in line with my note-taking archetype and how I think through information as a librarian, one of the archetypes that we talked about in this conversation.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: But you might be different.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to really get a handle on this, make sure and grab the special deal that Jeff is offering for Daily Rider listeners.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can go to dailyriderlife.com/slash note makingmastery to get$100 off the self-paced edition of this course.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you, it's great and you're really going to like it.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, huge thanks to Jeff for making time to be a guest on this episode.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_00: He runs a very busy life, is a very successful podcast.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: He's running Note Making Mastery, he's got lots of stuff going on.
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I really appreciated him making time to be a guest on the Daily Rider podcast.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_00: Also, I want to encourage you, if you're listening, to check out Jeff's podcast, which is read to leadpodcast.com.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's where you can go to find all his shows and lots more stuff related to the podcast.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, you can find the Read2Lead podcast on any podcast player, including Google, Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcast.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my friends, this has been an absolute blast.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for spending time with us here today.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_00: And again, thanks to Jeff for making time to be a guest on this episode.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.