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Screenwriter Brock Swinson on the Secrets of Prolific Writers · The Daily Writer

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hey friends, welcome back to the Profitable Writer Podcast.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new here, my name is Kent Sanders.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an author and ghostwriter, and this is the show that helps you grow your impact and income as a writer.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if there's one thing that all of us want to do in 2024, it's to write and publish more books.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I'm excited to have a guest today who can help us learn the secrets of writers who get the work done and watch their success keep rising as a result.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Brock Swinson is the host of the Creative Principles Podcast, where he speaks with writers, actors, directors, musicians, and more.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: He's interviewed figures such as Aaron Storkin, Ethan Hawke, Jim Gaffigan, Joseph Gordon Leavitt, Taylor Sheridan, Judd Apatau, and hundreds more for his show.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Recently, Brock has packed all of this knowledge into the book called Ink by the Barrel, Secrets from Prolific Writers, which you can get completely for free by visiting BrockSwinson.com.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: The book is broken up into three parts called Time, Voice, and Process, and it contains advice on every single page to help novice writers become prolific.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you're an experienced writer, and maybe you've you've been doing this for many years, full-time or part-time, you're still going to come away from this book with a lot of great wisdom.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Brock has also been a copywriter for the last decade, working with entrepreneurs like Russell Brunson, Grant Cardone, Tony Robbins, and more.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And in this conversation, Brock and I talk about how he got into screenwriting, using your time well, why you need to take action now instead of waiting until later, how podcasting has helped his career and much more.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Brock is a really sharp guy and also a really generous guy.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Those are two of my very favorite qualities in people and also in podcast guests.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that you're going to enjoy this conversation just as much as I did.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: So here's my interview with the amazing Brock Swenson.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Brock, welcome to the podcast.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: It is really great to have you on the show.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Excited to have you here.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought we would start out this conversation by talking about your background and how you got involved in screenwriting.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's something that as somebody who's never been involved in Hollywood stuff or TV or film, I'm a massive movie and TV nerd.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I love all that stuff.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that's something that I would love to get involved in someday.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: So it's always been a bit of a mystery to me how people get into that world.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd love to hear your story of how you got involved in all that and um where that's led you to today.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, and I would say after even doing I've done about 400 interviews with screenwriters, it still feels like a mystery.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody's story is so different.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, to go, you know, way back to the beginning, like my my family talks and movie quotes were more likely to be talking about a Western than someone's actual life or something like that, something we saw on TV.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: So definitely an interest there.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Won some little writing contests as a kid, didn't really care about the other subjects.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: It just kind of like writing was what I seemed to care about.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: I went to school and kind of studied creative writing.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I went to school in Wilmington, North Carolina, where if you've ever seen shows like Dawson's Creek or One Treat Hill, that's where they film it.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: So like I was on that uh One Tree Hill a little bit when I was there and uh eventually moved to LA, did a bunch of commercials and bad TV shows, either as a PA or different jobs you could find on set, like Guinness Book of Records.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: I got to watch five people try to break records every day for a period of time for a season.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So weird stuff like that.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I've always been interested.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Sometime while I was there, I got a job actually through Craigslist writing for a Crave Screenwriting Magazine, like a pretty big publication.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they've kind of had their ups and downs going from print to more online.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I've done about four interviews for them and I've always had an interest in screenwriting.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just now really, you know, kind of putting my name out there, breaking in.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a book out, I've got some screenplays floating around, and I've raised some money to make my first documentary.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm kind of trying, you know, four or five paths to kind of break the wall and figure my own way in.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's really fascinating.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: It it sounds like people get into, as you said, they get into the industry of screenwriting and film and TV by a thousand different ways.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that there really is no unpredictable way for somebody to get involved in that, correct?
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: If they wanted to do that for a career.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, even like the common thing people would say is you you go to film school and then you maybe try a bunch of contests, try to win something that way.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen people do that, but that's also like you're not really replicating success that way.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's more about just like constantly getting better at your actual craft of writing.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: It is things like relationships and networking.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I used to think when I was in LA, it was 10 years ago.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Ten years ago, I thought you had to be in LA or New York to make it.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in North Carolina now.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's still true anymore.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's still very much the heart of things, but I think you can make it kind of anywhere now.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So even in St.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Louis where I live, uh I'm actually that I think there's a pretty vibrant film community here in St.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Louis.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's just, you know, it's like if you read like Robert Rodriguez's book, uh Rebel Without a Crew, I think is what it's called.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: He shot his first movie for like seven grand and gotten some festivals that way.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: And his method is like, use what you have.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's like my buddy's got a turtle.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: This guy knows owns this store.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: So those are how you create your settings and your locations.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it it looks like you've got an animal wrangler and a budget and access to things like that, but you're just using what you have and making your own story out of it that way.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you may have to make a few of those to make a splash, but I think it's just like, you know, don't quit.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's really the only way to kind of like to to avoid not making it.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: You just kind of keep doing it.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: I remember Steven Spielberg talking about when he was trying to get into filmmaking.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: I guess this would have been what the late 60s or early 70s or or something.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um he would sneak on to the studio lot and he just kind of hold up there and I think tried to make himself at home and didn't ask for permission.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: He just did it.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it sounds like to be successful in that industry, you have to have kind of an entrepreneurial spirit.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can't wait for somebody to come along and knock on your door and invite you to something.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to take the reins and do it and figure out some way to get into the system and to get noticed.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is that a fairly accurate way to say that?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: And most of the people doing that, you know, that movie The Fablemans kind of discussed that a little bit more that came out a year or two ago that he did.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: That was kind of the idea behind that.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it's typically like people who are wearing multiple hats, like Matt Damon's writer, director, actor, I think, you know, a lot of those kind of things going on.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: The film I'm working on, like I raise money myself.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: I figure out a way to kind of make it.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just doing interviews from the access I have.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I figured out a way to actually, using archival footage, make a documentary from my office without having to travel around and shoot talking heads.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And once you cut all that, it goes from like a$500,000 budget to maybe a$50,000 budget.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just because you have to have lawyers and some of those things.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a lot more realistic.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's and that's like I'm doing something very specific where you know, if you're making a movie with your friends on an iPhone, you make you can make a$3 movie.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it just really depends how you want to kind of go about it and what kind of time you have and everything else.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that in some ways is that the future of filmmaking to some degree where I mean we all have studios in our pockets on our, you know, on our phones, basically.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is is there something to be said for all the technology that we have available that's basically free now?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Or is there is there always going to be a place for all the big budget stuff with fancy camera crews and all those kinds of things?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: How does how has that shaken out the past decade or so with all the cool technology that we have now?
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you want to see it kind of level out.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: It does seem like there's not really a middle ground.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's really like low budget films and then there's like Marvel films, and there's not a lot of those middle, you know, it used to be like$10 or$20 million.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's like barely any comedies come out anymore, right?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that crazy?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like everyone who kind of makes it today, though, they still did that, you know, mumble core movie or whatever it was.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like the reason why Greta Gerwig got the Big Barbie movie that like number one this summer is because she made these small movies, her and her husband Noah, when they were starting out.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: And they did movies like Lady Bird and even smaller than that.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: But it's because they did those things, right?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: So like I think it's it's really your approach.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost mindset.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like with the phone in your pocket and a little bit of cash, you can make you can make your first book, you can self-publish, you can make your first movie.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: You don't really need permission or gatekeepers.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that kind of like you're really out of excuses if you're not doing your thing.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's all in your head if you're not doing it, you know.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I think like the thing I'm doing though, so this documentary I'm making, it's very different to come up to someone and say, Hey, I've got an idea, give me money, right?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: So when I talk to people, it's like, hey, I'm gonna, this is like more of an underlying.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't actually say this, but it's like, I'm gonna get this thing made.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna carry it across the finish line.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love for you to join me, but if not, I'm still gonna do it.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the way I think that mindset changes like everything.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I wonder if investors or potential collaborators or people who are partnering with you in some way, I wonder if they also respect that more because they're seeing that drive and that desire to make something.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you're basically unstoppable at that point.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: If once you've just decided to do it, and they can either partner with you or not partner with you, but that there's got to be something about that energy and that that drive and that assertiveness that really is attractive to people who can make things happen for you.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's definitely got like this gravitational pull towards it.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's very odd.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I was honestly like studying things like affirmations and manifestations recently because like things were happening that made no sense to me.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's just taking action consistently, it seems like doors are opening or people are reaching out, or you're finding new connections you never thought would be there just because you're taking these actions and then kind of having faith that there will be some result there.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's after you're in like a pretty, you know, you can mean lengthy plateaus, but I think if you can love the plateau long enough, the results will come.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just really having that mindset like I'm not ever going to stop doing this thing.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the difference in like people who make it and people who don't.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's a good transition into um, and I'd love to chat some about your book, uh, which is called Ink by the Barrel, Secrets from Prolific Writers, which is a it has a great cover.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I love the title too.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: So congrats on the title and the cover.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: So as a ghostwriter, as an author myself, I'm basically talking to people all day about books and related things.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I I'd love a good title and a book cover when I see it.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: So so, first of all, well done.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and this is kind of a testament of what we were just saying.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm a ghostwriter myself.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: I've written probably 10 or 12 books for other people.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: This is the first book I've written for myself.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: I designed the cover in Canva.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: I got the physical copies printed up on Blurb, I think.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or there's I'll probably go to Amazon now with my next book I'm doing, but you can do all these things yourself.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then I kind of came up with this big idea to give away 100,000 copies kind of as a marketing idea.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: But these are just ways to like honestly like make something out of nothing.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like if you're willing to put the time into it, you can build this thing, and now you're kind of an author, as opposed to like, I need someone to give well, I think before this I had probably pitched half a dozen ideas.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: It just kind of got rejected because I don't have an audience of 100,000 people.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I've been in meetings where the this the actual, you know, the author and I'm the ghostwriter, they've got a hundred thousand people.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: It almost feels like they don't care what the book's about.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: They're just like, we know the audience is there, and that's kind of disheartening as well.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I think like going about it yourself, it just it very much seems like a better path for long-term success.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I'm also like, I'm planning to write 20 books, not one book.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of why I'm just like, I'm putting the first one out there, I'm gonna give it away.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's on my website, rock swinson.com.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'll sell the second book and then the other, you know, 20 books, whatever I ended up writing over a lifetime.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's let's maybe take a before we dig into some topics from the book, let's take a little side road and chat about ghostwriting for a second, because uh I'm always fascinated to connect with ghostwriters, and sometimes you don't know when people have ghostwritten books, because by definition, it's kind of a hidden thing.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: So one question that I would love to ask you about this, Brock, is how do you feel like ghostwriting other people's books has helped you as a writer of your own material?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: I've very look very much looked at so a combination of things.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've been a ghostwriter on 10 books, I've worked in marketing for like 10 years too.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: I worked at ClickFunnels for a while, worked on campaigns for people like Tony Robbins and all these stuff like that.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: You love ClickFunnels.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're great.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I worked there for a while for Russell.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, recently worked for some other big guys in real estate.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like I look at all of that as just this big apprenticeship to like, okay, now it's time to do your own thing.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of people, the funny one of the first questions you probably get a lot is like, don't you feel bad your name's not on it?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, these are not my books.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's not my subject.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really care.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I care as much about making it a quality book, but it's not the story I would tell, you know.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's kind of the big difference there.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I just look at like the last decade or so, like since I've been out of school, um, and just trying a hundred things and working with probably, you know, 25 clients, something like that over time.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: These are just I just learned everything and got and got paid pretty good money to learn everything I need to know to now kind of go out on my own.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm actually teaching other people now with some courses and things like that, like how to kind of get started.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm teaching a nonfiction course now with a handful of like six people, mostly memoirs.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: There is one person in there ghostwriting as well.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then that that's a great response.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: I really love that.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um the other question I wanted to ask about ghostwriting is for people who are trying to figure out their path as a writer, you know, there are a lot of ways that you can that you can monetize what you do with your writing skills.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um for people who are trying to figure out what their path is, do you have any thoughts on whether they should maybe focus on client work at first and then work on their own stuff?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or I feel like whenever I talk to people who are either helping people with publishing, they're doing their editors, they're ghostwriters, there's always this tension between working on your own stuff, you know, like courses, books, things that has your name on it, versus doing client work.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any thoughts on how how people who want to build a writing business can think about those things and maybe how we should balance doing work on behalf of other authors versus doing our own author work?
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's very difficult.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like I recently kind of got out of client work, and it was like uh I'll describe it as like going to AA like one day at a time to kind of switch over and do your own, like put as much efforts as you do kind of like your someone else's work because that the accountability changes, right?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of what the my next book is about.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's like how do you move away from deadlines and accountability to more like intrinsic motivation?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually not like a giant leap because I did a I did a an ad and a free course and got a thousand people to sign up, and they were about a dollar a person.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: So for a thousand dollars, I had about a thousand people sign up, and I quickly just shifted the accountability from deadlines to accountability to like an audience.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: And this is way better than trying to post on Medium and LinkedIn, where you're just throwing your best work into a void and no one cares because immediately 20 or 30 percent of these new people who you just kind of met, because you're giving them so much value, they're giving you some feedback right away.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think if you can kind of start to make those transitions, your own work starts to matter more.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: But as far as that, it's it's usually a question of money.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I would tell people to be at different phases.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've just finished a ghostwriting assignment.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't really want to like I would start outlining one book, but you don't want to be like writing two books at the same time.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you kind of have to see where you're at in the different phases.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really just like, can you save up enough money to give yourself a six to 12 month window to really pursue your own stuff?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the biggest thing.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And if you do that, it's hard to it's hard to find time because you're constantly, you know, even like I work remote, so I've always had well I've had a pretty good schedule for the last three years, but I really had to like I had to work towards that goal of like, all right, I need like a year to do this thing and do it right.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: And like, and then you really have to put all your faith in yourself.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: And again, that's more of a mindset issue.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, gosh, that that's really good advice, is especially having some money in the bank when you want to make a transition.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: That is exactly what I did a few years ago whenever I transition transitioned from being a college professor to full-time ghostwriter.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is that was one of the deals I had with my wife, which was I've gotta have I've gotta have number one, six months of savings in the bank.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna have at least six months worth of client work, you know, booked out.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um that made her feel a lot more comfortable with you know doing my own business as opposed to having a paycheck.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Even though the paycheck that I was getting wasn't very big, it's there's still something about that regularity of having a job that's attractive.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, that's really good advice about the money side of things.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people don't think of that.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Or it's like um, I would just make it different enough.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: So like I've worked with some clients more recently where we're just we're kind of running the branding for them, and I have a VA do most of the work, and it's different from the stuff that I'm doing.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like I'm learning from what I'm doing for myself and then reflecting it to other people, but I've almost got like an assistant running the business for me, and that way the bills are paid, and I've got this other like kind of savings there to give myself a longer runway.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And depending on where you are and your levels, like you could maybe, you know, quote, make it in 90 days, but the the longer runway you have, the more of a you know, kind of credit you're giving yourself to this like future version of yourself you're creating.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just not so much pressure, and that way you can build up the habits and the consistency and those things that have to happen because you can't control the results.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you could do as much as you can and learn from it, but in the end, like that last little bit is a little bit out of your control.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's gosh, that's why I think it's so important to have you have a variety of income streams and a variety of things that you can do, and maybe a variety of things that you are doing because you don't control things.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if you like if you just have one big client that you're doing work for, if that gets shut off, then you're host.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's bad news.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: So let's dive into some some themes and topics from your incredible book, Ink by the Barrel, Secrets Secrets from Prolific Writers.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And gosh, every chapter is its that could be its own podcast episode.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because there's so much really, really good stuff in here.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I'd love to ask you about is so you you talk a lot in the book about using your time well.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this is something I think a lot of creative types wrestle with.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And by saying creative types, what I really mean is me, but I'm projecting that on everybody out there so I don't look so bad, I guess.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's something that all of us I think wrestle with is how do we use this most important resource that we have, which is time.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Any thoughts on how writers can really be effective and productive uh with using their time?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, for me, it's like I would say every six weeks, I've got, oh, I've got the new perfect plan, and then it kind of changes, you know.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm I'm challenging myself the next year.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Can I make all these things work?
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've got this big challenge I've kind of shared with my followers that like, can I become a writer who makes a million dollars in a year only working three hours a day?
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Can you put these insane constraints on what you're trying to do?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that way it just makes you think differently.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: You can't like do things for$10 an hour X number of times.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's not physically possible within those constraints.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I think figuring out your minimum and your maximum output per day is is the biggest thing.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so I'm I'm teaching writers now, a lot of them are writing their first book, you know.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we I had a guest on last week, and we were just kind of saying, pick an pick a minimum, maximum daily word count.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's three or five hundred words if you're brand new, but you also might want to have a max of like 2,000 words because you don't want to write when I was 20, I would write 10,000 words in a day, and I would do nothing for two weeks, you know, and it's better to kind of chip away at it as opposed to that whole thing.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I really like the ideas of these positive constraints.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I use a little uh I like physical paper, I like note cards.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: I use a little journal now, and it's got like like this morning I got up at um 4 30.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: I did a short workout to kind of wake me up, and I did I was like, I'm gonna give myself three hours to what I need to do.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I wrote like two articles, sent an email, answered like three or four emails, and I had a strict cutoff at eight.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I have three hours to work on these things.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm constantly like throughout the day, I'm probably redefining what's the most important, what are the priorities, who's waiting on me.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I've got two clients I'm kind of overseeing in things, but it's mostly my stuff now.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I really have to decide like, you know, I am creating those accountability things there.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm teaching a course every Thursday for 12 weeks.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: I've got four other courses in mind.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Which one makes the most sense to come out when?
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: When do I have time to write my TV show, write my book, and work on my documentary?
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I work every day though, so it is it's still 21 hours a week, even though it doesn't sound like much being three hours a day.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: But those three hours, either before the day starts or at the end of the day, I used to write it at night when I was younger, but now I write in the morning.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: We have a small baby, I'm married as you are.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, those three hours are worth more than six hours later in the day when you're getting interrupted all the time.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: If it's super focused and condensed like that, it seems to be more open to work.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Another version of this is like I printed out this thing, uh a simpler version was maybe like I can really only guarantee that I'll get three things done in a day.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: If I make a list of 10 things, I'm just gonna be stressed out the whole day.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that means you can only do about 90 things in a month.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I used to print out this thing on the first of the month, and it had 90 spaces, and I would fill it up, and once it was full, it was full.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you had to like take something off or make decisions that way.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I rarely did them all because things changed, but you have to it does keep you reminding of like what your priorities are.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: And again, there's some there's some like positive creative constraints to that, a minimum and a maximum for each day.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you talk about let's say and and I know the the length of time is somewhat arbitrary, yeah.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: But but if you when you're talking about three hours per day, you're talking about that's your dedicated time to work on your own stuff, not client work, not admin stuff or anything.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're talking about the creative stuff where you're talking about this is the stuff I really have to get done today, no matter if it's admin or client or your stuff.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: For the purpose of this, it's everything.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the craziest part.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's everything but a call like this one, because I can't control this.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: So it's everything that's creative input is the first three hours of the day.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I and I'm also trying to limit those too.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, like in the next couple of weeks, what I'm trying to phase down to is like I'm only doing calls on like Tuesdays and Thursdays pretty soon, and that way it's like more have time to do other things.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: But also, so I have an assistant in Venezuela.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: Anyone can kind of find an assistant for like$10 or$12 an hour.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: It makes me constantly rethink of like, okay, this can be delegated.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: This isn't worth my time.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: This could be something else that they're doing.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And she's great at like podcasts and different things like that.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: So she does a lot of that stuff for me.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: She has all my schedule.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Anything basically that is not writing or me on camera or recording, she can kind of do it for the most part.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in fact, that's how we got connected was I assume that she pitches a certain number of podcasts per week, or you have kind of certain parameters for her to connect with podcasters.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like you, you're probably not gonna want to pitch to gardening podcasts or auto mechanics, you know.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: So your thing is writing, creative, creative thinking, screenwriting, those kinds of things.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I like that.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: I really really like that a lot.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: And most things for people who are are are weary about delegating, it's like I'll do the first version.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: So like for that one, like I think I created the spreadsheet, I created 10 samples, and I said, All right, extend this list to 200, reach out to so many until we book these calls.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we like booked like 20 calls pretty soon, like 20 interviews pretty soon.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: I write it up.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny because like the first one I did, um, the one of the the hosts was like, So you have like a whole PR team.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, No, it's just me and this girl in Venezuela.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: We just we just but I've seen, as I'm sure you have, I've seen so many PR requests come in.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: I know what they look like and sound like and everything else.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm just kind of putting my spin on it and using some of the like borrowed authority of celebrities I've interviewed from a podcast and stuff like that.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's actually what got my attention initially when she sent me that first pitch, is they were talking about the celebrities that you interviewed, and I was like, oh well, this guy's obviously legit.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: So because I get tons, and my show isn't even that big, really.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's just I get tons of PR pitches, like on a daily basis.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: So in fact, I had to most of them nowadays I'm just like, please take me off your list.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're sending me these pitches for these super obscure books.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't have any connection to the the author, like just can we take it down a notch, you know?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um I would love to hear your thoughts on um something that you talk about in your book is avoiding self-sabotage.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I I'm really curious if you can give us some tips on how you think about what self-sabotage is and maybe how we can deal with it as creative types.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, some of it's that first thing of like positive or positive limitations to your work, like trying to write 10,000 words a day, trying to get 10 things done done every day.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna like sabotage.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: I used to do this thing, and it still kind of happens, is like if I I would I would plan my schedule so rigorously and do such crazy workouts, I would literally make myself sick.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like I would have like the flu or something for a week, like out of nowhere.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's just like you're just trying to do like too many things.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: You're literally like exhausting yourself.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm constantly like the part of about defending your time is also defending your rest time and knowing when you need to kind of take a break and and put some limits there.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: But it also could be I've I've I've kind of entered into some coaching myself where I'm coaching, but I'm also being coached by someone else within screenwriting.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I've kind of noticed that like I might hit success somewhere, but if I don't care, I don't pursue it.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like historically, I did a video on YouTube that got two million views, and I didn't really do another one for a long time.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: I did the little business that got some sales the first day without advertising.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't really pursue it because I didn't really care about those things.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't really realize that it was more like I just like wanted to understand how the system worked, and I didn't care so much about the success.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it could be that you haven't, those people that have like done a few things or keep switching lanes, they haven't found the thing they could talk about for the next 20 years.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, like doing the podcast, it's like creativity plus productivity.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I talk about.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I've kind of just reduced that to like that's what it means to be prolific.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: To me, it doesn't mean writing thousands of words every day.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: It means I'm planning to write until I'm 100 years old.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I think about with you know the cost and the and just everything else.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's not long ago, or a couple years ago, I found a New Year's resolution list from like three years earlier.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was the same damn list I had like that year, you know.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, okay, that's enough.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's enough is enough.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like go go start doing your own stuff and uh just go make some mistakes and take chances and really just kind of figure out where you need to be going with this.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: And now it's like once you find that lane, though, it's like you suddenly have unlimited ideas because you're not wasting your bandwidth on multiple different arenas of ideas.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And that's that's really hard, I think, when you're starting out because I mean, my goodness, there's there's so much competing advice out there about how to actually make a living as a writer.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can literally have a hundred different types of businesses as a writer, and you don't know who to listen to, and sometimes you're not even sure where your skill set is best navigated toward.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I think what you're talking about is really it's really important.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like pick a lane, pick something.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: It almost doesn't matter what it is at the beginning because just the process of you moving forward, I think will you'll eventually end up where you need to be.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: What I did like most recently, and you know, uh like I got this, I think I created this offer.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's called the Prolific Challenge, and it's still up at Brockswinson.com slash prolific.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I just took like a bunch of clips from my show and I took my book and I broke it up into 30 pieces.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: And originally I was like, I'll do an email series, and and people will probably sign up for it for free.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, well, how do I make more value than that?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I made it a 30-day video series with clips from celebrities like Joseph Gordon Leavitt and Jim Gaffigan and people I've talked to over time.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: I interviewed a bunch of people while I was filming it.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: They gave me stuff to give away as well.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I added bonus interviews with some other big names and like mindset.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: And really, like it was so valuable.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: People saw the ad, they were like, is this a scam?
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is this even legit?
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: But those thousand people signed up for it.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: And like I did that within like the first month of like kind of just taking this shift, and it's just so different.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then you can really toy with your audience a little bit.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do they like?
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, I'm gonna email them every single day for 30 days.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna say everything that's on my mind and kind of see what clicks and see where the feedback is.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna ask them what they want.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna tell them, hey, I've got four or five ideas.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: What is most appealing to you?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: And you kind of got like that give and take.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: You'll find out what your lane is based on what you care about and what they care about.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's I think that can be anything.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think that could be any type of writing.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't think it has to be.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I teach like how to make it as a freelancer, how to write books, how to write movies, how to write TV shows.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: Those are all over the board.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_01: But when I talk to people, I'm mostly talking about what it means to be prolific and create habits and all those other kinds of things like that.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I do it in a number of ways.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: I had a really nice compliment from a writer I'm working with because I was telling him everything I was doing, and he said, a lot of people teach people how to write.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: You teach people how to be a writer.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't until he said that to me that I was like, oh, that is what I do.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I do.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't really realize it until he told me what it was.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great insight.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: It was really good.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious, I'd love to backtrack to something you mentioned a bit ago.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it was funny, you kind of just threw it out there.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I I love this concept.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: So if you were going to have a million dollar year as a writer working only three hours a day, based on the things that you've done, what kinds of what are some ways that somebody could actually do that in the real world?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I know there's tons of different answers you could have to that, but but generally, what are some some ways that a writer could actually do that?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, for me, like where I come from, the click funnels and different companies, like my ideas are all like the first question is what's gonna scale?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're not gonna make a million dollars without scaling something, right?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: So like I'm teaching this course like how to write a nonfiction book in 12 weeks.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_01: We meet once a week, they're getting like unlimited access to me, whatever they want.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna do it for free, but when I pitched it to my audience, uh, four or five people signed up, and they all like the first one offered me$500.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, okay, well, this person said that.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't I didn't really talk about money, they just said I want to give you something.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: And a couple of them came from like UCLA extension, and they're used to like this amount of money for a course like this, right?
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, probably thousands of dollars.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I made a couple thousand dollars just for me to shoot this thing, and then once I get it done, I'm gonna add so my my podcast has got 400 interviews, creative principles since COVID, so the last three years, I've filmed all the interviews with video.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I've got all that video content.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll add those as bonuses because I've never before seen stuff with like 10, you know, well-known authors.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll add some bonus content there.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'll keep stacking things upon it.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'll add like how I do a commonplace book and keep my note cards and right.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'll film myself and like do an hour on that.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll add as much value to that as I can, and I'll do that a number of ways.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just taking something you know.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm taking something that's not scalable.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: This course I'm teaching is six people, but I'm making it scalable and I'm learning from them as I go.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'll sell it for maybe a hundred dollars, but I'll have some upsells of working with me one-on-one, and those prices will kind of go up over time.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I think like the general thing is like for everyone across the board, what's the best course you can make as quote, an expert?
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_01: How can you pack it with value?
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: How can you sell it for one to two thousand dollars, and then maybe upsell some edition of it that's literally one-on-one, I hold your hand for like ten thousand dollars.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's like the most basic way to do it.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: Something like that, I would say.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: It could be for you, it could be ghostwriting, you know.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like, yeah, here's how I ghostwrite books, here's how I find clients, whatever.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's two thousand dollars.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'll teach you one-on-one for a X number of weeks for ten thousand dollars, and that's the easiest way to do it.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's really good advice.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: The the interesting thing about ghostwriting, and of course, you've been in this field too, and have done a bunch of ghostwriting as well.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: People hear they they excuse me, sorry, let me get a quick drink of water.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: People hear things like, hey, Prince Harry's ghostwriter made like seven figures doing his memoir, and everybody wants to kind of aspire to that level of success.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing I think a lot of people don't realize is that well, number one, the vast majority of ghostwriters don't don't make seven figures per book, not even close to that.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um but then that is a very, very elite number of writers who are even at that level.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's like another thing.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: But the other thing is that you you can only work on a certain number of those books.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like you can, it's not like you have a book of that caliber every single year.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like writers who are doing those several hundred-page memoirs for highly well-known people, like every few years you might have a project.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: So even if you're operating at that level and you're just a ghostwriter, you're not really making that much.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like so.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: I started at I I think I wrote, I may have written fiction first.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote like a a smuddy, like 50 shades of gray fiction novel in Canada first.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I wrote a Western for someone.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: And then like then it was stuff like how to write how to start a food truck business, and it was a couple thousand dollars.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then like at some point, I could say, have written like five books, and when I would talk to someone, I I met everyone initially through upwork.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then kind of once I got into some networks and things like that, I was literally my last book I wrote, I was literally just I was in the car with the billionaire, and he said, Do you know any ghostwriters?
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, I can do it.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I sent him some samples, and his book hit number two on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that is an oddity that I couldn't tell you how to weave your way into, even though I literally did it, you know.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's just like like I teach people how to make it on Upwork, you can do that and and and get paid, you know, thousands of dollars.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe up to I'd say I've gotten up to like 10 grand on Upwork books, like just like pretty normal stuff, but they take time, and it is like an apprenticeship type thing.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you really, I think even then after the third or fourth one, I'm like, I need to care about this a little bit.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can't do something where like I can't do a user manual.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: I work one of my first jobs was writing 2,000-word user manuals for eBay.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's an awful job.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, I couldn't do that.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you get to these points, I think, and I get to these points in writing where I'm like, I'll finish something.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, I can't do that anymore.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: That was literally my last one of those.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of where I got to like more recently, like, okay, it's time to go out on my own.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: I I can't work.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: I left a job I was with for over a year.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: I got another job, and within two weeks, I was like, I think this is it.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I can do this anymore.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it was just like this wall that I kind of hit.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like, okay, I'm ready, I've done enough, and I think I can spend a year and just make this work and I'll figure it out.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'll do whatever it takes because it's like I've seen everything else.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen all the other stuff work too.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen from the inside.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've been a part of I worked on the ClickFunnels campaign when they made$9 million in a weekend, like broke the internet.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like I worked on some of the ads for that.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: I worked on some real estate stuff recently that made a million dollars the first day it came out.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've seen like crazy stuff like that.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: And as wild as it sounds, like I've seen courses where one of the last ones I did, like personally by myself or someone else, we made like 300 grand the first day.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: I checked it about a month later, and like less than 10% of people even took the$1,000 course they paid for.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's really just about like you making the best thing you can, but that doesn't mean you're gonna find people who are actually gonna, you know, find the success out of it, which is the oddest part of the whole thing, you know.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, we'll get back to the conversation in just a minute, but I want to take a couple moments to give a huge thanks to today's sponsor, Vellum.
• 37:57
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• 38:02
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• 38:09
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• 38:25
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• 38:31
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• 38:34
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• 38:38
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• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's trivellum.com slash daily.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh one thing that I really respect about Russell Brunson is that my to the best of my knowledge, he actually writes his own books, which are I've, you know, and of course, as a you know, as a fellow ghostwriter, I don't know if you do this, but anytime that I see a book written by a well-known entrepreneur or celebrity, I'm always like looking to see if I can it's like a little game that I play.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: I like to see if I can figure out who the ghostwriter was.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: You you can't always, but you know, they're they're like kind of telltale science sometimes.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: But as far as I can tell, he actually writes his own books, which I really respect because he's leading this big, massive company.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's very busy, and his books are really, really compelling.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I just love his stuff, especially expert secrets with the webinar formula.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's that stuff is so good.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: You can tell like he's obsessed with it.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like he he reminds me like the new guy is probably Alex Ramosi.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: I would say he writes his own stuff.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: You look at like I literally have his book on my desk, I'm working through right now.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: He just had like a crazy for his second book, just wild like book launch, 500,000 people, he just gives it all away for free.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: I saw that.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's insane.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's very similar to Russell.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: I would say a lot of the content is similar.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then also like he's doing the images and some of that, he draws the images himself too.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: And once he got to that level, though, you can his his kind of take on it is like, I don't I'm gonna spend 20 times as then as much time as the next person to make this book a book that sells more the next month than it did the previous month.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how he's thinking about it, and that's how Russell's thinking about it.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: These guys are like they're giving them away, or the same thing I'm doing, like I put a lot of time in this first book because it's your introduction to me.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's how I'm establishing trust with my audience, with my readers.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it needs to have a lot of value in it.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then this and that only needs to be true like for the next book and everything else you do.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's like you should be doing less but better, is the whole idea.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of the stoic mindset, right?
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to ask you kind of a silly question, um, but I'm super curious about it.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: And um the cool thing about having your own podcast is you can ask all the weird questions.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, obviously, you are in the film and TV screenwriting industry, and so you have a lot of connections in that world, but I'm curious, um, how do you get to to connect with people for your show?
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like guests, you've had like Jim Gaffigan, Joseph Gordon Leavitt, uh Taylor Sheridan, Aaron Sorkin, those kinds of guests, and I know you've interviewed tons and tons of celebrities.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: What does it take to actually connect with those with that caliber of celebrity or writer or actor and have them on a show?
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: What I would tell people like I'll tell you my story, and I'll first I would say people starting out.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, so I'm doing a documentary now about the history of stunts in film.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Daredevil Society.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea is like from Buster Keaton to Jackie Chan, how have stunts changed in 100 years of film?
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm using my podcast kind of as some credibility for that, but I'm also kind of starting at the bottom.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: So the real simple thing I would do is like punch at your weight class for a little while.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: And as you as you start to climb up, you can use those names, and then that'll kind of get to the next one, the next one, and kind of rise higher that way.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's kind of the easiest way to do it.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: And if you if if people don't know what I'm saying, like it might even be like look at people you want to talk to in a certain niche.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: How many followers do they have?
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: Start with the lowest one first, go up from there.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: My actual story though, I got that job through creative screenwriting on through a Craigslist ad.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: I worked for them for a period of time, and I said, Hey, what are we got this great audio?
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't I host a why don't I host a show for you guys?
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it was still kind of early in podcasting.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: They said, you know, you can just keep the audio, do it yourself.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: So they gave me permission to use all this great audio, like Aaron Sorkin and really famous people.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, I'm gonna do my own show.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: And we were at the time like turning down some big names because we only talk to writers, we don't talk to actors and directors.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I could kind of like instead of calling it creative screenwriting, I was like, I'll just call it creative principles and I'll kind of expand that net a little bit and talk to musicians and you know everyone else like that.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um today I posted an episode with both a director and an actual astronaut the film was about, which is kind of a unique way that I can talk about something different from everyone else, you know.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: But it just kind of went up from there, and I still don't have massive numbers.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have massive numbers, you say, Hey, I've got a hundred thousand people in my audience.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, what I say is, hey, I've talked to XYZ, and I've kind of moved up from there.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then, like when we pitch to have an author on the show, I'll only mention famous authors.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: When we pitch to have an actor, I'll only mention famous actors.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: If it's more general, I'll say I've talked to Aaron Sorkin, Ethan Hawk, Jim Gaffigan, Whitney Cummings.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'll say like the top five or six or whatever it is.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: When I talk to comedians, I kind of lean to that.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: And over the years, just doing a ton of episodes, you just kind of you kind of get in these these PR nets.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: And now they come to me.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: The funny thing is like Jim Gaffigan's team came to me on my podcast, and I brought them to create screenwriting as opposed to where it's usually the opposite.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's just kind of like getting.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: To know those people, and I get pitched like 10 episodes a week.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been different with a writer's strike, but like typically it's something like that.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll usually do do a handful.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes, like before the writer's strike, we were like 30 episodes behind.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: I had 30 episodes on my computer that I just like was trying to figure out how to space them out and um everything else like that.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just like you just kind of work your way up.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: You start with something attainable.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: If you know someone you can, I would say that's probably the best way to go.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: I would say pick some niche area though.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: Don't be like, I'm gonna talk to just celebrities.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's not gonna get you anywhere.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Would you say podcasting has has been a huge help to you overall in your career?
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but I I think a lot of things is like even if no one listens, I learned so much from the show.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: I get to ask them whatever I want to ask them.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: Like my show is set up, it's very conversational.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I would say it's like 90% evergreen, and then 10% I talk about whatever their new thing is.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I just for me, it's like it's super valuable.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, it led like the first 250 episodes led to my first book.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: I've done 200 episodes since the first book came out, so now I'm ready to write the next book.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's how I put books together.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I I come up with like gigantic stacks of note cards.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: I use what's called a commonplace book, and I just kind of reorganize those as I go through them.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_01: So like I'm working on one now that there's a chapter called The Calvary is not coming, and then there's like a pile of note cards that give me ideas, and then it's like there's no blank page.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm piecing things together, and I've already put in a ton of work.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: I've already read all I've read a ton of books, I've done 200 interviews, and I'm kind of putting this all together to form the next book.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk about how you use your commonplace book?
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's a term that I've heard before.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've now I I'm maybe I do have one and I just don't realize that's what it is, but I'm curious what that is and how you use it.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so for me, like the easiest way to start is just um is you read a book, highlight things, or I take pictures on my phone sometimes if I don't want to like literally destroy the book.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm torn between destroying books and not destroying books all the time.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: But I just read like Rick Rubin's book on creativity.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: I probably pulled like 20 quotes from it, and I'll put those in a stack.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of like a year, or ideally I'd write a book every two years, but let's say at the end of a year, you've got a pretty big stack of books.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've got a stack of cards probably six inches deep.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just starting to kind of lay those out.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: And as themes are coming up, like I knew the intro of this book was going to be something like The Calvary is not coming.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: But there's another, and then it's like as I as I keep reading, I'm like, well, this fits here.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: This is kind of this idea.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm not like I don't have an idea, and then I figure out the information.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: I let all the reading, everything absorbed, come together.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because you naturally, if you read a book, it leads you to another book, right?
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how everything kind of works.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's how my questions are leading in my um interview series and everything else.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm doing all the work first and then kind of going backwards like a detective and figuring out how it pieces together, right?
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, like the Calvary's Not Coming.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: That idea, a guest told me about the speech from one of the Duplass brothers, and the whole idea is like you really don't need any help, you can do it yourself.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I was already writing about.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was already writing something, I was calling it the self-reliant artist, and that's what I've been thinking about in my head for a period of time.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: Then something within that is like I heard someone say, you can play the victim or you can play the game.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: And all of a sudden I'm like, oh, these 30 cards kind of fit this idea, you know.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just like, so I've got a I've got a little literally just like a box in the floor, 16 potential chapters.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: Some of them may merge together, some are more vague than others.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: But I just kind of read I read through them all the day, and it's like I spent a year reading, I write in a couple cards a day, I spend one day doing an outline, and I'm ready to write a book.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like the it's kind of the reversal of like, I'm gonna sit down with no idea on a blank page and try to start, and I'm gonna write the next great American novel.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: There's no there's no way to kind of the the difference in where I'm starting and where they're starting is so drastically different.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: I almost think that there is I was thinking about this uh actually last night I was journaling about this.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: This idea of when we put work out into the world, I I think sometimes sometimes we want something to be really great.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like if you so Cormick McCarthy just died not too long ago.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: A few of his books people would consider like the great American novel kind of a thing, and they're they're really good and and all that.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I wonder if there's a sense where it's not really up to us to decide which of which of our works is great, because there's that's so much out of our control.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: And our our duty is just to show up and create and be prolific, as you talk about so eloquently.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: But then it's really up to other people to kind of sift and comb through this stuff that people create, and and it's up to other people to decide what of what of what of our creations is actually worthwhile and maybe it has a lasting impact.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that that's kind of frustrating in a sense, but it's also kind of freeing because it kind of takes the pressure off.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: And definitely like I I doubt any writer would say their most popular book is their personal favorite.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: I would almost say it's implausible that that's the case.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like the guys, I think two brothers wrote Casablanca and they thought it was a piece of crap.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't think anything of it.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was a movie of the week for them.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's one of the best films ever made, the way we look at it.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: But they didn't think anything of it.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think like putting so much pressure on it, what I talk about a little bit in Ink by the Barrel is like I think that's what stopped Harper Lee from writing a second book.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: She had so much pressure from that first success, there's nowhere to go from there.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas opposed to she just had the habits and didn't have the feedback, didn't have that success, she may have written 30 books or 50 books or whatever it was, you know.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, and I don't know, it's like you should take it with a little bit of, you know, grain like it is the feedback is important.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: Take it with a grain of salt though, and I would say, listen to it all you can, but you need to be making your own thing and you need to be growing because they're also going to get to the point where they're expecting something of you.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: I like to give this weird example.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: Will Farrell made a movie called Casa de mi padre, that was all in Spanish, and it's I remember that.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: It just bombed.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why would he make that movie?
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, because he's still trying to be creative and find something different.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like he can do another step brothers and whatever, but he wants to make something weird and like find his creativity, and and that's where we lead to things that are probably the most unique, you know.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just like it's hard to be willing to do that because your your first difficulty as an artist is to love the plateau, but your second difficulty is to raise your standard and change your game a little bit.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: So when I talk to clients and stuff like that, or people I want to work with students, what I tell them and like what I kind of find my purpose is I want to help creative people get their most ambitious work into the world.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean it's their greatest work, it's it means it's that personal thing that they know is next.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: They could be their first book, it might be their tenth book, but they're gonna change something drastic and make it really personal.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I like to kind of talk to people about what that is.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: And one question I start with a lot of my clients is like, what heresies do you believe?
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: I want to know what you believe that no one else believes.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: And we start to get to the the underlying pen of that and find out what the purpose is, and what's the reason of doing all this stuff in the first place?
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: Man, that's that's a great question.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what what heresies do you believe?
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like well, what what's the counterintuitive well what's your contrarian opinion on things?
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's that's really good.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: Easy one for most people.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I think college is a waste of time or something like that, you know.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: So mine is like, I don't really think you're I guess the idea is like I don't really think gatekeepers matter so much, and that's kind of where we're going with all of these different ideas.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like you can go do this thing yourself, and you can build your own audience and you can start from scratch.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the funny thing is when I start doing these things, like I've always had a fascination with like pickpockets, for example, and and and stories and like the different characters like that is like I love people and characters who create something out of nothing.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I realize that's true both in my fiction screenplay writing and my non-fiction book writing.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it really took me a long time to like it, and then it kind of hit me over the head with like, oh, well, you like the whole idea is you create something out of nothing, and you can build this whole life out of seemingly nothing, you know.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: And really, isn't that the whole the whole point of what we're doing is we're we're trying to create a life for ourselves.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, before we hit record, we were talking about the writer strike.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: So we're recording this on September 25th.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: So supposedly the Hollywood writer strike is is done and they're getting a contract in place and all that.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: And my goodness, it what a great example of just kind of being stuck in a system and not having any options and your whole fate and all of your income being controlled by somebody else.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: So the importance of developing your own stuff is is more important than ever, I think.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I really think it's everything, and and even like the big names are kind of seeing like, what is the point of this whole system?
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I can go to YouTube and make my own stuff, or I can self-publish my own books.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: And as much as those uh like people want to get to a point, and I think maybe the school system is at fault.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's another heresy that's maybe something I kind of think about, is that you want to privilege for things, you want to get to a point where you can hand the keys over, and you really can't do that.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: You really have to go all the way to the end with your thing.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: There are no more, whether you're writing books or movies, you're expected to do all the marketing almost by yourself.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's very rarely you have to have a crazy, a crazy resume for someone to really put their faith in you, and you've already, and by the time that they do it, you no longer need them.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's the where we're at right now.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's the catch 22 of this whole thing.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's isn't the ideal situation where you have your own stuff and you don't have to rely on somebody else, but when something comes along like a studio project or a ghostwriting project or whatever, that's more of a client-based thing, or it's for another entity.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_00: You can do it if you want to.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that to me is kind of like the ideal situation.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's like, again, the the weird Barbie example is that like she made a weird movie, and she can only do that because it was weird, right?
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_00: I loved it.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Margot kind of brought her in.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: Margot had the rights originally, brought her in.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: Her and her husband wrote the screenplay.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the way they approached it is the way I teach people to kind of apply for freelancing jobs.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, hey, here's the way I would do it.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't want to do it that way, that's fine, it's not for me.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's the way the best actors audition for things.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's the way you get the best jobs.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: But you're at you're at the level to be at the table, I would say, but you still need to have kind of that backbone to say, I really would only do it this way.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_01: If it's not this way, it's not for me.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: Be at that level.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like a lot of people don't know.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if you listen to old interviews with Arnold Schwarzenegger, he was already a millionaire from real estate when he got into acting.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_01: So he he could say no to almost everything.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how he got these big starring roles when Terminator came along and different things like that.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: He had enough, again, six months, twelve months, whatever it was, banked away to focus on what mattered most to him and just focus on being a movie star.
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, did not know that.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he's got a wild story, yeah, for sure.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: He's all over it, all over the place.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: I had somebody the other day said, Hey, I'm I'm subscribed to Arnold Arnold Schwarzenegger's email list.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, What?
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's got an email list?
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's it's brand new.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a pump club.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: So he's trying to, he's got a book coming out in October, and now I think this Netflix documentary came out, it's a three-hour documentary maybe a month ago.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: He is transitioning to online marketing, which is something Mark Matthew McConaughey just did.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: We worked on a little bit of Matthew McConaughey's stuff.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't work with him personally, but I worked with some of the teams and everything else.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because he's working directly with like Dean and Tony.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: But they're they're entering into this new space, which is really interesting because Schwarzenegger's got crazy mindset.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you watch his stuff, I mean it's insane.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: His his belief system and the way he thinks about things, and people have different opinions about him, but there's no question about his discipline and dedication and getting these insane results for his entire life, basically.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's been fascinating, and I know you've got to go because we're this interview went way longer than I intended.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I just enjoyed talking with you so much.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it is really fascinating to see so many celebrities pivoting more to a business thing, like obviously Ryan Reynolds, everybody knows what he does with marketing, George Clooney, um, you know, with his tequila brand.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: And there's so many other celebrities who are like they're really making their portfolios much more diverse.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's fascinating.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's really fascinating and so cool.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they're making drastically more.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the the tequila, I think, is what it was, what made George Clooney a billionaire.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's an insane thing, right?
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_01: And The Rock does it.
• 56:59
  SPEAKER_01: They're they're going to follow.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: There's a great show called Wall Street on um HBO Max, like Walls and Mark Wahlberg, W-A-H-A-L.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_00: Mark Wahlberg's another one.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it shows him like how he runs his like six companies.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's really interesting how he kind of balances all those things and has his team.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: And if you think about it, those who watched Entourage 10 years ago, that was his early life, and now his life is way different, you know.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_01: But he's he's very much like he's building a legacy, and that comes back to purpose too.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_01: So Kevin Hart's another one.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you listen to interviews with Kevin Hart, his his life purpose is to shift the culture for black people, which is a massive thing to even say.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that means not only like becoming a billionaire, but even further than that, like changing the way things are set up, changing the way the studios are set up.
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a conversation with him and Tyler Perry, where Tyler Perry says, I don't care about you know picketing to get more black people in white movies.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm building my own studio.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then now Marvel movies are filming at Tyler Perry's studio.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's a whole different game, right?
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's but like some version of that is the mindset all creatives need.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's where you should be building your own foundation and everything else.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's the idea of I I don't want to just play in somebody else's sandbox.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go make my own sandbox and invite other people to play there.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's a whole different mindset than being somebody who's always just kind of looking for the next client gig or whatever.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's also like this I don't know, this confidence and self-respect and everything else that you can if you believe in yourself that much and you have to put yours, you're constantly putting yourself in situations where you're not really sure if you can deliver, but you have to do that like over and over and over and over again.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's all mindset though.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're gonna make mistakes, you're gonna fail.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like it is what it is, but the mindset is kind of the key to that that insane, those insane ideas, you know.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's like saying yes and then figuring out how you're gonna deliver.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can do that.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_00: How am I actually gonna do that?
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's one I like the audience too.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's like I was telling my writers, like, I was supposed to work on this other book and it kind of fell apart.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: It was a ghostwriting assignment.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be my last one, and it kind of fell apart last minute.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I was telling them, like, well, I've got an idea for my next book.
• 59:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what it is yet, but I have an idea and I've done all this work beforehand.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_01: So pretty soon, I haven't done it quite yet.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna just pick a date and say, hey, my book's coming out this date, and then I gotta get it done.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta figure out all the pieces, and I've already got an editor and different things like that.
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_01: But you just have to make promises to your audience, and that's another thing why it's just like a thousand people is a big deal that would you're talking to them every day and they're paying attention, they're giving you feedback, and they're asking you questions.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_01: You can do that like in 30 days.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_01: You can get a thousand people to read your work.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Brock, this has been an absolute pleasure to chat with you.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad that we've connected and gosh, I feel like everything you said is like there's so much wisdom here.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I took a bunch of notes uh as well.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: I don't always do that on podcast interviews.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_00: I try to really listen, but uh what you were saying was so great, I've just taken a bunch of notes.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, where can people connect with you and find out more about your work and all the cool things that you're doing?
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm on Instagram and and Twitter or X now, uh just at BrockSwinson.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: Also at BrocksWinson.com.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_01: You can get the book for free.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_01: You can learn about the Prolific Challenge.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's also free.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll be coming out with a ton of courses and some one-on-one training in the near future.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: All that's going to be at BrocksWinson.com.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you again.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: This has been uh such a blast.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm again I'm so glad that we connected.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I appreciate it.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks again.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_00: Brock was really, really fun to talk to and also a very smart and very accomplished guy.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I just really, really enjoyed getting to meet him and also dive into his book, Ink by the Barrel, Secrets from Prolific Authors, which as I mentioned at the top of this episode, you can get completely for free by visiting his website, BrockSwinson.com.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure and grab that.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I want to take a second to give a huge thanks to today's sponsors.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: We already talked about Vellum in our mid-world, but I want to highlight a couple of other sponsors who are part of our show today as well.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the first one is Thumbprint Creative.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now you've probably heard the saying, don't judge a book by its cover, but in the book world, that is a complete lie because we all judge books by their cover.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: People do judge the quality of the book by whether you have a great cover.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the cover, in fact, is the very first thing that people notice about a book.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why my graphic designer of choice is Christy Griffith, owner of Thumbprint Creative.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I've worked with Christy for years, and she's designed book covers and the interior layout for some of my own books as well as my ghostwriting client books, in addition to designing a lot of book covers and doing the layout for many, many friends of mine that I've sent her away.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: Christy works really closely with you to design a layout for your book that perfectly captures the theme and genre of the book.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: I highly recommend her.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's definitely worth checking out.
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_00: You can go to gothumprint.com to learn more about Christy's services.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's got thumbprint.com.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: I also want to give a big thanks to today's other sponsor.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_00: There is no such thing as writer's block, which is the brand new book from my friend and business coach Honore Corter.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you've been thinking about being more productive in your writing, or you just want to know how to grow your writing business, this awesome little book is going to help you learn the secrets to keeping the words flowing.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_00: You'll learn what's really blocking you, you'll learn about the value of building your writer tribe, you'll learn how to become the writer you've always dreamed of, and much, much more.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I highly recommend you grab a copy of this book today.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's short, you can read it fast, but the lessons will impact you for a lifetime.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's called There's No Such Thing as Writer's Block, and you can grab it via the link in the show notes.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_00: All right, my friend, as always, thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.