It's the Daily Talk Show, episode 535, special guests in the studio, Michael Bungay, Stania. You know what, I have 535 tattoo, we got on my chest, and we're doing my lucky number forever, so what are they all about? Is that your lucky shirt too, with the bananas on it? I'm lucky shirt, I like anything with the fruit thing.
You, I love your get up, and you've just revealed your tattoo that I didn't see when we spent a day doing a workshop with you. I like that. What is the tattoo? It is, it's meant to be the Australian Gumtree, so I live in Canada, and I love Australia, I miss it when I'm there, so as a kind of totemic piece I've got a gumtree, I spend four years trying to find a tattoo artist who would design this, go ahead as a vision for what it would be, and I keep going into studios and they go, I don't get what you're talking about, mate, so they're all Canadian.
I finally went into this one where this guy went, look, I've got a colour, I can give this a go, I like an adventure, so I'm like fantastic, so we do the first three-hour session and he does the blackout line, and I'm like, let's do it then, and he spent three months going back and forth on the design until we finally got one I liked, and then on the second session, I'm going to line there on his tattoo couch, staring up at the ceiling and trying to ignore the pain, and at a certain point I look down, and he's completely ignoring the design that we spent three or four months doing, and he's just free-handing stuff, and I'm like, this is a tattoo, it's not like a paragraph where you're like, can you just delete that and start again, I'm like, okay, okay, I can't, we're committed now, did you bring it up? No, because I was just like, okay, well I said to myself is, whatever happens, I'm committed to loving this tattoo, because it's like it's on the head, so I'm going to love this tattoo no matter what happens, and it turns out where he went with it was better than actually a design so I love it now, so it's perfect. Well you said you could lip this trick, I'll get a gumtree, like a snow gumtree. If you're listening, it's a gumtree, if you're looking at it on psychedelics, because it is colorful, it's beautiful.
So it's a great, I love the take on a gumtree in its colour pantry. Well, gum trees, obviously some gum trees will have this kind of striation, and it'll look kind of subtle colour to it, but it's like, it's pumped it up a little bit. I feel like it's quite on brand, because when I met you for the first time at your workshop, I loved you get up, I loved your vibe, and I loved your way of presenting even more so, I said to you as well, leaving, I said I know what you did, but I've got more energy, now after a full day workshop, then when I got here, I got you haggering. Yeah, and actually psychedelic, we put psychedelics in the water, that also helps.
Was that your first tattoo? I know, my first tattoo was actually that you see a little southern cross in there, I guess I got that done 30 years ago when I first left Australia, kind of before it became a symbol for the right-wing hate groups, but I'm like, okay, that's awkward, which is partly why the gum trees are going to hide the southern cross, but I love seeing the actual constellation when I come back to the southern hemisphere, and then because I live in Canada, I'm married to a Canadian, there's an Inuit snow geese, and so snow geese in general, they make for life, so it's a kind of Canadian shout out to my wife when I first moved to Canada 20 years ago, I got that tattoo done. Oh, that's nice. And then 5.35 in the honour of this episode, I mean, it's still a little tender, because I've been out and a half ago, so I'm like, it's a little awkward, I'm hunched a bit.
Michael, you're an author, a coach, how do you describe what you do for a cross, because it's not who you are, but it's what you do in this world? I try to avoid that topic, because I'm not very articulate about it, but I found it at the company called Box of Crayons. Box of Crayons is a learning and development company, and our mission is to help organisations be less advice-driven and more curiosity-led, and the thing we're best known for is helping people be more coach-like, ask better questions, as that kind of driver for coaching. Is that consultancy?
So I wouldn't call it consultancy, I've been a consultant, you've kind of sharpened, you're like, look, I'm X $100 a day, and I'm going to come in and I'm going to fix something for you, and you're trying to wrestle with the client around what the problem is, and you help come up with solutions, and you execute. Learning development is like, we need our people to elevate, change, be different, learn something new, and that's what Box of Crayons sells. Now, four months ago, I gave up being CEO of Box of Crayons to a colleague, and so I'm now man without portfolio, so I'm trying to figure out what I do for a cross now. But I'm a writer, so I've got a new book coming out February the 29th, I speak, so people are going to come and start around on the stage and teach and share, but mostly I don't do it for a cross, I do it for the impact I'm going to have in this life now.
Well, definitely shows that you love what you do. I think I had a kind of one-dimensional view of coaching before your workshop, because I attempted to do a degree at the coaching institute, which is very much about how can we help people with their problems, and it's, hopefully you understand what I mean. The way you put a spin on the coaching stuff is utilizing coaching within a greater span than just kind of like mindset coaching, it could be within a bit as a HR, the part leader. I know my heroes in the space of how organizations work as a guy could Peter Block.
I love his work. He's just, he's now like 75, he's grumpy, he's got edgy, spiky, but I love his thinking. It actually comes when you turn 75, almost there, and he wrote a blurb for the first book I ever wrote, which was a big highlight for me, it's like, you know, Beethoven going, nice piece of music. I'm like, paid a block likes my book.
And he said in this book, he said, well, coaching isn't a profession, it's a way of being with each other, and that's a big part of what I'm about, because the word coaching comes with a lot of baggage for a lot of people. They're like our coaches, you know, I've met them, they're all, you know, life coaches, executive coaches, and they've all got their agendas and their ways of doing things. And they all have their place, I mean, there's a place for all of that. For me, I'm like, how do I help everybody be more coach-like?
And that's a shift from being kind of a label and a profession, and it's a way of showing up in the world. And it's a, and this is a definition we have for being more coach-like. Can you stay curious a little bit longer? Can you rush to action and advice-giving a little bit more slowly?
Because my take on it, and this is part of what you guys experience in the workshop, is your advice-giving maniacs, right? You get into a conversation, you're like, I think I know what I need to tell you, I don't know who you're involved, I don't know what's going on, I don't know the context, I don't know the situation, and I've got an opinion. And we're like, you know what, advice, there's nothing wrong with advice per se, what's wrong is when you have just a default way of working or default way of kind of responding, which is my job is to always have the answer. And that's what I'm looking to shift.
Within the consultancy space, is there an extra level of need or feeling that people need to give advice based on that's what they're charging for? Oh, totally. So you get into that cycle where I hire a consultant, because I can't come up with the answers myself and I'm outsourcing that hard work. The consultant goes, look, my only job here is to have an answer.
And so you're colluding in this process where, and again, there's a place in the time where advice is exactly the right thing to do. And sometimes as a consultant, your job is to come back with the answer. But if you want me to nerd out here, another writer, Ed Shine, another huge figure, can he and Peter Blocker, the colossa is a stride above the ocean here, and Ed Shine wrote a book called Process Consulting. It's a little bit academic because he's a former professor from MIT in the States.
And he says, if there are three types of consulting relationships, there is the, what does he call it? The, it's kind of a straight transactional piece, which is like, I come to you and I want an answer and your job is to give me an answer. And there's a really nice way that that's a crisp, clean, fast relationship. But the problem is I'm like, I'm relying on you to have an answer and you're going, look, you know, they're saying advertising, the problem with advertising, you go to an advertising and you think, oh, he's my challenge.
I think I know what your answer is. You need some advertising. Right? If you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
And in that relationship, there's often somebody who's a hammer going, I think you should use a nail or I think I should bang the nail in. That's one relationship. The second type of relationship, the doctor-patient relationship. So you know what that's like.
You come to the doctor and you go, well, here are my symptoms and the doctor goes, okay, that's okay. I suggested this. And then you come to the doctor and you're like, well, I'm going to tell you some of my symptoms but not all of the symptoms because honestly, this rash is a little awkward. I don't want to mention that.
And I've kind of done a little research myself on Dr. Google. So I've kind of made up what I think the answer already is. And the doctor doesn't have enough time and they're like, okay, we'll just try and get them out of the door and have this medication.
And then they give you the medication and then you don't use the medication because you go, oh, I took the pills for three days and my symptoms kind of went away. So I won't take the rest of the pills. So that's a flawed model as well. And the third type of consulting that Ed Shine talks about is processed consulting, not a great name, but it's really where you lead with curiosity.
You lead with the thought that, look, my experience and my wisdom and my knowledge will help ask better questions and potentially share a better answer down the path. But I'm trying to keep ownership of the problem with you so that you're more likely to have insight into what the problem is, generate your own answer and then own and act on your own answer. So there's different approaches to consulting as well. And so if someone is that consultant, the idea of asking more questions, just ask more questions.
I mean, really, I mean, this is, this is my other tattoo. They're still kind of healing. So I just ask more questions because we are in this new book, I talk about the advice monster and, you know, as soon as somebody starts talking, the advice monster comes up out of the dark and goes, Oh, I'm going to add some value to this conversation right away. Yes, I am.
Here comes the value. And I'm like, look, yes, to advice. But what if you just waited two more minutes and just asked a few more questions before you gave your advice, you're going to find that you need to give it less than you think that when you do give it, it's better, smarter, more specific that they probably come up with a bunch of the answers themselves, which actually, they make that makes them think you're smarter because they figured it out themselves. There's all sorts of benefits that's staying curious a little bit longer.
Is there a fine line between asking the questions and the questions are all geared to answering questions? Yes. Which I think is my, I think Tommy's always picking up on that. It's like, I pick up on a very, like, I said, what about this?
It's actually not technically a question. That's advice with a question. Yeah. Could you have asked them?
Nothing more annoying than you go. Let me ask the question again, a little slower and a little louder. And hopefully you'll get the answers I need you to get here. At that point, you like to give them the answers.
Because it's just annoying everybody. Everybody's now annoyed by this conversation. So these kind of fake questions, you know, or rhetorical questions. What's an example of one?
What fake questions have you thought of? Did you try? Have you considered what about the, they're all just kind of like, I'm trying to solve this under the pretense, I'm asking you a question. Let's drop the pretense.
It's advice. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's the hard bit.
And so we've flipped on a 10. What is the approach and how do you squash that down? Even if you think you're not being an advice monster at that point. Yeah.
So there's a couple of levels to this. The first is to go, look, what are some of the good questions that you can ask that you can rely on that can be effective? So you both took the workshop and it was months ago, like maybe three months ago. So I don't expect you to remember anything from the workshop other than it was a good time.
So there's two questions that stick with you from the workshop, whatever. What else? What else? The biggest challenge for you.
Perfect. So two great questions. And what else? So I talk about that as the best coaching question in the world because you can almost always answer it.
And here's why it's so effective. Whatever their answer is to the first question, it's not their only answer and it's almost never their best answer. So you go, when I give you an answer, you go, great. What else do you do?
What else is it? Yeah, anything else here? And they're like, oh, well, actually there is. And you're like, perfect.
You're working it. I love that. And what's the real challenge here for you? This is what I call the first book the coaching habit.
It's a focus question because so much of our lives we're busy trying to solve the wrong problem. So I think the first thing that gets mentioned is the real thing. It almost never is. So that discipline to go, okay, I get what's going on.
What's the real challenge here for you is a way of quickly deepening the conversation. So that you actually start actually solving the real problem. So when you mention something and you go, well, have you thought of, okay, now you're like, okay, well, now you're annoying because now you're giving me advice and pretending to coach me. So instead you go, oh, hear it.
So what do you think the real challenge is here for you? And now you're like, oh, you get to work less hard. So you're like, I think the part of it is like, Tommy will sometimes say, well, I've just given you what I think the answer is. I think that obviously there's something else because you're asking again.
Yeah. So how do you how do you deal with that, which is like when people feel like the first or second thought is their final thought. So I always go, what's the lazy way of doing this? So I stopped trying to be tricky.
It's like, okay, we're playing in a mind game now and I'm going to try and play mental chess with you to play bigger this out. So I would just go if you feel Tommy's going, okay, he's going to be annoyed with me asking that question because he's already told me what he thinks the real challenge is go. Right. This may be a little annoying, but I just because I'm curious.
I just want to make sure we've got the real challenge here. What do you think the real challenge is here for you? So I just address him. Now he's like, yeah, that is annoying, but actually that's a good question.
What is the real challenge? And you know, the funny thing on being on the opposite side to that, getting asked that and feeling someone prodding you like that, there's a level of committing to this weird, it's almost a game. Like I get there with the second thing. I enter into this, I see what you're doing.
It's like, and it's like, and it's ambly. Yeah. Well, it becomes like a bit meta because it because we both did the workshop. We have this framework.
And so what's happening? And so sometimes it actually means that like I've said, like we are using this, like this is the framework, like let's be clear on it. So it's not like, I'm just asking these. If you think about it, I'm just asking the what actually that's.
And so there's no judgment. If we're just using the framework, there isn't really any judgment. Yeah. It's like, just check out.
Could I just, could we use that coaching framework? Would it be useful if we just ask some questions around this? You know what? I'm just going to ask you some of these good coaching questions.
It may not work. And if it does bonus. Yeah. So you just take the drama out of it and the fact that we're all pretending that this is a natural conversation where you both know it's not a natural conversation because you both know exactly what's going on, which makes it a more effective conversation.
I mean, imagine how people who work with me feel like every morning, I'm like, okay, Chloe, fantastic. Here's our regular meeting around program development and design. So Chloe, what's on your mind? No.
So the first time I'm asking that, she's like, you are a genius manager. Then she discovers that it's the question in the book that I say, start every conversation with. So the next two weeks, she's like rolling her eyes every time I talk, she's like, ah, I'm going to say, what's on your mind? And I'm like, you're right.
I am. What is on your mind? Yes. Actually, now you mention it.
And now we're just like, it's an understood pattern around it. Let me tell you what's on my mind. I'm like, perfect. Because I have helped her be a good coachee.
That's why you're redundant now from C. And who doesn't want to be redundant? No, I am serious because you're like, the best thing you can do is become redundant about part of your work. Because then you go, so what's my next big challenge?
I mean, literally two months ago, maybe three months ago now, I was in Las Vegas and working with Microsoft and they've had thousands of people go through an online version of our program, including the head of sales. Right? So he reports to such an adult who's this legend and who's redoing the whole culture of Microsoft from a nodal culture to a learnedal culture. And I get asked to come out on stage.
I mean, I knew this was happening, but I'm put out on stage and I'm going to coach him in front of 4,000 people. So he's like coaching, but it's fantastic. I love your life. Because you live touched me.
Yeah. And it was Tommy saying, ah, so you were grabbing your neck and you went a bit red. He loved it. You know the text.
So the person I'm coaching, he's old school. He's been at Microsoft for 20 years. And he's been part of the old culture and Steve Balmore, which was not a particularly healthy or helpful culture. And we sit down and there's a tiny bit of banter.
He's French. So I try not to put on a bad French accent because I don't do that. But I literally go. So he goes, you're probably going to ask me what's on your mind and I'm like, you're absolutely right.
So JP, what is it on your mind? He's like, ah, ah, ah, well, actually. So people know that it's not only okay that people know what's happening, it's fantastic because you're like, there's an unspoken agreement that we know what we're doing here to make it for a more effective conversation. And so working with someone in a sales capacity.
Yeah. So trying work like this is an advantageous, is it a softer approach to a cell? How do you utilize this best in a sales environment? In a sales conversation?
Yeah. So not just trying to find out what is on Michael's mind and the challenge is you're facing internally in a business. But outwardly. Well, let me ask you this.
From what you know about sales, where do most sales conversations go wrong? I would think potentially not understanding the real need of the person. So I put my need, we need to make cash, we can do this for you. You up for it?
Whatever you say your problem is, I'm going to start selling you a widget. In fact, I'm probably not even care what your problem is. I'm just because I've got to shift a whole bunch of widgets. I'm going to realize.
Remember Max had the widget. I feel like they've discontinued that. Remember the dashboard? You're going to have widgets in the weather anyway.
So people don't know what the real problem is that you're trying to help them solve. So what's the real challenge here for you is like, let me figure out what your real challenge is because you're either going to get to a point where you go, oh, look, if that is your real challenge, I've got exactly the right widget for you. They're like, I'm excited to see this widget because you've helped me really appreciate where my struggle is. I hadn't even realized it.
But now I see it. I see the problem. And I think I'm open to your solution. Is it hard though when they know that you only have one widget to sell and the fact that at the end of the conversation, you've managed to solve their issue with the widget?
Well, you may not because you may get to a point where you're like, you know what, it sounds like this is your challenge. And honestly, the widget I've got is not the widget you're looking for. So now you're playing a different game. Now you're going, do I try and sell on the widget, even though we all know that's not the thing that's actually helpful?
Or do I go, look, I'm being a trusted advisor to you because I'm not going to say you don't need, but when you do need it, you'll be the person I come to because we build a relationship of trust around this. So that all comes down to how do you sell, what's your approach to selling, what's your ethics around selling. I think if you've got a widget that doesn't solve the problem that they actually need, you're either going to not sell it to them because it doesn't solve it, or you are going to sell it to them, in which case I get really annoyed because I just spend $X,000 on a useless thing that doesn't actually help them. So either way, you get to choose to make a short-term sale now and break the relationship, or have a better, more relationship-based conversation where it might turn into a sale or might turn into a relationship with the sale happens later on.
The live coaching that you were talking about, I think it was like an aha moment for me experiencing it. Would you do live coaching with Harry, our work experience guy to test, just to show people that method. Harry, are you okay to be coached? Yeah, yeah, I'm happy.
Are you sure Harry? I don't know. He would read it as before. He's like, I would read the small print on the workout, he's like, okay, good.
So if you were coaching Harry, what does that look like? Let's just set this up. So you don't go, what the hell have I just said yes to you? So this is just a conversation.
And it's best if you've got a thing where you're like, here's something I would like to be better. A problem I'd like to solve based on this conversation is like, how can I get out of this work experience gig as far as possible? There's someone I'm just seeing here, but it could be something else entirely. And I'm going to ask questions, you've already heard three or four of the questions I'm probably going to ask you.
You don't have to answer any of them. So you get to kind of protect your own privacy and vulnerability. It's like, be as vulnerable as you want, be as unbundable as you want, the choice is entirely. And sometimes folks can work, sometimes it doesn't work as well.
So if it doesn't work, it's just the wrong thing at the wrong time. It's not about me. It's not about you. It's not for it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Perfect. I feel like he's Mark Whitney. He's doing great.
Who was his 10 years? I'm 10 years. All right. Do you remember who this wins?
No. It was a good show. He would go into like shopping centers and he would sign out for 50 bucks. Would you scale this letter of milk?
Great. I'll see you show. Sorry to interrupt. There will be no milk sculling.
Unless that's where it ends up. So mate, Harry, thanks for doing this. The opening question is like, what's on your mind? So when you think about something that's useful and real for us to talk about, what comes up?
At the moment, and I've been thinking about it a lot recently, is rebranding my website and my portfolio. Nice. Just because it's getting a bit dated. So that's really what I want to focus on lately.
Sure. Something that showcases who I am. Yeah. That's fantastic.
Big thing. When you think about that challenge, the rebranding of the website and the portfolio, what's the real challenge here for you? I think finding a design and including the right information, which I want to. Yeah.
Sure. So two things there, the design and the right information. What else is the challenge here for you? Finding the time and the right tools in order to do it.
So time and tools are up to four. This is great. What else? What else is a challenge in all of this for you?
That's a good question. Just having the resources and the how, how oneself created it. How do I share it? Nice.
So the sharing piece. So five, all of those are real issues. But if we're going to pick one of them to look at now, where would you go? Which one feels out of all of those are real challenges for you?
I'll go, how do I share it? How do I put myself out there? Fantastic. And let me just hit the pause button for a minute.
Yep. Just so we can talk about immediately what's happened there, which is when I go what's the real challenge? You're like, it's the branding and it's this. And I'm like, cool.
Now, I've been building websites and doing branding for 30 years. So do you think I have a little subject matter expertise on that? Of course I do. So there's a part of me going, oh, look, mate, let me hook you up with my friend blah, blah, and then have you seen the new release of the WhatsApp?
But actually, when we got down to that next layer down, which is so out of all of those, what's the real challenge? It was actually the fifth, the final one that you went to going, this is the big thing. This is the real challenge here for me. If I've been busy solving the first challenge, I'd be offering up Squarespace.
Yeah. I'd be offering up probably not a very good solution to solve the wrong problem, right? And that is a classic about what normally happens, just here. They don't ask anyone else, they just hear the first problem and they're like, I can help you.
I know some stuff. Squarespace, it's amazing. Yeah. So thank you.
I'm impressed with the pause button. This is brilliant. You're doing great. Excuse me.
So how do you get people to find you, know you, get kind of viral? When you think about that, what's the challenge here for you? It's promoting myself and putting myself out there and being confident enough to share what I do and what I enjoy. Yeah.
I think it's the big thing. So putting yourself out there, the confidence piece around there, what else is hard around this for you? I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure.
Yeah. Sorry. No, that's fine. Because I'm going to just be curious.
I'm going to double click on one of them. I mean, it's the confidence to put yourself out there and go with me if you want. This may go a little personal. You may not want to get there.
But when you think about that, what's the challenge there for you, having that confidence? Ooh. Like knowing who to go to and who I want to discuss, like who I want to target. Who might target like a bit like a target market easy if that makes it nice.
So let me hit a pause button again and let me just check in with you. What's already been useful about this quick conversation? Because it's been like a couple of minutes, two or three minutes maybe. I'm just saying, just putting out there what I'm having trouble with and acknowledging what I'm having trouble with.
Yeah. Yeah. I like it. So in my head, I'm kind of talking to you and kind of talking to the audience.
When you go down to that level of confidence, here's what I had in my head as a hypothesis, which is it just takes a level of confidence to go, look, I'm going to be out there. I'm going to produce content. I'm going to be in front of a camera. I'm going to be doing all of that stuff.
So there may be something kind of a deeper level around. How do I just show up with that kind of hutzpah to be in front of the camera and to be putting it out there? And I thought we might be going down there. That could have been a thing.
There might also be that piece around, which is where you went, which is like, where's my target market? Who am I talking to? Who's my ideal person? My ideal audience?
How do I connect and figure that out? Because we all know that if we're trying to make a splash in this world, trying to appeal to everybody as a losers game, that just doesn't work at all. You've got to pick your audience and know exactly who you're trying to connect with. Yeah.
So we could go a little deeper around that if you wanted to, or you could say, stop, Michael, this is just fine. I don't know where this is going, but it's going off the rails fast. So Harry, where do you want to go with this? I'm not sure.
You've got time to go, David. Sure. I'm happy to. So I've got two things on the table.
One is kind of an actual confidence thing. One is about a target market thing, which one of those is the most useful one to get? Confidence. Got it.
So when you think about how you want to show up and the confidence that you want to have, what do you want? I just want to believe in myself and know what I'm doing, is the right thing to do. Yeah. And being confident that I am, I don't know how to put it, that I can do what I, you know what I mean?
Yeah. You're picking up what I'm putting out like. Yeah. And just to kind of do the meta commentary around it, honestly, in some ways, even if I didn't get what you're talking about, it kind of wouldn't matter so much.
I mean, I think I got a sense of it, but it's like, the power is, do you get what you're saying? Do you feel the truth of the, the insight, which is like, say to me again, I mean, the way you put it was really nice. Say what again? Just a re-statement of how you articulated the challenge for you.
So I want to find confidence in knowing that what I do, I can do, and that knowing if I promote myself well enough, I would be able to find somebody or I'll be in a better position than I would be if I didn't promote myself with that next time. Yeah, it does. It's like having the confidence to go. I know what I'm doing.
I know what I'm trying to talk to. Let me see how it unfolds. That feels to me, like it's, it's the real challenge or it's close to it. Does it feel like it's the real challenge for you?
Correct. So we're going to be useful at all if we just had some ideas around how do you find that confidence? How do you figure that out? Yeah.
Cool. So my job is to be lazy as a coach. I'm going to get you to work with some of the ideas because I know you've thought about this already. You've already got some ideas.
What ideas do you already have about how do you figure out, tap into practice, express your confidence, whichever kind of thing works best for you? To express my confidence and express who I am, I like to be creative and communicate as many ideas that I'm passionate about as I can, whether it would have a medium that's through. Right. So being creative, communicating a bunch of ideas, what else could you do that would help build and establish that confidence?
Networking with people and getting to know other people and sharing, like sharing common ideas with them. Yeah. Brilliant. This is a great, great role.
What else could you do? I'm contacting people. I feel that's really landing for you, which is like they get out there and knowing these guys is a great star because they're well connected and being here is a great star. If there's one other thing that you could do that you go, this would help strengthen my level of confidence.
What would it be? I think just keep doing it. Yeah. And practicing what I'm doing currently.
Yeah. And if I was going to add one idea, it would probably have been that last one, which is honestly the way you build confidence is you do stuff. You just ship, you know, Seth Godin is a great marketer. He's all about shipper.
It's 80% good enough. Shipper. You know, Gary Vayner, check. You probably know if he's all about, look, put out the crappy content, put out the good content because you only get smart about what works, what doesn't work from the feedback that you get out there.
And if you spend your whole time trying to figure it out in your hair going, is it perfect yet? You get stuck around that. That's the message I'm sort of getting from crushing it. Get in this book.
It's just do it. Get it and then learn from what you've done and how to improve that. Yeah. And the thing for me that I'd add if I, if I can, is just to say whether people like it or don't like it isn't actually a reflection on your self-worth.
Like in this new book, I, I, at the start of it, I collected a bunch of reviews from Amazon from the coaching habit book and there's a bunch of ones going, it's the best book I've ever read. And then there's one from a woman who's never can't remember, but I'm going to have to remember it. It's like, one star literally says, this is the worst book ever written. Like, is that the worst book ever written?
I mean, I, I get this like, this is a terrible book, but this is the worst book I've ever written. Awesome. How good is that as a piece of feedback? And so for me, I'm like, there's a way that the praise and the feedback you get, you're like, it's not about me.
It's just a reaction to the stuff that's going out there. It's as much about them and their headspace and what they like and don't like as it is about me. So I'll take what you small and I forget the rest. I won't take it personally.
So I think that insight, which is around, look, network, get stuff out there, don't take it too personally, is a great process for potentially building confidence. Yeah. So here's what I've been asking you, which is, so you got an insight and it's interesting how that insight, and this is just for the folks listening, it kind of shifted from a, how do I get my website rocking to, how do I get the confidence to show up? So it moves from a technical external problem to an internal self problem.
And you find what's more important for yourself, exactly, you got it. So I'm curious to know what you want to commit to doing by when. So what does the action from the insight look like? I think creating as much as I can.
Perfect. I'm trying to see what I'm currently doing. So I push you to be a little more specific. So when you say creating as much as you can, as much as you can, I reckon you could create 400 pieces of content a day if you just watch all you did and that may be excessive.
So what do you want to commit to me on here on episode 35, what's your commitment going to be? Make it and make it one that you can hit. So play it safer rather than the bolder. I want to be able to my Instagram account because I've got a, I've got a theme happening there, but I'm just not pursuing it.
And I think that's Instagram is a good medium at the moment that you can get discovered. You can, you can express who you are when you're as good looking as you. It's like, perfect. It starts with selfies.
It starts with stuff. You're already naked. So come on. So Instagram is your focus.
How many pieces of content do you want to commit to Instagram on a daily basis? Is it one? Is it half? Is it two per week?
Is it two per day? I think a piece of content a week might work, whether that's in IGTV or story space content. And then from that point, as I'm getting comfortable with that, building on from that. So you're welcome to say yes or no or maybe to this.
But what if I double that and say what about two pieces of content per week? Maybe. Okay. So sit with it.
And you'll come up with a final commitment around that. And if you want to, you can use me as a kind of check-in buddy or use these guys as check-in buddy. Whatever will work for you. Fabulous.
Thank you. And Harry, feel free to use this as a snippet. So you really need to do one. Honestly, you could turn this into like about six weeks work.
So let me check in with you. What was useful available from this coaching? It was very much addressing what I feel like I need to do, like addressing my floor, not floors but like where I can improve. If that makes sense.
Sure. Yeah. Perfect. And to the folks and thank you.
That was great and really helpful for people to listen and see that. The folks who are watching and hearing this, if you're, if you were not getting swept away by Harry's story, but kind of watching what I was doing as a coach, in the end, I asked what four different questions, maybe five, all of them are from the coaching habit book. I asked, what's on their mind? I asked, what's the real challenge here for you?
I asked, and what else? I asked, what do you want? And I asked, what was most useful and most valuable here for you now? Well, five questions, which I asked most of them more than once and 10 minutes we had a conversation that went through an arc.
Well, one of the biggest assets that we got from the workshop were these three cards where, what are those three different sections of questions that it sort of falls into? So the three questions and Harry let us beautifully through them. The first is around getting clear on the challenge. So that's what, what's the real challenge here for you and you saw how that shifted quite quickly.
Then there was a creating possibilities piece, which is about this, I have some ideas. And you saw me doing my lazy brainstorming piece, which is like, I've got some ideas for what ideas you have and what else do you have and what else do you have? And you're like, you had all the ideas. I'm like amazing.
And then I just added one possible thought at the end. And then we went into sparking action, which is like, okay, you got the inside. Well, let's commit to an action. So that actually there's a chance that you won't just go, that was amazing and forget about it, we're like, we've got to deal around checking in on that.
So we went through the three key coaching moments there. Yeah. I think the sparking action stuff is super powerful that I think that a lot of businesses or even businesses, like especially businesses that I've been into or been in struggle with, which is that you have meetings, you do all that sort of thing, you even write it down, but you don't identify like, oh, what is the actual action? What is the specific thing?
What is what is successful? Look like? How do we know what that is? Exactly.
And you're right. So many meetings kind of end in a flurry of almost commitment. We kind of vaguely know what we think is going to happen. And what you could see me doing there is just crisping it up a little bit going specifically.
What are you going to do by when? Okay. So it's either one or two pieces of content per week on Instagram. So Harry will be able to go, did it or didn't do it?
Yes or no? Do you find that there's any questions that derail people that aren't actually great questions and lead to problems? You know, any question can fail. And what happens when the question fails as a person looks at you blankly and goes, what?
Or the conversation goes off path and you can feel it getting a bit distracted. What's great about a conversation is you're like, it really dies because the rest of it you go, oh, that was not a great question. There must be another one. What's the real challenge here for you?
And they're like, oh, well, they put it like that, boom, and they're back into the conversation. So part of maybe this is about just getting more masterful about being more coach-like is to hold it lightly. Hey, even though it's a conversation that is serious because it's about somebody's life, you don't have to be serious as you do it. Secondly, go, look, the worst that happens is you ask a question that doesn't work.
Yeah. It's like, if that's the worst thing that happens during your day, it's an awesome day. On the social media stuff, you don't have any Instagram account. I do.
What are you doing? Yeah. I'm just starting when it's called the advice trap. The advice trap.
They were going to go either way. I thought you were going to do the classic trial of art, and then you did it for me. I do. Go get fucked.
I try to find that. I try to take care of it. So, yeah, the advice trap is you do what I can. Yeah.
And how do you view... It's just giving advice. Yeah. Just quiet.
There's... Like, I'm sort of chewing and frying between two ideas, which is getting myself out there, but also sort of Cal Newport's digital minimalism and all that sort of that realm. How do you find it being someone who's in the public eye and that writes books and things like that? Just being out there and communicating and the deep work?
Yeah. I think like everybody, I find it hard. I have periods where I get into a routine of deep work where I will protect, mostly I protect my mornings. I'm an early morning person, so I'm up at sometimes four, sometimes five.
Before four AM club. Wow. Is there a habit that you're like eating up to write? Is it?
Yeah. I mean, to write the latest book, I would just go, look, my job is to get up at four or five, and then write for at least a couple of hours and see if I could get through the various considerations of somewhat crappy drafts that you have to get through to write a good book. And I had a, so the coaching habit came out February 29th, 2016, and I was like, I really want this other book to come out February 29th, 2020, so exactly four years, but on the first birthday of the coaching habit, because in my genius way, because I published 29th February, it's four years to live there. I see.
Do you get that? Do you get it? Yeah. Yeah.
I think about it. I really love it. So I was like, I really want to get it out in February 29th, and so the people that I work with, a company in Vancouver called page two who are going to backstage publishers are like, okay, well, here's, here's the work back schedule. I'm like, good, I've got to get a really good manuscript done by October.
And because you're, the coaching habit, you've sold 600,000 copies or something, close to 700,000. Yeah. A lot of books. Yeah.
It's amazing about a book. I mean, self published it. So it's even sweeter. That's what I was curious about, because you were talking, you know, that's a backstage publishing or whatever.
Can you explain that industry? Who's it for? Yeah. And I guess there is that school of thought that self publishing is this, is vanity publishing or this star that's not actually meant to get out at the scale that you've done it.
So the starting point is to say, almost every book fails. You know, the statistic I heard was 93% of books sell less than 1,000 copies. And that was, that's, that's an old statistic. I think it's lower, you know, it's a higher percentage now because there are so many books out there, right?
It's just, it's, sorry to entry. Kindle get it up there. It's entry is nothing. What's the stat of writing the worst book ever written?
Enough. Yeah. But I owe that. It's going to be full as mine.
So, you know, I get asked all the time, hey, should I write a book? And I'm like, probably not because writing a book takes forever. It's, it's hard. You're right.
You're first draft and you're like, that's a terrible first draft. And then you write the second draft and you're like, it's even worse than the first draft. And then you write the third draft and you're like, I'm going to kill myself. You know, I've got this kind of idea and I can't get it on paper.
And then by the time it turns around, you're on your fifth draft, by which time the book is a little bit better, but you hate yourself and you hate yourself for committing to doing this. And it just takes a long time to write a good book because you've got to work it and work it and work it. You've got to get beyond the, the obvious, the cliche. You've got to find your own voice.
You've got to find your own ideas. And then you put it out and it's odds on nobody's going to read it and it costs you money or trusting somebody money to put it out there. So there are other, what I think is really useful is to go create IP, create content, do a podcast, do an Instagram account, you know, run out, do, put your stuff out in the world in other ways because, you know, this is a commitment, awesome camera, great mics, awesome lighting, two actors, the actual guys are pretty ugly, but, you know, so there's a real, you know, so there's a real. There's a real commitment to, to making this work, but anybody can get a camera and start going, I can do some filming.
So question them on, do you want to write a book? The answer is maybe, but don't think, don't go to it as your default. This is the best way to get work. And then you go publishing yourself publishing.
Publishing is a really mostly broken model from the 18th century, you know, and the way most publishers do it these days is they're like, they're looking for somebody who has a social following, so they're going to audience, they don't really pay them much of an advantage, probably less than $1,500, definitely less than $2, yeah. I think it's going to be advanced. Yeah. Because I remember, well, because I remember hearing, I think maybe Tim Ferriss talked about take a low advance because then you make the money back for the publisher quicker, so then it's a perceived success and then you get another deal.
But most, I would say majority of books don't make their money back, so publishers already say do if they're like a $1,500, because they don't have to sell that many. So what they're doing is they're like, they're literally just going, we're going to put you throw our meal and pump stuff out into the world and hope something catches fire. Because if one or two catches fire out of a hundred, they make enough money to keep the machine going. The odds are your book won't be one of those one or two catches fire.
And so what was your conversation with yourself at that book at the time you were thinking about writing the book? So I wrote a book 10 years ago where they were about to do more great work, which was originally self-published, but got picked up by a New York publisher called Workman. And they published it and it's pretty exciting. And it's done all right, you know, it's sold about 100,000 copies over 10 years, which is excellent.
I mean, it's a really solid performance. I spent three years pitching the coaching habit to Workman. And they just didn't like it. They didn't get it.
They're like, oh, we like it. But we don't love it. I was like, oh, what's the real problem here? So it finally got to a point where I was like, OK, just killing me because I'd literally written five versions of this book to try and find a way to make them like the book.
And I just couldn't get it. I was like, well, it's what we're shifting each time. And I was five versions. I mean, I literally redesigning and restructuring the whole thing.
This is the agony of book writing, which is like, you write some sucky versions of your book before you write a good version. And it finally got to a point where the workman people just went, look, I've got a vision for what this book is. This is it. Do you want to publish this or not?
And they're like, no, we don't. Did you think that we were playing hardball? Were you thinking that they were going to die with it? I just got to a point where I'm like, I don't mind how it stands up because I've got two or two rigs of action.
Either they do it or I do it because I know this is a good book. I've got it now. I know what this book is going to be. And what was your perception of self-publishing?
Obviously, you had the one that was picked up by workmen. What's the mental game? Well, then you get into self-publishing. And for me, I set a very clear intention, which was, if I'm going to self-publish this, I have to publish it as a professional, not as an amateur, but it's really easy to do as an amateur.
Like if you can put something into a PDF, you can publish it as an amateur, put it into a PDF, upload it to Amazon's publishing thing and boom, you've got a book. Oh, I'm lasting 10, 3D deal, Rodey's memoir, and sells it on Amazon. Amazing. Yeah.
So it's easy to do that. And there is a place for that. It wasn't my place. I was like, I need this book to be professional because it's part of connected to my training company box of crayons and needs to show up in the world.
I've got visions of it being in airports and I don't want it to be picked up in an airport and somebody go self-published book, real book, or take the real book. I needed it to be indistinguishable from a high quality book. So I hired an editor, I hired a designer, the designer introduced me to this company, Page 2. They're like a white label publishing company.
I sold out distribution, ISBN numbers, how to get stuff up on Amazon, all the bits and pieces of stuff that you can figure out for yourself, but it takes time. And making sure that everything had a quality to it and a feel to it. So I've literally had people who run publishing companies not know that the book was self-published because of the look and the feel of it, which is fantastic. Now, the deal with working with somebody like a Page 2 is it's money upfront.
So you need to have a degree of liquidity to go, look, I put cash out upfront, but the numbers, when you're royalty for a published book, if you even get it published, there's somebody who needs an agent and it's about 10%. With a self-published book, if you're doing it entirely by yourself, it's about 70% after you take out all the expenses. If you're going through a company like Page 2, it's about 30%. So I wait up, I go, look, it's roughly three times the royalties.
I get to control everything about it, the look, the feel, decisions around distribution, all of that sort of stuff. It happens faster. I get to control 100% my own IP, so I can cut it, reuse it, play around with it. I like the control that self-publishing gives me, but I'm also good at it.
I write good books. I've got a business model that supports it, so I know that the books, I can point to literally millions of dollars of training that we've sold from people who picked up the book and then called us up and got it like your book. Was there a tipping point within the 700,000 you've sold, is there a point where you see it gain traction? Like you see online, it's very tangible, you see where the YouTube video's not getting a bit momentum, then the YouTube channel started gaining followers.
How do you see that as someone who's written a book and there's some success there? I'm not sure, I know enough to know how the patterns of that work. What I did with the culture, as I said, look, I'm going to launch it, I'm not going to get too hung up on the launch window, which is for most people about two weeks, and they're like, I'm just going to shift as many units as I can in that first couple of weeks, because that would just be my shoes getting delivered, Harry, if you can sign for that place, that's the career, don't mind that. That's perfect.
I was wondering why you were barefoot. No, I understand. What's with you? Oh, you've got comfy shoes.
I appreciate that. I'm hoping you're getting a pair of trousers delivered as well, because it's pretty disconcerting. It's so funny. It's funny you say that because the ongoing joke, I normally wear running shorts, and I spoke to Harry actually, and I decided to put on actual fancy pants.
Yeah, yeah, I'm even wearing a hat for people who aren't seeing the visuals. And so there's the two weeks sprint to the most people are doing it, and most people try and sell as mentioned as they can. Most people get to the launch date and they're exhausted, and they're like, I don't care anymore, and actually writing the book is miserable and difficult and the easy bit compared to marketing the book, because now you're going to make people notice it, and it's like coaching with Harry. You're like, okay, how do I do this?
How do I just get out there and bang on doors and show up on podcasts and they're like, and my commitment was to give it a year's really good marketing. So I was on two to three podcasts per year, a per week for a year, and that actually turned into two years. I'm like, I can't control the outcome. I don't know how many books I'm going to sell.
Publishers don't know how many books I get. So how would I know? I would be disappointed if it was below a certain number, but I'm just going to work the process in a fully committed way. I do all I can to be creative and smart about getting the book into the world, and either it does or it doesn't.
That's all I can do. This is a life lesson because you commit to the process, you let go of the outcome. Were you very specific on it? I'm giving it 12 months.
But you have to be very... That was my initial commitment, which is like, I'm going to bang the drum for 12 months. I'll show up on podcasts, I'll write articles, I'll do whatever I can to see if I can get a flywheel spinning. In an outcome-focused world, how do you detach from the outcome?
I just practice. I'm like, at the moment, new book coming out every 29th, part of me is going rise above the outcome, Michael, just to commit to the process. That's the other ten of me. Part of me is going, okay, so what if I sell 60,000 copies of the book?
That would be amazing. That would make it a bestseller on all sorts of levels and way above the predicted performance. And the part of me goes, but that's like 10% of what the country have it. What's wrong with you, you lose it.
So what's helpful is I'm just aware of that tension. And I'm like, okay, just be with it, watch it, don't get hooked up on it, commit to the process. Just go, numbers are just made up, numbers are just random. So it's either going to say me wanting to sell a certain number, doesn't help it sell or not.