#300: I Spent Three Days With A Dozen New York Times Bestselling Authors

Jay Clouse [00:00:14]:
Hello, my friend. Welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. I am recording this on Sunday, April 5th, and I'm a few days removed now from getting back from an author's mastermind in Franklin, Tennessee. A few weeks ago, I was in my garage home gym, got a phone call from Hailey at kit. Haley leads community for Kit and she had some questions and she also had an interesting offer for me. She said, hey, we're putting together a small group mastermind with a bunch of authors and it's in conjunction with James Clear. And he put you on the list. And I said, huh? She said, yeah, it's in Tennessee at the end of the month if you want to come.

Jay Clouse [00:00:58]:
And I said, of course, I would love to come to this. And that's all the information I had for a while. Over the next couple of weeks, I got details on the location. She shared a notion page with the attendees. And it was such a. An impressive, intimidating group of people. A lot of these folks shared photos from the event. So I don't feel like it's inappropriate for me to share who was at this event or some of the folks who were at this event that shared it publicly because it'll add some context to what I want to share in this episode, which is some of the takeaways I had, some of the ways I was feeling.

Jay Clouse [00:01:42]:
But folks who were there were members of the KIT team like Haley. Nathan Barry was there. He was co organizing it with James Clear, who was obviously there. Amy Porterfield, Amy Purdy, who is a New York Times bestselling author I hadn't met before this event. She was also on Dancing with the Stars. Diego Perez, who you may know as Young Pueblo, Donald Miller, Jefferson Fisher, Jen Hatmaker, Jenna Kutcher, Nir Eyal, Sahil Bloom, Tori Dunlap, Vanessa Van Edwards, Will Guidara, and Madeline McIntosh, who is the CEO of Authors Equity. She's the co founder of Author's Equity with James and wow, there's somewhere between 10 and 12 New York Times bestselling authors on that list. And I think Nathan and I were the only ones there who haven't yet published.

Jay Clouse [00:02:33]:
Nathan is nearing the finish line of his first book and I'm still pretty early on in the process. So talk about intimidating going to this event. But you know, I talked to my wife about this. She assured me that there was a reason I was invited. I. I talked to friends about this. They said this is going to be amazing. Of course you should be there.

Jay Clouse [00:02:52]:
I called my mom on the drive down. Was just constantly trying to Psych myself up over the days leading up to this because obviously in a room like that, there is so much to be learned. And of course, I hope I have something I can share as well. But I was excited to be in the room. So over the three days that I was there, I took many notes in my Clear Habit journal, which James gifted to all of us at the event. And I thought I would record a little episode here, breaking down some of the takeaways I had from this event. Things that I don't feel are secretive or inappropriate to share this way. It's almost like you were there too.

Jay Clouse [00:03:34]:
You know, a lot of the benefit I can pass along because I think the spirit of this event was passing along. I was very pleased that everybody I met here was just a delight. Everyone was great, Everyone was very kind. There was no gatekeeping. And again, of course, I entered this was pretty anxious, but that calmed pretty quickly in the first night. So in this episode, I want to break down all of the takeaways I had. Some of those are very tactical things. That's one major section of this episode.

Jay Clouse [00:04:05]:
There were also several memorable quotes or ideas that I wrote down here that are kind of one liners that I wanted to pass along. I had some thoughts on the structure of the event itself because I think it will inform some of the ways that I both plan our offline event in Boise in June. And also the way we do things inside the lab, our online community. And then there were some miscellaneous notes that I wanted to pass along as well. So I'll share all of that in this episode. No gatekeeping from me. We'll get to that full list right after this. Okay, let's actually start with the structure of this event, because I thought it was structured and planned really well.

Jay Clouse [00:04:50]:
Everybody arrived on Monday, late afternoon, between the hours of 4 and 6. And at 6 o' clock we had a cocktail hour. Basically just a little mingle outdoors. And then from 7 to 9 on Monday evening, we had a welcome dinner. It was kind of a. A fixed menu. There were three different tables, or I guess two different large tables that we were all sitting at multiple courses. The chef came and talked about it.

Jay Clouse [00:05:18]:
But this welcome dinner, which I really, really liked, really, there was very little structure here. James and Nathan kicked it off and basically encouraged us to meet one another, share. One of our guilty pleasures was a conversation starter. But it really wasn't about getting deep into anything that evening, which I thought was really good. Because, you know, as much as I think that I was probably the person who most snuck into this event. A common refrain you hear from people at an event like this is that they feel unqualified to be there in a group. That's really impressive. Everybody feels a little bit of pressure.

Jay Clouse [00:05:54]:
And so the nice thing about that opening dinner was there were no real stakes or expectations. It was just conversation. And so at our table, Tori and I sat next to each other. Tori Dunlap, she and I have gotten to be pretty good friends over the last couple of years. She's been on the show twice. She's always very generous with sharing. She and I also have a deep love of the TV show the Traitors. So we talked a lot about the traders and led the group and discussion about that.

Jay Clouse [00:06:19]:
Will Godara, who was the general manager of eleven Madison park and then eventually co owner of eleven Madison park, which was named the number one restaurant in the world while he was owning the restaurant. I got to ask him to power rank his favorite fast food restaurants and that was delightful. He ranked them in N out, number one in Taco Bell number two, by the way. So I really like this, this welcome dinner format because as anxious as I was and as anxious as I think everybody was, this really got us feeling connected and comfortable because the next day, Tuesday was a pretty full day. We met at 9am in the morning. We had a full day of basically masterminding. There were a bunch of different sessions within the time block of 9 to 5. We had lunch in the middle, but it was all like the in depth work.

Jay Clouse [00:07:13]:
The first session that we shared was we went around the room, we had everybody share a tactic in their business that was working right now. And I actually loved this because it, it created a lot of value in very short order. I'm actually thinking this will inform some of the programming we do inside the lab, our online community. I think I could be hosting live sessions where we basically just do that. You know, it's an hour to say, okay, everybody who showed up. What's a tactic that's working really well in your business right now? And I think it's super, super valuable. We had dinner on Tuesday evening from 7 to 9, which was great. Just kind of a relax, end of day thing.

Jay Clouse [00:07:48]:
And then Wednesday we had a breakfast before everybody hit the road and got out of there. So it was, it was relatively short, you know, Monday evening through Wednesday morning. But that was perfect, I think for this crowd. And we really packed Tuesday full of a lot of information and a lot of value and benefit. So that was a note on the structure and a Couple other things I'll say about the structure. I think the location of this made a huge difference. I think it mattered a ton. We were at this really great.

Jay Clouse [00:08:19]:
I don't know if you'd call it. I think they call it an inn, but it was like a resort. It was on a farm. It was a working farm. They had restaurants on the property, they had cabins. It was very relaxing and nice out in Tennessee. So I thought being in that setting was very good for helping people be calm and feel good. Like I said, the opening dinner on Monday night I thought was great for lowering everybody's guard and creating connection one another and kind of setting the tone for what it meant, like to just be there as people and share with one another, be kind to one another, build friendships.

Jay Clouse [00:08:53]:
There were really quality gifts from the Kit team and James as well. James gave us one of his journals, one of his pens. They're both made by Baron Fig, and they make incredible stuff. So the gifts were really great. And actually on the drive down, I listened to Will Godara's audiobook, Unreasonable Hospitality, which I really, really loved. Man, talk about a good book. The way that he tells stories in that book was phenomenal. And they're all firsthand stories, which is a great example of if you want to write a great book or have great stories, just do really interesting, impressive things.

Jay Clouse [00:09:27]:
I think the trap I fall into sometimes, and a lot of young ambitious people fall into, is we want to cut corners or skip the line and fast forward. And there's a lot to be said about, hey, why don't you just go do really interesting hard things before you try to make content about it? You know, like the best content is rooted in unique firsthand experience. And if you don't have that, go get it. There's a lot I think I can be doing to have more interesting firsthand experiences and make content around that. We had several folks in the group who were locals to Tennessee, which was great because it made the trip easy for them. But I will say some of them arrived late, some of them left early. Everybody's busy. But I think if you're gonna get people in the room, it can be nice to make sure everybody is traveling so everybody is there for the duration.

Jay Clouse [00:10:22]:
Now, it's very possible that if we'd gone somewhere else, some of those people wouldn't have been able to prioritize it and make it. And I totally get that. So, you know, I. I think it was great to have them there for the time that they had. I just wish they were there longer. I wish I could have soaked up some more of it. You know, I thought the invite list for this was great too. The vibes were good.

Jay Clouse [00:10:43]:
Everybody was incredibly generous with their time. And what I really loved was almost everybody there were parents. And not just were they parents, but they're very involved parents. And I don't often meet very accomplished, ambitious people who are parents who also seem to me to spend a lot of time with their partner or kids. I know that sounds harsh, but it's just something I've been dealing with over the last couple years is looking to find models of parents, working parents, who are also very involved with their kids at a young age. I do find that content creators and authors specifically seem to have some of the most open lives for that because content and books can create a lot of leverage. So it was really encouraging as I, as I continue to be interested in the authorship path. So let's, let's talk about some of the tactics that I learned from this that I thought were really interesting.

Jay Clouse [00:11:46]:
The first was one of the authors there mentioned that when they were promoting their book, they did something called a newsletter tour. Now, recently I've seen more and more authors. Instead of doing like a podcast circuit, that was something that was very popular over the last five years, a lot of authors are now doing newsletter swaps with other authors. So it'll be like, hey, I have a book coming out. If you can add it to your newsletter during launch week or shortly thereafter, I will then cross promote your newsletter or something you care about in my newsletter as well. I think that's very smart because it's easier to scale that operationally. It's not dependent on your time. Your team can help you do this.

Jay Clouse [00:12:21]:
But what was really interesting about this newsletter tour idea was it wasn't just a cross promo. This author's team was actually writing a full edition of somebody's newsletter in their voice about a topic that their audience would care about and integrating material from the book in that newsletter. So it wasn't, hey, can you do a cross promotion and promote my book in your newsletter? It was, hey, can I write an issue of your newsletter for you? Is going to be about this. It's going to serve your audience in this way. It's going to be pulled from my book and I will mention the book in the newsletter. I thought that was very, very smart. Higher effort for sure. But a lot of that analysis can be done with AI now.

Jay Clouse [00:13:01]:
So I think that's very interesting as a tactic for cross promos. A More involved cross promo. Another author there talked about how they were using AI for proofreading. And what they mentioned was they created what they called a consciousness filter for their AI proofreader. And what that meant was they took their values and ways that they wanted to show up in their writing and kind of created these gates with their AI. It's like a skill they created where it's like, hey, I value openness, I value transparency, I value treating people equally. And so they put these values into their editing skill. And when they wrote an essay, they would pass it through their AI editor and ask, do I pass all of the gates? I think it's really interesting.

Jay Clouse [00:13:49]:
I have an editing skill in Claude right now as well, where I say, hey, aspirationally, here are five things I'm trying to accomplish in my writing. And when I finish an essay, I put it in the folder that my AI can read and I say, I just put a new essay in there. Can you rate that essay? And it knows then to call on the skill and read that essay through that lens for those different areas of focus that I'm trying to touch on. And it gives me very good feedback. Not like line edits. I would change this. I would do this. Like it doesn't give me new writing to copy and paste in.

Jay Clouse [00:14:27]:
It gives me feedback like an editor would, which I really, really like. Because of course I could pass on any of that and not do it. Or I could say, yes, you're right, there needs to be a transition between this part and this. Right? Yes, you're right. This was kind of a soft conclusion that needs more evidence. That's great. So I like this consciousness filter idea as well. I heard from another person there that they were having success with what they called tiny offers, things that are around $67 or less as a way for filtering whether somebody was a good lead for their higher ticket program.

Jay Clouse [00:15:01]:
I'm seeing this more and more in the lab as well. It seems like there's kind of a barbell approach to pricing right now where you want to have a price on your product because it's a good filter for a qualified lead, but it needs to be relatively low priced. There's this area in like the mid hundreds of dollars that seems kind of like an awkward price point. I mostly see people pricing sub $100 and sometimes even sub $50 or closer to like a thousand and above. There's this real barbell approach where it's like, I'm going to sell something really cheap and help people out at a low Cost and then the people who really want to go deeper. I've got this higher touch offer over here. I'm not great at Instagram, but everybody in this room was. So I learned a lot about Instagram and one of the takeaways that a lot of people are talking about, besides having a lot of love for manychat, a lot of them talked about trial reels.

Jay Clouse [00:15:57]:
Most of these people have very large Instagram accounts. I'm talking hundreds of thousands, over a million. Follow Diego has over 3 million followers. And so a lot of them create reels. That's part of how they grew. And they mentioned how just leaving their reels in trial reels. You know a trial reel, if you're not familiar, it's a feature within Instagram now where if you put a reel through the trial reel process, it only shows it to non followers. And this is a really good way if you have a high performing piece of content, one, to test that it is performing and two, get it in front of non followers to create more followers.

Jay Clouse [00:16:31]:
Now the way Instagram is designed is they want you to run the trial reel and if it proves to be successful, engaging, they want you to then push that reel to your main feed. But what folks in this room were saying was they would take some of their best previous reels, put them on trial reels and just leave them there for a very long time. Never actually push them to the main, but just let it keep getting in front of new followers. And that was huge for their growth. So that was interesting because I always heard of trial reels as a way to test content and then push it to your main feedback. But they were saying no, just let it run in trial reels for forever. One creator there talked about their process for vetting ideas. They said they start with X as text.

Jay Clouse [00:17:12]:
They throw a lot of text based ideas on X. They look for the ones that perform the best. The ones that perform well become an image card on Instagram. Then that becomes a handwritten text on a canvas for Instagram. They can turn that then into a reel using a hook from that and and then they can turn that into a multi slide carousel as well. All those things are posted to Instagram. An image card, a handwritten text, a reel, a carousel. And then all that same content can be cross posted to LinkedIn.

Jay Clouse [00:17:39]:
So one post on X can become eight additional assets on Instagram and LinkedIn. Pretty crazy. It's a good flywheel and it's a machine that I'm trying to get more into. Another creator there Talked about their Instagram posting strategy. They said they had four buckets for the types of content they create on Instagram. They number one was authentic stories. Number two were funny skits, kind of like comedy reels. Number three was being in conversation as a guest, especially if you are a big podcast guester.

Jay Clouse [00:18:12]:
This works really well. But I've also seen some creators who set up their camera just off to the side to almost look like they're a guest on a podcast, but it's really just them recording on their own. And they said the fourth was kind of a testing slot, a grab bag they called it. But these are the four buckets of types of content they were posting to Instagram. Authentic stories, funny skits, you in conversation or a grab bag. I know I'm firing through a lot of these things, but there was just so much here. I'm trying to get through as much as possible and give you as much as I learned here. Growth strategy for books.

Jay Clouse [00:18:43]:
This is something that I had seen, but I wanted to pass along anyway. I'm seeing more and more that authors are putting more illustrations and visuals in their books because they're realizing these illustrations are great, shareable images. People will take photos of the illustrations and share them on their own accounts. So the one point they made here was, this is great, but make sure the title of your book is on the page, at the top of the page. So when people do capture an image of the page and share the image, the title of your book is there as well. That's really, really smart. But here's what's even more interesting. You can take that same image, the same asset, and just share the image file on Your Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever platform that you're on, if that image does well.

Jay Clouse [00:19:31]:
One of the ways a lot of these folks grew on Instagram was they would post images from other accounts. Those accounts would post images from them with, with a credit to them, with a tag to them. And at first that sounds like kind of a, a tit for tat, quid pro quo kind of thing where you're like asking for a favor, hey, can you share one of my posts and tag me in it? I know when I think about that, I get a little, a little nervous because it's like, oh my gosh, I have to ask for a favor. But really, if you have tested yourself that an image or an asset performs well on your own accounts, then what you're doing is actually offering that person a high performing piece of content for their own channel. You're not saying, hey, can you share this for me? It's hey, I have this illustration, this visual, this image that performs really well every time I post it. I think your audience would like it too. Do you want to share this on your account? All I ask is that you tag me. That's really interesting.

Jay Clouse [00:20:26]:
I think that's really, really smart. All right, I have several more tactics here, but I recognize we're already kind of at the midway of a typical episode. So I'm going to take a quick break, I'm going to catch my breath, and when we come back, I'm going to talk about street teams for your book launch. I still have several more tactics, and then we'll get into some of the memorable quotes from the event as well. So stick around. We'll be right back. Let's talk about the street team for your book launch. This is a strategy I've heard several times.

Jay Clouse [00:20:56]:
When Tori was on the podcast, she talked about it. We'll link that in the show notes, Tori's most recent episode for us. But they said you want a small group of people who will support your book launch, some of your biggest fans who want to be a part of the launch. One of the insights that Tori shared in that first episode was she had met with an author. Her name was Tiffany Leache, who was actually an early member, early guest on the show. And Tiffany mentioned that her street team, each individual bought on average five copies of the book. So this suggests that if you have demand for a lot of people to be on your launch team, we can call it a launch team if you want, then this can be a really great early sales mechanism, too. These people are big fans of yours and they want to help spread the word.

Jay Clouse [00:21:40]:
And they end up buying more than one copy of the book, which is just gold. In the early stages of a book launch. Your street team can also provide specific feedback on different chunks of the book. James mentioned that he did this with the launch of Atomic Habits, his early readers. He kind of put them into small groups and gave each small group a batch of like 10 pages of the book and said, read this in a Google Doc and leave your feedback on it. And this is his way of validating a lot of the concepts in the book. And when people all marked that they were confused about something, he changed that material. Now there's a book called Write Useful Books.

Jay Clouse [00:22:16]:
It was written by Rob Fitzpatrick. And Rob Fitzpatrick has a software that he helps with this. It's called helpthisbook.com. this is an app that he Built to help you gather feedback from your readers. And I thought about that. It's called helpthisbook.com to get feedback from your beta readers now. Now, other authors said that for their street teams, they asked them to leave an Amazon or Goodreads review. There was actually a funny story of one of these authors got a negative review on their Amazon listing shortly after launch.

Jay Clouse [00:22:53]:
And this person was just complaining that the book itself had been damaged in transit. It wasn't the fault of the author, it was actually Amazon's fault. And so this author emailed their audience and said, hey, I just released my book and we only have one video review on Amazon and it's a negative review about the quality of the book. Can you go and help me with some positive reviews? And they said their audience really showed up and left a lot of positive video reviews to the point where they considered, okay, maybe in the future this is a strategy, maybe I should like seed a negative review on Amazon to give my audience kind of a call to arms to go share some positive reviews. I don't know, your mileage may vary. You can decide if that feels like it's an integrity to you. This was kind of just an idea, but I thought that was interesting. Another author said for their early readers, they had some incentives to pre order.

Jay Clouse [00:23:44]:
If you pre ordered, you would get your name in the acknowledgement section of the book. You would get an early access to the audiobook. And Jenna, Jenna Kutcher said that when she released her book, she offered 15 minute guest spots on other people's podcasts. So she said, if you join the street team and pre order the book, I will jump on your podcast for 15 minutes. And she batched this in a day. She said she just went, I forget if it was one or two weeks, but for several days, just back to back to back, 15 minute guest spots. And ahead of time she sent a lot of context of here's how this is going to work. I need you to be ready to record at this time.

Jay Clouse [00:24:22]:
We're going to jump right into it so we get the most out of that time. She said it went very, very well. And lastly, another author said for their street team, their launch team, they put together a book club for their book with their people. And that was so popular and so successful that a lot of the people who were on that team were asking, okay, but what is the price? And he said, there is no price. The price is you pre order a book. And for that I will host a book club for us together. So that Was a lot of great context. Sahil.

Jay Clouse [00:24:55]:
His book became a New York Times bestseller. He said he sent out 250 personalized copies of the book, 200 of which he had to buy personally. But he said he sent out 200 copies of his book to early readers that he thought would share it. He had a goal of getting 80% of those people to actually share the book after they received it, and 95% of the people he sent a book to shared it. On each of those books, he had post it notes calling out, here's a specific part that I think would be interesting to you, which helps a lot. He recorded a video for everybody who pre ordered. He said he recorded over a thousand videos for people who pre ordered the book, which is insane dedication. He even offered 15 minute calls for people who bought more than 10 copies.

Jay Clouse [00:25:44]:
So that was pretty wild. He said it was very, very intense. But if you watch Sawhill's launch as closely as I did, it was orchestrated incredibly well. It was so impressive, and it's no surprise that it was as successful as it was. One of the popular stories from the launch of Atomic Habits is how James targeted some communities of people that he thought would be good fits for the book. And he had several different groups he thought would be a good fit. But the one that really took hold was CrossFitters. He also tried venture capitalists.

Jay Clouse [00:26:18]:
I forget some of the other ones, but his point was if you could send to people who are both kind of chatty about the thing, the shared interest they're a part of, that's good. Like if this group is a group of people who talks about their thing, photographs their thing, shares their thing on Instagram, that's really good. But the other point that he made was a lot of people in our position, creators like us, authors like us, we get a lot of books shared to us. But if you can find people who rarely get early copies of books, they the share rate on that is actually gonna be much higher, which I thought was a very, very smart note. I think the last tactical thing I'll share here is one of the folks in the room mentioned. They don't do their own YouTube content or podcast much anymore. Their strategy is actually just to be one of the greatest guests on the most popular shows. And so this individual had been on Diary of a CEO, they'd been on the Mel Robbins podcast.

Jay Clouse [00:27:22]:
They've been on many of some of the biggest podcasts that are out there right now. And they said they prepare 40 to 80 hours for each of these podcasts. Which was so crazy to hear. But they said, listen, you want these episodes, for these shows to be their most successful episode. You want to be the most successful guest on that show, because then they're going to want you back. So what this individual did was they would go through past episodes of the podcast and identify some of the common recurring questions. They would take those common recurring questions and answer it through the lens of their own work, their own research, their own stories. So it was a unique answer to them that was relevant to their book or their material of whatever kind of.

Jay Clouse [00:28:12]:
But aside from that, not only did they have their own stories and answers to these questions ready to go, but they realized a lot of the reason that these shows grow is because they do short form vertical clips. So their idea was, how do I speak in viral clips? Like, how do I respond to a question with a great hook for my answer right out of the gate? So just the level of preparation on this was insane. And of course, those short form clips do well for the podcast themselves. But then they would take the YouTube video, send it to their team, their team would create way more clips out of it. And all of their growth on Instagram in the form of video, or a huge part of their growth on Instagram in the form of video was clips from other people's shows that their team pulled from the YouTube video. Because this person had already done the work of thinking about answers in the form of clips. Kind of crazy. I mean, a little bit.

Jay Clouse [00:29:12]:
It broke the fourth wall for me on how some of these major shows work. For example, I heard that these shows record much longer than you realize. A two or a two and a half hour episode of a podcast may have been cut down from four or four and a half hours of recording, which is wild, the amount of material they're getting. And yeah, I just have never prepped anywhere close to that degree to be a guest on any show. This is why the people in this room are so successful. I think I'll get to some of my miscellaneous thoughts here next. And then I'll end with some of the memorable quotes from this on that point of this is why these people are so successful. I mean, I was just awestrucking by the level of professionalism and excellence in this room.

Jay Clouse [00:30:03]:
These people were just operating at such a high level. Maybe you can even hear it in my voice, how enthusiastic I am about this. Because I'll be honest, for the last couple of months, I've been in a little bit of a funk. I've just been kind of Floating along and feeling a little sad for myself because things feel hard. Life feels hard, my 30s feel hard. It's a difficult season of life. I wish I had more time in the day. How do people do this? But when I was at this event, I didn't hear a single excuse, I didn't hear a single complaint.

Jay Clouse [00:30:39]:
I just saw enthusiasm and professionalism and execution. These people just take it seriously and they just go after it. Of course, a lot of them have teams. One of the questions I posed to the group was I said, can we go around really quick and just talk about the size of your team and how it breaks down? How many team members do you have? What's the breakdown of full time versus part time? And that was very illuminating because everyone in the room did it. And it varied from, oh, I have no full time employees, I just have four contractors to it's just me and my wife to I have a team of 38 people. Like, the spread was really that big. And it wasn't correlated to business size or level of success either. Like, some of the people with the smallest teams had the largest platforms.

Jay Clouse [00:31:37]:
So it was really eye opening and inspiring to see what can be done with small teams. But also when you take it seriously, what you can do with team building. One of the things I've been really mulling over lately is, okay, I am at capacity, so do I reduce the scope of what I do? Keep the team size the same, but do everything a little bit better? I think if I do that, I probably net out making a little bit less money if I'm doing fewer things. Or I could start hiring, I could start team building. I've been putting it off for a long time because it feels like such a responsibility and a commitment and an obligation. And I've always really wanted flexibility, optionality. But you know, I think about having a daughter and a lot of the meaning in my life is being a dad. And with that comes a lot of new responsibility and a lot of new obligation.

Jay Clouse [00:32:39]:
And. And if I think about building a team, it's probably the same. You know, I'm sure it is harder, I'm sure it is more stressful. But I think with that responsibility and commitment comes a level of meaning and fun and excitement that I'm just not experiencing right now, doing this in a bubble. So it really inspired me to think again about what if I start team building? What if I do hire somebody full time, somebody great. Yeah, I'll have to change our benefit structure. Yeah, I'll have to jump through some hoops and there's going to be more paperwork and blah, blah, blah. But I think it's the right move because if I hire, we can do more.

Jay Clouse [00:33:20]:
If we do more, I think we'll end up making more. Of course this will cost more, so I might net out the same. But if I do less for the purpose of comfort and ease, I think it actually kind of starts a slow march to the bottom on the business. I think that I should take advantage of the opportunity in front of me, the respect that people have for me. And honestly, in some ways the expectation that people have for me, like the fact that I was in this room, goes to show that people respect what I do and have high expectations or belief in me. And I think I could do a better job of matching that in terms of the belief and the confidence I have in myself. And if I believe more in myself, I think it does mean that I take the business more seriously and start team building. One of the folks in the room who has one of the largest teams was really talking about eos, the entrepreneur operating system.

Jay Clouse [00:34:26]:
It's a system made by Gino Wickman. I believe with the book Traction. It's where the ideas of visionary and integrator come from. I have historically, in the terms of the book, been wearing both hats as both visionary and integrator. That's just not sustainable. And as the on camera, on microphone talent, I think I kind of have to play the visionary role more than the integrator, which means that I'm going to need to hire more operations, more integrator style talent. This individual also really talked about this idea of what he called the Culture Index for hiring. But he mentioned he had a Culture Index coach who gave an assessment of his team members.

Jay Clouse [00:35:07]:
And ever since he started following the insights from that process and hiring people based on what the role needs from an individual and what the Culture Index says about that individual, that he has unlocked his team's talents, putting the right people in the right seats. And he just could not have been more glowing about this. So something to look into, the combination of EOS and Culture Index, if you are team building, something I'm certainly going to look at. I wish I would have taken more photos and asked for more numbers while I was there. I get nervous asking people if we can exchange contact information, especially phone numbers, because it feels so personal. But everybody that I asked said yes. And it's a much more direct line to folks, especially knowing that a lot of folks who have large social media accounts are not running their own social media or no longer the only person in their own social media accounts. So having somebody's phone number is a much more reliable and faster way to reach them.

Jay Clouse [00:36:03]:
And after an event like that where you really get to know people, it's a great place to do it. I didn't take a single photo with people there, but as I watched other people do it, I was like, man, I really should, I really should have documented more of this, taken more photos and shared it for memories for posting to the gram. I just didn't really do that. We learned a lot about the author's equity model for authors. I'm actually not sure if I'm at liberty to share some of that. I think they've been fairly public with it, but I don't think it's posted to their website. But I think it's interesting. The big innovations with it are a couple of things.

Jay Clouse [00:36:40]:
Number one, there's no advance, which you know is a bummer for aspiring authors. They're not going to advance up front. That's one of the best parts of traditional publishing. But the economics are much more author friendly. It's a profit split after covering the costs of hiring freelancers on your team, that being editors, designers, publicists if you want. Those costs are shared between author's equity and the author. Print costs, distribution. But after that it's a 70, 30 profit split to the author and that's a big deal.

Jay Clouse [00:37:18]:
That's roughly a 2x royalty on sales of your book. It's closer to self publishing in that way. I also really like that author's Equity has a 10 year reversion of rights as part of their standard terms. So after 10 years you can reclaim and resell the rights of your book if you would like. That's not a thing in traditional publishing. But again, the big trade off is you don't get an advance up front. So you have to take a risk on yourself, take a chance on yourself. And if you think the material will succeed, that's going to be pretty interesting to you.

Jay Clouse [00:37:54]:
Okay, let me get to some of the memorable quotes from the event that I wanted to pass along. One individual said they've been taking a lot more time away from quote unquote working and they've noticed that they are starting to feel creativity in their body more. They said I actually wanted to work less. So I've been working less. And the outcome of working less is I actually feel more creative and it's unlocked more creative energy and productivity from me, which is interesting, you know, and I've Experienced this on a small scale myself. The more closely I hold on to trying to produce more. Sometimes I get too tight and it actually reduces creativity. Sometimes creating space is actually what unlocks a lot of it.

Jay Clouse [00:38:39]:
Someone else on the topic of hiring said if you pay for half of someone's time, you get a quarter of their attention. And this was a recommendation to pull the trigger and hire people full time. Because if you pay for somebody's full attention, you pay for somebody's full time, you get all of their attention, sometimes extra attention. If you pay for half of someone's time, you get a quarter of their attention. There is no piece like the piece of someone else posting for you. This came from somebody there with a huge Instagram following and they said they don't have it on their phone and they they haven't logged in on their phone for a long time. Everything they post is actually posted by a member of their team and they said there is no piece like the piece of someone else posting for you. Really interesting.

Jay Clouse [00:39:26]:
Am I doing my best or am I doing what is required? I like this idea. This has played a small role in the book that I'm writing. This idea of trying your best, it sounds like the bar you should be pursuing, right? Did you do your best? But sometimes the work or the job requires more than your current best. And when you say I'm trying my best, it's as if you're saying that's a fixed position, that's a fixed possibility, a fixed ability. But really, if the job requires more than what your current best is, I think it's on you to acquire the skills and improve your ability so that you can do what is required. I really like that question. Fewer moves, bolder strokes. I've heard James say this on a few different podcasts.

Jay Clouse [00:40:20]:
As he has spent more time as a father, his time has contracted, as has mine. And he said, one of the things I try to do is make fewer moves, but bolder strokes do fewer things. But the things that I do try to do with more excellence and more intensity and more intention, I think that's wise for creators today, especially if you have a fixed capacity that you want to keep fixed. And this is the tension that I felt when it comes to hiring, because again, there is a world where instead of hiring to add more capacity, I reduce the scope of what I want to do and just try to be more excellent in a smaller number of things. I think both are viable. But regardless of your capacity, your overall capacity, the size of your team, I think generally most of us could do with reducing the scope of what we're doing, making fewer moves and bolder strokes. Next idea was am I willing to do the losing version of this for a long time? The idea here was when we get ideas that we're excited about, we want to do something. Let's let's say you want to start a podcast.

Jay Clouse [00:41:34]:
It's easy to say, I want the winning version of that life. I want the winning version of that decision. The the winning version of this decision seems really fun and exciting, but the reality is it takes a long time to get to the winning version of things. Are you willing to do the losing version of this thing for a long time? And if the answer is yes, then you are set up for success. You want to be at peace or even happy doing the losing version of something, because that is the energy that will take you through the hard times and get you to the winning version. What makes this book giftable? This was part of our author and book discussion. Can you find a reason to position your book as an obvious gift for some type of person in some type of season of life? Really interesting question. If you create a reputation for being a great book to gift for graduation or for summer, you know, whatever, whatever season, whatever excuse, if your book can be positioned as the obvious gift for that season or for that event, that can be a big deal for you.

Jay Clouse [00:42:54]:
And then lastly, where do tastemakers hang out? This is a really interesting insight. One of the authors there said he had a friend who was a barber and that barber cut hair for really influential people. And he just gave that barber a bunch of copies of his book and said, hey, give this to anybody that you think would enjoy it and those individuals getting their hair cut would get that book as a gift and maybe share it either on their platforms or with individuals. But when you are in the hands of tastemakers, that can be a really great thing for you. So those are the highlights of my notes. I took a lot of other little, little things here, but I really took a lot out of this and I'm still processing it. But most of all, I am just feeling so motivated to take my work more seriously because these people did not succeed through chance. You know, it was so impressive.

Jay Clouse [00:43:57]:
So impressive. I mean, day two, Sawhill was up at 4:30 running 12 miles and I was sleeping for another three hours or so. And we are not the same. We are not the same. But I think I could do more of that in this season of life. I recently spoke to Eric Zimmer on the show about his process writing the book. And I was talking to my friend Ryan Hawke recently as well. He's written several books now.

Jay Clouse [00:44:23]:
And I said, where do you fit this in? You have several kids. You're an involved dad. How do you do it? And he said, I wake up an hour and a half before my kids get up. I don't do that. I wake up when I hear my daughter waking up on the baby monitor, and then my day begins. So one of the things I'm going to be doing over the next month is trying to shift into more of a morning person, trying to get an hour or two of work in before she wakes up in the morning. If I can do that, that's a huge additional amount of capacity to the team, to my personal workload. That also unlocks my evenings a little bit more.

Jay Clouse [00:45:02]:
I'm so much better in the mornings. I'm a morning person. But if I sacrifice all of my best working time, then that's just a huge loss. So that's my goal for April as I'm trying to become a morning person. I'm starting to ramble here, so I'll wrap this up. I really, really enjoyed this. I hope that in the future I feel more comfortable and at home in a setting like this. But I also hope that I keep getting invited into rooms where I do feel a little bit uncomfortable.

Jay Clouse [00:45:28]:
And I hope you do, too. And I hope when you get those invitations, you go. There's absolutely no downside to this, even though there were times when I thought about trying to weasel my way out of it because I was so anxious and so nervous to be a small fish in this pool or pond. I guess fish belong in ponds, but I'm so glad I went, and I hope if you get the opportunity, you do the same. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. We are getting close to 500. We've gotten several new reviews in the last week and I love it. It makes my day.

Jay Clouse [00:45:57]:
So thank you, guys. Thank you to Melody and Dory and John. I saw your reviews. Those are huge. If you're listening on Spotify, leave a review or comment on Spotify. I love seeing that as well. But most of all, thank you for being here. Thank you for listening.

Jay Clouse [00:46:13]:
I'll talk to you next week.