Sales and Cigars | Brian Skillen | Mastering the Art of Publishing | Episode 182

[00:00:01] Hey everyone, Walter Crosby with Helix Sales Development, your host of Sales and Cigars. My guest today is Brian Skillen. He helped me publish my book, Scale Your Sales, and I had him on as a guest because he's an interesting guy. He's got a great backstory.

[00:00:18] He tells a wonderful story about how he got to being a publisher and being a writer with all the challenges that he had. But he adds an element to this episode about how a visionary can develop a team and what's

[00:00:33] important to finding somebody that aligns with your vision. And he talks a little bit about how he does it and the tools that he uses. So go grab a cigar, grab a cocktail, strap in for another educational episode of Sales and Cigars. Thanks.

[00:01:01] So Brian, welcome to the program. I appreciate you taking a couple minutes to jump on with us. Hey Walter, thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here with you today. I've been kind of looking forward to this conversation because we've done some work

[00:01:14] together and I don't have a lot of guests on who I've been partnered with on some projects and you helped me with an exciting project when we'll get to that in a second. But I like to start off with it helps the audience understand what's important to

[00:01:32] the guest. Is there a book you gift or a book that you read repeatedly that's part of your repertoire? Yeah, absolutely. So some of my favorite books are by Russell Brunson. We have dot com secrets, expert secrets and traffic secrets.

[00:01:50] Hands down, that is the book that I recommend to most people or those that's the trilogy. I recommend to most people I buy them from my employees so that they can read the books and we can all be on the same page together.

[00:02:02] Walter, before I go anywhere else, I see you keep smoking. What are you smoking today? I appreciate it. It's Olivia series G box press. I just I was getting ready for this and I was looking at my humor and I found the box in

[00:02:16] the back on the bottom like, oh, I haven't even opened this box yet. So wow, brand new cigar. That's awesome. I love it looks great. Looks like really good. Well, it's every once in a while I'll get a bad cigar, but even a bad cigar doesn't suck

[00:02:34] in my world. So the Brunson trilogy in your funnel hacker, right? Is that right? Correct. Yeah, absolutely. Like help me understand like why how did that become part of your journey? Maybe we talk a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey, but yeah, funnel hacking stuff get

[00:02:58] into your your life. Well, I kept learning so I'll get more into my story later, but that particular part I kept learning that all roads kept leading back to Russell, which is really interesting like people, everybody from Tony Robbins to Dean Graziosi to like all these people,

[00:03:15] they were all running funnels sales funnels and they were using Russell system. And so I kept learning that everything would kept going back to Russell Brunson in this way. And so it was like, oh, OK.

[00:03:28] And then I started reading him and I was like, this makes so much sense. And so as I was going, it just really gave me a firm understanding of concepts that were only half formed in my mind.

[00:03:39] It made it much better for me to get in there and really understand things at a very simple level right down to like he has doodles inside of his books. And I think being able to see it in picture form really helps too.

[00:03:52] You know, so it's really very accessible. He takes these high concepts and makes them very accessible for everybody. And when you say the doodles and little drawings, but he's actually he has a piece of software that he bought that called doodles.

[00:04:05] Is that the actual? Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, like so inside inside each of his books, he has these little drawings inside his books. And when he does presentations, he says, oh, I'm just going to doodle on my board over here.

[00:04:15] And he draws. He draws some pictures and things like that. So he puts pictures in there. So it's not an actual software. His software is ClickFunnels, and it's one of the first funnel software is at least the longest lasting funnel software that's been on the market, essentially.

[00:04:31] Yeah, he's had a little bit of success. Yeah, just a little bit, you know, to the to the billions, dude, probably at this point. Well, when you're building a museum for books on your property, just because you're so intrigued with them,

[00:04:45] he's not he's no longer motivated by money. He's motivated by learning things and doing creating legacies and helping people. So it I have a love hate relationship with ClickFunnels. I I use it. Our mutual friend, Nate, helps me with that. Yeah. But some of the things that that

[00:05:08] if I purchase something from Russell, which is often the amount of emails I get. It's like my inbox is inundated. Well, Walter, I think what we should do is we take all the emails from Russell, put them into a book and send it to him as a gift.

[00:05:30] That would be a very thick book. It would be a very thick book. It'd be like encyclopedia Britannica. So so that that takes us back to its nice segue, Brian. It takes us back to creating a book. And that's not a bad idea.

[00:05:46] But let's talk a little bit about your journey, because you help me. I'm going to show this little this little book here. You help me get off the ground and and make it a. Well, you tell the story. Amazon bestseller.

[00:06:01] Yes, it became the number one Amazon bestseller for scale your sales, which is super awesome. And, you know, I loved it. You had a great launch. And, you know, the cool thing about books is they make one of the best lead magnets for your business.

[00:06:16] That was the other thing I noticed, right? Everybody has books. Tony Robbins, Dean Grosy, Ozy, Russell Brunson. And the reason why is because with a webinar or something like that, you're only in somebody's mind for an hour, right?

[00:06:29] You're only there for an hour when they're reading your book. You hear their voice going through there. And then you also are there for more time. I'm kind of a slow reader, so believe it or not, I own a publishing company.

[00:06:41] I'm a slow reader. You know, I get other people to read it for me. But, you know, it's like your voice gets to be in somebody's head for a week, a day or whatever. So you have more exposure to that.

[00:06:52] And obviously the goal of sales is to get people to know, like and trust you. And what better way to get somebody to know, like and trust you than being a voice inside their head, especially if you're providing value. And if you think about it like this,

[00:07:06] when was the last time you recommended a course to somebody versus the last time you recommended a book to somebody? I would wager 10 to one that you recommended a book more recently than you recommended a course. And so the pass through is amazing. It was interesting.

[00:07:24] I want to go back to something you said, but right. I start off the start off always asking somebody what book they recommend or gift because it really helps the audience understand how somebody thinks. You know, what's important to them, you know,

[00:07:41] what they're thinking about, what they're considering. So and I really recommend a course. But I have those that I take and that's interesting. But last night I was sitting with a small group of people at the networking function and

[00:08:02] I had given the book to one of my colleagues a few weeks ago and he read it and he said, I think this is a compliment, but it speaks to your point. He goes, when I was reading it, I could hear your voice. Totally.

[00:08:20] He knows me and he's like, you're, you know, you are in the book. I could hear you saying the things that you wrote, which I took as a compliment. And and I think he meant it as a compliment because sometimes I'm a little direct. Yeah.

[00:08:37] And I'm not I'm not for everybody. Yeah, I have a certain style and that came through in the writing. So I think that's one way that people can, you know, decide if your book is really authentic. Yeah, you're already filtering out people to begin with.

[00:08:56] Right. So and think about this. You're getting paid to advertise. So instead of you paying, right? So somebody buys your book, they're actually buying their book to listen to your advertisement as you're going through there. Not that your book is just an advertisement.

[00:09:09] Obviously you got to present value. But like within that value of a shape of book properly, it can lead to other things like downloads, you know, resources, all these other things. And then they become a part of your ecosystem because then you've captured

[00:09:23] their email and you can market to them, which is why I think every business person should have a should have a book like no matter what business you're in because it is just the best lead magnet essentially coming into it. It really it's a lead magnet digitally.

[00:09:41] People can go and find it and get it on Amazon or Barnes and Ohl or wherever. But, you know, there's been a couple occasions since we got this on the street where I'm sitting with somebody who says like, what do you do? How do you do it?

[00:09:57] And what do you do is easy. The how do you do it is a little bit more complicated. But when you hear them, the book totally this is a pretty easy read. You can knock it off in the length of the time it takes you to read a

[00:10:09] cigar or smoke a cigar. You can you can knock through this book. And it helps you understand what how I think and and how I go about solving problems. And, you know, that the problem isn't necessarily what you think it is. That's all in the book.

[00:10:26] And every time I've done that with one exception, just a grumpy old dude. But everybody else is like, oh, a book. Right. And they show and they all look at the chapter headings. I try to understand what it's about.

[00:10:42] And they're like, can I get another one so I can give it to somebody? Awesome. Thanks for watching another episode of Sales and Cigars. I'm looking for guests. I'm looking for really good guests who have an interesting story to tell. Their entrepreneurial journey.

[00:10:58] They want to talk about something that's that's going great in their organization. I'm really interested in speaking to business owners and CEOs. The other type of guest I'm looking for is somebody's got a passion for cigars.

[00:11:11] And we can do a short episode about a pairing about a new cigar they discovered about something around their passion of cigars. So if one of those things fits you or you know somebody or want to make a recommendation, shoot me an email, ping me on LinkedIn.

[00:11:32] I'd love to get some guests from the audience. Appreciate it. I think you just invented something, Walter. The book as a business card. I've never thought about that before. I think you invented the book as the business card.

[00:11:45] Well, this guy asked for my card and I'm like, you know what? I don't have a card and I had 20 of them in my bag. Yeah. But I said, I got this and it was all my info is in there. They can reach me there.

[00:11:59] It's a little bulkier to pull out of your pocket. But, you know, it's a it is what it is. So so so we talked about my book and you help me get it there. And I recommend anybody that is trying to get a book off the ground or

[00:12:17] get it out of their head onto paper to reach out to you. But let's talk about like what you get here. Yeah. So I have a pretty funny story. So I have I always say God has a sense of humor.

[00:12:35] He made me dyslexic and I became a writer. He made me fat and I became a dancer. Right. So you haven't heard this part of my story before, but before publishing, I actually was a world famous dancer.

[00:12:44] I traveled the world teaching dance performing in Todd and over 32 countries around the world, you know, performed on Lincoln Center or a lot of big stages. So that was like my credit film. Yeah, I also did film too. I did a lot of things.

[00:12:56] I've done a lot of things in my in my short life so far. But I was on dance. I mean, I would do like swing dancing. So like swing and blues dancing. So literally my job for years was throwing women in the air, which was amazing.

[00:13:10] You wouldn't believe it. Look at me now. But like back then that was that was what I would do, which is pretty, pretty fun. There's a scene from John Fabro movie, shit, the name of the movie, Swingers. Yeah, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what I would do.

[00:13:29] So like, like Daddy was playing in the in the they were doing swing dancing and wearing suits and stuff. Yep, exactly. Yeah, I love it. I love that movie. That was one of my favorites, that and swing kids. That inspired me to start dancing.

[00:13:43] But that but that's a whole other story. Like and that was an amazing career. Like I took a form of dance and that and popularized it around the world. So I teach local girls how to teach or women how to teach that this particular dance, give them music.

[00:13:58] They build communities in those communities before to me for like 20 years. Like all the way so it got to the point where I'd be like, oh, I want to go to Europe. So I just put up a post saying, hey, I want to come to Europe.

[00:14:09] And then who wants me for a workshop? And within an hour, I would have like a three, four, five week trip. All both planned, paid for whatever going through Europe is great until covid shut us down and I'll get to that in a second.

[00:14:22] So on one of these dance tours, I was on something called the Communo de Santiago, which is this ancient pilgrimage that stretches across Spain. And I got to this place called the Ark of San Anton, which is this giant art just jutting into the air.

[00:14:34] I was like, this looks like something out of Game of Thrones or Lord of Rings. And just past there was the Hilled City of Casa Perez, which is a giant hill with a castle on top. And once again, I was very intrigued and I checked into the albergue,

[00:14:48] which is like the pilgrim shelter and the stamp, the seal for the city. You have these pilgrim passports and they stamp them. It had five Templar crosses on it. And I was like, oh, the Knights Templar. And the guy's like, what do you know about the Knights Templar?

[00:15:00] I said, I don't know. What do you know about the Knights Templar? We got in this great conversation about the history of the Templars and the Camino in that region. And as we were finishing up our conversation, he said, look for the clues the Templars left behind.

[00:15:12] And with that, I was hooked the next morning I woke up. I took my dancers out of my bag. Remember, I was on tour. So I took my dancers out of my bag. I left them outside of a second hand store that was closed.

[00:15:22] I said to God in the universe, I said, I'll trade these in for a story. And every day after that, as I'd walk in the morning under the stars, this book started to play like a movie in my head. The people I met became characters,

[00:15:34] the things I saw interwoven to the narrative. And there's all this weird Templar stuff that kept coming up. And by the end of the 30 day hike across Spain, I had a whole book dictated. Now there was one only problem.

[00:15:46] I got back home and I grew up with dyslexia in the third grade reading and spelling level. So I never thought I would write a book. But, you know, I think if you have a big enough why you can do any how.

[00:15:56] Right? The how, you know, if you have that why, you can just go through. So my why was to inspire a million people to go to the Camino. And my how was by committing 2000 words a day, no matter what.

[00:16:07] So I sat down, I started writing 2000 words a day, no matter what. And it was painful in the beginning. Like it took me like eight hours to get through that first one. But just like a muscle as I kept writing, I got faster and faster and faster.

[00:16:20] And thank God for Grammarly and everything, you know, I still did. You know, and I had to learn, I had to learn about punctuation. Had no idea where a comma went. You know, like all this other stuff. I finished the book.

[00:16:30] I thought it was the best thing ever. I brought it to my girlfriend at my time. Or yeah, the girl I just had a couple of dates with at the time. I was like, I'm an impressor with this book, you know? So I gave it to her.

[00:16:42] She read it and she's like, I need some work in my little heart broke. I was like, oh, no. But I'm so happy she was honest with me because that forced us to learn everything we could about writing and like all the skills that I'm using today

[00:16:55] to help other people I learned in that time period. And so fast forward, I send out query 50 query letters to agents, got back to rejection letters, 48 other agents, even didn't even write, bother to write back to me. And then COVID happened. Right.

[00:17:10] And so I had this, you know, thriving dance business where I'm getting traveling six, nine months out of the year every week, different country, different city, only working two days a week, you know, making, you know, good money, what not? And then that's all gone.

[00:17:23] But I have this book, right? And so what I decided to do is I decided to do a Kickstarter book launch for it. And so we put our book up on Kickstarter and with 30 days we read we raised over $10,000 from my debut novel.

[00:17:37] Now, just to give you an idea, the average self-published book only sells 250 copies in a lifetime. So that's kind of like just industry standard and actually published books. You know, it's like with traditional publishers, it's somewhere between 500 up to 2000, depending on how much money they put into it.

[00:17:56] So like the margin is there. But anyways, we had done that before we even launched our book, which was like super cool. Then we launched to became Amazon, the seller in several different categories. And all these people kept asking, how are you having so much success with this?

[00:18:12] And so I just started teaching people for free. But as COVID persisted, I realized, oh, I can't keep teaching people for free. You know, like we got to start making some money on this, right? And also like people wouldn't take it seriously.

[00:18:24] Like if you teach somebody for free, like they would have to have skin in the game and that's usually dollars in time. Exactly. And so I'd be sitting there teaching them and telling them exactly what to do and they wouldn't do take action.

[00:18:37] And so enter Dean Graziozzi and Tony Robbins with the World Summit. Right. So we did their World Summit and joined Project Next. They taught us how to make a course. We made this course. We launched the course.

[00:18:50] And then right after we launched, somebody approached me and she said, I don't want to do the course, but I want to become an Amazon best seller. Will you help me? And I said, sure. And so what we did is here's my first client

[00:19:01] and we got her to an Amazon bestseller in 11 categories in four different countries, which was, wow, a huge success. Like, I mean, and we got her to like the sub, you know, like thousand level on Amazon. Like we just nail it.

[00:19:14] We knocked it out of the park and it was so good. And then we had other clients saying, well, will you help me publish my book? And I kept, you know, these people that kept coming to me and they kept

[00:19:27] I found that they were going to these vanity publishers where you'll pay people like five to, I don't know, 20, 30, 40 thousand dollars to get your book published and you end up with a OK looking book,

[00:19:38] but they don't build the assets around it and you don't have the knowledge to go with it. So I invented something called an educational publishing company where we actually walk you step by step through the entire publishing process.

[00:19:50] And we also build assets around your book, like Facebook pages, landing pages, things like this so that your book has a better chance of competing. Right. So it's not just a book by itself. It has an ecosystem around it.

[00:20:02] And anyway, so yeah, so I like we started doing this. And then, lo and behold, you know, people take notice when you're kicking butt. Dean and Tony's team noticed that we were kicking butt and they give us a shout

[00:20:16] out at the World Summit in front of 800,000 people like, you know, did you say my name on stage in front of 800,000 people? And then we had enough for that. Yeah, I know. Like that was just like and he did it more than once. So it was super cool.

[00:20:31] So like here we are. We're doing great. And then I got too big too quickly and my business imploded. I didn't have systems or people in place and my wife felt called. You know, we have this thing if one of us feels called to do something,

[00:20:45] we're going to support the other 110 percent, even if it doesn't make sense. And so even though our business was doing great, she got called to go be the director of the volunteer organization that helped change her life. And I said, OK.

[00:20:58] And even though I had a negative effect on our business at the time, like, you know, it forced me to actually start working with the team and start developing employees and, you know, like really going through and doing

[00:21:11] that. So in the long run, it ended up helping us coming through it. Yeah. And so that's a that's a little bit about us and our story. And holy crap, that's a I mean, how you started that little that

[00:21:24] that that journey like you actually took to Pilgrim Ridge and built your book what you were watching and seeing. That's a that's a cool story. And I learned a lot like I didn't know.

[00:21:36] But I want to I want to kind of land on one of these things that you just you just talked about, you know, the audience is our entrepreneurs and business owners, right? And they have us, you know, that visionary seat, right? And they go towards the sales piece.

[00:21:52] Yeah. And what you just said about getting big, going fast and not having the structure in place. The process is the SOPs, all those things in place. And I've worked with your team. Yeah. So I understand that like they each have a role and they know what their

[00:22:14] role is and they're really, really good at their role. And they were, you know, they were more than willing to do something that was a little bit outside, you know, to help me, you know, with the with the editing component of it.

[00:22:29] Did it super fast and really, really well. So talk a little bit about how you went about creating that system and finding people to that you could rely on. I mean, when I say when I say you built a team, like, how the hell did you do that?

[00:22:51] Yeah, that's a good question. I'm still working on it. I'm not perfect by any means, but like what I found was I was looking for people that would bot into my vision. Number one, I look for people who had love, right? So they loved books, they loved publishing.

[00:23:07] They wanted to get involved with it. And so like that was my number one thing is that they had a passion for books and a passion for helping people. And so that fit right into my thing.

[00:23:18] And they also like I look at like each person I do a book for, I help them like, you know, Dean like ingrained it into my subconscious that sells a service. So if I have something that I know is going to help somebody and I'm not

[00:23:32] doing everything I can to get in front of them, I'm doing that person a disservice. And I know our system's great. I know we're better than, you know, you know, like pretty much, you know, we're a very good company and we deliver. And so

[00:23:47] like I think if I'm not doing everything to get in front of them, I'm doing a disservice and having my team buy into the we're helping people because we are we're changing lives. Like I've had people cry.

[00:23:59] I've had people say I've been having this dream for 10 years and nobody's been able to help me. I've had people say I got scammed for like X amount of money and you were able to do it for so much, you know, more cost effective.

[00:24:10] And I learned so much more as I was going through it. Like we are literally helping people. And so I look for people that wanted to help people. The other thing that really helped too was with working with interns.

[00:24:21] And so my right hand woman, Michael, who you met, she started off as an intern for me. And so she started interning and then gradually I was like, I got to start paying you and then I paid her more and more and more until she's sitting in my

[00:24:35] integrator role at the moment and she formats for us and she's learned all of these skills and has become pretty much invaluable to the company coming through it. And then our publishing specialist, like she started off in film and then the film strike happened

[00:24:52] and she lost all of her income, but she loved editing. She loved books. And I said, hey, why don't you just come join us? And so she joined us. So I was able to poach from there too.

[00:25:03] But I think it's finding people who have a passion for what you're doing and a passion for helping people, people who are really bought into your vision. Skills can be trained, right? You know, depending on like what they are,

[00:25:13] you can train skills, but you can't train that passion and desire and need kind of coming in there. When you're when you're I mean, you gave I think a great answer is like they bought into your vision

[00:25:26] and you and you have a process where you bring people in as an intern, intern to kind of it's almost like a trial. Exactly. Yeah. And you get to know each other and you get to start to see how well

[00:25:40] they can adapt and adjust and fit into your space. But buying into your vision and that they they truly because part of your vision is helping people and I believe I agree with Dean that, you know, if you're not providing service, you're not providing value, then you shouldn't

[00:25:55] be in sales because those are all connected. But getting them to getting them to buy into your vision, you have to articulate your vision. Yeah. And those the team are younger than way younger than me. Yeah, younger than me as well too.

[00:26:22] I mean, how do you talk a little bit about that? You know, being able to help them understand what that really is. Is it just a conversation? Is it like, you know, you got a VTO that you're rolling out to, you know, get them to buy into it?

[00:26:36] Like how are you getting up to really understand what it really truly means? Because you're passionate about what you do. And and that shows through with how you do it and getting those folks to. The buy into the vision, that means they're doing the same thing.

[00:26:53] Their passion is aligned. So and this speaks to one of the issues in the book that I talk about is getting that alignment. So like so how do I do that? So major magic wand or no. So it's the same thing with sales is demonstrating results. Right.

[00:27:11] And so like the moment that that person sees that effect that they've had on somebody's life, it changes. Right. So when we with Michael, when we got through our first client that we did together and she saw, wow, like this person is crying and I made this.

[00:27:30] I made this possible that I formatted that. Right. And so like that was a big thing. I think also I think it's really valuable to to I do personality tests. And then I also like I love the Enneagram. We have another personality test that we use to.

[00:27:46] But we also I also like to look at what people's love languages are. And I tried to cater to the love languages of my employees. So if somebody's love languages words, I make sure to tell them you're doing great, you're doing awesome.

[00:27:59] Like the work that you're doing is affecting people's lives and you're doing wonderful and proud of you. Right. And if somebody's is gifts, then I buy them an extra cup of coffee. Right. If somebody's is quality time and make sure that we have a meeting once a week.

[00:28:13] So if you learn your employees like love languages, it really helps to do that. And then also like if you're into the Enneagram, you know, there's different, there's like eight different explain what that means. So the Enneagram,

[00:28:28] it's one of the oldest kind of like personality things out there is originally developed by the Sufis and later the Jesuits picked it up. And it's a number system. So it's one through eight on these numbers. And each number has a different representation of things going through.

[00:28:42] Eight is the boss. Like you'd be an eight. Like in my opinion, right? You know what you're coming into it. And then you have like four who's the artist. You have five who is the sort of very intellectual like researcher.

[00:28:54] You have six who's the loyalist and you have two who's the helper. Right. So there's all these different things. So I think this kind of goes with going with like what's in the right seat. Right. I wouldn't put like a two and an eight position, right?

[00:29:09] Because they, you know, they're not, they're not necessarily going to be there. And I'm not going to put a seven who's kind of like the flighty, you know, like loves to do a lot of different things and just like research all the time position.

[00:29:21] And so with this, and then like for the two, somebody that loves to help, guess what? I'm going to put him a position where they get to help other people because they feel good when they're helping other people. They're being true to who they are.

[00:29:32] Right. If somebody's a six, they're a loyalist. That means that they're going to stay loyal to you, you know, pretty much no matter what if you get that loyalty to begin with. And so you can kind of look at this.

[00:29:42] I started really getting to Enneagram when I was developing my characters for my books because they're fiction. So I think what type of they're how they would act. But I see it definitely applying to business when you're going in there, and especially like which seats to give people.

[00:29:56] Because if you find out like what's innately inside somebody, it's going to really line up with those seats that they that they should be in. So what happens when somebody thinks they're an eight and they're five? Yeah. There's like a little conflict there.

[00:30:14] Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I haven't gotten to that point yet because I signed right into it. But yeah, I guess when somebody is an eight and a five, like I would just really sit down with them and investigate. Do you actually like leading people?

[00:30:27] Is this something that you like doing or would you rather just be researching? Like I see that you like to read and research. Like is that something you'd rather be doing? You know, like just really pull out the pain point essentially that's going in there and like illustrate.

[00:30:43] OK, you know, what do you like? What do you not like that? Be like, oh, that's because your personality is this. And I think that's another thing too. And I haven't I haven't doubted this is all theory at this point because I haven't gotten to that point yet.

[00:30:56] But I think if you point out to somebody in there that, you know, that's what their personality type is. If they take like one of these tests and they're like, oh, my personality is more fitted to this,

[00:31:06] it's a lot easier for them to kind of have that own self discovery instead of being told by somebody else. And so that would be kind of something that'd be interesting.

[00:31:15] Is if I had like an eight or like a five and an eight seat who shouldn't be there. I would I would have them sit down with the intergram and be like, OK, which type do you think you are?

[00:31:25] And then they're like, oh, the research is like, well, would you be happier doing more of a research role when you're coming into it because that seems like more of what you're gravitating towards. So I don't know. I'm still working on that development.

[00:31:37] And it probably never gets perfect. But what what you're describing to me as you're communicating in working with your team, I mean, you're doing a few things that an entrepreneur does if they're doing if they're doing the role well. They're coaching their people. Oh, absolutely.

[00:31:56] And but it doesn't feel like they're being told what to do because you're truly coaching and you're helping them self discover, right? In a way that's going to support the business. But also it's probably equally as important to support themselves in doing something that they have passion for.

[00:32:18] Totally. And I love that you you talk about like training because I totally believe in that. Like I give my people like I bought them all the Russell Brunson books. I send them courses. I will teach them anything that I know that I'm doing and then I see

[00:32:33] this is another thing that I also ask along the way. I do check ins with them and I say, hey, are you still enjoying this? Is it something you still want to be doing if they say, no,

[00:32:41] I'll give it to somebody else or I'll do it myself and come through there because I want to keep them happy and I want to keep them loyal and I want to keep them there because they're damn good.

[00:32:50] You know, like I want to keep them as long as possible. Then the other thing, the other thing with that too is the learning styles. So I was a master teacher, right? I got flown around to teach.

[00:33:01] So one of the reasons why I wasn't the best in the world at dancing, but I was damn good at teaching. I mean, I was damn good at dancing too. But like, you know, but teaching.

[00:33:09] But it's because I would try to hit each of the learning styles when I was teaching. And so you have visual, kinesthetic, auditory and then I would call it theoretical was like another one. And so when I'm teaching somebody, like

[00:33:23] some people like to be shown exactly what to do or told exactly what to do or whatever, some people you have to their their kinesthetic learners. So they have to do it by going through it themselves. And that's kind of what I'm going right now.

[00:33:37] I mean, they have to be okay with trial and error and figure it out and fail. And they have to be okay with they have to be okay with failing.

[00:33:46] And they have to know it's OK by from you as as the leader that it is OK to fail. And then I make more mistakes than anybody else. So if you want to if you want to learn this way,

[00:33:59] you got to get comfortable with, yeah, that didn't work out as well as I thought. There's a tool or not a tool, but it's more of a concept I use. What did we do well in this situation? What did we do well?

[00:34:12] Right. And like what where could we do a little bit better? Like what what aspect of that if we just did a little bit better would make this easier? And then is there anything that we need to do differently

[00:34:25] that would make this whole outcome closer to what we what we were trying to accomplish? And it to me, those questions like open things up for them to think about it and they have to be delivered in a in a in a

[00:34:40] empathetic way and they have to believe that there's there's there's trust in place that can give a straight answer. But it it's it all starts with that that vision piece and making sure that they really are on board with what you're what you're what you've envisioned.

[00:35:02] And then if they are, then you can you can do this little dance, not to make a reference to your your previous life. But I mean, it is a bit of a dance and it totally is.

[00:35:14] And it can be elegant and it can be stepping on each other's toes from time to time. But, you know, it's going to be both. So I think that's a really good lesson for, you know, the entrepreneurs out

[00:35:25] there, especially the visionaries that if we don't have alignment with our people and aligned with our visions, we're going to struggle with people. And people are what make or break our growth and our ability to do a scale.

[00:35:43] I think I think one other thing that I found too is listening what's important to them like one of my one of my employees, her family is really important to her. And I realized this because the first time her family was in town,

[00:35:56] she totally disappeared and I was like, where are you? I need you. You know, we're talking about younger generation, like just different stuff. But the moment I realized, OK, family is super important for her. She's going to drop everything instead of making a bad thing.

[00:36:10] I say, hey, just tell me beforehand when you're going to be with your family. We'll arrange it so you can just take the time off and be with them. Because I'd rather have some knowing that somebody's not going to be there.

[00:36:19] So I'm not relying on them and and have them just enjoying that. Then having somebody not show up when I need them. So I'd rather kind of so I flip the table on that. I said, OK, if they're there, just take the time off.

[00:36:30] Be with your family like that's super important to you. I get the clue everybody else in exactly, exactly, exactly. So it's really about listening like what's important to them. And then they feel heard and they're like, OK, I feel like oh, he sees that I value my family.

[00:36:45] You know, so that's awesome. And I think that's some really good insights for the audience. And again, if somebody we're going to have all your data in the show notes and how to get a hold of you. If somebody is curious about, you know,

[00:37:03] taking a step with a book or they have a book, it's it's kind of done. And they want to take a step like what's the best way for them to reach out to you? Yeah, absolutely. So you can go to our website, PublishingHackers.com.

[00:37:17] And you can go through there or email me directly. We'll put the email in the show notes or link tree. You know, there's a lot of a lot of different things we also just launched a podcast to called You Don't Need a Publisher, which is great.

[00:37:30] You know, it's contrarian, but it's like awesome. Really, my ultimate goal is to take down the publishing industry. Not necessarily like the big, big guys, but like all the vanity publishers who are taking advantage of other people, I want to take them out.

[00:37:43] And there's a lot going on. I know we don't want to get in there and yeah, but people need to be need to be careful. There's lots of there's lots of folks out there just like in any business. It doesn't matter.

[00:37:57] Like in my business, there's people that will just sell somebody training because they ask for it when it's really not. It's a complete waste of money resource. So you have bad actors everywhere. So they can reach out to you through your email and through the website.

[00:38:16] And Facebook is usually the best publishing hackers Facebook. You can reach us there. Yeah, we're all over the place to try to find this publishing hackers. Awesome. Last question then, Ryan. I kind of know you're not a cigar guy, but, you know, any any kind of relationship

[00:38:36] with cigars? Absolutely. Yeah, so I've been thinking about this. So I have two actually. Number one is I had an old so my grandfather's old old school Italian straight over and he had a neighbor that used to smoke cigars with this dog.

[00:38:49] And so I always think about that as well. The story you were telling me earlier kind of reminded me about that. So good childhood memories with that. But like the main thing was I do love the smell of cigars and like walking

[00:39:01] into that humidor and just kind of like that smell. And so what I did when I was younger is I actually took a cigar box and I put all of my checks back when we used to use checks inside the cigar box.

[00:39:13] So every check that I would send for rent or whatever, they'd always have that smell and you know, I think kind of cigars are kind of the smell of wealth. Sometimes you know, coming into it.

[00:39:23] And so like all of my checks would have that like distinct cigar smell to them. You get commentary on that from people? I don't know. It was years ago. I don't even remember anymore, but I kind of wish I had another cigar box to put

[00:39:37] things in because I do like that smell. Maybe I'll send you one. Hey, there you go. I once printed off some stuff. I was doing a workshop and there's like 30 people in a client's office and I was handing out the worksheets that went with the workshop.

[00:39:53] And the first guy I handed it to him was like, you know, just pass this around and he took the pack of papers and like put it to his face. I started to walk away from him like, how are you doing? It's like this smells like cigars. Awesome.

[00:40:07] And and he's like, is that a problem? He goes, yeah, I don't really like cigars. OK, then just pass them down. That's the guys that owned the company were laughing because they were cigar guys. Yeah. And so they were sort of explaining, you know, my setup.

[00:40:24] And it was just funny. That's that's a good story with the I'll get you a cigar box that we got. If you got any yellow, yellow ones, that would be nice. I'll take it. Just joking. All right, man, I truly appreciate it.

[00:40:40] Appreciate all the help you've you've provided me and the help you're going to provide me next round of this. So thank you and we'll be talking soon. Great talking to you today, Walter. Thank you everybody for joining us. You can become publishing hackers too.

[00:40:56] I know everybody has a book inside them and we'd love to help you get them out into the world. There you go. I think I think that's absolutely true. I didn't think I had a book in me, but maybe I got three.