Chandler Bolt [00:00:02] Hey, Chandler Bolt here. And joining me today is Dr. Guy Winch. He’s a licensed psychologist, a keynote speaker. He’s the author of two books. They’ve done really well. Well, I guess maybe even three, three books. Sorry. And so the two that I have here are emotional first aid and how to fix a broken heart. He’s also written a book called The Squeaky Wheel. And. And yeah, he’s and his books have been translated into 24 languages and his first TEDx talk. Maybe you’ve seen it. A lot of people have. It’s called Why We All Need to Practice Emotional First Aid. It’s been viewed by over 5 million or over 5 million times and I figure over 5 million people. But and it’s rated as the number five most inspiring TED talk of all time on TED.com. So in this interview I want to talk about a couple of themes. So, I mean, we get asked all the time, how do you land a TED talk? What are some of the themes there? I think what’s really interesting Guy has some experience with TED books is also kind of turn a Ted, Ted talk into a book or had those two work together. So I think there’s some interesting themes there. I think there’s also some interesting themes. If you’ve listened to or watched the episodes with Gosh, with. Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman or with Henry Cloud of Boundaries. I’m really fascinated by this concept of four people who work with people one on one, and whether it’s in with mental health or psychology or counseling, etc., is like, how do you take that, crystallize it into a book and then impact people in scale? And even just guy we mentioned we were talking before this about democratizing that thing through your podcast, so we got a lot of ground to cover. I think this would be a fine conversation. Guy, great to have you here.
Dr. Guy Winch [00:01:51] Thank you for having me. I’m excited for this.
Chandler Bolt [00:01:54] Yeah. So let’s maybe at the start, why did you decide to write your first book and why books is kind of a big part of your brand, your business, and what you do.
Dr. Guy Winch [00:02:06] So I mean, so full disclosure, I, I always loved writing and I always wanted to write on the side. And so when I became a psychologist, I, you know, spent a few years building a practice. And then I took some, you know, I cut it back a little bit so I could make time for writing. And by the time what I was writing was screenplays, that just to be very clear that no one asked me to write. Nothing ever happened with the things that had been produced. But it was a good ten years of toiling away and, you know, something getting optioned better than not. And then something always happening here better than not. And it was on the 10th year, like I think it was 2008. I had a screenplay optioned and it was about to be produced. And then the financial collapse of 2008 happened and that went kaput. And then this person, who was an agent, who always said to me, like, I don’t do screenplays, I do nonfiction, write psychology. She said, Well, maybe now you’ll write psychology. And I had this idea for this book, The Squeaky Wheel, which about the psychology of complaining. And I’m like, Oh, fine, I’ll write psychology then. And that’s when all the success happened. In other words, ten years of toiling literally got me nowhere. But the minute I pivoted to that lane, it started to work.
Chandler Bolt [00:03:18] So would you say that lesson from that was write about what you know or write about?
Dr. Guy Winch [00:03:24] There’s a lot of lessons there. Number one, perseverance. Because I could have given up on writing.
Chandler Bolt [00:03:29] Yes.
Dr. Guy Winch [00:03:30] Period. Number one. Number two, you and I kept writing because I enjoyed writing and I didn’t want to write psychology previously because I associated it with my dissertation and my Ph.D., which was not a fun process. There’s no one who does a Ph.D. who considers that an enjoyable process is always an emotional recovery to follow, you know, trauma and such. And so I wanted to stay away from it. But it’s it was in a ten years of hindsight there, it was like, no, but there’s realms in psychology that I would enjoy talking about and the psychology of complaining. Things seemed to me at the time, this is like, this is fun. I could enjoy doing that. And once that happened, I realized, Oh no, I can actually find a lane here in my specialty that I do enjoy writing about. Because the other takeaway is you better enjoy it because it’s so difficult that it takes time. It’s such, you know, you don’t get feedback for it for a while, like, so you’d better enjoy the process because there are no guarantees.
Chandler Bolt [00:04:23] MM Anything you learned from your ten years of writing screenplays that you feel like helped you? And I know you said it was behind the scenes. Nobody’s asking for any of that, but it’s it’s a really in-depth and different discipline. Anything you learned from that that you feel like helped you write better, more traditional come clean lately.
Dr. Guy Winch [00:04:41] And that’s storytelling because screenplays are very, very lean by definition, regardless of what you see on the screen, what’s on the page is, especially when it’s a spec, you know, thing is just dire, you know, like dialog and bare description. There’s no real prose going into it. So it’s all about the storytelling, all about a story arc and character arcs and so and it’s all about editing down because in screenplays it’s expensive. And so if a scene’s there, it, you know, it has to be there for something. It’s not just for it’s serving the purpose. So editing down storytelling, story, structure, structure, narrative arc, all those skill sets getting really handy later on from those ten years of writing screenplays.
Chandler Bolt [00:05:26] That’s really great. That’s awesome. And and for those who are listening to or the podcast or watching in a couple of weeks after this episode airs, we’ve actually got a deep dove on writing screenplays and turning your book into a movie and going from book to script. So it’s interesting just hearing some of the parallels. So stay tuned. Which came first for you, guy? Was it was it the the TED Talk? And then turning that TED talk to book was the book by the same name and then the TED Talk.
Dr. Guy Winch [00:05:57] Well, okay. So actually the way that TED talks happened was so the squeaky wheel came out was my first book. The second book was called Emotional First Aid, and I was and it was coming out in Swedish and the Swedish company said, Hey, we’ll fly over to Sweden to do publicity. And I said, You know how to do great publicity. Getting a TED Talk today. This is a licensed format of of TED. Those talks go on the YouTube channel usually. And I found one locally in Sweden. So I applied to it and I got in and I did that. So with the hopes of this, the people at TED see it, they’ll put it on TED.com, which is a separate from a YouTube channel, is the documentary that has 5 million views, has on TED.com, 13 million because that has the aggregate of YouTube and all the other places. So I did that talk, which was about the book. It went to the YouTube channel. Ten people saw it. They put it on TED.com. It went viral there. And the book sold out everywhere. And most of the first day, that book became really successful because of the TED Talk. And then after that book, I was writing just articles for Ted to help support the talk and the book at that point. And then they approached me and said, Hey, we want you to do a book with us. And it goes with a TED Talk. They’re a package deal. And we want it to be about heartbreak. Are you in? And when Ted says, we’re going to give you a TED talk and give you a book, are you in? It’s not a long decision process. It’s pretty much like I.
Chandler Bolt [00:07:34] Said, where do I sign? That’s great. I want to dove into that in a little bit and hear your experience. But maybe first, let’s back up and see you wrote the book, then did the TED talks, then the are the then you did the tax talk, then did really well. And then that got picked up by Ted and kind of kept snowballing. Do you feel like writing the book first helped you deliver a better talk? And if so, how?
Dr. Guy Winch [00:08:00] A yes because TED talks especially, right? I mean, the 12 to 18 minutes, sometimes 6 minutes to get there short. And when you have a whole book of material from which to draw, it gives you a ton of options. And it’s it’s a big sandbox to play in, because then if I’m trying to write a talk like the emotional first aid talk that I wrote as the TED text that is now on TED.com. I knew the through line that I wanted a through line that I wanted I wanted to to write about the fact that physical health and emotional health should be the twins of our well-being. And I’m a twin and we’re not treating them like twins. And as a twin, I find that offensive. So it was about my twin brother and it was I knew the through line. But how to make the point that we should treat our emotional health like physical health. You can choose so many entry points to that. You can choose so many aspects of our emotional health that we neglect and we shouldn’t for that. Having a whole book gave me a huge array to choose from that I could then organize around the narrative line that I had for the talk. And so it just gives you so many options because you just have all this material. Now, what do I take to make my point? What are the most interesting or the best ways to make my point? That’s very, very convenient. Much harder to do it without having that research in the book behind it.
Chandler Bolt [00:09:20] And it’s great. So that should be encouraging for people who have already written a book and are hoping to land a TED Talk, as you’ve already done some of the summer. A lot of the fundamental work to crystallize what you were speaking, be speaking about and write. And in TED terms, they call that the big idea, right? I’ve given a TED talk and that was that was the big thing in that and the interview process. And then leading up to actually giving the talks, what’s your big idea? What’s your big idea?
Dr. Guy Winch [00:09:47] Right. Say it in a sentence, by the way. Right. What’s the big idea? And say it very, very concisely. So that’s the other part. And why that’s actually so important is because Ted talks are short. You don’t have time to get into five big ideas. There’s one. What’s the best way to service that idea and tell a story that’s going to capture people interest throughout the time that you’re talking about? The examples are so yeah, but that that that was very useful. And when I said earlier, you know, emotional health and physical health, we should treat them the same. That’s the whole point about emotional first aid was like, here’s a toolkit for emotional wounds. It was that idea. So it was easy to come up with a big idea because it was as was the nature of the book. So it it really helps organize your thinking.
Chandler Bolt [00:10:30] That’s great. You kind of breezed over this a little bit and I think it’s you nailed it and it’s so important is you got your big idea and your hook, right? So you’ve got your big idea, which is the emotional first aid. And then there’s the physical and emotional side of things. And then you’ve got the hook, which is really compelling and interesting, which is they should be treated like twins. I am a twin, right?
Dr. Guy Winch [00:10:53] Bring in the personal.
Chandler Bolt [00:10:54] For the hook. It’s a Finn. It’s offensive. Right. And so I think, you know, you’re just like, oh, I had a hook for a lot of you. But that’s the hardest part, is coming up with something that’s compelling, that’s interesting, that gets people to click, to watch and then share that concept. How did you come up with that big idea and hook and any tips or things that you learned from that?
Dr. Guy Winch [00:11:14] So look, I have three TEDTalks. Each of them needed to have a hook, right? So the one that’s about romantic heartbreak, the hook there was again, just from the research, this is what I was finding, was that actually when you’re heartbroken, trusting your instincts will take you all the way to the wrong side. It’ll just make everything way more painful because our mind doesn’t serve us well when we’re heartbroken. We need to know what to do and how to ignore what our mind is telling us we should be doing, which is like stalking our ex on social media, doing all kinds of things that are not useful. But in general, the hook is, to me, the fun part of the process. It’s almost arbitrary. Like you have the idea. I want to talk about emotional first aid. I wanted to talk about heartbreak. My third one is about work stress. I want to talk about these things. But what’s a package that you can use? You know, you mentioned Chapman and the five love languages, right? That’s a packaging of something that’s very hawkish. Like, it’s like, oh, that’s a really interesting idea that we express our love in different ways and different people express it differently. We don’t always because it once you find that frame or emotional first aid was a frame about, hey, we have physical first aid, we should have emotional first aid. That’s the hook. That’s the frame. And you need to try on a lot of different things for size. It’s a it’s a marketing hook, right? I mean, that’s what we’re talking about here. It’s something to get people interested, but then you should play around with it in the same way. Advertising and marketing agency spend a lot of time brainstorming different ideas and with talks, especially how to bring in a personal dynamic. How would that tilt the hook a certain way? But to me, that should be a fun exploration of really what’s the. Best I can come up with that will organize what I want to talk about in a way that’s, you know, succinct and appealing. And people go like, Oh, I get it in the sentence, Oh, that’s interesting. I want to hear more.
Chandler Bolt [00:13:11] Mm. That’s really great. I love how you, how you approach that. Do you think about it the same way when you’re creating a hook or a title for a book as you do a TED talk? And if so, why? Or if not, why?
Dr. Guy Winch [00:13:24] Yes, because it’s all about the packaging. In other words, a lot of what I say in all of my books, there’s some things I think I’d say in an original way that people hadn’t quite said that before. But a lot of it is I’m using data that other people have used to describe other things and using research that is available to other people. I’m trying to find a unique way to kind of say it or do it. It’s about holding the, you know, the audience’s kind of interest. And the way I tend to think about those things is I always start by thinking about, well, what’s a kind of a riddle or a puzzle or a mystery. I composed at the beginning to get people thinking, to get them to go like, huh? Oh, yeah, that’s interesting. So it’s like, what is a riddle that I can come up with? Or a puzzle or a mystery? Like in the heartbreak talk? The mystery I posed at the beginning was I told a true story about a patient, a woman who went through cancer twice, had a double mastectomy, but actually had two individual intersect the news had chemo and recovery just got better. Another chemo and recovery and soldiered through. She was incredibly strong, incredibly resilient, kept going to work, kept getting promoted at work the entire time, like nothing could fail this woman. And then she got heartbroken and she went to pieces. And the mystery I posed at the beginning was, how come our defense mechanisms that serve us so amazingly well and in the face of the worst existential challenges of life, fail us when we’re heartbroken. So just and it’s the kind of question that people go like, oh, oh, yeah, so tell me. And now they’re listening, and now you can start that again. You know what I mean? So it’s about coming out and that’s a hook, too, but it’s coming up with a question or something to get people curious and soon and quickly. I find that’s always really important.
Chandler Bolt [00:15:12] Wow. That’s really interesting. So we’ve talked about coming up with a good hook and, you know, the kind of how to get accepted or come up with your big idea for your TEDx talk. And then we talked about how do you know how a little bit of how we’re actually. Let me zoom in on smaller pieces of that. Why? Why and how did you think Ted said yes. Like, how did you get your first yes to speak on that first TED stage?
Dr. Guy Winch [00:15:40] The initial ten x I applied to over ten probably Ted X conferences. You do it to the TED website. The problem with that is that often, you know, conferences have a theme. It can be about urban agriculture, except you don’t know that when you’re applying. So that might be applying to things that I didn’t because I, I didn’t know. I just threw things out. And I happened to hit on a conference in which the they already announced the theme but had room for speakers. Usually once you announce the theme, you’re kind of close to speakers and it was about habits. And so I just said, All right, it’s about a habit of emotional health. You know, and I just you know that’s what emotional hygiene as a habit just to kind of curator toward the the scene and they said yes because I had a book coming out. So it’s already established I’m an American psychologist. This is in some college in Sweden. So they were like, This is fun. We’re getting foreign. People come though. We don’t have to fly in or solicit their volunteering to come and speak while they’re doing publicity for a book. So that gives us publicity. I think it kind of worked. But you also sent a very thorough pitch, and the organizers said to me when I arrived, she said, If your talk is as good as a pet because she was about to see it in rehearsal, she said, then it’s going to go viral. And I was like, Yeah, yeah, this is, you know, it’s going to be on the YouTube channel. We’ll see. But she was and then she saw the dog and she said, this is going to go by. She said to me, this is going to be one of the most inspiring talks for TEDx. And I’m like, okay, thank you. That’s very kind. But she, she, she thought it was a good idea and that’s kind of why it was. Yes. And I had worked on it and spend the time. It’s a marketing tool. You want to spend the time pitching a good idea and knowing what you’re pitching. If it’s for Ted or Ted X, this is very specific format. They’re very specific things. They’re very they want things done a certain way to do your research. And when you’re pitching ideas, whether it’s books for agents or for publishers or whatever it is, do your homework and pitch correctly. That really matters.
Chandler Bolt [00:17:39] That’s great. So that’s how you got the first? Yes. Then we also talked about how you come up with your big idea or your hooks, and that leads in a lot of ways to it becoming shareable or viral. Is there anything else that you did or that you feel like worked? Well, that that that maybe either led to it going viral or brought in a bunch more views?
Dr. Guy Winch [00:18:01] Yes. So, for example, on every TEDTalk of the three that I did, I went through and I after I had the basic talk, the basic structure, the basic ideas, I wrote 5 to 7 sentences in the talk, which means theoretically, which you can just list and post on social media, because it’s exactly the kind of it said succinctly. It’s not in the three sentences. I’m saying this, I had those things and I wanted to make one good sentence out of it, very kind of straight to the point, the kind of thing you would see on social media. So people listening to it could repost and help the virality of it. So I literally spent time crafting those because sometimes collapsing it into one sentence where this did this in a clever little cute way. It’s a little bit of a squeeze, but I actually spent time on that squeeze because I wanted certain sentences that could be identified by other people or I could put out there, you know, on Twitter here, social media or whatever. So, yeah, so I was thinking at the level of sentences as well, I was thinking about humor that that’s important for people and where do I put jokes in without ruining a moment? Because some of it is dramatic, so it’s not appropriate. Some of it. So it’s a time where you want to lift tension. You know, I said I wanted to start with curiosity. My first book, The Squeaky Wheel, The Mystery I started with a kind of true story was there was construction being done 20 years ago outside my apartment. And it was horrible noise all day, but it wasn’t my building doing it. It was just another building in New York City. And so the entire building wrote complaint letters because it was unlivable. And I was the only one who wrote a complaint letter that actually got a rent abatement. No one else did. And the landlord called me and he said, Everyone’s writing complaint letters, but that was a really good complaint letter. I’m giving you a rent abatement, and that’s when I started. But on the squeaky wheel, I’m like, Let’s do an analysis. And I do an analysis of why that why I’m the only one complained about the same thing that worked. And what is the psychology of complaining that I used to make that effective? But it starts off with a story. So now people are interested at the end of the introduction of like, Wait, how do you do that? What was the right? So it’s about presenting like you want to. People need to have an appetite to come back for the next page in the next chapter and the next minute of a talk. And you have to help provide that.
Chandler Bolt [00:20:24] That’s great spoon opening story that makes it interesting. Make people care like you said earlier, that maybe even posing a question where people say, huh, why is that right now? I’m interested. Now I’m sticking to the meat of the talk. You’ve got snippets or one sentence snippets that you can then use to boost the reality on social and things like that to help the overall talk grow. Anything post-punk that you did, the market, the talk that you feel like worked well and do.
Dr. Guy Winch [00:20:52] Everything I possibly could. So, for example, Ted reached out and said, Hey, can you write they’re a nonprofit. They don’t pay for talks. They don’t pay for articles. So can you can you write an article for us based on the talk? And some people would say like, well, no, I really like, you know, I don’t write articles for free. And I’m like, well, of course I will. So because that’s a big platform. So, you know, I did that. I supported the talks and. The books mean. When you write a book, you want to support the book. You want to do as much publicity as possible. You want to say yes to as many things as possible. So I, I was very much doing that. I was out there looking to see how I could continually promote the talks or the book for the first TEDTalk when it came out and it was on YouTube that it wasn’t on Ted. I got it in Time magazine online over Christmas because I had pitched it to a reporter that I didn’t know, but I said, Hey, this is my TEDx talk and here are the ideas and here are the points you can make in an article. And the reason it was like easy work for her because I kind of. Gave the whole, you know, like this is what it would look like. And this these are the points. And so she said, all right. And she brought it up and it went out on Christmas Day and it became one of the five most read stories over the Christmas Day in time, which is not about emotional health, it’s political use and all that stuff. But it was an interesting idea again. So it was like but I pitched a lot of journalists about, Hey, you want to write about my talk? Do you want to write about this? And here’s why you should. And I did the research knowing that they write about this thing and this is what they’ve written about recently. So I could say I saw you wrote A, B and C, I think this would be a good complement rather than just pitching. You know, I get this all the time pitches for my podcast, which is therapy. It’s a therapy podcast and people are like, Oh, here’s a guest you should have on like therapy. So apparently you haven’t listened to a single episode, even though they write to me, we love the podcast. You haven’t heard it because you are pitching accordingly. So do the homework.
Chandler Bolt [00:22:42] Got it. So do the homework. And then it sounds like saying yes to a lot of things that there are opportunities to promote the talk and then making journalist job easier to using your TEDx talk to get more PR and publicity super smart so we’ve talked a lot about okay how do you how do you get the talk how do you make it go viral, all those things. But then you said something earlier which was the book sold out when the when when the TED Talk came out or was picked up. A lot of times people can do a TED talk and it not news books, right? You can go viral but not have it not have an impact for selling books or growing your business. What do you feel like you did well so that a lot of viewers would end up purchasing a copy of the book.
Dr. Guy Winch [00:23:33] So, first of all, again, there’s Ted X, which is a licensed. What happened is TED on the TED Dotcom website, there are only 3000 books on the YouTube channel. That’s half a million. So that’s not what’s going to help it go. Viral is not considered viral. There is not what’s considered viral, what’s considered violent. Ted dot com is just have a million views of a talk within a couple of weeks that’s kind of viral. So it depends where the platform is and how viral it really is is going. But people should be able to tell that there’s a book or if the books that have I sometimes seen people have talks and the name of the book is completely not present in their talk and not even just the talk itself, but in the in the title of the talk, it’s not present and not in the verbiage of the talk. So in terms of SEO, look like you’re not getting the cross-pollination of certain concepts being associated with your name or with your book. So you want to use that in terms and you want that to be an immediate. But if you’re going to use the talk to promote the book, then push the talk, but make sure that you’re pushing the link to the book in the wherever you’re pushing that talk that people can find. You know, the book is not going to mention the book in a TED Talk because that’s not what’s what’s done but that but you know, if it’s people will look for you or look you up in that way if it if it goes viral. And so you want to leave a trail of breadcrumbs wherever you’re promoting yourself so that people can follow the trail to your website, to your email list, to your social media, where they will then get exposure to the book.
Chandler Bolt [00:25:04] Mm hmm. That’s good. And I know Ted and Ted X are a little bit particular about kind of self-promotion and the talk.
Dr. Guy Winch [00:25:13] It’s you can’t do it in the talk itself.
Chandler Bolt [00:25:14] Yeah. So can you even say the name of your book or was there anything in your talk that kind of related to the fact that there’s a book about this?
Dr. Guy Winch [00:25:23] Well, the talk is called Why We All Need to Practice Emotional First Aid, and the book is called Emotional State. So yeah, and the second talk is called How to Fix a Broken Heart. And the name of the book is How to Fix a Broken Up. So yeah, I tried to keep them. In other words, that they’re fine with naming something they’re not going to say as per the book, but they’ll use that concept. If you’re writing about, you know, the joy of cactus plants, then you can have a TED talk, all the joy of Pakistan, that sort of problem.
Chandler Bolt [00:25:57] Got it. Okay, cool. Now, you mentioned earlier about your. Which one was this? This is, I think, How to Fix a Broken Heart where TED books came and said, hey, ah, Ted came in today. Yeah. It’s a package deal book and a TED talk. What is the structure of that book like and how is that experience a role?
Dr. Guy Winch [00:26:19] So first of all, that that was something they were experimenting with. I don’t think they’re doing that currently with the TED books anymore. The idea of the TED book is to take a talk and to do a deeper dove into that talk. So they often did it with talks that were out already, and they approached us and said, Hey, write a book about your talk with me. It was like they didn’t have a talk about heartbreak. They wanted me to write a talk and kind of write the book. But when you’re publishing, even if you’re self-publishing, you’re going to, you know, whatever the the idea is, it’s like you do need to think about marketing and you do need to think about like how you like if you’re going, let’s say for a TED X, you know, then you’re not going to get a book with it. But like the many Ted X’s and some of them are very, very low profile and some of them are very, very high profile. So you also want to research what is it you’re applying to? Is it going to be a very established one that actually they’re going to be pressed, there’s going to be press there, it is going to be more marketable as opposed to a much smaller event. That’s not you know, again, like you, you want to make sure that it represents you well. And and the other thing I found is that just not to mention it because I haven’t yet. Podcasts are a very good vehicle and this one and many others to promote books. And so and that’s something it’s such a huge space today. It’s exploded so much over the past three or four years. You should be able to find 50 podcasts in whatever the lane is that you’re writing about and then apply to them. I applied cold in my first book. I applied, you know, ten years ago. The podcast was a much smaller space. I just applied to all the top podcasts in my space and said, Hey, I talk about this, this, this, and this. This works with your podcast because you’ve had episodes about ABC and this, and I think 30% of them said yes, which is a huge, you know, very successful response rate. But it’s like it’s very good promotional. You know, vehicles. So if you’re thinking about talk and book should be a lot of synergy there.
Chandler Bolt [00:28:22] That’s great. And one thing, that one pattern that I keep seeing, it it seems like is. Unique to you, but also a commonality of people who very successful this kind of stuff is. Reaching out and reaching out to podcasts to get on podcasts, reaching out to PR and publicity in the New York Times to making their job easier, a personalized reach out or you’re making someone’s life easier, but also being very explicit and specific in your ask. Okay, I think this would be great for your podcast. Here’s the book. Here’s the TED Talk. Here’s what I think could be a fit. And I think that’s something that a lot of people don’t do. We talked in my new book I talk about this is author appearances is what I call it Right podcast, a TED Talk, speaking gigs. They’re all kind of under the author appearances umbrella. And you’ve got the 3 hours of landing those author appearances, research referrals and reach out. And so, you know, you have to research to see which opportunities exist. Referrals are really helpful for that kind of warm introduction. If you do all that and you don’t do the reach outs now, no one can say yes and no one will say yes. And so it seems like you’ve done that really well time and time again, and that’s worked well.
Dr. Guy Winch [00:29:38] Yeah, but I always bring something to people who are not aware in the traditional publishing space. I thought my three books of traditional publishers, here’s what they do. They spend six weeks from the time the book comes out. Six weeks hence they will put some promotional effort into and before the book comes out. But at six weeks after that, they have to move on to their next cycle of books. It’s even with traditional publishing, unless you’re a massively bestselling author, which most, most, most, most people are not, it is still 95% up to you to get the publicity. And so sometimes people feel like, well, if I’m self-publishing, there’s only so much I can do. And it’s like, that’s so much you can do is exactly what you would be doing. Hopefully, if you being published, published by the biggest publisher in the world, it doesn’t matter. They only do so much and it’s very little compared to what you need. You have to come into this, assuming you publicity is on you. It should start at least six months before the book comes out before you want to publish it. It is a continual effort for a good year afterwards. I would suggest that’s how successful books are made. There’s no, you know, once in a blue moon, Oprah will come and put something on a list. Bravo. And even then, it only will give you a bump. You need to parlay that thereafter. So it’s like there’s no way around the sales promotion stuff that you have to do and you have to get comfortable with that self-promotion. I know it’s awkward for people to go, Hey, have me on your show, but it’s like if you’ve done your research and you’re making a good point and you think it’d be a good best a good guess, that’s not a big ask. It’s like, it’s just like, here’s information about me, but you have to do it. You’ve got to be really ready to push because no one else is doing that for you.
Chandler Bolt [00:31:23] That’s great. I’m so glad you said that, because that’s a common misconception, right? So if I’m published and the publisher is going to do that or I’ll just paid someone.
Dr. Guy Winch [00:31:31] Or people will see the book is out and they’ll go crazy, but no one will see the book is out. No one will see it. Who’s how are they going to see it? A thousand books are published today. Why would they sales? Unless you’re shoving it in front of their face, no one’s going to see it.
Chandler Bolt [00:31:45] Agreed. Guy. What would be kind of your your parting piece of advice for the guy from how many years ago before you got your first TED talk or anyone who’s like you who wants to turn their book into a TED Talk.
Dr. Guy Winch [00:32:01] So first of all, Ted is your backup, TED, because that’s highly curated, but two decks is there are many of them every day, literally around the globe. Do the research, find out the people who are organizing it. Try and get to those people via LinkedIn connections, cold calling, cold writing. We don’t call these days, you know, like this but but realize that that it’s a lot of cold calls in the sense that you’re writing emails to people and you got to do it. It’s like what I said to people about the dating apps, by the way, I know this is going to sound like, huh? What’s the connection? What I said to people about the dating apps is the likelihood of you texting somebody that will then lead to a first date. That’s good is small. So you need numbers. You need to be texting with a lot of people to get to that first date and you need a bunch of first dates to get to someone that you want to have a second, first, second date with, etc.. It’s that same with promoting. Like you need to send out a lot of mass pitches that are researched and specific because again, people like me on the podcast when they get pitches, which I do all the time, for people who clearly never listen to it, it’s more annoying than anything else. So you want to do your research, but you it however long you spent writing the book, how many hours a day a week you spent writing the book? That’s the amount of time you need to spend promoting the book. It is as a full time job as the writing. Clear the space for it. Clear the mindset for it. Gird your loins for the effort, but go forth and it’s going to be a big campaign.
Chandler Bolt [00:33:35] That’s great. It’s not always people like to hear, but it’s it’s what they need to hear. It’s so important. It’s really, really good to know. Guy, this has been awesome, man. And then. So you’ve got your books yet? How to Fix a Broken Heart. You’ve got an emotional first a you’ve got the squeaky wheel, you get the podcast. The Dear Therapist played Castillo really well. I think he’s had over 6 million downloads on the podcast, which is nuts. Where can people go? Where’s the best place for people to go to find out more about you? What you’re up to do, grab a copy of your book or whatever would be most helpful.
Dr. Guy Winch [00:34:09] So https://guywinch.com. If people forget my last name, just the guy and psychologist, something will come up pretty quickly. You can go to Ted and put guy in and he’ll get to me quickly. So. Ted dot com. Yeah. So again, it’s a distinct name and just the guy in psychology, if you forget the last name but it’s guy wins dot com has all the information you don’t see links to the books there by the way in 28 languages at this point we just bought a bored Mongolian and and I asked if I could, you know, they’re going to fly me out there so I could ride around in a horse. And they said no. So that’s it. As disappointing but but yeah. So so guidance that come will give you links to everything and articles and such and whatever else I’m doing, which is do things all the time.
Chandler Bolt [00:34:59] Cool guy. Thank you so much.
Dr. Guy Winch [00:35:02] It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for having me.