Chandler Bolt [00:00:02] Hey, Chandler Bolt were here, and joining me today is the man the mythology, Mr. Michael Hyatt. He’s a man who needs no introduction, but I’ll give him one anyway. So, Michael, he’s the founder and chairman of Ford Focus. Are you scaled multiple companies, including a $250 million a year publishing company with over 700 employees and his own business coaching company? A program that I’ve been a part of which is a business accelerator that’s grown over 60% year over year for the past four years. He’s been a mentor of mine and an advisor for self-publishing icon for the last couple of years. He’s speaking at our Author Events Live event coming up. And he’s authored multiple books. You’ve probably heard of some or maybe multiple of them, Some New York Times best sellers, Wall Street Journal, best sellers, USA Today, you name the list, he’s hit it. His books include Living Forward Your Best Year Ever, Free to Focus the Vision Driven Leader and his newest book, Mind Your Mind Set. Among many other books. There’s no telling how many Michael Hyatt looks at that on the shelves back here. And then I just love this guy. He’s I think the story is this introduction just gives you a longer but I think is the first ever person to be on the podcast three times. I was just checking the stats the other day. It was episode one and episode 55 and episode one is one of our most downloaded episodes ever. So if you’re curious about standing out in a noisy world, that’s episode one. Check out that episode. If you’re curious about traditionally published trade books and self-published books to grow your business, we went deep on that and Episode 55. So those are great resources to find those two topics. We will not be talking about either of those things here today. We’re going to be talking about minding your mindset and really the mindset of an author. So with all that said, Michael, what’s up? How are you doing?
Michael Hyatt [00:01:59] Chandler so great to be on with you. I so appreciate your friendship and that introduction. You know, some of it was true. That was amazing.
Chandler Bolt [00:02:09] So, hey, we’ll start with this. Why this newest book and why have books continued to be kind of such a big priority for you and such a big part of part of your life and part of your business?
Michael Hyatt [00:02:23] Well, let me answer the first question first, which is that this book really represents kind of the prequel. To everything else that I’ve written. And, you know, just kind of dawned on me about 18 months ago. I thought, you know, I haven’t written anything on thinking. So I talked to my daughter Megan, who is the CEO of our company, Full Focus, my oldest daughter. And I said, what if we did a book on this topic? Because it kind of undergirds everything else we do because, you know, our is our kind of focus on our coaching program and everything else we do is we want our clients and our customers to experience extraordinary results. And the only way that you get extraordinary results is you’ve got to take massive action. And I think most entrepreneurs, most owners, most leaders have an action bias. They think if they just work harder, faster, smarter, they can sort of sort of by brute force change the results. But if you swim upstream from the actions, it’s the thinking that leads to the action. So the stories that we tell ourselves are what shape the actions that we take, which deliver the results we get. So that’s kind of the underlying premise in terms of why I continue to write books. And I think this is my 16th book. And the reason and I’ve got another book that’s almost ready to turn over to the publisher, and then I’ll be at the end of the contract that I have right now. And who knows what will happen happen after that. But I don’t intend to stop. You know, I want to keep writing books because it it for a couple of reasons. Number one is I think it’s the single best way you can establish authority in your market niche. And, you know, some people think, well, if they get professional credentials or they get a Ph.D., sometimes those are a prerequisite. Sometimes those are important, but they are not as important if you’re trying to establish credibility with an audience. Being a published author, nothing establishes credibility like that. I also think nothing, nothing can have a greater influence on people than books. And I still I was involved in the book industry for most of my career, but still to this day, it’s pretty hard to beat a book. For actually shaping people’s thinking and making a difference in their life. And that’s why I’m committed to it.
Chandler Bolt [00:04:47] Mm. Amen. So you said it’s pretty hard to beat a book for shaping people’s thinking. So we’re getting a little bit meta here. Books shape people’s thinking. That’s also the subject of the new book. So can you talk about that? So mind your mindset. The science that shows success starts with your thinking. So you’re just kind of talking about how thinking is upstream of action and you can’t just muscle your way there. It’s it’s in a lot of ways starts with the mindset. And you talk about some of the key concepts of this book, and I’ve got some specific questions on some of these concepts. So maybe just big picture key concepts of the book and how authors can use those concepts to write and publish better books.
Michael Hyatt [00:05:28] Yeah, why don’t they? Why don’t I give you the overarching framework and then you can come back and ask me questions that apply to two authors because man writing a book. There’s a lot of thinking and there’s a lot of mindset. You know, that’s where it has to start. So the book is basically divided into three sections. And think of these as three steps for. Better thinking. And the subtitle of the book is The Science that Shows Success starts With Your Thinking. So we did a deep dive into brain science and tried to understand how our thinking happens, why it happens, and what shapes our thinking. But the three parts are step one Identify the story. All of us are constantly telling stories. Our brain cannot exist without telling stories. And so it takes all these random facts that we encounter every day, and it knits those together into stories because we are meaning seeking creatures. We we can’t exist without meaning. And the brain’s basic job is to keep us safe. So it takes the facts. It tells us a story. And based on that, we take actions and then we get a result. So identify the story. And in that section we talk about. Sort of the villain of the story, which is what we call the narrator. This is that voice inside your head that sounds remarkably like your own voice, but will, well, basically tell you what’s happening. Much like, you know, as we’re recording this last Sunday night was the Super Bowl and there was what was happening on the field, you know, between the Chiefs and the Eagles, all the facts about what penalties were called, what passes were completed, what the fumbles were, all the facts were happening on the field. But the commentators, analogous to the narrator inside our own brain, weren’t content to just let that accident happen. They had to comment on it. They had to tell you what it meant. They had to predict where it was going. They were constantly predicting or trying to predict where it was going. Sometimes they got it right, sometimes they got it wrong. Same thing happens with the narrator inside of our own heads. So that’s step one. Identify the story. Step number two is interrogate the story, because there’s often a difference. There is a difference between the facts and the story that we’re telling ourselves about the facts. And we tend to think that our version, our story is true. And yet we know from the science that 20% of our memories and that’s the principal thing that informs our stories of the 20% of our memories are false. Up to 70% of our memories are inaccurate in some significant way. So the story and the facts are different and we have to be careful and look at the stories and say, is there a more empowering way to tell this story? I can come back with examples in a minute, but then step number three is then we get to imagine a better story. Some stories are empowering. Some stories aren’t. And once we learn sort of the mechanics of how our brain works and how our thinking works, we can reconstruct or or re-imagine different stories that actually lead to better results.
Chandler Bolt [00:08:47] Mm hmm. Well, let’s create the 21st of the 20% of your memory box. It’s pretty wild and crazy to figure out as like, Oh, what? What? 20% of my memories I’m misremembering. And how might those myths, myths, remembrances be shaping my future? That’s wild. I know you talked about this concept of the narrator. In in kind of the story that I’m you know, the story that I’m telling myself. How do how does that. NARRATOR Or that story? How do you feel like that looks for authors who are in the process of writing a book? What does that story look like and how might they be able to kind of challenge that? NARRATOR Interrogate the story, Imagine a better story.
Michael Hyatt [00:09:39] In 1997. Chandler I signed my first book contract. And I was elated because I had I think it was 30 publishers reject me. I mean, it was like one rejection letter after another. I finally told my agent, I said, Look, I’m just done. Nobody wants this book. And he said, well, it’s just whole I’ve got I’ve got kind of a warm lead here. Let’s let’s try it for a few more weeks and see what we can come up with. So sure enough, 30th publishers said yes. I was elated. For about 90 seconds. And I thought, Crap, now I’ve got to write the book. So here’s here’s where the narrator came in. So almost immediately, this voice inside of my head says, You know, you’re not really a writer. Who are you kidding? What do you know about this topic? You know, you’ve never written a book before. What makes you think you’re going to complete this one? And I mean, you know. So then so then the deadline is looming. And I’m making no progress because I was working full time and I’m trying to write my book like a lot of people listening to this. And so finally I went to my wife and I said, Honey. I think I need to take a couple of weeks of vacation. And checked myself into an extended stay hotel. And just, you know, write 12 hours a day till I get this done. Because if I don’t get this turned in, in time, I’m going to be in trouble because I was a publisher at that point. So I was sitting on the opposite side of the the chair and I said, I’m as a publisher, if there’s one thing I hate, it’s a late manuscript and I’m just determined to not be late. But I haven’t made much progress. So I got a pull away to do this. So every morning I would get up and I would experience this enormous mental battle. Where I you know, I it was me against the narrator. It was the narrator saying, you can’t do this. You don’t have experience. You’re not a writer. Who are you kidding? And me trying to crank out the words. And I mean, there were times when I was sick to my stomach, times when I just wanted to give up and quit. And even years later, the narrator would show up like this often happens. I get a first draft done and the narrator will say, You know, this isn’t as good as you thought it was going to be, is it? You know, or this. This just is not that great. You know, this is going to fall on deaf ears or worse, the publishers are going to reject it because, you know, it’s just not very good. So all these mental things that you go through. So at some point. I decided that I was going to in my identity, I was going to identify as a writer. And it felt like a little disingenuous. Like like I was an imposter. But I started saying to myself, I’m a writer. Well, the cool thing about that story, even though it didn’t fit exactly and it felt a little bit uncomfortable, is that it began to shape. My behavior. Because if you identify yourself, if you say to yourself, I’m a writer, what’s the first thing you’re going to do? You’re going to write. Because writers write, if you’re a writer, you’re going to write. And if you self-identify as a writer, then that’s going to lead to writing behavior, that’s going to lead to writing results. So now when I feel overcome by that, that voice in my head, I just and this comes to imagine a better story. You know, it could be anything from. Well, but I’m learning to write. Or I’m getting better at my writing. Or, you know, after you’ve got a couple of books under your belt, you know, I’ve written several books already. I felt this exact same way before. This is normal. I’ll get through it. And this is just part of the missing middle.
Chandler Bolt [00:13:37] That’s awesome. And it reminds me a lot of, you know, Steven Preston on this podcast and author of Changed Lives last year talked about the concept of resistance. And he also talked about I think the code he said was like, I don’t always like writing, but I like having written this and like this battle that happens daily and how you’re not immune to it. Right. So this is I guess it still happens to me. I’ve written a ton of books and so does that still happen to you to this Totally. To this day?
Michael Hyatt [00:14:13] I don’t I hate to confess this, but whenever I’m creating anything and I read all press fields books and I’ve read several of them multiple times. And I highly recommend him. But there are I have a terrible problem of procrastinating my writing. And so at one point. A coach of mine said, Why don’t you just embrace that? That this procrastination, you tend to do your best work when you’re up against the pipes running out of time. And you’ve got to perform or there’s going to be a serious consequence. And so I’ve just now I don’t a lot of the time that I’m preparing to write, you know, that procrastination time is actually preparation time because I’m thinking conceptually, thinking about different stories. And then when I sit down to write, I’m pulling that all together. But it’s almost like the writing couldn’t happen without that prerequisite of preparation.
Chandler Bolt [00:15:15] Yeah.
Michael Hyatt [00:15:16] But it always happens. And I guess I get mad at myself sometimes. I think, you know, if I had started this several months ago, I wouldn’t be in this jam right now. But I almost have to get into the jam to perform. And so, you know, if that’s you if you’re listening to this and you and you struggle with that very, very thing, just know that a lot of bestselling authors struggle with the exact same thing. We’re not that different.
Chandler Bolt [00:15:40] Yeah, that’s really good. So it sounds like from what you were saying earlier, is that the kind of the narrator it exists, but but then changes throughout the process. Before you start, it’s, hey, who are you to do this? After you finish the rough draft, it’s hey, that’s this probably is isn’t any good. Do you see it continuing on beyond that, like whether it’s in the book production process or the marketing process of the lines or after you launch? And if so, what does that look like or how does it change?
Michael Hyatt [00:16:09] Well, the narrator never shuts up, You know, at least one at least when the Super Bowl is over, the commentators are done. But inside your head, the narrator never takes a vacation, never takes time off. His car is talking constantly to you. And actually, it’s a God given thing. The narrator’s job is to keep you safe. And to keep you away from things that threaten your survival. And so it it feels like, well, gosh, you know, if I go out there and decide to write a book, what if it fails? That’ll be humiliating. And the narrator says, You don’t want that. That’s scary. That’s dangerous. So better to not write. Then to write it and to fail. But the truth is, every good thing, every important thing that happens to us happens in the discomfort zone. You know, the secret to growth is to constantly put yourself into positions where you’re in the discomfort zone, because that’s that’s the zone where you’re going to grow. But yes, like like that first book that I did, it was called The Millennium Bug. And this is not the Y2K thing. So I contacted the publisher. Here’s a couple of ways that they showed up. So it was all I could do. I checked myself into that extended hotel. I turn in the manuscript, I got it in on time, and I even had a copy editor go through it. So I felt like. This was pretty awesome. By the time I got done with that first draft, I thought, okay, I feel great about this. If I was as the publisher, if I got this in, I would feel great about this. So I sent it off. Proud of it. And about six weeks later. I get a FedEx package. And it’s the manuscript. This is back in the days before we did things electronically. So this was paper. And I open it up and there’s my manuscript. I was kind of confused. I didn’t know. You know, I’m in the publishing business, but I didn’t. They had this happened to me and I got this manuscript. There were so many pages that were dog eared. All kinds of red ink all through the manuscript, like very insensitive, harsh comments like, you know, kill this chapter. This doesn’t belong in the book or move this chapter somewhere else. And so it quickly dawned on me that I had to rewrite it. And I had built that into my calendar and built that into my schedule. Again, I’m holding a full time job. And so the narrator saying to me, you know, you you thought this was so good, but look at the professionals read it and they think it sucks. And, you know, yeah, you got a first draft together, but you probably aren’t going to have the time, aren’t going to have the energy, don’t have the creativity to rewrite it. Right. Okay. So I finally did. Got it rewritten or re-engineered, sent it back in. They were good. So then. About six weeks before the book was supposed to publish. And of course, keep in mind, I’ve told all my family, all my friends, everybody knows I’ve written this book. I’m a little bit proud of the fact that I’ve got a book coming out. I’m talking about it. I get a call from the publisher. This is six weeks before publication. He says, Hey, the page proofs are at the printer ready to be printed. But I think I’m gonna have to pull the plug. I said, What? He said, Yeah. He said, We can’t sell this book. No, retailers want to take it. They feel like this book is irrelevant. Nobody’s going to understand it. It’s just not a felt need. And so we’ve sold less than 2500 copies and we really just can’t even afford to go print it. I said, Well, good. What’s the smallest print run you could do? And he said, Well, 2500 copies is kind of the smallest print run. So I used all my sales ability to talk him into printing that book. And he did. He printed 2500 copies. So I felt like, you know, again, the narrator saying to me, see, this is just further proof that nobody wants this book. You’ve wasted all this time. You’ve wasted this money. You know, What are you thinking? Well, the book gets published. And it took about six weeks. But the book hit the New York Times bestseller list. And of course, then the narrator saying to me things like, It’s a fluke, it will last. It’s going to bounce off the list. You hit it one week, but it’s not going to last. Well, it ended up on the New York Times bestseller list. Let me just think here for a second for about. 40 weeks.
Chandler Bolt [00:20:51] You’re kidding.
Michael Hyatt [00:20:52] No. 4040 hits over hundreds of thousands of copies. I was on, and I still can’t believe this. I was on over the course of 12 months I was on about. This was before podcast, before social media. I was on about 1200 radio shows and television shows all across the country, some of them multiple times. And it’s literally all I did for a year. And it was it was nuts. But even then, you know, finally the narrator begins to relent a little bit. But it’s always something, and it’s usually never positive. It’s usually something that is designed to keep you safe, but unfortunately keeps you stuck if you listen to it.
Chandler Bolt [00:21:38] It’s wild. It’s absolutely white. It reminds me of I’ve got this little thing in my book. It’s the creative process is how the creative process goes. And it’s kind of hard to see. And you can’t really see it here, but it starts out, This is going to be awesome. This is hard. This is terrible. I’m terrible. Hey, not bad. That was awesome. It’s like it’s so serious right there. That’s it. And I think anybody listening who’s already been through the process can relate to that feeling. When you get those first edits back from your editor or when you go through the self-editing process and it’s like. Like, was I under the influence when I wrote this? Made this horrible.
Michael Hyatt [00:22:26] Well, here’s it. Here’s another one that happens, of course. If you publish with a traditional publisher, maybe even if you self-publish, it’s really hard to get sales information. And so the only way that most of us can get sales information is just check Amazon. You know, it’s the closest proxy to how sales are going. And so when I publish a book, even to this day, you know, I’ll be incessantly checking my rankings on the Amazon page. And and so my book, Mind Your Mindset, hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list at number two last week as we’re recording this. And so I’m still watching it like a like a hawk. Now, here’s what’s interesting. So the book is rated 4.9 out of five with 148 reviews. So not bad for the first week. What do I focus on of that?
Chandler Bolt [00:23:19] I mean, I bet there’s a one star, two star that you could recite word for word there.
Michael Hyatt [00:23:25] There’s a one star review that I probably read 50 times. Discount all the positive stuff because they’re readers saying, Yeah, but look at this one bad review. And here’s the truth. Those bad reviews, this is intellectually, I can’t fully appreciate this emotionally, but intellectually, those negative reviews add credibility.
Chandler Bolt [00:23:47] Yes.
Michael Hyatt [00:23:49] They know you’re not you’re not faking it by just padding it with, you know, all these positive reviews. Exactly. So, you know, as hard as it is, they do serve a purpose.
Chandler Bolt [00:23:59] Yeah. I’ll never forget getting my first one star review for my book. And I was in Europe with my family and my brother being in the music industry probably for almost a decade at that point, said Chandler, This is a one star review on your book. It’s not a one star review on Chandler Bolt. Yeah, I’m like, Oh, right. I mean, that only kind of kind of feels a little bit better. But you remember, hey, they’re reviewing the book. They’re not reviewing me. So my self-worth should not be tied up in this review.
Michael Hyatt [00:24:29] Well, this this particular review, that’s this two star review. The guy really got personal. And, you know, like one of the things he said was like, oh, you know, he always tells the same stories over and over again. He has no news stories. You know, this is and then he says, here’s the typical Michael Hyatt book. And then he kind of gives the outline for what I do. You know, and I mean, just like, nasty.
Chandler Bolt [00:24:57] Oh, Oh, that’s tough.
Michael Hyatt [00:25:00] But I’ve tougher skin than I used to. But, you know, it still stings for a bit.
Chandler Bolt [00:25:04] Yeah, well, and we sell it. We in our in self-publishing account community, we celebrate the women stars. It’s like it’s a celebratory moment because it means you’ve made it. And this isn’t just your your mom and your grandma reading the book anymore. This is real life people out in the wild. And that that, you know, when that happens, you’re going to get a one star review. And it’s funny you mentioned about the refreshing and all that I got on the team. And you’ve met him, Omar. He’s a he called it a it was like refreshing screenshot drunk. He was like, I woke up hungover last night from all the refreshes and the screenshots. Not quite like every author can can convince you that it’s just like refreshing. Oh, hit number one in this screenshot and then all that stuff is kind of a fun, fun experience when you launch.
Michael Hyatt [00:25:53] Well, you know, this this is one of the things I try to be for my coaching clients. I have a coaching client who’s got a book coming out next week, as a matter of fact. And she’s. Concerned about it. Obviously, it’s her first book. She has a very successful business. She wants this book to be a a hit. And it’s really easy to get your self-worth all tied up in how the book does. Right. And it’s easy, particularly. Depending on your personality profile, it’s really easy to get focused on whether you hit the bestseller list. And I’ve had to remind myself from time to time, and this is where I have to reprogram the narrator to imagine a better story is to say honestly, this can’t be about and is not about hitting the bestseller list. That’s a vanity metric. You know, it can serve a purpose and you can use it if it happens. But are we committed to helping people? Or not? Or is it all about us? And I hope that we go to the effort to write a book because there’s an audience that we want to serve. And and people that we really want to help. And that should be our focus. Whether we hit the bestseller list or not. That can happen.
Chandler Bolt [00:27:03] Yeah, that’s great. Let’s talk about kind of the flip side. So we’ve talked about how the narrator shows up where identifying the narrator would become friends with it. And, you know, now we know a lot of the tricks that are going to come out throughout throughout the process of publishing. You talked about steps two and three in the book of interrogating the story and imagining a better story or training the narrator. How could we do that and and create a flip side? So the positive kind of the author mindset, if you will. And how can we train the narrator to be for our benefit and the book writing process or book publishing process?
Michael Hyatt [00:27:42] Well, when it comes to interrogating the story, step two, the first thing we have to do is separate the facts from the fiction. And we have to realize that that there are the facts. And then there is the story that we’re telling about the facts. Or to say it another way. There’s what happens. And then there’s the meaning that we assign to what happens. So let me give you an example. I have a really good friend, Dan Miller, who’s the author of a book called 48 Days to the Work You Love. And he’s a successful author, but he grew up Amish, and I heard him tell from stage his story. He said, you know, I grew up in this enormously repressive religious community where we were not allowed to go outside of the community. It was almost as if I was a prisoner in a prisoner inside this community. We were not allowed to consume any media. We didn’t have any technology to speak of. All of our technology was like 19th century technology. And it it was just really hard. I didn’t feel like I had access to the outside world. And I and I grew up deprived. Or. I grew up in this amazing, close knit community where our neighbors were always there when we needed them. We were there for them when they needed us. We weren’t distracted by technology or media where these amazing conversations over the dinner table. We played board games together and that’s where I first learned the importance of family and community. Okay, so what we have there. Same identical fact set. Right? But two different stories, two different ways to string together the story. Another example and channeler, you know, part of the story. But I had a what the doctors euphemistically call a cardiac event last fall, had a heart attack in September. It was mild. My heart wasn’t damaged, but I went into the hospital and that caused them to do a series of significant tests. One of them was an angiogram. And they discovered in the angiogram that I had my one of my arteries, my Widowmaker artery was 90% blocked. Two other arteries were 70% blocked. Total surprise to me because I’m really focused on my health and have been for a couple of decades. But I had a high calcium score and it ended up leading leading to this situation. Totally asymptomatic. Fast forward. I have bypass surgery. I go into cardiac rehab. And in cardiac rehab, you exercise while you’re being monitored so that they make sure that you’re safe and making progress and all that. But they always have an education component. So after the exercise, we sat down. There are eight of us, eight patients and a nurse. And the nurse says to us, What? First session. What does your heart attack mean to you? The guy right across the table from me first to speak up. He says, Well, it means that my life is basically over. That from this point forward, I’m just going to decline until I eventually die. And I was like, Whoa! Now. I met one of my doctors in Los Angeles. I see a couple different doctors, but the one in Los Angeles calls me when I’m in ICU. And he said, look, it’s going to be so easy for you to second guess everything that’s happened to this point. You should have done this. You could have done that. You’re going to second guess everything. You’re going to beat yourself up. Don’t do that. He said, What’s in the past is in the past. There’s not a thing in the world you can do about it. He said, Your life really begins now. Your future is a blank canvas. You have more blood flow to your brain now post-surgery than you’ve ever had. He said, I can’t wait to see what you create.
Chandler Bolt [00:31:37] That’s cool.
Michael Hyatt [00:31:37] He said, This is a gift.
Chandler Bolt [00:31:39] Yeah.
Michael Hyatt [00:31:40] Well, those are two again, same FactSet, but two radically different stories. But if you took the first guy’s story to show you how it leads to two specific actions, if you think your life is basically over and it’s just going to be a decline till you die, why even try? I mean, bring on the fried chicken big. Bring on the Big Macs. Don’t exercise. Doesn’t matter.
Chandler Bolt [00:32:00] To.
Michael Hyatt [00:32:01] Me. Are the other hand, I got my whole life in front of me after what my doctor said to me. And so I’m going to take care of myself. I’m going to exercise because I want to maintain this level of health and fitness. So that first step in interrogating the story is to separate. Okay, what are the facts? And then what’s the story that I’m telling about the facts? And I think that the biggest challenge for authors is to develop the self-awareness that that that that voice inside your head is the narrator. And he’s providing meaning. And that’s different than the facts. You can accept the facts, but the stories story’s optional. There’s probably a better way to tell it that’s more empowering that will serve you and the people you’re trying to reach. Better than sort of the default voice that’s going off in your head.
Chandler Bolt [00:32:49] I love that you can accept the facts. The story is optional. That’s Writer Downer. That’s great. And what I think you just kind of underscored, too, is the importance of having someone speak in your life. Right. Obviously, you guys did this with the business accelerator. We do this with self-publishing dot com, But kind of like those critical events when you’re caught in this doom loop or this spiral and being able to talk to someone who can who can speak life and say, hey, yes, the great thing about this is as someone on my team that was always there, phrases like, the good thing about this is, was that exactly The good thing about this is and then you start to fill in the blanks and yeah, you’re about to say some.
Michael Hyatt [00:33:35] But I was just you’re exactly right. I mean, you know, back when when I started writing, there was no self-publishing dot com. There was not such a thing even as a book coach. And part of what I love about what you’re doing is that you don’t have to go through this experience of writing a book alone. It’s treacherous. You get isolated. You just quit. I mean. You probably had statistics on this, but. Lots and lots of people. There’s some I think you actually told me this. What number of of people want to write a book?
Chandler Bolt [00:34:14] According to The New York Times, it’s 81% of.
Michael Hyatt [00:34:16] People, 81%.
Chandler Bolt [00:34:18] Less than 1% of people actually do that.
Michael Hyatt [00:34:21] Yeah. And they don’t do it because they don’t have a book coach. And even the ones that do start to write a book, this would be an interesting stat. What percentage don’t finish. They start it and it’s just too overwhelming. They don’t know where to go next. They don’t have a coach. And so to have a coach, to have somebody that’s been through the process, even if they haven’t done it themselves, but they’ve they’ve helped other people get through the process, enormously helpful.
Chandler Bolt [00:34:51] That’s awesome. Scrambling for the unmute button over here as I’m writing notes down. So last couple questions In the more wrap up, I want to talk just briefly. So you wrote this book with your daughter. Any lessons learned from the coauthor process? I think, if I’m not mistaken, maybe this is the second. Maybe it.
Michael Hyatt [00:35:14] Is. It’s the third book I’ve coauthored.
Chandler Bolt [00:35:16] Living for it and maybe platform and then this one. Or is it living for two more, another.
Michael Hyatt [00:35:21] Living forward and then win at work and succeed at Life, which I wrote with my daughter. I wrote Living Forward with my former executive coach, but I’ve written these last two books with my daughter.
Chandler Bolt [00:35:32] Any lessons learned from coauthoring? Especially coauthoring with a family member that you would share and with people who are coauthoring a book with someone.
Michael Hyatt [00:35:42] I think is really hard. I think it’s harder to write with a coauthor than it is to write yourself. Because now you’re trying to get the two of you in alignment. Our task was pretty easy because. Megan. I’ve known each other for 42 years. That’s how old she is. And so we’ve got a phenomenally healthy, productive relationship. We have the same set of values. We work together in the same business. So conceptually, we’re using the same frameworks and the same language and all that. And we do have some creative sparring, which I think is healthy. But it’s really challenging. Like when I wrote Living Forward with Daniel Hakata and Daniel is, to this day, one of my. Very good friends and I think the world of him. But we finally decided, because I’d written a couple of books before that, we decided that I was going to go ahead and do the first draft. So here’s how it looked. We flew down to Florida. We got a house and we spent four days just doing a brain dump. You know, we recorded the whole thing. We talked about everything that we wanted to talk about. We laid out any frameworks that we had. Then I went off to Colorado for 30 days, and then I wrote the first draft knowing that he would take that and he would add some of his stories. He would maybe challenge some of it that that was a pretty good process to. But I think somebody kind of has to take the lead. What you don’t want to do is to have, you know, a book that looks like it was assembled by a committee. You don’t want an anthology. You want something that’s knit together so well.
Chandler Bolt [00:37:19] Right. Yeah. That’s really good. I completely agree. I’ve always I’ve always said that, you know, writing a book is with the coauthor is kind of like painting a painting with two hands on the paintbrush.
Michael Hyatt [00:37:31] There you go.
Chandler Bolt [00:37:33] And it’s difficult. Is possible if you have a good framework And if people want to if you want to unpack that concept a little bit further, check out the podcast. Interview I did with Leif Babin talks about coauthoring extreme ownership with Jocko Willink. Really interesting, kind of on the coauthor process. Michael, this has been awesome. Thank you. Awesome. I want to get a two part final question, and I’ll ask part one first. What would be your parting piece of advice, knowing what you know now about this concept of minding your mindset and kind of the author mindset? What would be your parting piece of advice for people who are maybe at the start of their journey or somewhere stuck in that messy middle of their book journey?
Michael Hyatt [00:38:17] Well, I would just embrace the fact that you’re thinking is where it all starts. And if you’re thinking is out of alignment, that everything else is not going to be right. So take the time to literally write on a piece of paper. What is the narrator saying? And then go ahead and counter that as though it were a new script that you’re going to use to reprogram the narrator. And so for me, this looks like affirmations. So I take those things and put them in the form of affirmations, and then I record them. I still do this to the day. To this day, I record them in an app called Think Up, and it’s a great little app. I’m sure you could, you know, put a link in the show notes, but think up. And it basically takes your affirmations and it plays them back to you in your own voice over a music bed. And you can reprogram your thinking that way. There’s a really important scientific reason for why that works, but you’re essentially trying to cut a new neural path in your brain, and anything you can use to hack that process will be helpful.
Chandler Bolt [00:39:20] Mm. I love that. That’s great. And maybe you listen to that every morning or every every time you sit at your computer, before you write, before you start writing, listen to those affirmations. That’s amazing. Michael It’s been great. Where can people go to buy a copy of the book and to check out more about what you’re up to? The business, business, accelerator, whatever would be most helpful for folks?
Michael Hyatt [00:39:46] Well, my general website is full focus scope, SEO, and that’s where you can find everything about our coaching program, my courses, the full focus planner, all the other things that that we produce. And then on the book go to mind your mindset, book e-com. And if you go to go forward slash ESPs self-publishing school, then there’s a set of bonuses that you’ll get when you buy the book, and then you could buy to any retailer you want to come back with a receipt entered in there and we have over $50 worth of bonuses for you that are free just for buying the book from wherever.
Chandler Bolt [00:40:23] Awesome. So mind your mindset dot com forward slash ESPs. That’s it. All right. Well, guys, check it out. Grab a copy of the book. I’ve got one here. Mind your mindset dot com forward slash ESPs. If you want to see Michael speak at our event go to author vintage live dot com grab a ticket it’s a virtual event you don’t want to miss it first hundred people who grab a VIP ticket. We’re going to buy a copy of this book for you. So go to the site gravity ticket Amazon, your book in the mail. This will be some good reading ahead of the event to get your mindset right. Michael, you’re the man. Thank you, sir.
Michael Hyatt [00:41:03] Chandler, Thank you.
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