It's important to COLLABORATE - #EvansBook ep. 24

It's important to collaborate. So one of the important things I find in running a business is how important it is to collaborate with others. And I think too many entrepreneurs try to do everything themselves, and you may have been burned in the past by hiring somebody and it didn't work out, and you figure, you know what, I'm just going to do it all myself and not involve other people because I know it's going to get done right and nobody else 'Nobody else can do it like me,' or 'Nobody else will care as much as me.' And I get that you may have been burned, and that will cause you to be more defensive and more careful the next time, but it's important to understand that you can't do everything yourself. Like, if you have a big vision, if you want to have a positive impact, you want to build a successful company, you can't do it all yourself. One, because you only have so many hours in the day that you can actually get work done. And two, you're not an expert on everything, right? You've got to figure out what you are among the best in the world at and focus on those things. And the other things, eliminate, automate, and delegate. Delegate to people who love doing that, who are really good. So I'm here in Seattle. We're in Bellevue right now. I'm on a trip with Microsoft, and this is Jen.

Hey everyone!

Friend of the channel. You've seen her a couple times on the channel. And Jen lives in Portland, and I wanted Jen to be on this video too because she's super active and involved in the book, and so we're collaborating. And so one of the things that I found to be really stressful was doing a lot of the research for the book and doing a lot of the interviews and writing out all the interviews. So part of the book, they don't know what the book's about yet, so it's still— Yeah, hush-hush. I'm on the hush-hush, but it's coming. We won't talk about it.

It's gonna happen.

We'll let you guys know. But there's a lot of theory in the book, and there's a lot of how I have applied it to help grow my business. And so it's the way I think businesses should run that will help you get to where you go faster and make it more clear, and then how I've applied it in my business to achieve rapid success. And I wanted to then also include other success stories in the book to show people different sizes. So we have somebody who has used these strategies to build a $50,000 company, and then who's next? Is it half a million?

I think it's half a million.

Yeah.

Or is that—

is there in between? I'm trying to think now.

No, I don't think so.

No, I don't think so. Yeah, $50,000 business, half a million dollar business, million dollar business, $5 million business, and then $100 million business. So I wanted to show that no matter what state you're at in your business, these strategies will apply to you and It can also help you get, you know, if you're a $50,000 business and you want to get to a million, you know, the strategies the million-dollar company uses can now be helpful for you. So I want it to be applicable to almost anybody. And just the thought of writing all of that stuff freaked me out. I was happy to do the interviews and get the information out from them, and for each interview it took us 4 to 5 hours.

Yeah, most of them took a good 4 hours, yeah.

And just the thought of then distilling all that information and transcribing it and making each page makes sense and taking what they said and crunching it down to fit on the page that flows just made me feel crazy, crazy, like I don't want to do this. And so that's why I brought Jen on board, because Jen is a writer. She writes fantasy copy and, uh, I love to write and loves to write. Yeah. And is great at it. And felt like this would be an amazing collaboration to help me continue to do what I love to do, help make the book get out there a lot faster, and also I think make it more more valuable, helpful, and interesting. Because if I was forced to do it, then I probably wouldn't do as good a job. Yeah, or like I might cut it, you know. Honestly, I might get to the point like I'm writing it like, you know what, I can't do this, or I would drastically cut it down so that I'm not spending time on things that I hate. And then that's a disservice to the readers, and it's a lower quality product. And so by collaborating, I find that that's really helped save my sanity and will help me create a much better product.

And I love collaborating with people because I feel like there's like an energy that comes from that too, right? There's a synergy energy that comes from, from working with other people and getting their thoughts, and then it inspires you to have more thoughts on the same thing. And I just, I love collaboration, so I've enjoyed this project a lot.

Yeah, I think as entrepreneurs it's easy to get lonely, especially if you're working from home.

Yeah, that's what I did at first, and it was like I wanted to shoot myself. And then when I started working with other people, it made it so much better.

Yeah, and you can go to coffee shops and stuff too to kind of get out of the house, so there's people around you, but you're still working by yourself.

Yeah, it can be really isolating. Yeah, no, it is.

And a lot of people can't take it and give up and go back and get their jobs. So working with others, ideally face-to-face, like this is great, but again, this is the first time we've met even though we've connected online many, many times. So it's cool. So, you know, first get past that thought that you have to do everything yourself, that nobody will care as much as you, and that nobody else is able to help you. You have to go out and build a team. And then think about what you're not great at, what you don't love doing, but that needs to get done, and then see who you might be able to collaborate with who loves that stuff to help you finish the project. Cool, so get to the questions. Not that many questions today, only a couple. Ask questions! This is how it works. Look at that, you got the glow on. I know, it's gonna glow. I ask for questions and then I get insane amounts of questions, and then the next week I'm just answering the questions and I don't ask questions, and then it's like we have these cycles, so we need to have consistency. So next time, ask me some questions and we'll answer for you. So first off is Sherry, who's suggesting that we go check out K. Smith Business Graphics here in Seattle, and one I gotta give Sherry a shout out 'cause we're here in Seattle. We should have figured that out first. You could have collaborated with us on this video too. But thank you, Sherry, for the love. Next up, New Future Builder. Great video, Evan. Thank you, bro. You're right about celebrating your wins. I'm wondering, how do you feel about people incorporating hashtags into a book? It's a strategy I've heard about and I'm wondering your take. What do you think about hashtags in them?

I think we're using hashtags in your book, so I think I know your answer's gonna be heck yeah.

Yeah, it's just funny, so, I'm in the process of acquiring a new company and I brought on a new, basically a CEO to run it. I'm still officially in charge, but I got him in charge of all the operations and I'm busy doing all these other projects. And he was asking about hashtags, because this business has its own one-word hashtag. And he's like, I don't understand if we should use this in everything that we're doing because isn't this just a Twitter thing? And the idea with something behind a hashtag is yes, it can help you with social media, but it represents an idea. It represents something bigger than just that word. There's a difference between believe, lowercase b, and hashtag believe. And so the idea is that, you know, whatever your one word is, that flows through everything that you're doing. And so anytime we want to represent a bigger concept in the book or, or anything in social media that I share, or in writing emails back and forth to each other with my team or with my audience, if I want something to represent a bigger idea, then I'll use hashtags in it. And so I don't think it's just a book marketing strategy, at least for us. I think people might use I think it could help for us is just how we communicate. We use it in everything that we communicate, and the book is just another way to communicate. And so yes, it's gonna be in the book, number of different places, and you'll see when it comes out.

Yeah, love it.

And then last question, Peter: Will you do a Europe tour? I would like to meet you once. We're gonna do a Europe tour?

I don't know. I'm game. I'm game. Let's do it.

You know, so I get asked a lot of questions around the promotion of it, promotion of the book. You know, is there gonna be an audiobook version? Are you going to do tours? Are you doing book signings? Are you going to do interviews? My mindset right now is just on finishing the book because again, we have to deliver it in January. Deliver in January.

Oh geez.

It's November.

So the pressure's coming on.

We gotta hustle, we gotta hustle. And then it takes, it takes a year before it comes out. Have you, I don't know if you've gone through, have you gone through this process?

No.

No, it's my first time. So I don't know what's going to happen in that process. I'm assuming after I deliver the book, there's going to be a whole bunch of edits and revisions and we'll go back and forth and we'll see what gets cut and maybe that creates bonus content for you guys. And then also planning the release and the marketing and the promotion. So right now my focus is just on writing it and getting it done because if I have a year to plan out, you know, for me that's an insane amount of time. I'm gonna go bat crazy in a year. And so will I do a Europe tour? Probably. You know, I go to Europe every now and then. I'm going in March, I want to say, for a conference in Madrid, which is about how librarians can use social media. To stay relevant. I thought it was pretty cool. Librarians—

You're speaking, obviously?

Yeah, yeah, so I'm keynoting. It's librarians and museums because they feel like their stuff is getting left behind, right? And they want to stay relevant. They feel like kids don't go to libraries anymore. I just— I think there's a lot that they could do that they're not doing. Anyway, so I do speaking gigs and I travel, and so it would be cool to be able to tie on a book tour potentially to that. I don't know where you are. Let me know where you're at. For those of you watching, if you want a book tour, tell me where you are. And we'll see if we can make that happen if you leave it in the comments below. And so probably, I don't know exactly when or where or how, and there's a bunch of other marketing things that we're probably gonna do too. And again, I don't know the details. Once I finish our draft and it's out, then I'll be able to focus more on the execution of the marketing strategy. Cool, so that's it. Thank you guys for watching. I'd love to know what you think in the comments below. Let me know what you think about collaboration, if you have a question about that that you want me to answer next time. And if If you have a question about my book or the book writing process or you want to write a book, leave it below and I'll answer it next week on this episode. That's it. Thanks for watching. Thanks for collaborating.

Yeah, thank you.

Seattle, baby!

That's right!