127: Protect Your Idea Factory, Build a Creative Flywheel, and Go Behind-the-Scenes of Book Publishing with Todd Henry

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If our goal is just to go out and sell a bunch of books, well, you can go out and sell a bunch of books, that's fine. But is that really what you're trying to do? Is that really the outcome you're aiming for or is there something more you're trying to do? Like are you trying to achieve influence? Are you trying to achieve impact? And sometimes that impact is achieved not through you and your work, but through how your work influences somebody else. And then they go out and they create impact and it changes the world around them.

This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Hello hello my friends. I am here today with Todd Henry. Todd is the author of six books including the Accidental Creative, Die Empty, Louder Than Words and Herding Tigers among even a few others. He is the host of the 17 year plus running Accidental Creative podcast and the Herding Tigers Podcast. He empowers companies and teams to be creative, prolific and brill in their work through his books, podcasts and keynote speaking. Today we're going behind the scenes of his brand new book Daily A Practical Guide for Staying Prolific, Brilliant and Healthy. I last had Todd on the Pivot podcast episode 51 all the way back in 2016. Todd, welcome back to the new show.

Jenny, it is so good to hear your voice again. It's great to connect. It's funny because I am an admirer from afar of all the work that you do and it's always a sheer joy to get to spend some time chatting with you.

Well, I feel the exact same way and you have a podcast so you know that this is basically the reason I have any friends at all. And I feel the same way. I feel like we're really good friends in my mind. It's Just like you said, it's kind of from afar.

Right. We're really good friends. Every six years. Right? Every six years, we're really good friends. Yes. No, but it is tricky. But it's funny how it's such a gift that we can follow one another and follow one another's careers and root for one another from afar and sort of feel like you know someone and you're sort of rooting them on, even though maybe we don't interact in person as often as we'd like.

Absolutely. And then even facing similar challenges, you know, with kind of somewhat similarly structured businesses and navigating these last few years. The first question I wanted to ask you, because it still stumps me when people say, what do you do? So I'm just curious for you, Todd, having written six books and you're to podcasts and so many other things that you do, what do you say? Let's say you're at a business conference. Someone says, what do you do?

If I'm feeling cheeky, I'll say, I'm an arms dealer for the creative revolution. Which always gets a response from people like, what do you mean by that? Just the phrase arms dealer. If I'm being more forthright, I'll say, I write and teach people how to be creative under pressure, which is primarily what I do. So people who have to go to work and solve problems every day, who have to come up with ideas, design things, write things, solve managerial problems, I help people do that in the face of uncertainty.

So you actually give the answer of what you help people do. I always feel like I should do that, but I end up just saying, I'm an author and podcaster. Or lately I've been just testing out just for fun. Oh, I run a small media company.

Oh, I love that. That's great. Yeah.

I figure there are big companies like Vox Media that. What do they do? They have a suite of podcasts and books.

Right.

And maybe newsletters and all that. Okay, so can you share with us a little bit about how your business model is set up? Because I know daily creative. I just love how creativity and the rigors of that and the roller coasters of that is really, has been a big focus of your work. But I'm so curious how your business model looks now and how you structure your time.

Yeah. So while it's been very interesting the last couple of years, we were chatting a bit before we hit record about how the pandemic has affected so many people in our space, because so much of my business Model prior to Covid was about getting into rooms with people and breathing the same air with one another. Right. So basically getting into a room and teaching people in person was primarily what I did, whether that was at a conference or doing a workshop for a larger company or a company off site. Obviously, Covid put a bit of a crimp in my plans for 2020 and 2021. And so the pivot to doing virtual teaching and speaking was a really interesting one because I had shunned that for a number of years, primarily because it felt like it was cannibalizing my main business. If I offered that as a solution, which typically is a more price competitive solution, people might opt for that instead of paying me to come in person. And what I realized is that they are entirely different markets. The people who are looking for virtual teaching and training are not really the same people who are looking for in person teaching and training because they're looking for different things. One is looking for a way to build into their team in spite of the fact they can't all be together. And the other is trying to get people together for a specific purpose. And I am just one of the reasons that they're getting people together. So it's been really interesting to pivot to teaching and training virtually over the last couple of years because I found A that I actually really enjoy it, although I wouldn't want to do it exclusively, but I really enjoy it. B it's given me entree into organizations I never would have worked with otherwise because it's a more cost effective way for people to access me because I don't have to leave home, I can just sit here in my studio and do the work. And C, I've discovered that there are all kinds of really fun, creative things I can do in virtual presentations that I can't do in person. So I have really thrived, I think, during the pandemic. I mean, the business obviously was really more about, and we talked about this too, mitigating the downside than leveraging the, the upside. Because you know, a lot of the upside opportunities went away with the absence of in person events. But it's been really fun to see that virtual presentations and virtual training can become a complimentary part of my business. So that's really the core strategy for me is teaching, training, working with organizations, working with companies. The way that I typically get that business is by writing books, by coming up with ideas, writing books, putting those books into the world where they influence people. And so it's really sort of more demand driven than it is supply driven. I'm not out there chasing down leads. Typically, people will come to me and then invite me into their world where I can influence their team. So that's the core part of my business. I obviously also do podcasting, and we do podcast advertising for the show and things like that. But that's really more of a sort of a supplemental revenue stream than it is the core part of the model, which is coming up with ideas, putting them into the world, and then going out and teaching and training teams and.

Within the core part of the model. So that's the B2B side, or B2Big B, I call it.

Right, right.

Do you do any B2C? Like, you know, I think it's so tempting because I'm similar to you. My books are the reason for everything good in my life, practically. Like, if I write a book, I know that good things can follow. As long as I keep getting out into the world for the next five years, let's say, it can be tempting to then create courses and then create all kinds of other extensions. So have you dabbled in the B2 small B or B2C space? And how do you stay focused while still diversifying?

So the answer to that is yes, a bit. I would say that my B2C approach has been to largely give things away from a B2C perspective, meaning free podcasts, free content, you know, really sort of offering as much value as I can. And then obviously, the books are very B2C. You're trying to connect with individual creative professionals. My B2C strategy is really to get in front of and encourage and bless as many people as I can with the understanding that all of those people work, or most of those people work for larger organizations who have the budgets and the need for what I do from a B2B standpoint. So the more influence I can create in the lives of individuals, the more likely I am to create Demand for the B2B part of my business. You know, we forget that companies are made up of people. Nobody sells to a business. You sell to a person. And so if I can write a book that is compelling enough that it changes the way somebody approaches their leadership in an organization in terms of how they approach leading creative people, that can't help but at least provide me with entree into the conversation. When they start discussing, well, who could we bring in to work with our team to help them lead our creative teams more effectively? Well, I just read this book by this guy, some yahoo from Cincinnati, Ohio. Right. Wrote this book called herding tigers. That's really been. My strategy is create as much influence as possible in the lives of individual creative pros through books or whatever media I can, and just be generous in that with the hope that that will turn into demand on the other side. Books are a funny thing. Jenny, I know you've written a number of books and have seen the same thing, I'm sure. I was talking with a friend of mine, Harris, who runs the story conference the other day, and he said, you know, books are a funny thing. He's like, you spend a couple of years of your life, or maybe more, and you write everything you know about a topic, and you spend all kinds of time and energy doing that, and then you spend several more months editing it down to get to just the best stuff, right? Just the best principles. And you go through the process of designing it and putting it into a package, and you put it out in the world and you say, this is everything I know I have spent everything I have to share with you the absolute best I can find on this topic. And here it is, and somebody says, how much is it? And you're like 12 bucks, right? It's like, what an incredible value that is, you know, for someone. And so even though it feels like you're kind of selling something to someone when you're telling them about your book, I feel like that is maybe the single most valuable thing in the world you can offer to people, is, here's all my expertise, and for like, 12 bucks, you can have everything I know about this topic. And if you get one insight from that, it might make you hundreds of thousands of dollars over your career, all for 12 bucks. You know, I think that's just an incredible deal for people. And so I almost consider that a B2C strategy, right? Like trying to get those books and those ideas into as many hands as possible.

We'll be right back just after this.

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You're the first person that has connected those dots so clearly for me because sometimes I see them as very separate in my business model. But you're right. Like the other day someone told me a former colleague from a decade ago was like, my team members were talking in our Slack channel and your book came up and your name came up and I wondered if it was the same Jenny Blake. And she's at the C level and you know, in the C suite of this company. And it was just so interesting how you're exactly right that it can bubble up and that not to think of them as so separate. It's interesting what you say about books because, you know, I agree with you. I'm a complete book nerd and I often joke that I don't have any desire to be famous, but I'd like to be known among nerds, right? Like, if you love books, it'd be cool if you knew about any of my three, let's say at the same time, just colloquially, a lot of people I'm talking with lately say I can't keep seem to read anymore. People I know who are major bookworms. And it's just something is happening with our atrophying attention span. We both know Cal Newport and he talks about this. And then the stats are so fascinating on books I just read in the New York Times, Penguin Random House executives said just 35% of books that they publish are profitable. Among those that make money, just 4% account for 60% of their profits. And in 2021, fewer than 1% of the 3.2 million titles that BookScan tracked sold more than 5,000 copies. And knowing also that some people will only read one or two books in a year sometimes you're saying I put five years, I put the best I have, I put everything into this. And then you try to do a pre order campaign or something. And I'm just curious to hear your take on the market now. And having marketed this will be your sixth book. It's not always easy to get traction with a book.

It's not. And I want to ask you about one of the stats. What percentage did you say sell less than 5,000 copies?

Well, let's see. Fewer than 1% of the 3.2 million titles that BookScan tracked sold more than 5,000 copies. Wow.

Okay.

I think you and I would both be in that 1% with our books, which is wild to consider that even selling more than 5,000 qualifies because the P and L on a book, if you go with a big publisher, you know, they often will want you to sell 20,000, 30,000, 50,000.

That's crazy to think about. And I think that's a huge shocker to a lot of people. So I, you know, around this new book, Daily Creative, we're building out a business and I'm working with a business partner on building out this business who isn't terribly familiar with the publishing world. And he asked me how many books I've sold, how many copies my other books sold. And I told him I won't get into the numbers, but I told him what my books had sold. And it's interesting because he said, is that good? And my first response, just being from in the publishing industry, I'm like, that's actually really good compared to what I know a lot of books do. But to the average person, they'll think if I could throw out a number, 4 million, which my books haven't sold 4 million copies. But I get there at like 4 million and to them they're like, I don't know, is that good or bad or I just assume every book sells 10 million copies, you know, and they don't understand the business side of that and like how rare that is. I remember having the conversation when my first book came out. I can't remember who the conversation was with, but I want to say maybe it was with Chris Brogan, actually. And he said, he told me that what he had been told, which actually has borne out in my experience as well. If you can sell 25,000 copies of a book, A, that book will be around for a long time and B, that book will become known to most of the people who read books, even if they haven't read it. It will become known to most of the people who read books in your genre, right? So like for you and I, that would be like business books or self development books. It only takes 25,000 copies to become kind of ubiquitous, right? For people to assume that you're kind of around for a long time now. That was a decade ago. I would assume maybe those numbers have only come down, you know, because the numbers of people reading books and, you know, the number of books and stuff. Or maybe those numbers have gone up because there's so much more competition now, right? There are so many more people who are self publishing, but I think that's a really nice, interesting grounding thing for people to consider. I mean, 25,000 sounds daunting, but that's not an insurpassable number for most people if they really dedicate themselves to trying to get to that number.

Especially if you take a longer arc on it like everybody assesses over the launch itself. I am finding that to be true. I will say with Pivot. Pivot has probably sold about 35,000 copies. It's now seven years out. And most people I talk to, it's weird because in my mind, you know, it's always hard. I always say, eyes on your own paper. But it's, you know, it's so tempting to look over on someone else's paper, what are their stats. But now when I introduce myself, a lot of people will kind of scratch their head and go, oh yeah, I think I've heard of that, or I think I read that, or I think I have that. Maybe they're just saying that to be polite. But that actually has been my experience lately. That way more people than I would think, given my own day to day life, will say somewhere that's on my radar. And you wrote about something interesting in Daily Creative that sometimes your favorite ideas or books are not the most popular ones. And I've always thought that would be very interesting to grapple with as what you would call a professional creative. The famous Liz Gilbert TED talk where she says I can't beat Eat, Pray, Love. You know, like maybe I'll catch lightning in a bottle twice. But most likely that my biggest success is behind me and with you with your six books. I know that I don't know which ones, but it seems like in the essay that you had written for Daily Creative that maybe a later book didn't sell as well as an earlier, but you loved it the most. And I'd just love to hear your take on that experience and how you navigate that.

So my first two books were the Accidental Creative and Die Empty. And I kind of like, I wrote the book, I put them out and they just sold. And I thought, man, I've got this thing figured out. You know, all I have to do is write a book and put it out and it just sells. And I wrote the third book and I put it out and initially was received well by my immediate audience, but it didn't continue to grow beyond that like the other two books. And I was in a panic actually, because I didn't know what to do. I mean, you're sort of in this place where it's like okay, well, my old strategies aren't working anymore. The things I used to do just aren't working anymore. I mentioned this in the book, and I didn't mention his name, but I'll mention his name because I don't think you would care. I reached out to Seth Godin, actually, and I was like, I don't know what to do do. Right. And his advice to me, which I thought was really good advice, was, listen, the market is almost always stupid at launch, right? The market very rarely knows what it wants, but if a product is good, it will find its footing and it will take hold in the marketplace and it will find its audience. And I thought that was really good advice because I think, to your point, we often obsess about the launch of something, but we don't think about the fact that the launch is just a small fraction of the life of this thing that we're putting into the world. And any number of things can happen. Just like in a person's life, you have events that are inflection points. So it could be that somebody reads it and they decide, oh, our entire multinational conglomerate is going to buy this book and use it with our organization. Right. Or something. I mean, things like that happen in the life of books, if they're good, if they're sufficient. And so what's really been interesting with that specific book, it's my third book. It's Louder Than Words. What's interesting about that book is, yes, I think it's probably my best written book, or at least it was at that point, my best written book, and maybe the most compelling book at that point in time. But what's interesting is that's the book I get contacted about by people I respect, people who are out there doing things. So influencers in the marketplace, people at the absolute top of their industry, at the top of their game, people who are household names have written to me and said, hey, I read this book and I just want to let you know, it really impacted me, made me think about my own work in a unique way. And that, to me, that was really compelling because I realized maybe that's the book that isn't going to sell as many copies. But that wasn't the purpose of that book. The purpose of that book was to be very specifically effective with a smaller group of people who are influencers, who are going to go out and then create ripple effects. And so embracing that has been really helpful to me because I think we have to understand what are we measuring? What really are we trying to do if Our goal is just to go out and sell a bunch of books. Well, you can go out and sell a bunch of books, that's fine. But is that really what you're trying to do? Is that really the outcome you're aiming for or is there something more you're trying to do? Like, are you trying to achieve influence? Are you trying to achieve impact? And sometimes that impact is achieved not through you and your work, but through how your work influences somebody else. And then they go out and they create impact and it changes the world around them. So that was a real wake up call for me to realize that I need to better define what it is I'm trying to do and stop measuring the wrong things and just continue to be diligent. And you know what the funny thing is, right after that book came out and it sort of fell with a thud, you know, right after the launch, I started working on my next book. And then the following book actually sold much better and has had impacted really well as sort of like a cor. Correction. But I think we have to be very careful about what we're looking to as our metric of success and understand what it is we're really trying to do.

That's such a great point that sales does not correlate to impact and that those, I call them keeper emails, those keepers that come into your inbox. Just noticing the proportion that came in for that book. So now with the gift of hindsight, is there any reason, was it just a fluke that it didn't do as well as the others? The ones that came before or after or. Or were you able to pinpoint? I think with books it's actually very difficult to know what any one thing works or doesn't. But do you have any insights looking back?

Yeah, there are a couple of things. I think one of the biggest issues with that book was the title. Louder than words. Harness the power of your unique voice. It doesn't really mean anything to people. And in retrospect, I look at that and I realize I wasn't solving a problem. People felt like they had. That's a problem. Your books. I love the jobs to be done theory, which is everything that you try to sell should be marketed as a way to accomplish a job that people need done. Well, whenever I write a book, I try to think, okay, what job am I trying to do for people here? Why are they going to buy my book? So case in point, Thiago Forte had a new book called Building a Second Brain.

I think it was. Yes, he was on the show. Yeah.

And that's an example of people have this problem, which is, I've got so much stuff coming at me, and I don't know how to organize it. I don't know how to find it later. That solved a very useful problem for people. My first book, the Accidental Creative how to Be Brilliant at a moment's Notice. People read, they see that subtitle, and they see the book, and they're like, oh, my gosh. I was in a meeting yesterday, and I needed to have an idea, and I didn't know how to come up with an idea. Right. And it solved a problem for people in a very practical way. And so I think with that book specifically, people didn't understand the job I was trying to do for them. Those who read it loved it, but the package didn't express to them the job to be done. So my third book, Herding Tigers, the title doesn't mean anything, but the subtitle is Be the Leader that Creative People Need.

Oh, and the title is powerful. Like, that's a job people need done as well. How do I herd these really brilliant, powerful people?

Yes, exactly. That package was, again, really good, I think, really effective. And so I think I learned from that that I need to always perpetually frame up everything I do as a solution to a job that people need done. And if I can do that effectively, then I'm more likely to see success.

I also want to highlight Die Empty. I feel like that's the perfect aspirational tweetable that I always talk about with someone. Carry your book face out at the gym to show people that they're proud to be carrying it. Or at the beach and Die Empty really hit me, and probably a lot of people where it's like, oh, you don't even need to read the book. You just tweet that that's what you're reading, and it says something about you or tell your friends or you see the book. That's one of those where you see it on the bookshelf and you go, oh, yeah, okay. Reminder to self, you know, Die Empty. It's all you need to see is the spine of the book to be inspired by it.

Yeah. You know what's interesting is that we got all kinds of feedback from the market. I know we're kind of talking shop here, you know, books and stuff, but we got feedback from some of the buyers at some of the bigger retailers that maybe we should soften the title of the book and call it. I think even somebody was suggesting Empty. The Tank or something like that. And to his great credit, I'm pretty sure it was Adrian Zakheim at Portfolio who basically dug his heels in his. No, the title's Die Empty.

Right.

And I'm really appreciative of that because I do think to your point, it's a really provocative thing. I think people hear that and it's aspirational. It's very polarizing in some ways. It's either aspirational or offensive. But either way, you want to know more.

Right? Right.

And that book sort of was a problem to be solved by people, which is, you know, I feel like I've got all my stuff inside of me. How do I get it out of me? I think that book was, again, it was very much written with that problem to be solved approach, and I think that's why it took off as well. That's the difference between books that sell well to the people who love you to your fans, and books that continue to spread beyond your fans, I think, is, are you able to articulate that problem to be solved?

We'll be right back just after this.

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You mentioned measuring success, and I find it so interesting to talk to authors right on the cusp of a launch because, I don't know, I get involved with a lot of magical thinking around the time of a book launch, but also big aspirational thinking and visioning. And I'll make up numbers, like with free time, I want to set 50 million hours free and sell a million books or even 100,000. You know, I'll just pick these big numbers out of the sky. And then at the End of the day, I kind of take a much more low key, surrendered process to sales. Like, I always joke that I marketed pivot with magic and serendipity. And anyway, I'm kind of like a rebellious business owner now. I honestly kind of jokingly refer to myself as a hobbyist because I'm just so lacking a metrics discipline or focus or obsession in any way. But I'm curious for you. Do you track metrics? Even if someone is still listening, you're still with us and you don't publish books. We all often set metrics, even if it's, let's say, growing a podcast for the creative professional who does want to see platform growth. Sometimes I feel that we could just pluck metrics out of the sky and then it's so arbitrary whether we hit them or not. As you said, sometimes the project takes on a life of its own, has a soul path of its own. I would just love to know how you think about this. What numbers do you aim for and track? Which ones do you let go? How do you go into this phase of growth and track it lightly without getting overly obsessed and making yourself miserable?

So I don't really track. I don't have number goals that I aim for because what I've realized is I don't control any of that. So I could say, oh, I want to add 10,000 more people to my email list. Well, I could make that happen. If I just am willing to spend enough money, I could go out and make that happen. But are those people going to be really engaged? Are they really going to care what I'm sending them? Are they really going to be interested in what I'm doing next? Probably not, right? So I have taken the approach of I have what I call wildly important goals. And my wildly important goals are the container for all of my activity. So I'm happy to share them with you. They're right here on my desk. I keep them in front of you.

Welcome to share them with us and your mantra that you read every day.

I also have my flywheel.

Oh, please tell us your flywheel. I was just getting stuck on mine yesterday when I was rewriting it. So please do share.

Basically, it's all built on. I have a framed copy of Walt Disney's business model from 1957. It's up over my bookshelf behind me. And what's interesting about that business model is everything comes back to the idea factory. Everything comes back to the creative talent of the film studio. So all of their business, all of their Merchandising, all of their licensing, all of that stuff all hinges on the central factor of the creative ideas coming out of their idea factory. And so for me, I recognize that the core of my entire business is measured in how many and the quality of the ideas that I generate. So I need to protect the idea factory. So what does that look like for me is kind of a central question that I ask. So my flywheel, it's funny, it's I've got a Google Assistant in front of me and I have my flywheel on it. And it's create compelling content, distribute in digestible and shareable ways. And those are like highlighted drive to free subscriptions and then invite the paid subscriptions. That's my core business model moving forward because that's what we're building out around daily creative. But the wildly important goals for me for a couple of years now have been quality awareness and revenue diversity. Those are the wildly important goals. So every day I wake up obsessing about how can I make what I do higher quality? You know, what does that look like for me? Whether that's bringing people in to help me make things higher quality, figuring out, how do I make higher quality audio, how do I do higher quality interviews, make higher quality media, write higher quality content for my books? Awareness. So how do I increase awareness of the things I'm making? Because if I'm making quality things and I'm increasing the awareness of those things, I can't help but grow my audience. Now, I could say again, I want to add 10,000 or 20,000 or 50,000 people to my email list, but if I'm creating quality stuff and I'm raising awareness of that stuff, eventually those kinds of metrics are going to happen, right? It's just going to happen organically. And then revenue diversity is a big one. And this was one that came up shortly before the pandemic, ironically, but really became evident during the pandemic, which is it's not a smart thing to have three quarters of your business be something that's dependent on being able to get together with people, right? So that's the thing. Over the last couple years, I've been working on this. How do I diversify my revenue streams so that I'm not in a place where I have to depend on people calling me to come speak to their company or calling me to come speak at their event? And so I've been working on that. And one of the strategies was related to my last book, which is called Motivation Code, sort of building out a Business in which I'm a partner and sort of have that as a source of revenue diversity. And we're working on monetization strategies for the podcast to help diversify on that front. And some other things that I can't talk about right now. But you know, that's sort of been a huge focus of the last couple of years. It's one thing to have a really nice business and a really nice income, and it's another thing to know that that business or that income is resilient because if any one revenue stream dries up, you've got six others to take its place. So that's really what I've been working on the last couple of years.

Thank you for sharing those. It's so helpful and interesting to hear what you've come up with. We have a very similar flywheel and philosophy because I also agree, I just don't spend a lot of money on ads because I focus so much more on quality. People always bag on the phrase if you build it, they will come. But I genuinely believe if I build something great, people will share it. And if they're not sharing it, there's just something wrong. It just means it's not there yet. You've been podcasting for 17 years, which is so epic. I mean, talk about an OG in the space. A big theme of Daily Creative is consistency and showing up. Showing up when you feel like it and showing up when you don't. So what on earth has enabled you to keep going with your podcast for 17 years? Like even when you hit a plateau or you kind of get sick of it? I love to hear one or two lessons learned from that epic trajectory of consistency.

Well, I think one of the things I've discovered is that if I set an expectation for myself and I make that expectation manageable, then I'm very likely to hit that bar. The podcast is not optional for me. It's an expectation I have of myself every week. In the same way I mentioned Seth Godin earlier. He writes every day, he blogs every day, publishes something every day. For me, that's what the podcast has been. So it's just an expectation that once a week, at least once a week, I'm going to deliver some content to our podcast audience. Whether that's an interview or teaching or something. I'm going to do that every week. And it's just a non negotiable for me because if that audience is going to show up, I'm going to make sure that I am there to deliver something to them. I Know, it sounds a little bit maybe not sexy and sort of rote maybe, but it's just setting that expectation. I have a container and I'm going to fill it once a week. That's what I'm going to do. So that's the first thing, I think also we need to lower the bar in terms of what we expect from ourselves with regard to the content that we make and that we put out into the world. Yeah, I think sometimes people don't release something. They don't put a podcast out or an episode out, or they don't do something because they think, well, it's not the absolute best thing I've ever done ever in the history of humanity. And the reality is, consistency is a lot more important. If you show up consistently and deliver value to people, even if it's not the most polished, perfect thing you've ever done, people will forgive that if it feels valuable to them. And so I think that's another thing I've learned is, you know, I think early on, when I first started, I felt like everything had to have this maximum profundity before I could put it out. And now I realize if there's one little nugget of something in there for people, that's sufficient. If there's one thing people get from a conversation or from an insight that I have, that's sufficient. It doesn't have to be the most profound thing I've ever done. Showing up and doing the work, as Steven Pressfield says, is the most important thing. So I guess that's probably what's led to the 17 years of consistent podcasting is just making the decision that if an audience is going to be there, I'm going to show up and I'm going to try to deliver something every week.

That's amazing. What an accomplishment. And I love these two nuggets that you shared sometimes, too. I think it might not be what we expect as the content creators. I love what you said. I've had to lower my bar of how original, how impressive, how well thought through. Sometimes they are, sometimes they're not. And it's okay if one out of five isn't great. And I give myself that permission, too. But also, I know as an avid podcast listener that sometimes all I'm looking for is the tone of someone's voice to, like, relax and calm me. You know, it's like I don't even need the smartest business nugget that I've ever heard. It can be just a soothing voice in my ear while I tidy the house, that's adding value, too. So I think we do sometimes keep the bar way too high for ourselves.

Yeah, absolutely. Like, think about if you're gonna go have coffee with a friend, you know, you're not going into that with the expectation that, well, you better make this valuable to me, right? You're just gonna go have coffee and you're gonna see what comes up. And I think we can think of podcasting in the same way, like, for many people, like, for myself, I know I have people who've been listening for 17 years since I started, you know, and they contact me and they're like, I've been listening to you for a decade and a half, you know, or whatever. And that's incredibly gratifying. But also, I realize, like, sometimes I'm just their friend that is showing up to have coffee with them, and we're just having a conversation. And it doesn't have to be something they've never thought of before or something that's brand new. It can just be, hey, you remember that thing that we've talked about before, about the importance of building time into your life to absorb stimuli that can spark new ideas? Have you done that lately? Have you built some time into your life to help you spark new ideas? You know, it could be something as simple as that, and it doesn't have to be profound. It just has to be helpful in some way and just feels more like coffee with a friend than it does. You know, I am now going to go attend a seminar by Jenny Blake or Todd Henry. You know, it doesn't have to be that. Just, you know, show up and be their friend.

I love that. Show up and be their friend. And I always say, think of building an audience like making friends. Most of us don't say, oh, I'm totally maxed out. I don't want a single new friend for the rest of my life. So someone out there will want that friendship that you have on offer. Todd, this has been so fun. I could talk to you all day. Let's leave business owners with a permission slip. So if you could give them permission to drop something altogether or do something differently, what would it be?

So one of the principles that I share often is what I call that we need to practice pruning in our life to manage the energy that we need to be able to do our most important work. There is probably something that you are doing right now that has already served its purpose. It's run its course, but you keep doing it anyway because you've always done it. That way, or because somebody else expects you. It could be a coffee meeting you have with someone. It could be a system that served you well, or a meeting that served you well but now has run its course. I'm going to give you permission to prune that thing to create the space that you need to be able to do your most important work. Because it's in the white space where innovation happens. That's where ideas emerge. It's where synthesis happens. So create some white space by pruning a commitment in your life that might be good, but needs to go away so something better can be born in its place.

Beautiful. Thank you so much. I love it. Listeners, if you don't already have a copy, get one of Daily Creative A Practical Guide for Staying Prolific, Brilliant and Healthy Todd, where else would you like to send people to learn more about the book and keep in touch?

Well, of course you can listen to the Accidental Creative podcast. Yes, since 2005 we've been delivering weekly tips to help you be prolific, brilliant and healthy. That's the intro and also toddhenry.com is my personal site.

Awesome. And we'll put all that in the show notes in addition to all these other shows and wonderful people and books that we've mentioned. Todd, thank you so much for being an inspiration from afar and from near today. It's such a delight to chat with you.

Thank you and thanks for the great work that you do.

Thank you. Thanks everyone for listening.

If you've listened this far, you get a gold star.

Thank you.

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