Why Traditional Publishing Can't Compete with @ScribeMediaCo | H&F #650

There is no amount of marketing that overcomes a bad product, even if it's true for that some, you know, three months, six months, 12 months, like, over the very long period of time, you know, the reputation in the product is the ultimate, you know, determinant of value. Impatience with action, patience with results. I think that, like, defines the trust thing. Authors now have their own audience. They can sell directly through their website or, you know, link people directly from their social media, their newsletter, whatever. They may give away a thousand books, you know, exactly. But they'll get $10 million in business to their core business or raise hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of having that book out there and getting it into the right hands. Show me another marketing channel that, like, makes you money, builds trust at a deep level, and creates, like, high intent. Inbound.

Marketers have never been so spread thin. You know, like, with all this stuff happening, technology is going crazy. It's really tough to really focus and get creative and, and create great content or connect with the customers like we used to or even prospects. So, you know, you're trying to launch a bunch of content campaigns, you're generating leads, you're trying to score the leads, you're nurturing them so much more, but you really don't have enough time to even breathe, let alone do the best marketing out there. But HubSpot is trying to fix that for you. They have a new AI. It's built into the system called Breeze. So it actually combines their marketing hub and the content hub with all these different cool features that help you automate and, you know, remix your content into a whole bunch of different types, score your leads in a better way, and actually have a nice look at the analytics and everything that's going on in your business. So I would recommend to stop spreading yourself out so thin and start making some big moves with HubSpot. You can try it out for yourself. Go visit HubSpot.com marketers to learn more. Hey, before you get into the episode, I urge you to hit pause and go check out the AI Digital mind. It's like a digital twin of this podcast and a whole bunch of other content I've released. Go to hustleandflowchart.com AI Joe. It's hustleandflowchart.com AI Joe. You can literally chat with this podcast with me and my guests in text, audio and video for free if you want one of these made for yourself. If you're Interested, go to hustleandflowchart.com interest and we make these things Out. So enjoy.

Let's get to the episode. Eric, it's good to have you here, brother. And I'm happy we get to connect.

And I've been reading.

This is actually. This book here has been by my bedside for years now since it came out. The Almanac of Naval Ravikant where you. I don't know. Yeah, maybe you were the curator of that book, the author.

I never really know what verb to use because write doesn't, you know, write, build, edit, curate, create, whatever you want.

To do, but you're obviously doing a lot more.

But that was the first time, you know, I was introduced to your way of thinking. And just like the sheer, massive, like just the work that would go into something like that. I would love to dive in later on that, but for sure. I mean, yourself, man, you're doing some. Some very interesting things. You know, Scribe Media is. Is. You're the CEO over there. So, I mean, I guess how are you doing? You know, how are things right now? Let's start there.

Like, I'm learning to juggle. Learning to juggle. It's, you know, it's hard to.

Split your attention across a handful of different projects, but it's also really fun. And I think, you know, you just try to stay in a place where you take the perspective, you know, look for synergies, not. Not distractions to find ways that things can like, feed each other and stack on each other. And, you know, my buddy David Sudner's got a great line. It's like opportunity, well handled leads to more opportunity. And very true. As sort of you. If you do something well, it unlocks new opportunities and the opportunity cost of your time should continue to go up over time. Like, that's a good problem to have. And yeah, you just end up with a lot of balls in the air. Yeah.

And you probably get used to it just even more and more.

I hope so.

One day. One day.

One day.

Well, I mean, I'm so intrigued by the story. Like I was mentioning, you know, I've known about Scribe for a lot of years. I've seen, you know, Tucker. Tucker. Max speak about it. Was one of the founders, right? Or co founders.

Founder, yeah. Tucker and Zach Obrant were the co founders of Scribe.

That's right. Yeah. So, I mean, interesting story. I would love for you to break things down, but you're at the helm right now and I guess.

Yeah.

Where would you want to start with that? Because I have some questions and thoughts. But I mean, like, this episode, I feel like, is. It'd Be a great journey about what you've gone. Starting as an author, a writer and now running the thing.

Cool. Yeah. So if I do maybe the story of Scribe and the story of Eric and they'll merge in the third act. But we've got like you mentioned, it's the right place to start. Tucker, Max and Zach Oberon. And Tucker is, you know, for people who haven't heard of him, a very successful author. He's one of the original blog to book guys. Absolutely millions and millions of copies sold, multiple time New York Times bestseller. And so he got all these calls from friends. Hilarious, hilarious guy. Like pathologically honest. Just a really, really interesting dude. And he's, you know, we were sort of reading each other's blogs early on as he was starting Scribe. So I also had been following Scribe since the very beginning and I think the vision that they had for where publishing was heading was incredible and even more incredible 10 years ago. And they've really like the sort of the increased rise in hybrid and people leaving the traditional, you know, leaders leaving the traditional publishing and setting up their own kind of more unique models that are closer to what Scribe has done are all like really interesting sort of proof points of their original vision. And you know, over 10 years they built up this really impressive company. You know, I think it was originally, it was like bootstrapped and grew like crazy. Grew up to, you know, tens of millions and you know, dozens of employees. And after eight years or so they were, you know, they're founders and they're ready to go do other stuff. Tucker has a family and he's kind of ready to retire and go do his ranching and write his memoir. And Zach on the other side is like a super genius and he went off and did. He became one of the biggest like bug bounty hunters in the Ethereum ecosystem. So he's like in the crypto world. And they totally went different directions, like both brilliant and interesting and awesome guys. And as they stepped back from the company, the guy who they had hired as CEO before and who sort of took sole control of the company after they left, it went off the rails a little bit like and a little bit turned into a lot. And there's a very like. Tucker wrote an incredible kind of postmortem about this whole thing and some of the psychological he did in that post, what I think no other business case study I've ever read has done, which is understand the psychology of the leader that led to the mistakes in the business and then ultimately the, you know, the outcome that.

Affected so many people. It ended up being quite an ugly bankruptcy actually, which I got caught up in.

So you're an author right at the time?

Yeah, so. So that's like smash cut back to like act one of Eric. Like I, you know, came from the venture backed startup world. I've always been a, like a big reader and writer and I love like tweeting turned into blogging, blogging turned into writing this book, the Almanac Naval. And since Tucker, I've been reading his blog and following him. And he was just one of the first people I reached out to when I was starting to talk to authors about like, you know, how do you navigate this world of publishing? What are the options? It's very confusing. It's only gotten more confusing. So he was kind enough to take some time with me and lay out the options and talk to me about my book and help kind of really develop it and move it along. And so I ended up publishing that first book with Scribe as an author in 2019, 2020. And I had an incredible experience. Like the team was perfect. I learned so much. It was a remarkably like transformative experience. And that book changed my life. And as a model, I thought Scribe was just so, I thought it was dead on. I thought it was so correct. I thought they were very.

They were just really honest about, like look, you as the author, the CEO of the book, like you're going to front the cost, you're going to take the risk, but you also assume full control of this thing. You get to make all the final creative decisions, you get to craft the book the way you want to, that serves your goals and your life and you're going to get the full upside, which especially in for a book like Naval turned out to be life changing.

Like that was a million plus copies, right?

Sold. Yeah, I think we're at a million and a half. I think, you know, all formats, all languages, like worldwide. So it's, you know, it's a big world but you know, not a lot of books make it there, man. No, it's, it's crazy cool, you know, thank you, thank you. I mean it is a testament to like Naval's wisdom, I think. And you know, the word of mouth around it has been just crazy. So I, I don't think it's, you know, I worked hard on the book, but I don't think it's like, it's not some genius marketing hack that I have. Right. It's just like a good product that changes people's lives and a lot of people can get something from it and.

Absolutely.

It's just, you know, had win in its sales. Very, very luckily for months now.

It's value, it's value packed, man. Like there's no, there's no fluff in there. Like, seriously, if you don't have. I'll be linking it in the, all that stuff. Thank you.

I love, I love to see a copy that's just, yeah. Beat to. That's got highlights on every page. It's all dog eared. Yeah. It's been in and out of the backpack a thousand times. Absolutely. Or, or like you said, people are like, yeah, you've been in my bedroom, it's been sitting next to my toilet. You know, whatever the, whatever it's seen.

You know, so you're top of mind and it's true.

Yeah, yeah, it's perfect. I love to hear it. Or. Yeah, being gifted. Like, I think being gifted is the best compliment a book can receive.

Right.

So when people are like, I gave this to my little brother, changed his life. He changed his major, dropped out of school or quit med or whatever. The thing is that, you know, sort of wrapping your head around some of these principles does for people.

That's right.

So I immediately, I mean, especially with a book like that, I. And an experience like that with Scribe, I immediately started writing my second book, which is the anthology of Biology. And that came out like late 2023. But that was the book that I was publishing with Scribe also and got caught up in this bankruptcy. So, you know, when the sort of the house fell.

You know, I took a loss like everybody else in that. But I also was like, man, I feel like I owe this company, you know, something like some level of effort to save them after, you know, the, all of the good that I got from them and all, you know, the wonderful experience I had with the team and the respect I have for everybody there. And so I started just making some phone calls and I lucky enough through just conferences and Twitter and friendships to know people who buy companies or, you know, work in private equity or permanent equity. Yeah. So I started making phone calls and I found these guys, C and Xavier, who run Enduring Ventures, who I'd met a few times at, you know, at Berkshire Hathaway conference and I think Capital Camp and a few others. And yeah, they're just good dudes. They, they run a long term holding company that's. So it's not a fund. They're not trying to flip companies. They buy and hold for the long run and they have a background in publishing and a background in distressed situations, which this definitely was.

So they knew the now situation you're in, but they also had that long term vision that you know, around with.

Yeah. And they saw, you know, what I saw, which is like this is a unique model. It had been a great brand until this very moment which basically one guy like screwed it up. And you know, they're just long term thinkers and so they saw the potential I think, and they were willing to do some of the really messy heavy lifting to like try to, you know, in situations like that. There's no perfect solution. There's no. Everybody's gonna end up angry about something and there's a lot of pain to go around. Like economic and emotional pain.

Yeah. I mean you're supporting what thousands, I think what you're up to like 2000 plus authors.

Right.

I don't know what was going on at that time, but yeah, trust, you know, like there's a lot of that that probably is lost and you're just like, oh shoot, you know, it's capital, right?

Yeah. There were hundreds of active authors and a lot of people got.

Yeah.

It just ended up in really unenviable situations and I've heard some, some horror stories and I've been trying to like have conversations with all those people and make up for that and do what we can. Essentially what ended up happening is we started a brand new company, hired over some of the team and basically bought the, the IP from the bank that.

Yeah.

So the kind of mechanics are, are interesting. It's not my expertise, but to my surprise they called me after and said like we, we. Okay, we got this new thing and we need somebody to run it and we think that should be you. So.

All right. I mean this thing, you raised your hand, man.

I mean that's.

Yeah, that's like 90% of the battle right there. Maybe more even, you know.

Yeah. Situation. Yeah. And it ended up being a very interesting like, you know, most people I know who are CEOs either built their business from the ground up or spent 15 years there and got hired into the role after sort of working their way up. And so I think, you know, there's this sort of search fund and small business and small business acquisition and like private equity world that is full of kind of these weirdly interesting almost one off stories of like, you know, seller finance acquisitions and, or, or privately funded or search funded or independent sponsors. And this ended up being like a very weird combination of all of those like kind of by accident. But it's a very. It's a cool. It's a really cool world, and very interesting stuff happens in it.

Man. Well, I'm. I'm thinking of, like, the moment when you stepped into the role as CEO. Like, was there. I don't know. Like, was there. What was the feeling that you had at that point? Because you're obviously probably learning a ton and things that you didn't totally know about, like.

Yeah.

Was there something that. If your gut was feeling that, like, spreadsheets and all the numbers really weren't talking, like, there had to have been something happening there?

It's a lot. I mean, you said it right. It's a lot of learning. It's a lot of getting oriented as quickly as possible to do a lot of things right. Like, you're meeting the whole team, you're meeting the customers. You're trying to understand the processes. There's so much to wrap your head around really quickly. And friends who'd been through this before warned me, they're like, you will get asked to make a decision in the first week that you don't think you'll be ready for six more months. And, like, you just have to do the best you can with what you have. So it's a very. It is a very, like, seat of the pants experience. And. But, you know, all you can do is kind of keep doing your best. And, you know, I'm 18 months in now, and I. I'm still, like, I'm still trying to learn. I'm still. There's so much, you know, you can't possibly know enough. And every additional piece of information helps, like, every customer you talk to, trying to understand your whole team's roles ever more deeply and how they all fit together and the changing environment, you know, the different offers, different authors, different tools, different vendors.

True.

So, yeah, it's. It's already a dynamic environment, and then you're trying to play catch up on top of it. But it's also kind of what makes it fun. You know, it's a very fun. It's fun to kind of be the, like, to some extent, the nexus of all of that information and have it all kind of, like, feeding into you. It's a lot to process, but it's. It's very fun, like, for. For somebody who's deeply, endlessly curious and hungry to understand all of this. Yeah. Like, it's fantastic.

And be right in the middle of it. Yeah. I mean, I see a bunch of books behind you, so it's like you're literally surrounded by Authors all day, every day.

Yeah. Dude, it's. I tell you, it is brutal to, like, have, you know, six to eight author, like, meetings with authors a day who they, they explain their book idea. And you're like, I want to read that book.

Yeah.

Half an hour later you're like, that sounds amazing. I would love to read that book.

It's like having podcasts like this.

Like, that's a great idea.

Focus. Yeah. Yeah. It's very easy for the, yeah. The opportunities and ideas and reading material in particular to stack up, I bet.

Yeah. Well, walk me through. There's like two, two ways I want to go, and I don't know which way it is yet, but, like, maybe start with the rebuilding trust. Like, because I was thinking the trust with existing authors, maybe ones that, you know, and this leads me to like, the model of Scribe too. I want to make that very clear. I don't know which way that goes because. Well, yeah, I don't know. I'll just leave that to you.

Yeah, I mean, let's, let's start with the trust is the foundation of everything. So I think starting there, you know, I wrote in the, wrote the first, like, annual letter recently to kind of like the community and the, the team, and I, I think this first year was all about just rebuilding trust. And I don't think, you know, it's not something you can ask for. It's something you have to earn. And it takes time and repetition and.

Like, to be trustworthy, you have to be reliable. And to be reliable, people need a sample size. And, you know, there's some element where you can't speed that up. You just have to be conspicuously doing the thing that you are expected to do that you promised that you would do over and over again. And, you know, if you're greedy for trust, it's much more, you know, it's, it's. People hesitate. It's a very like. That's why I say you can't really ask for it. You just have to earn it.

It's like they could smell it out that you're wanting it maybe more or, you know, or need it.

I guess when people, like, proclaim themselves to be trustworthy, it's almost always a counter signal. Right. Like if they're leading with, like, conspicuous. Oh, like. And frankly, the guy that used to run Scribe did this. You know, he like lots of claims about transparency and honesty and integrity. And, you know, I, I. My focus for the team was like, let's just get back to fundamentals. Let's just Focus. We have to be flawless on the fundamentals of what we're doing. We don't miss deadlines, we don't ship mistakes. We just do the work. And the best advertisement is the work on our desk. And we're in the business of rebuilding a reputation like day by day, week by week, book by book. We're not going to shout about it, we're not going to ask for it, we're just going to do the work. And.

You know, I, I've never been one to like.

I do not like to advertise myself. I'd rather like, just do good work and let the work speak for itself and let others sort of, if they feel comfortable, you know, recommend, tell other people that we did good work.

It's pretty, it's like a testament of what you did with, with the naval book, you know.

Yeah, I think, you know, you can't, there is no amount of marketing that overcomes a bad product.

And even if it's true for that some, you know, three months, six months, 12 months, like over the very long period of time, you know, the reputation in the product is the ultimate, you know, determinant of value. And that's just the right place to keep the focus.

I like that. Now, I would say like, you know, because I was thinking, is there some kind of trust hack or anything? But it's, it's really doing what you say, you know, because most people don't even do that. Maybe do it in a concise or effective manner that helps everybody and, and just, just keep doing it, keep showing up.

Yeah, like any, any trust hack, I think destroys trust, you know, it's kind of like, you know, I think we've all had experiences with somebody who like overdosed on how to win friends and influence people. And they're like, hey, Joe, it's really great to see you, Joe, how's your wife? Joe? Like all of the like, hacks that you're like, we've, we've met one time, like, just be a human and like, let, let the relationship develop normally. So it's a very, Yeah, I think like, you just.

You just gotta be the kind of, be the partner that you would want. That's good to be seen as, yeah, just walk the walk the walk and keep your mouth shut and let it take care of itself. Be patient, be patient, be patient.

Patience is probably the, it's the toughest, but it's, it's true. You just gotta let stuff develop as it should.

I mean, I, I, I will quote naval at least five Times in this episode. Cause it's an occupational hazard for me. But you know, impatience with action, patience with results. I think that like defines the trust thing. Like you must be obsessive and impatient about doing good work and you have to be patient with allowing that reputation to, you know, catch up to the work that you're doing. Because it's always going to be a lagging indicator.

Yes. Yeah. And that's layer, layer everything with naval quotes because I know, obviously, but people love them. So yeah, if you're not following naval for whatever reason and Eric, like go find them on Twitter. I'm sure it's probably the best place or X whatever.

Yeah.

So.

But let's go to the.

The model of Scribe. Scribe Media. Like yeah, did things change from before? I guess break it down in general because I know a lot of folks listening, watching, maybe have a book or thinking about a book. I mean let's be honest. We'll address the whole tech thing and how there's tools like AI now that could speed up the writing. So people thinking, hey, I could just do this myself, like why would I go to scribe and work with you guys?

Yeah. So I'll give you the context first is that the whole history of publishing is basically.

150 year old business model. That the presumption is that most books are sold in bookstores, that they're physical books. The presumption is that they're marketed through centralized media like TV and newspapers and magazines. The presumption is also that you need like a big capital investment up front to like do a big print run of books and get them all distributed in order to sell books. And when all those things were true 100 years ago, even 50 years ago, it made a ton of sense to have a traditional publishing model and where you know, they give authors advances, they take control of the copyright and they basically manage the book in the inventory of the book for a long period of time and they just pay the author some royalties for having written the thing in the first place. And what is obvious to everybody living on the Internet now is like all three of those have actually flipped 180. Right. Like most books, this is not obvious. But most books, physical books that you use now are print on demand. Like almost everything you buy on Amazon. Like so there is no need for a big upfront investment. There's no physical inventory. It's basically like selling a digital product and just like Amazon takes care of printing and distribution for you. The other is that most books are sold on Amazon or on Other websites. And so you don't actually need a huge, you know, proprietary distribution network. They still exist and people still buy from bookstores, but like the majority of them are sold either digitally or through Amazon, even when there are physical versions. And third, like you don't need, you know, going on the late show or the morning show doesn't move a ton of copies anymore. It's like going on podcasts, newsletters and being recommended on social media. And so with all those as sort of givens, the model that makes the most sense is actually like authors being in full control. Authors now have their own audience. They can sell directly through their website or you know, link people directly from their social media, their newsletter, whatever. The authors have done all the work to de risk the book. Essentially. The authors in many cases, like make more money from other sources. You know, whether it's coaching, speaking, consulting, you know, a fund, like whatever the business model is. There's usually, especially for like non fiction business authors that we normally work with lots of ways for them to win other than selling a ton of books and making money from the royalties themselves. So there's a few authors that we've worked with that are like that. So David Goggins is the most famous and the highest selling, I mean, one of the best selling memoirs of all time. And he basically couldn't get an offer that he was happy with from a traditional publisher. He's like, you guys are undervaluing me and if you're not going to pay me what I'm worth, I'll go do it myself. And so he worked with Scribe and published Can't Hurt Me and never finished both with us, which means, yeah, both incredible books. And he just went to war like only David Goggins can like selling that book, right? So for years and years he, he just like would speak and market and go on social and talk about that book and sell that book and go do interviews. And he sold five, I mean the last, this is an old number, but it was in 5 million plus. He made way closer to 10 by now. And because he published with Scribe, you know, he paid us a few tens of thousands of dollars to do all of the publishing work, but he kept all of the rest of that upside on millions of copies. So he's gotta be one of the highest earning authors of all time. He's out earning many authors who are actually traditionally published but even sell more books just because of how he went about it and the risk that he took initially to get his full upside.

Wow, okay, that's Cool. And thanks for breaking down all the different elements of, like, ROI of a publish, you know, a published author.

Yeah, yeah. So. So I should say, like, Scribe's model is like the opposite of traditional publishing in that we don't offer advances. We actually just charge a clear, fixed, flat rate for the work that a traditional publisher will do. So you bring a manuscript to us, we'll copy edit it, we'll proofread it, we'll do cover design, we'll do page layout, we'll do illustrations, we'll design all the final files the way you want, we'll help you get uploaded for distribution and launched, and then you make all the final creative decisions. You keep all your rights and you keep all your royalties.

Wow.

Which is, for one, for people like me and Goggins who are going to go sell a lot of books, that's a huge ROI on the royalties because we're earning two to four times as much as a traditionally published author would on a per book basis. But the more important thing is actually that there are thousands, millions of authors that would. A traditional publisher would never even consider because they'll only sell a thousand books or 10,000 books, and they're trying to find people that'll sell a hundred thousand books or at minimum, 50,000. Otherwise, it just doesn't make sense for them to take the risk and do the work.

I want to pause for a moment and shout out another podcast on the HubSpot Podcast Network, your audio destination for business professionals. This one's called OG Mentors. It's hosted by Julie Mayer and Jimmy Edgerton. And these two, they're a pretty cool duo where one is, you know, Jimmy is a lot more on the loose side. I would say that Julie brings it in and keeps us focused on mentoring and movement. And so these folks, they focus on mentoring and exploring ways on how to augment and refresh, kind of like the way that mentoring is applied. And they have these principles that they weave into their episodes and they give a bunch of practical tips and they lace it with a whole bunch of humor as well. It's always cool when there's a cool duo happening there. So if you're in the mentoring space or if you have a, you know, leadership space, relationship guidance and things like that, that's what the podcast is made for. So you'll get a lot for it. It's great for entrepreneurs, marketers, sales professionals. They love the show as well. It's a great one. I've checked it out and I recommend it. So go listen to OG mentors, wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm gonna do a quick shout out.

One more time for the thing I talked about, the top of the episode, which is the AI version of me and of this podcast and my YouTube.

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You will love it. And also, there's a lot of people who are asking, how do I get one of these?

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The cool thing is my team and I have been building a ton of.

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Let's build this thing together. All right, back to the upset.

But I talk to authors every single day who want to write a book for their own reasons just to impact a social issue or they want to take the. They want to get their message out there. They want to claim like, they want to increase their credibility. They want to tell their story. They want to give back to their industry. They want to, you know, really connect deeply with their clients or their potential clients. And they may, you know, there's people that will only sell a thousand books. They. They might give away a thousand books. Exactly. But they'll get $10 million in business to their core business, or raise hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of having that book out there and getting it into the right hands and building trust on a very deep level through the means of this, like, very important, timeless medium that is just really difficult to fake.

Like, it really, you can't. Yeah, yeah.

You write a great book. Like, you probably know what you're talking about.

Yeah. You know, and it's still more important. Like, I love your thoughts on this because, you know, you have AI and everybody feels like, you know, information's at my fingertips. I could be knowledgeable in seconds on whatever topic I want, or I can look up this person's book and get the summary of everything. And yeah, the answer, I would say, is yes to that. But the value of a book, like, I would love to hear it even more from you. Going down this vein of, you know, the roi are the reasons why people would publish. It's. It's kind of what you're stating here. It's like you can make it your own on the front end, but there, what a business model should be defined on the back end, I would imagine. And yeah. Any thoughts on that or how scribe kind of steers people through that process?

Yeah, I mean, we, like, we talk to everybody. We try to get an idea of what the context is that they're publishing this book into. Right. So there are people who come in and say, I truly just want to impact this issue. And if I, you know, like one author that I remember is the issue that they wanted to impact. They're retired, they did very well for themselves. And they're like, I am dedicating years of my life and a large amount of money to impacting gay teen suicide. And if I can save one life, this will be worth it.

True.

And I do not care about anything else. I don't care if I sell any copies. I don't care if I give them away. I don't care, like, what it costs. Like, if I. As soon as I reach that threshold, I'm great. I will keep reaching for 2 and 3 and 4 and 100. But, like, that's my, my measure of success. And no traditional publisher is going to care about that. Like, that's a big risk to take. But if that's important to you, and I think that book could be good for the world, who's. Who's not going to support that. But most importantly, like, if you just have a vision like that, we will help you do it. But different example along similar Lines is like, Paul Franco wrote a book called Successful Successions. And it's very, very targeted. And we, we often coach authors to do this, like, uncomfortably targeted. So his book is for certified financial planners who own their own firm who are retiring within the next five years.

Okay.

And they're like, not sure how to transition. They're not sure what a good transition looks like. They're not sure what their options are. And Paul's business is to buy those firms from people transitioning out who are like retiring and just ready to be in doing a different chapter. And so they search for this problem, they see his book. Amazon is a very underrated as a search engine. So they search for it, they find it, they buy it, they read it, and then they pick up the phone and call Paul and try to see if he'll buy their firm because they like how he thinks and they trust him. And they just had this experience of like understanding his philosophy and his expertise. And you know, as far as marketing goes, like, you just made, you know, four bucks to spend 10 hours with this client in this very high leverage way that now they pick up the phone and call you and ask you to buy it. It's not. There's no other. Show me another marketing channel that like makes you money, builds trust at a deep level, and creates like high intent inbound like that. Absolutely.

And I see it. You know, I'm partnered with one of my partners is Mike Koenigs here in San Diego. And we, yeah, I'm. I'm one of the, the fractional AI officers. We consult a ton of businesses. But you know, this program we do on the back end, it's high level, you know, almost $10,000 thing, but it's all driven by the book on the front end. And we see where all the leads are coming. It's all from the book. And everyone talked to. Yep. Read the book and like not even all the way through and invested or needed. I knew I needed you guys. I'm like, yeah, there it is.

It's incredible. It's so difficult to create that level of trust and there's so few mediums that can do it. And if you're out there, like dropping a bunch of paid ads, like, it's that, you know, back goes back to that level of trust like when you were asking to be trusted instead of just doing something and letting yourself be evaluated as high, trustworthy or not.

It's just a very different. It's a very different kind of climb. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm Glad to hear you having a similar experience.

Absolutely, man. And there's, and yeah, not gonna say, you know, paid ads are evil or anything, but I think the big thing is, like you said, like, be in a place where people are looking for you. Amazon, you know, don't gloss his over. I know you didn't, but, like, for anybody who might've missed it, Amazon is a search engine. I don't know where they rank with everything, but it ain't going anywhere. And their apps, you know, integrated now with even you have all the AI stuff, you know, like they'll point there as a source too.

Like there's.

So being there you need a book or some kind of product. But yeah, why not give them the book?

Yeah, it's, it's, it is an incredible thing. And, and the fact that you need to have written a book to get a search engine results page on Amazon is a very high bar. There's. There's authors of those who are selling software like B2B SaaS software, like Big contracts through a book. And because they're some of the only ones with a book out there about it, and we work with it, quite a few organizations actually, like, publish a book as their organization or have a systematic thing where like one of their executives publishes a book every year that helps sort of build their mind, share each in different ways. It attracts. Sometimes it's to attract employees or partners or customers or investors. Like, whatever it is, it's a very, you know, because it's not a traditional marketing channel, I actually think it becomes really effective.

I think so, man. Well, with. I want to go to AI because it's obviously a hot topic. It's only getting hot by the minute. It seems like everything's getting cheaper, faster tools for everybody. Of course, you could write a book very quickly with AI, but I wouldn't say it's all about speed. You can write an effective book as well. I'll say an example. I'm an advisor of a company called Delphi AI and one of the use cases, lesser known, is you can write a really solid book or at least start the process because it's all based off your knowledge, like this digital mind.

Oh, interesting.

So you can like literally pull in quotes and all that stuff from like this podcast. I can make a book. And that's actually the plan. It's like, why not? It's almost like a Tim Ferriss tribe of mentors kind of style, you know, but like, how would you. I guess my question would be like, how do you guys have People use AI or some tools to kind of get that manuscript, the initial draft out of them because. Cause I know that's the biggest hurdle for most people.

Yeah. I mean the advance in transcription tools has been huge over the past few years, which helps a lot because a big part of our method is actually interviewing people and writing the book for them. Like there's a lot of people have, you know, writer's block is a real thing. Talker's block is not a thing.

True. Yeah.

So if you're sitting like part of our, you know, our scribes that we. That are people sort of create a partner in writing their book are not just great writers and not just thoughtful about structuring the book, but really great, great, engaging interviewers. And so they'll really work with you to position this and outline it and understand what you want to accomplish. And then they'll. It'll feel like a friendly conversation. They just pull the information, the stories, the important principles, the. The key quotes out of you. And that's the process for running into the book.

Are.

We are always like experimenting with AI it is still.

I, I think it'll. The end result will be to make the great people more prolific. And there are things that it speeds up but not. It's still not great for like long form pros generation. It just doesn't quite have the like the touch yet that you want. So it, there are advantages to it, but it's just, it's sort of a different trade off of like you spend more time editing because you can't. The first draft is a little further off. And the. Especially when you're trying to build a very long, very thoughtful like thread of continuous ideas, it's much easier for it to lose the thread and it's much harder to find when the threat is lost. So you just have to like, if you did AI generation, you have to spend a little more time in editing and be a little more concerned about the structure and the linearity of the thoughts. But I think to your point, like, depending on the kind of book that you want to write, if what you want to write is a very disjointed tribal mentors thing where you're just like, here's an episode, condense it down, plug it in. I think those will be very commoditized relatively quickly. Not that that makes it a bad format. It still be a great format, but like AI will unlock that one sooner than a novel, for example. But I've seen really good, like it's just a great sounding board I mean, it's a tireless, tireless sounding board and proofreader and editor. And it can just be a really good way. Actually, I did a great. One of my very smartest friends about AI and usage in general is Sean Divine.

Okay.

And I had him on, I had him on my podcast Smart Friends. And he was like, this is a year and a half ago. And he's like, it's AI has completely changed how I hire. I now hire for two traits, which is like curiosity and endurance.

Yep.

Like the, the. I could be, I could be misquoting that, but like endurance or something very like it. He's like, this is the most important thing. Like, you now have not just a bicycle for the mind, but like a nuclear reactor for the mind. But it only really operates as long as you do. Like, you have to keep the, you have to keep hitting the ball back because it will iterate instantly. And so if you're not re, like feeding it something, if you're not reacting to it, if you're not.

Continuing to push and refine it, then like, it stops working. And so, you know, can you put in a 12 hour day with like a relentless volley partner who's just like hitting the ball back instantly? It's like playing.

Never tired, but you can get tired, right? Yeah.

It's like playing chess against the computer. Like, it moves instantly and you're like, fuck, I need to think. Yeah. So you know that but for all work is like a really interesting psychological shift. And knowing that, you know, this is another one that Sean mentioned that's counterintuitive. But like, options are free. Like we, when we're working with a human, we're used to being like, give me three good options and I'll pick one. Because saying give me 100 good options and I'll pick one would be psychotic. And so, so like, but with AI, you can say, give me 100, give me a thousand. I hate all of those. Give me 2,000. More. Like, okay, now rank order them. Now throw away anything. Like, it's very. There's some counterintuitive things about it that, you know, a lot of writers I think are relearning how to write with, with new tools. And you know, I like, I very much love my job and I love talking to authors all day, but I'm also like, shit, I wish I could just block off some time and really like, wrap my head around working with these tools.

Oh, I bet. I mean, it's a, it's a monumental task and it's good that, yeah. I position at least myself in a way that I can monetize that be the source of that truth. Yeah. But yeah, man, I mean it's changing and the thing I always just say is just get your hands on something that you can stick with and really understand and grasp and like you said, be curious. You can keep going down the rabbit hole.

Yeah.

I mean I'll just plug this here. I know at timely. Deepseek is like making all the world's news, it seems like. But Perplexity is like my go to research tool. But when you hook the two together, which you can now. Oh, it's like insane amount of real time searching plus reasoning and it's talk about like deep research in seconds.

Very cool.

Try that out. Yeah. All right. It's pretty sweet. But how about like naval? I want to bring out some philosophy, like some things that have impacted you through, especially through this journey of becoming the CEO of Scribe Media 18 months ago. And like one of the quotes that naval just sticks out to me is that happiness is a choice. And I genuinely believe that's true. And that's kind of. I don't know, some people feel like happiness shouldn't be the thing that you strive for, but it's like, why the hell not? Yeah, I don't know what else is there. And.

Yeah.

So how does maybe that quote or.

Something like that from naval helped you through? I'm sure like burning it out throughout the nights, you know, figuring it just the stressful times.

Yeah, I think, you know, choice is almost. He has said it's a choice. He has also said it's a skill. And I think like skill is actually a more useful frame because you don't. When you hear happiness is a choice, it's almost. It almost makes you feel guilty, you know, or something. It's like, just choose to be happy, dumbass.

Like, what's wrong with you?

What's wrong with you? Don't you know there's a switch you can just flip and like.

Here, like, while that's probably true, you have to do some work to build that switch. Right. Or remember that it's there or you know, have it in arm's reach. So I think the skill framing reminds you that it'll take time to get better at and that you should expect to have to work at getting better at every day. But it also, you know, it will yield to effort and intention and. And if you work on becoming happier, you can become happier. I also remember I've been following Noel for long enough to know that, like, he wasn't always happy and he didn't always focus on happiness. He didn't always value happiness. And so saying that it's a, you know, a choice is not to imply that it's easy, but that you. But that it is something that you can control with effort over time. And it's funny, you know, he's. I think he spent a long time being unhappy while getting rich and then got rich and is like.

That didn't make me happy. Maybe that's a different quest. And so, like, I think not that many people that, you know, I know some really happy people. I know some really rich people. I know very few, like, very happy and very rich people. Especially, you know, naval who went on the quest to become both of those. It's not like he was born happy and happened to become rich. It's not like he was born rich and happened to be happy. Like, he started without either of them and deliberately built both. And so this book is very much like, here are the principles and the tactics and the mindset that he used to go from, you know, not that to that. And, you know, he's got an. Like, his description of this is like, if you want to know how to lose weight, you don't go ask somebody who's been skinny their whole life. They're not even going to know what you're talking about. Like, you want to find somebody who was, you know, got up to 600 pounds and then got back down to, you know, 150, 160. Like, that person knows what they're talking about because they've been on both sides and they've had to fight the fight to get, you know, to overcome the thing. A bigger. They. They beat a bigger dragon than you're trying to beat. And, like, that's the person who can teach you. And so I think, you know, when you're filtering for people to read people to emulate heroes, you know, there's a lot of people talking a game that they learn from somebody else, not firsthand. And that's just a different, you know, there's a different level of knowledge that comes with that.

That's a good frame. Yeah, and, yeah, and I know naval, you're absolutely right. Like, it's cool to see that progression. And I know you outlined that a ton in the book. Like, is there something that you, either from the almanac or are just studying naval that keeps you grounded? Like, is there a tactic that you go to often?

There's a lot on the happiness side. There's A lot of little ones that just became habits that I think he. I mean, he's such a good distiller, and he comes up these sticky little phrases. And so some of these seem very small.

But if you do them every day, if you do them multiple times a day.

It does, I think, meaningfully change your, like, base level of happiness. And so two in particular. There's one that, you know, I drink coffee every morning, and he's got one that says, like, if you can't be happy with a cup of coffee, you won't be happy with a yacht.

I like that.

Which is a beautiful encapsulation of everything that you need to know about, like, learning to appreciate the things that you have and.

Take it. That reminds me, and I think about it on my first cup of coffee every single day, and just like, take a second with the steaming mug before your first sip, and you're just like.

This little thing is a miracle that I can just really appreciate. And if I can't learn to appreciate this, there's no point in striving for anything else. So, like, practice appreciation with this thing in this moment, this humble thing, and let that be like, a moment that is complete of itself.

It's like very mindfulness. It's like that moment of Zen that you just carved out for yourself.

Yeah. And you can. I think he had another one about a toothbrush. Um, that's, like, whenever he's brushing his teeth, like, he. He uses that as a moment to just, like, concentrate on the feeling, like, how good the toothbrush feels like. Don't look at your phone. Don't think about the tasks that you're supposed to be doing, like, or could be doing, like, just be very present and having those triggers that are things that will happen to you all the time. And another one is when you feel the sun on your skin, look up and smile.

Yes.

There's, like, tiny thing. I mean, you live in San Diego, so you'll. You'll have to stop doing that at some point and go get some. Go get some stuff done.

Yeah, good point.

Don't stare right at it. Yeah.

Huberman says to stare at it, but it's got to be low on the horizon. No, we're all doing that these days.

Yeah.

Just little.

Little things that stick with you. So. Yeah, some of those are. Have worked their way into my daily life and that I really appreciate.

Yeah.

Thanks for sharing.

Is there one that hasn't worked, like. Or one that you just like? All right, Naval. It sounded really good, but it's Fucking useless.

One that I'm still struggling to implement that I think Naval is probably better at than me is just like.

He'S got a very, it's almost a Buddhist approach of the, like, only the individual ascends or transcends and that is a pretty hard line on like you're not responsible for other people's feelings or happiness.

And that's just a really difficult thing in practice day to day, you know, that's for sure.

Yeah.

You've got people you love around you all the time and you care about how they feel and how their experience is going and. And I'm not actually sure that it's like ideal to totally separate you. It's not ideal for your relationships. It might be, you know, if you want to go become a monk and like take complete, perfect accountability for your internal state.

And you're just observe, observing like the objective neurochemicals in your brain and how much dopamine you get. Maybe, yeah, it is optimal to like totally separate from all relationships, but that's at least not the way I want to live my life. And so there's a lot of times when, you know, that is just a messy area of trade offs, I think, around relationships and when you, when you do choose to take on other people's emotional states to show empathy and work through something together and you know, or share, you know, share pain, share experiences.

And not jump to conclusions too quickly or try to solve it for someone else or.

Yeah.

Even yourself sometimes, you know, just like let it simmer.

Yeah.

Something usually connects for, for whoever it is.

Yeah. And you know, but he's these decades into this journey, so it's possible that I. That's just a naive take for me, but it is, that is an extreme. I think he's got a relatively extreme stance and it comes from the philosophies that you know, that he's read and some of the extreme, some of the philosophers are extreme by nature. So I, I don't disagree with it so much as like have chosen a different path or at least live a different path in the moment. And yeah, we're all, we're all on different paths at different places, so.

Absolutely, man. Different upbringings and all that. So, you know, got to keep that in mind. We're all starting in different places, which is totally fine. Yeah, give yourself a break everyone, please. So, well, that leads me to this thought of like, you've had, you've worn a lot of hats and still do, you know, author, curator. I call you an author, obviously, and you know, founder, investor, podcaster, you know, and all these things. Now CEO, Like, I'm thinking of fulfillment. Like, that's the frame I have here. So is there like a myth, almost like a toxic myth that you think that you had to unlearn in this process, you know, for as a C or any of these hats, like, is something come up that you've reframed over that those years?

I want to say.

I've sort of given up on the concept of done.

Like.

There is no, there is no finish line, really. Like any. Any given finish line is arbitrary. And.

I will always be working on something and just trying to find good, high leverage ways to like, make the future better.

And.

That that work will never be done and I'll never be quite satisfied with it. And that's like, I have to learn to learn to exist in a state of happiness without anything being, like, done and complete and at rest. So, you know, there's another, There's a nolism that's like.

Happiness is peace in motion and peace is happiness at rest. Yeah. And so learning to become like, peaceful and in motion at the same time, learn to be happy and satisfied without feeling done, because you will never be done.

Is.

Is a constant quest. And I'm not good at it, but I. I feel lucky to have at least learned that. That's something that I need to get better at and try to, you know, refocus on and just, you know, live in that space. And some of the people that I admire the most are really, really good at that. You know, they, even under high stress, you know, heavy fire, they can be peaceful and productive. And I think that's the mindset to have to stay in the game for a really long time, which is what you need to do if you're going to have great compounding results and great relationships and.

You know, easier said than done. Especially when you hold yourself to high standards and you care a lot about, you know, what you're doing and who you're doing it with. But that's.

That's a goal, that's a focus.

I love it, man. I kind of want to end it right there because that's. It's impactful. Thanks for sharing. Definition of done. Yeah. What is that? Yeah.

Thanks for. Thanks for sharing, man. And yeah.

Who.

I guess a couple things like who are you following closely now? Obviously, Naval Balaji. I think you have something with musk coming up here, right?

Yeah, I'm working on Elon Musk. Very, like, tough to pit down, but I'm very Focused. I'm focused on the, like, first few decades of building that he did and, like, what makes his mindset and his approach really unique in this. The scale of problems that he tackles and how the intensity with which he tackles them. I think there's something for all entrepreneurs to learn in that. And so that's really the book that's coming together this year. Yeah, I'm excited about it. I hope that it'll. I hope it's helpful. I hope it helps, you know, birth another. A generation of a thousand musks and, you know, usher in a golden age in the next industrial revolution. That's the. That's my humble hope for this book. I love it.

Yeah.

Great vision. Yeah, I. I follow. I. I think Casey Hanmer is. He's a little more technical than, like, naval or musk, but I think he's an incredible talent. An underrated under. Followed.

Very much in the tech world, but, like, brilliant, brilliant guy. I don't follow him.

So that's great, though. Add them to the list.

Yeah. Highly recommended. Cool.

Awesome, man. Well, Eric, dude, it's been a pleasure and thanks for being so open, honest. I know you are, and first time we chatted, but, like, yeah, we. We went there. So appreciate you, man.

Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me. This is very fun. Yeah.

In scribemedia.com is that the best place or where else should they find Scribe and then also find you?

Yeah. If you're thinking about a book, if you think a book can help build your business, if you've got a stray notes app full of book ideas or.

Honor AI like me.

Yeah, yeah.

Perfect.

Yeah. Yeah. So come. Come just chat with us and we're happy to, like, take you through that scribemedia.com and just get a consult with somebody on the team. And yeah, all my personal stuff is@ejorgensen.com and I'm on Twitter X all the time at Ersh Jorgensen, so happy to. To DM or, you know, get you on the newsletter and yeah, whatever. Whatever else you're interested in.

Go check it out, the podcast and everything. We'll link everything, show notes, description, make.

It easy for you.

So, Eric, thank you. Thank you, my man.

Appreciate.

Sam.