House of Wolves Episode Twelve - With Bryan Cohen

You should be a monster, an absolute monster, and then you should learn how to control it. There's an intensity to what we're trying to accomplish, and, um, you know, if you want to be truly great, you've got to bring it every day.

Do you enjoy pain? Pain don't hurt.

You blitz all night. Standing out is a long-term strategy, takes guts, and produces results. If you care enough about your work to be willing to be criticized for it, then you have done A good day's work.

Mr. Cohen, thank you so much for joining me today. I feel like, um, you do so much that it might be a disservice if I tried to explain exactly what you do, because I know I'm— you do so much, I know I'm going to miss something or leave something out. So would you mind explaining to everybody kind of like what you do on a day-to-day basis?

Absolutely, and thank you for having me. I love talking about this stuff. So basically, I'm the CEO of Best Page Forward. We have two main things that we do. We, you could say more than that, but we teach authors about ads and then we write book descriptions. The teaching about ads now encompasses all the way from our free challenges to our course to coaching, and now even we have an agency. And so it's a lot of work to maintain all of those elaborate pieces. We have over 20 contractors working for us in various points. And so on my day-to-day, while it might seem I just poke in and make some Facebook Reels and comment on some people. I'm also trying to lead 20, 20-plus people to try to help them be able to better help the authors that we work with. So a lot of my time is spent in meetings, in trainings, and in just brainstorms to try to move the whole thing forward.

You do so much. And one thing that I admire about you— I admire a lot of things, but one thing that I admire about you is the consistency. Because I feel like consistency and time tells you so much about somebody, right? Like, somebody will come and tell me like, oh, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z. And in my mind, I'm thinking, I hope you do. Like, more power to you. I hope nothing but the best for you. But then many times, you know, we'll fast forward a year, 5 years, 10 years and that, that person's just gone, disappeared. They're doing something completely different. So I admire that about you where since I've known you now for a long time, I don't think I have the brain capacity right now.

I don't know. Me neither. At least 5 years or so. At least.

Yeah. I was gonna say 6 or 7, but I've known you for a long time. You've not only been consistent with your work, but you've been consistently growing. And I'm just not talking about like your business, but I almost feel like yourself as a person learning and whether it's, you know, focusing on your health or your family and just trying to be better. So I just want to let you know right off the bat how much I admire you.

Well, thank you for that. And I— it's interesting, I took my 34 Strengths. I'm a big Becca Syme fan and she talks about that a lot for the author peoples and my Clifton 34 Strengths. Has my consistency in the lower portion. Now, with 34 strengths, it doesn't mean that you're necessarily bad at something. It just means you need to conjure up a lot of energy to make that kind of thing happen. The other part of it is, like, for instance, Sell More Books Show, which we've done for 460 consecutive weeks over 8 years. My maybe lower strength of consistency is totally pushed out of the way by my fear of disappointing people. And so my, my worry that, that people won't get a thing delivered to their, their phone at 7 a.m. Eastern every single Wednesday morning crowds out any, any, any maybe lack of true internal consistency that I might have. And I think that guilt is honestly a semi-powerful motivator. And that, that needs to be factored in if you happen to respond to it as I do. Jewish mother, all that good stuff. So I respond to guilt. Internally.

I wonder if those emotions like fear and guilt could be used as motiv— like used for good as motivators if handled the appropriate way. Like you were saying, maybe there's a little bit of fear in you or guilt if people don't wake up and they have their podcast, you know, that they're looking forward to at a certain time. Do you think that— do you think that's healthy? I don't know. It's not like a trick question that I know the answer.

No. Oh, I get it. I get it. I I think that as long as you're, you're in, in understanding that it is happening, I feel like it's certainly healthier than if it was happening subconsciously and you never, uh, you never talked about it and you bottled it all up. Uh, I talk about it on a regular basis. I do therapy. I'm a very open person talking about this kind of stuff, which is why I was so happy you invited me. So I feel like maybe it's not so bad for me, but certainly you need to— if you are using so-called negative motivators, I suppose you do need to be aware of it, or it could probably be unhealthy in the long run.

I think that's what the Sith Lords do, right? Don't they feed their Jedi power off like anger and hatred and they use it?

Well, there was, um, uh, I forget the exact title. It was something like, uh, a black heart person, and it was about this, uh, this female, uh, uh, entrepreneur and, and, and CEO type person who, like, maybe it was Black Heart Theory. I'm not exactly sure of the name, but, uh, she talked about sometimes you need to tap into your darkness. It can't always be like positivity because obviously toxic positivity exists. It needs to be— sometimes you need to pull into the darkness in order to move forward. Now, I don't think you should do it that often. I think of it like, uh, you know, uh, uh, The Wheel of Time series, tapping into that, uh, tapping into that power that is also connected with madness. You don't want to do it too often because you are— you're asking for trouble.

I think that's an important aspect too. I forget who said the quote, but I think there's a quote that no great person has ever existed without a touch of madness. And I— let's talk about that because I definitely don't think that I am sane. And I wouldn't— in a— in the— as a much respectful way, I would— as much as you're taking on as much as you do, I wouldn't put you in the category of sane either. And that's a compliment that you stand out, right? We're not just like, you know, following the norm or the status quo. Do you think that you can have success at a high level without there being a touch of madness in you?

Yeah, I think that you need— I think you need it. I think you need to be willing to be weird. And if you only do what this is essentially the status quo, you, you may not ever move forward because you need to— that you need to be vulnerable out there. You need to be open to new ideas. Something I was thinking about as I was signing in today was one of my philosophies is, and I, I think I borrowed this long time ago from Steve Pavlina, Personal Development for Smart People, great blog until he just started talking only about polyamory, which is fine, but wasn't exactly what I was looking to, to read about. But talking about how if my system for living, if my philosophy is, is outdated in a way, if I see something that might work a little bit better, rather than putting up a big wall of resistance in front of it trying to say, well, maybe mine wasn't as good to begin with. Why don't I try putting this on for 30 days, see how it works? And I think those— that, that willingness to just say who I am, what I do, I might not be that exactly this coming month, just to try it on, is a really good way of testing if this weird new thing, this weird new idea is going to be better than the way you're doing it.

And would you say doing that, being open to trying new things, do you think that you have failed more than you have succeeded?

Oh, I've definitely failed more than I've succeeded. I think that at the conference that you'll be speaking at in a few weeks, Self-Publishing Live, I'm going to be closing the whole thing out with talking about failing your way forward. Because you need to be, especially if you're doing anything writing to market, you're doing anything bigger like the things that you've done, that, that you and Jen have done with the, with the movie, is you have to be willing to fail because there is a good chance when you try for something big that you're going to have a few failures before you get to an ultimate success, a lot of people are too afraid of failure to try that on. And so you, you, you kind of need to be open to it.

Yeah, I definitely agree with you there. I was reading Tim Ferriss's book Tribe of Mentors, and two— on two separate occasions, I forget who said it, because in the book Tribe of Mentors, he's interviewing, I think, maybe like 100 different, like, successful, influential people. Yeah, but one thing that stuck out to me about failing, uh, and learning was two different people. I don't remember who said it, but they said that they didn't understand what was with all the, uh, you know, failing to succeed. We shouldn't concentrate on our failures, we should concentrate on our wins. And I thought about that for a while, and I was like, yeah, I understand that philosophy, but I fail way more times than I win. So if I, if I was only going to win, then it'd be easy just to focus and learn from that. But I fail way more times. So I feel like you almost have to not focus and spend a lot of time, but you need to learn your lessons from when you fail and then pick yourself up and move on.

Yeah, your, your life should be like testing Facebook ads. You're going to have 90 to 95% of them are going to suck and 5% of them are going to work and make you all the money.. And so you need to be willing to say, all right, my life is now a Facebook ad testing. Let's fail a bunch on the, in the direction of something that's gonna work like gangbusters.

And do you feel like doing what you've done for so many years and growing your company and being willing to try things that may not work out, but learn from them and keep on trying, do you feel any sort of fatigue as you're, you know, this many years into that process, doing it over and over and over again? And how do you imagine, you know, 10 years from now that you're going to keep the same hunger and being willing to try new things? Right.

Well, I've also been a big fan lately of the Enneagram model, and in Enneagram, I'm tied for a 2 and a 3 as far as my personality type, which is the helper and the achiever. And so I really get a buzz out of helping people. And I think that when I help people achieve things, it helps give me some of that very important purpose energy, uh, which you need. You absolutely need that kind of purpose energy to move on. But I think things could change. Certainly the, the— we've adapted in just the last, uh, 6 months to include, include these new kind of higher tier things with the coaching and the agency, and that didn't exist previously. And so now we're looking for these other ways to kind of inspire us because we're always learning from the people we coach. We're always learning from the people that we, that we work with, and that is helping to inspire us to keep creating content and to make those changes. But in 10 years, I don't know. I think it's definitely something I've thought about. Before I started this business, I was a bit of a pivoter. I would pivot when I got bored with something. And so this has been the first thing that's kept my attention for, for 9+ years. And so I don't necessarily have something to compare this to. And so I think that In order to maintain that hunger, you do have to enjoy this from the beginning. How many people have you seen who've come into publishing, they're here for 2 or 3 years and then they're like, "I don't know about this." They may not have loved it to begin with. And so I think the love that you have at the start of a project and the start of a business can be the thing that carries you. But I certainly can't guarantee I'll still be doing the exact same thing in 10 years. But I'm going to keep looking for ways to learn and to grow.

The longevity of somebody being in this industry was interesting that you touched on, because I think we both have done things to take care of ourselves and to make sure that we can perform day in and day out. And we've talked about some people who maybe, you know,, were big names for a year or two or three years, and we don't hear from those people anymore. I feel like health is both mental and physical and emotional, all types of health are so important. Because I remember, uh, seeing someone who's a huge name, everybody knew who this person was, writing like crazy, super successful. And I remember seeing this person post an image of the ending of their latest novel, and in the image was like a McDonald's cup, a Monster energy drink, and some fast food wrappers like on the desk. And I remember thinking like, man, like, I hope nothing but the best for this person, but if this is just kind of like a glimpse into how they're fueling themselves, then I don't know how long they can sustain this. And then sure enough, it was a year or two later, that person has just fallen off, and I take no joy in, um, knowing that they've fallen off, but it's almost kind of like a, uh, maybe a warning to us that, you know, but for the grace of God, there go I, that maybe, you know, that we need to make sure that we really nail down taking care of our own body so we can do this day in and day out. So how do you juggle taking care of yourself physically, mentally, spiritually, all that with as much work as you do.

Right. And it ebbs and flows. I, I had at the end of 2011, I had really put on a lot of weight. And while I was regularly walking, I was trying to get out of the house. I just was not eating as healthily as I would have liked. And so I really, at that point, I had to make a change. And I think you have to be open to making these changes. I wasn't quite at McDonald's wrapper level, but I was definitely not where I needed to be. And, and I, uh, it's actually a fun story. I talked about it in one of my 20 Books talks where I was officiating a wedding, which was really cool. I'd never done that before. It was two players from my soccer team back in Chicago who I had introduced, and now they just had their first baby. So very exciting. But Uh, they— I was officiating the wedding, and one of my friends from the soccer team who always, uh, uh, uh, tells it to you straight— and he had a couple of drinks in him, so he told it to me extra straight— it's like, I'm worried about you. You're— you've put on a lot of weight. Uh, you got to do something. And that night I said, all right, I've been wanting to do this myself. Tor helped me out here, and I started getting meal deliveries. Because I just never had the time to eat as healthily as I wanted. And I started getting like lean vegetable enriched meals sent to me on, on a weekly basis. And it's one of the better things I've done for myself. I ended up losing about 30, 37 pounds or something like that. And it was very important to just remember, okay, once I'd gotten to that point. This is how I feel now. This is the energy level I feel now. I, I want to keep feeling this. And it still ebbs and flows. I put on a little bit of that weight back on, so I had to rein that back in and get strict with myself. And I think that we work for ourselves we kind of say, I've done this, so there are fewer boundaries in my life. But when you work for yourself and you work with yourself, you need to set self-boundaries. And some of those self-boundaries revolve around food. Some of them revolve around energy, getting out, exercising, uh, getting out of the house, getting that outdoor air. Uh, it has to do with the, the mental energy of you need someone to talk out your stuff with, you need to be around people if you, if you're an extrovert, you need that time to recharge if you're an introvert. All those things are things that you kind of need to keep track of on a regular basis. But if you notice, this is back to that self-awareness, notice that something is out of alignment You need to work to get it back into alignment because you're exactly right.

Your longevity will not, not stand the test of time if you're not focused on those things. Exactly. I thought a lot about, too, about like our own mortality. Like for me, like my main job is to write novels. Yeah, but and this might seem a little morbid to some people. But I think it helps to drive me and make sure I put my best into every book. There is a finite amount of books that I get to write before it's time for me to go. I don't know what that number is. I don't know if that number is like another 100 books. I don't know if it's 50 or 20 or 10 or 1, but I know that I have today, and I know that if, uh, this is my last book that I'm working on, that I need to pour everything into it. So I know thinking about kind of like our own mortality that way And as we get older too, and as we have children, I think of kind of like taking care of myself and my body so I could stick around. And I see some old other people who may, you know, be living until they're, you know, 80, 90, 100 years old, but what does their quality of life look like at that, at that age? So it's good to hear that you're taking care of yourself and you're aware of this. And it sounds like a good friend, even though at the time the friend you know, was a few drinks in and maybe, uh, I don't know if you struck a nerve, but it was good because you took action.

Yeah, I think that's, that's the power of having good friends who will, who won't just yes-man you or won't just smile and nod.

You need some people who give you the tough love. No, 100%. I feel like tough love, even though it might sting at first, was meant, is meant by definition, I think, to make you better. Those people want to see you better. They want to see you succeed, even if they might not be giving you the words or the lip service, um, at the time. Like, they have your best interest in mind. Yeah, yeah, agreed. Let's see. Okay, another thing I wanted to talk to you about is leveling up your business, because you've been working for so long and you've been hitting milestones successfully, when do you— maybe trying something new and it's not working out— when do you decide to cut something off? Like, hey, we've tried this, it's not working, it's time to let it go. And when do you differentiate between starting maybe something new and be like, okay, let's try it, it's not working now, let's try to give it a little bit more time?

Let me— I have a perfect example for this, Jonathan. So 2021, we started doing covers on the side for, for authors. And the deal was, we're going to do the COVID research for you. We're going to work with a designer and we're going to make sure this cover is written— is perfectly covered to market. And we— I felt pretty darn good about the work that we did.. And more often than not, these, these authors were getting something that they would not have been able to come up with on their own. Let's face it, it's tough. It's tough when at first, when you don't know how it works to get the right kind of COVID for a book to market. And we were doing pretty well with it. But what we didn't foresee was that these are a lot of authors, a way higher percentage than we would have thought. Um, they said, no, I don't like it, when we would do all this research, all this effort. No, I don't like it. Okay, well, I mean, this is perfectly to market. We've, we've, we've— you could do some weird stuff to it, but it's not going to help. Like, okay, what if you throw a giant bird on it? It's like No, you don't understand. Like, you can't just make tweaks and throw a clock on it or throw a bird on it because, because you, you want to represent this scene. And we just kept running into this over and over again. And it was a psychological thing. These folks did not want to part with the first cover they created for this book. They had difficulty letting that go. And so we ended up with and we still have orders out. And so if people order in this year, we still fulfill them, certainly. But like, we have stopped promoting it. We just couldn't— we, we didn't have a way to filter out, oh, this person is open-minded and this person is closed-minded, uh, to this cover. So we, we determined We're not going to sell this anymore. We use data to back it up. We let it run for, you know, a year and a half where we were actively promoting it. But when we kept seeing the same message come back that people were not ready for it, and it's a shame because some people are like, we love this, but we can't maintain for years and years the occasional order to someone who loves this. If it's going to be something that we, we have that pulls focus from something that more, a higher percentage of people enjoy. And so we are going to probably just fully retire the product at the end of 2023. And, and that is hard. I do not like, uh, closing things off, but we realized this is this thing that is harming the profitability of the business.. And I had a meeting with this great cash flow guy who said, look, if you've got full products that you're selling— and that could be one series versus another series if, if you're thinking from fiction— if you have a product in your line that is actively losing you money, this is not a great way to run a business. You need, like, maybe if it's a loss leader to something else, but like This was just actively sucking money out of the company. And when you identify that, you need to say, okay, can we work with this? And when we determined the answer was really no, we said, all right, well, it has to go because it is not helping people in the way that we wanted it to, first and foremost, and it is not profitable.

And so we just, you know, have to be in the process now of winding it down. Yeah, that resonated with me when you said you didn't want to give up on it, or you didn't want to— if I gave you your choice, you wouldn't have wanted to, you wouldn't have chosen to shut it down. And I struggle with that too. Like, uh, I don't like giving up on things, whatever it is. I just don't like giving up on things. And I know that's something I've had to learn is when it is time to give up on something. And that's not reflection of a failure on you. It just didn't work. You tried, you did your best, you tried to make it work and it wasn't working. So now the next best move is to let it go, not to stay in it and try to claw your way. And something isn't working, go into the cash flow, what that guy was saying, as opposed to somebody— something that is working, you can spend your time there and double down there. And, um, I totally know what you mean. Now, as we're working on larger projects with film, a lot of the times I realize now, same, same idea with book cover, it doesn't matter what I want, it matters what's going to sell. So as we're talking to all these different financiers and other producers and now talent, like, very little of what I want, do I really like try to push for if the people in the industry who have done the data and the research are telling me this is, uh, X, Y, and Z should happen? Yeah. And then it's not me from just my own wants and desires saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, I don't want to listen to the data, I just want to do what I want to do. Like, that's a recipe for disaster, and I've seen that happen over and over again. Yeah, yeah. Let's see. Well, we have you for just a couple more minutes. Is there anything that you wanted to touch on? Is there anything that you felt like you wanted to talk about?

Well, I— going back to kind of the energies, there's a really good book called The Power of Full Engagement, which delves into those four, kind of the four energy types of the physical, the emotional, spiritual, and the purpose energies. And, and actually lays out, well, hey, this client needed this, so they went and did yoga 3 times a week. This client needed this. And so that's— I often recommend that book because we, we are, as an industry, self-publishing, we're kind of failing at self-care. We kind of are like you and me, we're advocates for it. But generally, I'm just seeing like so many people working themselves into unhealth that I really do hope that more people focus on— okay, usually I think the first payment of something when I'm doing well is a VA, or is an ad, or is a course, or is a coaching. But honestly, it should probably be like a massage or some healthy ingredients for your kitchen, or a babysitter so you could just take a day off, like something that helps you recover.

Because we can't just keep working ourselves or we're going to work ourselves into the grave. No, you're exactly right. I see that again more and more. Just as I'm getting older, as I see my kids growing up and getting older too, I realize how important and how vital that is that you take care of yourself. Because if you can't take care of yourself, you're not going to be able to be there for anybody else. Yeah, cool. Hey man, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for coming on chatting with us.

You know, you're welcome back anytime. Yeah, no, it's been great. And, and definitely, if, if anyone sees this and wants to check me out every week, Sell More Books Show podcast every Wednesday. Awesome. Thanks so much, Brian.

Yeah, thank you, Jonathan.