Chad Cannon (Chief Sales Officer at Michael Hyatt & Company)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode. Hey there. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work, not primarily for their own fame and fortune, but for the glory of God and for the good of others. Each and every week I'm hosting a conversation with a Christ follower who is pursuing mastery world class mastery of their vocation. We talk about each guest's path to mastery, their daily habits, and how their faith influences their work. Today I'm sharing a conversation I recently had with somebody I've respected from afar for a very, very, very long time. His name is Chad Cannon. And you might not know that name, but you probably know the name of the guy he works for, Michael Hyatt. So Chad is the chief Sales officer and the former Chief Marketing officer for Michael Hyatt and Company. I know a lot of you are famous fans of Michael Hyatt. This leadership expert, author, former CEO of Thomas Nelson, one of the world's largest publishers and certainly one of the largest Christian publishers. Michael's got a serious team around him. They're up to about 40 full time people. And while Michael was running Thomas Nelson, Chad was actually his VP of marketing, where Chad led marketing on more than 200 books. I think Chad's one of the smartest people when it comes to marketing, period, but especially book marketing. So Chad and I recently sat down and we talked what the most successful content marketers are doing today and what they're doing, what the most successful content marketers five years from now are thinking about. Today we talked about what Bob Goff's book Love does was almost horribly titled while Chad was at Thomas Nelson. And we talk about how Chad and Michael Hyatt see their work at Michael Hyatt and Company as bringing great glory to God and accomplishing his will and in the world. This is a terrific conversation. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed having it. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Chad Cannon. So, Chad, I want to talk about you. I want to talk about your work, but in order to understand your work, I think we need to first introduce your boss. So a lot of our listeners know and love Michael Hyatt. But for those who don't know who Michael Hyatt is. Who's Michael Hyatt?

Yeah. So Micha, Michael Hyatt is a very successful business owner and entrepreneur over the years. We currently are running a leadership development company. Been around eight years. So he's the CEO and founder of a company called Michael Hyatt Co. Here in Franklin, Tennessee. Prior to that, most people would probably know of his time in the book publishing space where he spent a lot of his career starting out at the bottom of the totem pole all the way to CEO at Thomas Nelson, which is at the time the seventh largest book publisher in the world and served as a CEO role helped them grow through the recession where publishing got hit hard. So the work that he did and saw the book publishing space through some of their hardest times of retail, the rise of the Kindle and digital when everyone said the print book's gonna be gone. And looking back at the blogs he shared during that time is what he was writing about is pretty impressive. I think it goes to show the type of leader that he is and the futuristic component to him. He was pretty dead on with how that would all kind of settle out and what the book publishing has experienced today, which is really renaissance. Yeah, it's pretty impressive.

Yeah, it's pretty exciting for, for writers and book marketers like yourself. So I think most people, when they hear Michael Hyatt, they think author, they understand that Michael sells books. But you're the chief sales officer for Michael Hyatt and Company. Obviously you guys are selling way more than books. Talk about that product portfolio that you guys are currently selling.

Yeah, it's a great question, Jordan. Sorry, I didn't even mention that. He's a multiple, multi time New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today bestseller. And part of that is because I guess that's just my world and it just kind of comes with the territory. But yeah, we've got a team of almost 40 of us here in the Nashville area. We work virtually remote. We do have a space not too far from here, but we're releasing a book every 12 to 18 months. So the book is a way to kind of get our broad message out. But then we have. So we, we have Michael Hyde and company. Kind of our mission statement is we help overwhelm successful leaders get the focus they need so they can win at work and succeed at life. And so we're intentional about every word there because we are from the publishing background. Our chief content officer has written numerous books himself and edited you know countless others is that overwhelmed comma successful leaders and business owners is because of their success is what is why they're overwhelmed. Yeah. And so we really try to provide the focus they need to kind of eradicate that overwhelm in their lives so that they can be present at the things that matter the most in their work and their life. Because we kind of talk about this idea of the double win which is win at work and succeed at life. There's not an or in there, there's a very bold. And we're always talking about that. So we're not, we're not going to create products unless we help people do that. So the books are kind of a way for you to capture information. Yeah. And then we have products around application. So I'm looking here at my full focus planner which is a 90 day physical planner that helps you achieve big things on a daily basis. And then we have online courses that teach around goal setting, productivity, helping you become a better focused leader. Product's called Focus Leader. And then we've got a high end coaching program for business owners and CEOs which you and I have talked about previously and then live events and things of that nature. But it's all about this win at work and succeed at life. And, and you know we're. When I joined the team four and a half years ago, there were four of us had just broken the seven figure mark and we're now multiple eight figure business. And the books really serve as kind of the foundation and like, you know, the marketing world, it's a top of the funnel opportunity for people to get in at the $15 to $25 mark and then there's a whole path upwards of that.

How do you guys think about Marty Verano's script? This is, I'm like so fascinated by the business. I'm such a big fan of the business you guys are building. How do you think about books in the relation to those other products? I mean are you guys using the other higher tier products to inform what's being created in the books or is it vice versa? Like what's the relationship to the books and everything else you guys are producing?

Yeah, that's a great, really good question as well. We're a little different in that we have the books that have come out the last two years have actually been based on our best selling courses. So we've actually used our courses as a way to workshop the content and then when the book has hit the market we've actually sunsetted the courses because now the book is kind of the stamp. We've kind of worked through the content because we've had tens of thousands of people go through it. Whereas a lot of authors, the first time they've actually created that content is the book. And then two years later they want to make it better and change the book. And for us, once it's in the book, it's there. And so that's it.

Yeah, that's the best wisdom we can provide on that topic.

And it really is. We've spent years doing it, not just 18 months writing the book because that's a normal process, but it's actually tried and true. It's typically filled with tons of research, real case studies, things of that nature. And so.

So 12 to 18 months, that's a pretty rapid cadence for releasing books. Much more rapid than you would have seen even five years ago. Right. Where people are on a at least every other year schedule. Do you think the rate is going to get more rapid or less for some? I mean, at some point there's a limit to how many books you can churn out.

Right.

But do you think we're going to see more authors moving to that 12 to 18 month timeframe or is it going to get further spread out to two, three years?

Yeah, so when I say 12 to 18 months, that's our traditionally published books.

Yeah.

And so that's when we're going through a big publisher kind of big idea book that we really want to kind of disrupt the marketplace with. And I don't think that's going to change. I think 12 months is as fast as publishers can move and most don't want to move faster than that. You know, that 12 months is for their a like A level authors, you know, like Thomas Nelson, Max Lucado, they're pushing to have a book every year. They've got a whole business model built around Max putting out a book every 12 months. You know, for some publishers we're that to them, you know, and so we've got to keep that in mind and it's got to work with both us and the publisher. But we publish one to three smaller books a year around one idea. So like this last year we rolled out a book called no Fail Meetings, which is really about this idea that we know our business owners and leaders that we're coaching. This is a pain point for them and we would never write a big traditionally trade book around meetings, too narrow a topic. So we self published it. And really as a resource, when people ask the question, it's like here you go, this is like how we do it and this is a great resource. And then people buy it for their team. And just the feedback we've gotten on that's incredible. And we just finished a pre order campaign for a book called you'd World Class Assistant. So people that are interested in buying or having an ea, an executive assistant, whether that's virtually or on staff, because we're big, Michael's big on that. So if you've got someone, you don't feel like you're maximizing them, this is a great book for you and things like that. So we're rolling that out in the next couple of weeks. But we did a pre order for and honestly we thought it would be smaller than the meetings book and it's actually been bigger.

Yeah, I'm not surprised by that. I was really impressed with the position of that book. I think that's a really, really smart topic because it's something a lot of people get hung up on. And that assistant helps you guys, I mean assistants. My assistant in particular I can attest to, helps me be excellent both at work and at home. It's very much on, on brand and fitting within the mission. So Chief Sales Officer, it's a new role for you. Congratulations.

Thank you, thank you.

You spent the past four plus years at the Chief Marketing officer. Why the change?

Well, our company is growing and expanding and I've had the luxury of working really closely with our director of marketing over the last year, year and a half. And honestly she kind of precipitated the need for it. I mean, two things. One, she had come in and just done such a phenomenal job and I really felt like first and foremost I was holding her back from being able to grow inside of the company. And she was taking on more and more responsibility. And every time I gave her more and more responsibility, she was doing it better than myself. And I would be foolish to not see that opportunity to promote her. And at the same time I had been taking on a lot of sales initiatives and kind of building a sales team on the side around our coaching program and things of that nature. And as I was really dreaming about kind of the next three to five years of the business, that's really where we need to go. And really the last two years I've been saying like every year when we're kind of do strategic planning and it's like, hey, we need a sales team because we've kind of hit a ceiling of just what we can do through email list and people buying without that One on one contact. So we just got, you know, more complex sales, more higher priced sales. And so we want to be. What gets me energized is building an industry leading sales team. That doesn't feel like a sales team, you know, is that our brand of Michael Hyatt and company flows all the way through from them being interested in our product, us selling them. And we have no problem in marketing and selling, but we do feel like it's a calling of ours because we know if people aren't pushed to make a decision, human nature, delays.

Absolutely. So correct me if I'm wrong, I'm putting words in your mouth, but I would also imagine that you spent more than a decade getting masterful at marketing. Right. So I would imagine there's this excitement of mastering this other similar, but also very different disciplines.

Totally. Yeah. I think one of the things about modern day marketing, whether you want to call it direct response marketing, online marketing, things like that, that the best people that do it understand sales and marketing. Yeah. Because if you have a great marketer, whether that's a brand marketer or whatever, but you can't move people to purchase. You don't understand the sales process.

Right.

And so I actually built. The beginning part of my career was all marked, all sales. So I've built sales teams before and then kind of got bored with that and so jumped into kind of online marketing and loved that and have just now kind of the pendulum swinging back to like new opportunity, new. I love new things, I like starting things, I don't like maintaining them. And one of the great things about our company and our leadership and Michael and Megan is that they know that about me and want to put me in a place to do that. Not just me, but really our whole team.

Yeah, I love it. So you, Michael, have worked together for a long time, going back to your days at Thomas Nelson. You guys were there at the same time. What drew you to the publishing industry?

Well, so publishing, we have a lot of people on our team with publishing backgrounds because we love words, we love ideas, we love bringing that to market. So a lot of my. I managed and built a speaker's bureau. One of the things that we did was we in the faith space, so churches. So we represent people like Josh McDowell, Kirk Cameron Lee Strobel, a lot of the apologists that are around today and evangelists. And so we were booking them in churches and a lot of them had books that came out. So it was really powerful when you combine the content of the book with a speak engagement. So I had worked with publishers about when books came out, like with Lee Strobel. When Zonderman came out, I would be on hey, how can we leverage the stage around the book for a period of time? And what churches do we have access to that type of thing. So that was really fun to be that. And then I was working for a company called Outreach, which are big church marketing communications company. They were transitioning from California to Colorado Springs. My wife and I decided Colorado Springs wasn't for us and we had met in Nashville and so I had found out about this job at Thomas Nelson was, you know, actually was replacing a friend who had vacated that role to take on another position. And so I kind of had the inside track at least as to his supervisor and probably wasn't qualified for that role just because I had never been in book publishing at all and it was straight away to a VP level position in the book publishing world. So I had my work cut out. It's a funny story is the hiring manager was the only person that wanted to hire me and everyone else didn't because I was young, green and stupid, you know. And so I'm eternally grateful for that decision because it really propelled my career and the work and the relationships I was able to foster through the publishing industry.

Were you and Michael both at Thomas Nelson when HarperCollins did the acquisition?

So when I joined, the acquisition had been announced, but they were doing the due diligence. Got it. And so Michael was chairman of the board. He was not there involved in the day to day ops. But the first book I worked on, first two books I worked on were platform. Michael's book on helping you get noticed in a noisy world and Love does by Bob Goff.

Man.

So those, you know, I had no idea what I was doing. Literally at 10am I was leading a conference call with Michael and his two VAs and his road manager. I'd found out about 8am that day that as of Friday we're 45 days out from launch date that they blew up the marketing plan. And we have this call at 10:00am Chairman of the board, former CEO. How do we launch this book and basically reallocate all of our marketing funds?

Geez.

And I and I never marketed a book before. Yeah, so. So that's fun. Yeah, it was really fun. So what'd you do? We just, we ideated like, basically like we don't. For me, I had always seen what marketers were doing and just the general space.

Yeah.

And so I had a lot of fresh ideas and Michael was always thinking new and so I presented a lot of ideas differently that most marketers knew was happening in the world, but in publishing 10 or 15 years ago.

So what year is this?

That is probably 2010.

Alright, so this will be fun. So what were really great innovative ideas for marketing platform in 2010?

What did you guys do?

Were you investing in social? I mean, I guess that was an option.

So yeah, we had a multiple seven figure marketing budget at Nelson. 95% of it was spent on traditional advertising. So print radio. I was just like, wow, that's crazy. So yeah, I would say 95% was spent on digital and social for Michael. So we had built a launch team which at that time was like only certain people did launch teams. And now it's like everywhere, like our whole pre order campaign around. I was in a meeting, this is kind of getting shop talk. Ish. But I was in a meeting with our sales reps and they were telling me kind of the whole New York Times formula at the time, which has changed now, which is insane. Yeah, right. As we all know, is that every book that is sold before the launch date counts during launch week. Then they started sharing the numbers of what the pre order numbers were for the books. For the last two years at Nelson, no one spent any resources on the pre order. I think the most was Max Lucado. He had 300 pre orders for his book launch. At that time you had to hit 15,000 sales in the first week to hit the New York Times list. I'm like, strategically this makes zero sense.

No sense at all.

So why aren't we allocating some funds during the pre order phase? We had a preorder big push towards pre order and we launched the New York Times bestseller list and we unfortunately ran out of copies. And Michael's team brought a lot of ideas. We brought a lot of ideas. And the great thing was is because I didn't have any experience, I didn't say no to anything. I was like, oh, that could work, that could work, that could work. And then we just kind of organized and made it happen.

So love does. I didn't know you worked on this book. Yeah, I've always been curious about this book. In particular about what the public. Because nobody knew Bob Goff. I mean, right?

Yeah. The only people that knew Bob would have read Donald Miller's book. Sure. Because there's, he's like this mythical figure.

Right, Right. Sure.

Yeah.

So there was that.

That's about it.

But nobody really knew Bob Goff.

Yeah.

Did you guys know that book was gonna win as big as it did. Like, when did you guys know this is gonna be just a phenomenal Dust?

So when I was in the interview process, I asked one of the questions I asked everyone that I was interviewing with is, what book are you most excited about in the next 12 months? It's a great question. Yeah. Everyone said this book by Bob Goff called Love Dust. And actually, I think when I was inter. Title was called Palms Up. Huh. So it was this book by Bob called Palms Up. Luckily, the title changed and ended up being Love Does. And what's funny about publishing is, I'll say this for my publishing people, especially on the marketing side, is everyone on the sales team, which they have a lot of opinions on titles, hated that title.

Sure.

But then three months later, after the book comes out and it does so well, they're like, we really need the magic of, like, a Love Does. And they're, like, taking the credit for it and everything. It's just. It's funny for those who don't know.

Because we're talking shop. I love this because I love publishing. Explain in 60 seconds the difference between marketing and who is sales and Thomas Nelson selling to.

So there's publishing. So under publishing is really the content and the editorial of the book. They're the ones that are actually producing the book, the words, and they're the ones choosing what books actually will get published in tandem with the sales team and marketing. But the sales team are basically teams that are representing out to Barnes and Noble, Amazon. They're selling on behalf of the publisher. But we're always kind of. When we say, hey, we want to publish this book, sales team will say, hey, the market's telling us we think we could sell 50,000 units in the first year because of that. Here's what we should be able to pay as an advance. And then there's negotiations with the agent and all that. And so that process is called Pub Board. Publishing Board in Thomas Nelson. So once a month, we would meet, we look at proposals and determine kind of really, every book is a venture capitalist project. Totally.

That's exactly.

We think we're gonna make this much money. We may not. And the reality is publishers make money on about 12% of books. Yeah, yeah, that sounds right. And they make good money on them.

Is the rule of thumb still a publisher's expecting a book to sell on average 5000 copies year one, or is that number going up? I mean, I've heard most books don't sell that.

Yeah, most books don't. I Mean, it's, you know, Thomas Nelson's in a different game. We're a big Christian publisher, and so our were. I'm not. We. We. I'm no longer there. But we would never publish a book hoping that it would sell 5,000 copies. Right. That's not a project we would.

You never want to take that bet. Yeah. You got. You got to believe it's gonna sell 50.

Yeah. There are some publishers that build a business model, and they. Every book they publish will sell 8,000 copies, and they can win. That's what's great about publishing, is you can set up the business model to work that way.

So I'm gonna ask some selfish questions. Yeah, I ask a lot of selfish questions.

I love it.

Yep. This is my show. I can ask whatever I want. You've worked on more than 2, 200 book marketing campaigns, which, like, blows my mind, the churn of publishing. And I get this question a lot from aspiring authors like Jordan. You've called it great. Did well. Hit a national bestseller list. Like, what. What are all the things I have to do? Everybody's telling me I have to do 50 things to, like, market my book. And I always try to, like, simplify it, but no, actually, pretty much nothing matters. Except for this one thing. I'm curious if we share that one thing. If you were to boil it down to guys, aspiring author do this one thing to market a book, what would it be?

I think you're leading me to something.

I am totally leading you.

Well, first, you have to write a good book. Yeah. Like I would say, write a good book. There's two funny stories to this. I'll share real quick. Michael shares. Content is king. Yeah. The other thing, which means that, and this is a quote I think I heard before I actually came to work at Thomas Nelson, is that great marketing makes a bad book fail faster.

Yeah.

And so the great thing about book publishing books are that it's probably the most shared and referred product on the planet. Yeah. So if you have a book that's impacted your life, like, you're gonna talk about it till the cows come home. Yeah. First and foremost, that's becoming harder and harder. Like, I would say a decade ago, that was tried and true, but there's a lot of not good books with really slick marketing and good marketing and good platforms that will help you launch a book. The reality, though, what that means nowadays is if you have a platform and an audience that want your message, because they have to buy the message before they can read the message. So it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good book. The long term success now is really about content, but the short term success is really about having an audience platform.

To really sell the book to within the platform bucket. My advice to authors is an email. Email is the only thing that matters 100%. The only thing. Right. Like don't waste your time doing anything 100%.

But no funny story about this. We launched Platform and Love does probably within a week apart. And good quarter. Yeah.

Thomas Nelson.

Yeah. So platform launch, New York Times bestseller list. Bob and Michael had gotten to know each other when we launched Love does. We were doing the summit and so Michael did an interview with Bob and they were promoting each other on social media and Bob got off the phone and was asking Michael. I haven't even shared this story with Michael. So if he listens to this will be the first time he hears it. You know, like Michael starts sharing with Bob all the stuff that we're doing to market Platform. So I get an angry call from Bob. He's like, you guys are doing this for Michael, blah, blah, blah. How come you're not doing this for me? And this is a big lesson. I told Bob, I go, bob, your book is totally different. Right. I said one, Michael has an email list. Michael has all this other stuff. We could do all that, but it's not going to move the needle because you don't have anything. This is a long term play and I believe in it. I said, I told him this. I said, michael's book is a niche book. Your book is super broad. Six months from now, you're going to be outselling Michael.

No question.

No question. Yeah. So Platform roughly has sold maybe 100,000, 110,000 copies. I could be. I'm somewhat disassociated with it now. Love does is approaching a million copies, you know, so just to kind of see the scale of it, it's a very different book. And you can't. One size fits all marketing campaigns don't work at that point in the game. Bob just had a lot of people that wanted to see that book succeed. And word of mouth for that book was the most important thing.

What are the most successful authors five years from now going to be doing that their less masterful counterparts aren't?

Wow.

By the way, I ask myself this question all the time and I'm not sure I have a great answer.

My mind went first to it's going to be something that's not Facebook.

Yeah.

I think this is nerdy talk. But I believe that Next to an email list, social media is still big, especially if you can leverage your circle of influence to help you promote on social and really borrow their platforms for a period of time because they really believe in the message and believe in you. And so Facebook and Instagram are the leaders in that space right now. But I believe that I think there's going to be something happen that shifts. I mean, it's already happening. I mean, I think there's just this public dissonance about Facebook and the distraction piece, but also the privacy piece. You know, I think we're just one travesty away of like, you know, as soon as I say this, though, I'm also like questioning the human race.

Right.

Because we all know it. Right. It's like a joke around the table about it. But yeah, it's like we're addicted to a degree too. And so, so we're talking a lot about publishing.

Try to, let's try to broaden this a little bit. We get a lot of people, I'm sure, listening who are just marketing professionals. They're not marketing books, they're marketing lawn care services, whatever it might be. What do masterful marketers do that less masterful marketers don't do? Like, what is the real differentiator between somebody who's a really world class at this discipline and somebody who's not?

Well, for me, I think not just marketing, but I think in life in general, is being a constant learner. And so marketing, probably more than anything else when it comes to business, changes more rapidly than anything. Like leadership and management principles are pretty much true over time.

Drucker and Michael Hyatt are saying the same.

Yeah, very similar. I mean, granted, they're managing a millennial generation and a booming boomer generation. There's different elements to it, but there's layers of that that's always going to be the same. But marketing. When I first started, I taught myself Google pay per click. That's how I became kind of a masterful marketer, is that I reduced our ad expense by 80% and increased leads by 400% on the speaker's bureau side all through pay per click. Owning four or five keywords. That can't be your only marketing strategy now. And it couldn't have been seven years ago. You know, when I started it, it was. And similar when I, when we jumped into Facebook five or six years ago, Facebook was like stealing candy from babies. And now it's more competitive. It's just like, you know, I think Gary Vee says this, but three Words. Marketers ruin everything. And so when something works, you know, an email first came out, open rates were 85, 90%, but open rates now are 10 to 25%. Hot, hot list. Because marketers have ruined that. People hate their email now and spam and all of that because it worked. There was a season where marketers were just so. I would just say constant learning, kind of being ahead of the curve. That question you just asked that I didn't have a great answer for, about what's five years from now they're going to be doing that they're not doing right now. Like TikTok is a social media platform that probably most people like. I have no idea what that is, but it's far surpassing. And the teenage market more than Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. Yeah.

The growth rate's out of control.

It's crazy.

It's Michael Hyatt and company. Growth rate crazy.

Yeah. I have a friend who has a daughter who's 17 and she has a million followers.

Yeah, it's crazy. I love it.

It's awesome.

We talked about your home life a little bit. Talk me through your daily routine. I'm fascinated by the daily habits of people. So from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed.

What does your day look like? Yeah. So this used to be different before I had a child, but actually I became more routine. And I should say we as a couple, because it's now with a child. It' It's a tandem effort to make sure we're on the same page. Our daughter sleeps from. No hate mail about this. She sleeps from 7am to 7 or 7pm to 7:30am you couldn't hear that fist bump.

7Pm is the official bedtime of Ellison Joy and Kate Everly Rayner.

So there you go. And then she also still naps. She's almost three. From noon to three.

Noon to three.

Noon to three.

You're a blessed man.

I sure am. And so part of that is, I believe, I mean, one, her temperament. But my wife stays home and has been super intentional with her and it's been really good. And it's been harder seasons for sure. But so since we had her, we became way more militant about when we wake up, when we go to bed because we need our time. And so we're up between 5:15 and 5:45 every morning. Cup of coffee, a little time on the couch, a little time in the word. And then she'll go run. And then I'll typically run on the treadmill in the House a few days a week. So kind of get the workout in the morning.

She's out of the house running.

And then she gets up at 7:30. So certain days I help her get up, certain days Julie does, depending on kind of what's there. But I'm in the office between 8 and 9. So I've got my morning routine. It's kind of exercise, seeing crew in the morning, connection time with my wife, with God, all that's kind of part of that morning. And then typically 9 to 5, and typically 8 to 5, I guess you should say. But we got the flexibility where if I have to leave early, can leave early and home for dinner, do my best to put the phone down and not touch the phone or the computer. And in this season of Life, I'm in a place where I don't really touch work until the following morning. And we're in bed. Crew goes down at 7 and so I'm the one that puts her down. And it's kind of that fun time, daddy wrestle time right before she goes to bed. And then we're in bed between 8:30 and 9. And I love it, you know, so we're. Yeah. I like, I had a friend call me or text me. He's like, hey, you free for a work question? And it was like 8:15. And I'm like, hey, I've got 50 minutes. I'm going to bed at 8:30. Normally I don't take calls, but I was like, it was a close enough friend. And he was like. He was just so jealous.

Flabbergasted.

Yeah. He was like, how do you do that? I'm like, I just do.

Yeah. When I was the previous company, I ran threshold360. When I was running, I was getting up at 4:30 and people are like, how do you do that? I'm like, I got to be at 9 at 8:30. Like, that's the only way you can do it, Right. If you really value sleep, which I do, and I think the most productive people in the world do, one of.

The things we say is that your productivity for tomorrow starts tonight.

Do you ever ask people in interviews how much they sleep and judge them.

Based on, you know, I probably should, but I don't because I was that like, you know, and it depends on seasons of life. Like, I've always been a highly productive person.

Yeah.

But in my 20s when I was like climbing the ladder, whatever you want to say. Like, I mean, I would constantly go on five and six hours of sleep.

I could never do it. I Ask all the time. If somebody Sundays, I get five hours of sleep, I'm not going to not hire them.

Well, maybe from a hiring perspective, 100%.

Yeah. But what I look for, though, is whether or not they're proud of it.

Yeah.

Like, whether or not they think that this is a culture that celebrates not sleeping. That's not a fit.

Like, that's 100%, because we.

Yeah.

We're fighting for culture. And the reality is, if one person comes in and goes against that, and that's like a proud thing for them, because, one, you shouldn't be proud about it. There's no data that supports you. You know, like, if you're proud, like, oh, I can get more done because I'm working five hours. It's like. It's like Elon Musk saying how many hours he works. And it's like, well, let's play out how Elon's Musk, how his life has played out for him. Not many people want that, but that's what happens.

Right. I was having coffee with another member of your staff last time I was up here in Nashville, and he mentioned something about. About the fact that internally he's heard Michael talk about the mission of Michael Hyatt and company being at least partially about the glory of God. And I was surprised to use a term like that. Is that a part of some official statement somewhere?

It is.

What's that statement?

Your purpose statement, or. Yeah, I should know this. Exactly. But it's really part of our vision statement, why we exist. And the reality that we believe this double win, win at work and succeed at life, and helping overwhelm successful leaders get the focus they need is going to help them be a better human being and ultimately a better husband, a better friend. And those are all things that we believe glorified God. And the reality is to be as passionate as we are about our work, just the sake of having someone work. On average, our clients, after a year of our coaching program, work anywhere from 11 to 20 hours less a week. If that's not attached to something, like, what is the purpose of that? Like, this isn't to get you to be able to do more work, but it's like, how do you spend more time with your family and your kids and loving on them? And, you know, because most time, like, I think, you know, this is probably getting into a soapbox, but I think, and this is how I have found, is that when I get busy, the thing that retracts out of my schedule more than anything, and it shouldn't is the word of God and the more time people have, that's just an excuse that you can no longer use. That's been a big part of my story over the last year or two is that's like one of my. We talk about creating a routine or ritual, like that's a non negotiable because you need it. And then it's the proto life. I mean, yeah, there's a first. Peter talks about it as like nourishment, like an infant needs milk. And he was talking to believers, not unbelievers at that. Right. Which means we need to be craving it like an infant craves milk. And as we've got young kids, like, you know what that looks like and they need it.

Yeah.

Like without it they don't grow, without it, they don't mature, all of that. And so yeah, it's about. It's not something that you have to be a believer to work for us, but you have to be okay with that mission because that's the values that we have decided and it's something that is near and dear to Michael's heart. Otherwise, you know, we can get off kilter and start creating things to make money. But if it doesn't glorify God or we don't, we're not helping our clients glorify God in a way, then what's the point?

I love that and I love that this is a great example of common grace and seeing the Lord's will accomplish even the lives of people who are.

Not following him totally.

The Lord is using you all to create more margin in the lives of these business leaders so that they can spend more time with their kids, more time with their family. And that whether or not they realize it or not, is revealing the character of God.

Well, we have these real life stories. I mean, it's getting kind of bone chills just thinking about the story I'm about to share because I know how impactful it is. And it's a perfect example of why we do what we do is we were at a live event and we shared about our coaching program from stage. And we had a woman come back and Michael and I were just talking and she said, hey, I've got a question. I know I need this, but I've got a question. It's like, do I have to be a Christian to be part of this coaching program? 1. We appreciated the candor and just the, you know, the boldness to ask that question. We said absolutely not. We're not going to shy away from our Faith. We believe that Michael, when he talks about his morning routine, just like I said, scripture and the word of God is important. I don't want to share too many details, but she came in about two quarters in to be part of our coaching program. It had come out that her and her husband were going through a really, really hard time. They were business partners, very successful, and I mean, they're on the brink of divorce after 30 something years. And three years later, both of them are in the coaching program. They've renewed their vows. They're happier than they've ever been. And because of what they've been able to do through being part of our coaching program and gaining those hours back and things like that, they've been able to kind of fall back in love with each other. You know, this isn't a story of they've come to know the Lord quite yet, but that's not our job. And even as a pastor in a church, if they came to church, it's not our job. Like, can pray for them and Holy Spirit can move. But we've set. We have laid so many seeds and have. I mean, they've said it. We've saved their marriage and we have countless stories like that.

That is ministry 100%. You are revealing the character of God and helping these people love each other and model what biblical marriage looks like. You're loving your neighbor as yourself. These people who are in crisis, right. In a marriage, I think some people would look at that and say, well, yeah, but they didn't pray the prayer. That's not the point. It's a point. And I'm sure that you are praying for your customers that they would come to saving. Faith in Jesus Christ. That's not your job. That's the Holy Spirit's job. Your job is to be salt and light in the world and just to serve your Customer well. Right?

100%.

So I'm curious, what would be different about Michael Hyatt and company if Michael, senior leaders like yourself, if you weren't following Jesus Christ, can you envision what the company. What would be different about the company if that were the. If that were the case?

I can't. You know, I think that the culture would be totally different. I think we, we might be more financially successful because in our space, there are a lot of things we can do to make money. And it has to serve the purpose of helping you win at work and succeed at life and in the end of the day, glorify God. And so that being our compass, we say no To a lot that most businesses would think we're absolutely crazy to say no to.

What's an example?

If my team was sitting here, they'd be laughing like, what do you say no to, Chad? Because I'm like a, you know, hard charging futurist. Like, I'm an optimist. But we say no all the time. I mean, speaking engagements, I mean, we're very particular about that because Michael's has five kids and nine grandkids all within 10 miles of each other. And. But we could probably generate three times the amount of speaking fees we do. Which we know that when he goes out and speaks, there's this kind of revenue halo that impacts the company. And we've got a pretty hard constraint on how many times Michael's on the road. And that's changed over the years. Used to be zero, and next year it'll probably be between 15 and 18 times. But a lot of people in our space, they're on the road 50 to 60 times. And for us, that's like a constraint that we say no to. And so it's got to be super high leverage and it's got to be the right things. And that's one that on the sales side, I'm kind of trying to figure out what are those things. And it's hard because great opportunities come in every day. Yeah. And you know, we've got some big growth goals, and so it's hard to say no. And I know, like, oh, this could lead to potentially half a million to a million dollars in sales in the next six months. Just because I know the type of audience we're going to be in front of.

Yeah, well, I mean, people who are following after Jesus Christ have to say no to maintain balance in those areas of life. But you also have to say no to things in order to become masterful at your craft. Right. And to stay focused on what's essential, what matters most, what aspect? This is a tough question, I think, but whatever, I'm gonna throw another hard one at you. When you think about the work you guys are doing day in and day out at Michael Hyde and Company, what aspect of God's character do you think you most regularly reveal through the work, either through the products themselves or how you treat people like. I know you're not explicitly saying it.

Yeah. Right.

But what aspect of our Lord's character do you think you're revealing the most through your work?

Yeah, you know, I think this aspect, and I don't know the scripture right off hand, but don't worry about tomorrow, because today has enough worries of its own, basically. Honestly, that's what we're trying to sell people. There was an article, I think, in the Atlantic a few years ago, and this world was talking about this world of noise and distraction and things like that, that in this world, you can sell peace, calm and quiet back to people at a profit. And honestly, that's what we're doing, is we're creating tools and resources to allow you to be less anxious. Which in my small group last week, there's a young life leader who's Franklin High School. He's got his 16 top leaders. He found out 14 of 16 are on antidepressant and anxiety meds, and that's an epidemic hitting our country. And we believe that our tools and resources help people be less anxious when it comes to work and home. And that if you get into this cadence, that we'll walk you through. And, you know, Jesus didn't do anything in a hurry. It was very intentional. And in our culture today, we are more hurried than ever. We're more anxious than ever, and we are trying to provide calm, and we want to make a profit on the back end of that. You know, that's obviously insider baseball. But that article, kind of as an executive team are like, that's really what we're doing is we're trying to fight against this culture of hurry, you know, the hustle fallacy, to really provide that calm and the structure. Donald Miller called Michael the Marie Kondo of productivity, you know, on a podcast one time. And it's really about that is like, how do you slay the distractions? How do you get clear about what we say in our. You're working 80. As a business owner or a leader that has autonomy over your time, you should be spending 80 to 90% what we call in your desire zone. So things that you're passionate about and proficient in not or passionate and proficient, which means you're excited about it, it fills you up, and they're proficient, is that it makes money.

Right.

And whereas when we do these exercises, most people are spending less than 20% of time in their desire zone, they don't know how to get out of it. Wow. And so we coach them how to get out of it.

I love it. You talked about hurry. Have you. Have you gotten your hands on a copy of John Mark Comer's new book, the Ruthless Little.

I have seen it.

Have you read John Marcus? I have.

I love him. I love Bridgete's church. I love what he's doing.

So John Mark really should be sending me royalties as much as I'm talking about him on the show. And we're really excited that he's gonna be on here at some point in the near future. That book, I mean, all of John Mark's stuff is great.

Yeah.

Ruthless Elimination of her is exceptional.

That's awesome.

It's next level.

It's funny how so Jefferson Bethke is a good friend of mine, and Jeff has a book coming out called to the Hell with the Hustle by Thomas Nelson. And so. And Jeff's a very strong believer. And, you know, a lot of people are gonna probably be upset with hell being in the. But he feels that strongly about it. You know, John Mark and Jeff went to a similar seminary over the last. And it's funny how neither one of them knew they were writing about this book. Yeah. And God's kind of put it on their heart and it's a similar message. And, you know, both have a similar audience and. Which is. Just goes to show, I think we're all struggling with it. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I'm reading Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, and I'm like, man, there's a lot of Digital Minimalism in here by Cal Newport. I'm not sure if you read that great book, but I don't think the book wasn't out. If I'm understanding the pub. Timeline. Publishing timeline. I don't think the book was out when John Mark was writing. And I'm gonna ask him about that when we have him on the podcast. But no, it's just the Lord is working.

Digital Minimalism came out in February of this year.

Right. Of 2019.

Because we included it in our leader books. And so we had 4,000 leaders reading that book all across the country at the same time. And it's a great title.

Yeah. So I'm all about this. Hustle, hustle less. But I think. I think we're all saying the same things. Scripture does command us to work hard. Right. Colossians 3. 23. We talk a lot about the show. Work heartily as unto the Lord. But we also have to recognize the truth of scripture, that we do not produce results.

Right.

The Lord produces results through our work, and that should allow us to rest from our work. That should allow us to approach our work with great ambition, with great hustle, if you want to use that word. Also in this tension of trusting that the Lord will be the one to provide. Right.

100%.

So talked about. John Mark Comer. So a couple of questions I love to ask every guest Other than the Bible, what book or books do you find yourself recommending the most or buying, gifting to other people?

Yeah. So I saw this question, and I get this question a lot because being in the book publishing space is the book that I read every year without fail is in a pit with a line on a snowy day. Really. So Mark Batterson's book, great book. It's been out probably a decade now, but it was a first. It was one of the first books I read that kind of just burst something in me that I didn't know existed. And so there's probably some nostalgia that when I read it, it kind of brings me back to that moment. But it's also a really powerful story that I feel like Mark did such a good job of. There's like two verses in the Bible about this character called Benaiah. And the whole premise is he went into a pit with a lion on a snowy day. So you. He was literally in the lion's territory and had the faith to basically kill the lion. This guy killed a lion in the lion's territory. It was like on an equal match in your territory, the lion's gonna, gonna win, but not only. And so for me, you know, I like to kind of do like underdogs and against all odds stories I love. And so part of that is just kind of a remembrance of my own journey and what, the next three to five years. It kind of. There's some things in there that just gets me excited about dreaming about what are the next three to five years? Like that question of, hey, what are. What's going to happen in the next five years that no one's thinking about. It kind of does that for me. Kind of just puts me back at check. You know, from a business standpoint, I read too many books. There's not one that I say come, you know, you have to read this book. But I mean one good to great is a big one for me that just when it comes to maximizing and thinking through like what does your business need to be to be great and you know, the data and the research and Jim Collins is a legend. Yeah. I think In a Pit with a Line of Snowy Day is one that I would recommend to anyone. Yeah, it's a great book.

Those are two great ones. One person would you most like to hear talk about how their faith influences their work?

Maybe on this podcast, let us mention him, Jefferson Bethke. So Jeff's a close friend of mine. I get the luxury of having these conversations with him. And I think that you know, similar to John Mark Comer. They're thinking about life differently. So Jeff, for those of you who don't know Jeff's story, you know, 22, 23, he created this viral video before viral videos were viral, before Facebook video even existed. It was YouTube called why I Love Jesus, Patriot religion and the spoken word. So a lot of people probably have seen that. I think when I. Three days in, it had 15 million views. And I met him through a friend, and the moment I talked to him, I just knew that God had something big in his life. Like there was just something wise beyond his years. And it's been really fun. You know, at that time, he wasn't married. He's now married with two or three kids. I'm so bad at this. Yeah, I think Alyssa. Yeah, I think three now, actually. Yeah, three kids. And he had the opportunity to kind of just do whatever he wanted and which meant he could have. He started a young adult ministry that could have turned into a church and been huge. He could have been this big travel speaker and made a ton of money. And instead he and Alyssa moved to Hawaii to be in community with the people that they knew they needed to be in community with and said no to everything that people were telling them that you could just make it make hair. Cash x5. Yeah. And is living one of the most intentional lives as a parent, as an author. And he hasn't.

He.

And he's probably been way more successful in his career than any of those people said that he could be doing those other things through digital products and things like that. And just brilliant. He's got a great partnership with a guy by the name of Craig Gross, and they're doing really, really great things. And he's one of those, I think, authors that 50 years from now, his people appreciate his work now, But I think 50 years from now, they're gonna appreciate his work even more. Yeah. So that's a good answer.

What one piece of advice would you give to somebody who, like you, is pursuing mastery of the art of marketing and or sales?

Yeah, I said it earlier. Being a constant learner. Ask more questions than share opinions. There's something about being. It's hard because I like to more ask questions, but you're the one asking questions here because one asking questions allows you to learn. And it's the number one way that'll make you more curious in the other person's mind by actually asking them questions. I think that goes. That's a life lesson about your craft. Like, you need to continue to Learn and listen and consume as much content. I think one of the things that marketers don't do and even salespeople is they don't look outside their own industry. And so like book publishing, if you're looking inside your industry, you're looking at 15 years behind. Right. What are people doing? Like what. How is people with billion dollar marketing budgets, how are they doing storytelling? Obviously there's a limiting belief. You'd be like, well, I can never do that because I don't have money. Which is totally not true. They're just wasting it, you know, and so there's just, there's videos that I have seen. Like there's a video of extra gum that was done years ago and it's this. The silver wrapper. Yeah. The title of the video was called Origami. And it was a thing that the dad and the daughter would do is when they open the gum, they would create this little origami thing and create like, there's no words, just really powerful music. And over the years, the daughter grows up and the daughter's moving out and dad's helping her move and pack up the room and shoebox falls and all these. She had saved all these origami things that her and her dad had been doing over the years. Thinking about it now brings me to tears because I have a three year old daughter. It's like, and I was working on a book at that time and I was like, man, what? Like that emotion is what I want people to feel about this book. And what, like, how do we do that? And so we started storyboarding it and that ended up being one of the most successful. And it was like, so what was the Happy Wives Club? And so just inspiration coming from other places then that was all about storytelling. But I think it's, don't be afraid to learn. Don't be afraid to ask questions and continuously learn.

That's great advice. I love the advice of looking outside your industry. I don't pay attention to competitors very much.

Right.

I pay attention to who really impresses me in other spaces. So I love that. Hey, Chad, thank you. I just want to commend you and Michael for the work that you're doing. I've always been a big fan of both of yours. You probably don't know that. I've admired you from afar for a long time. Followed you on Twitter, obviously. Big fan of Michael. Thank you for the ministry of excellence. Thank you for helping business owners and leaders when at work and at home. And thank you for revealing the character of God through the process of doing that. Yalls work matters a great deal and just grateful for it. So hey, if you want to follow Chad, probably the best place to do is Twitter. I mean, you're pretty. You're pretty active on Twitter these days.

Yeah, if you want to see sports rants, Twitter is the place. Yeah, I'm a big Chicago sports fan, but Instagram is probably the best.

Where are you on Instagram?

It's C canon. So first initial last name and the number 21.

And then on Twitter you're just C canon. And obviously you can follow Michael's work@michaelhitt.com Chad, thanks for hanging out with me.

Thanks, Jordan. Such a pleasure.

I didn't think this is possible, but I'm an even bigger fan of Chad Cannon and Michael Hyatt after that conversation. Thanks again to Chad for joining us. Hey, if you enjoyed that episode, be sure to subscribe to the Call to Mastery. So we're going to start releasing these episodes on a weekly basis. Want to make sure that you never miss an episode that we release. So go ahead and subscribe. If you're already subscribed, do me a favor, take 30 seconds and go review the podcast. This is the number one thing that you can do to help ensure that we get this content into the hands of more people. So go leave a review of the podcast on your favorite podcast app. If you have no idea how to subscribe to or review a podcast, no worries. I had no idea how to do.

This before we started producing this show.

Head over to JordanRaynor.com podcast. That's JordanRaynor.com podcast. We've made it really easy for you to both subscribe to and review the Call to Mastery with me. Jordan Raynor, thanks so much for listening to this episode. I'll see you next time.