Episode 473: How His Simple 28 Page Booklet Launched His Publishing Company with Clint Greenleaf

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind, where we get real world insights on winning from people who have accomplished amazing things. I'm your host, Larry Wydell, and let's get going. I'm here talking with Clint Greenleaf. Hello, Clint.

Hey, Larry. How you doing, buddy? Good to see you.

Good. And you're in Austin, Texas, is that right?

Yeah, it's only going to be 100 today. Nice and cool.

Oh, that's where you go, where you want cool weather in the spring and summer. Any place in Texas.

That's right, yeah.

Congratulations on the success of all your Greenleaf companies. I guess. Did it start with the publishing?

It did, yes. That was the first one that I launched. Started Greenleaf book group in 97 and then sold that in 2011.

Oh, you did. Now, how much success did you have with the publishing? I know, I think you have, what, 30 New York Times Wall Street Journal bestsellers?

We did, yeah.

How did you start? You're not one of the. You're not in the publishing capital of the world down there in Austin, which is. You're not in New York City. And you started a publishing company and you did it big. So talk about that.

Sure. So I had been a Marine in college and got hurt my junior year. Couldn't get commission because my shoulder was busted up. So I took the obvious next choice and went into accounting. I hated pretty much every second of it, but I figured I'd apply to the big six firms. At the time, there were only six of them. And my friends all kind of laughed because they were like, you're not very bright. You don't really go to class very much. You trade stocks on the Internet, whatever that is. This is the mid-90s. And they said, you're not going to get an offer. We have 4.0s and we got one offer from the big six. You have maybe a 3.0. There's no way you're going to get a job offer from a big six firm. And I went to the interviews and I got six offers. And they all laughed and said, what did you possibly do? And I said, everything the Marines taught me to do. I tied my tie properly, I shined my shoes, I looked presentable, and it's kind of fun. And so after a few drinks back and forth, they may or may not have goaded me into writing a book about how to dress properly. And it was a garbage little booklet. It was a piece of a paper folded over. It was 28 pages, hand drawn illustrations with a sharpie called attention to detail. And we sold it through the mail. And I went to go work at Deloitte. And I lasted there for seven long, very excruciating months before I retired at 22 to take the book that had started to sell well into an actual publishing company and launched Greenleaf book group in 97.

A 28 page booklet with hand drawn illustrations on how to dress for an interview.

I'll show you something.

I got.

I got a copy here. This is. Look, I'm not proud of this because anybody who. To all my early customers, I am so thankful that they did this, but this is. The quality of hand drawn illustrations in this thing.

I don't know. Not bad. Well, it's not good either.

For those of you that are listening on audio, this is not a wonderful piece, but I sold 10,000 of them through the mail and it beat accounting. So I passed the CPA exam after a few months.

What did you charge for it? What did you charge?

Five bucks. Five bucks in the mail.

And you advertised it where?

Bottom line, Personal gave me a small little classified ad space. It was about three lines and said, if you want your. So what I didn't realize at the time was they marketed the book for grandparents who were buying it for their grandsons. Right. I love my grandson, but he dresses like in this grunge. Like a slob in this grunge model. Right. So it was five bucks and the first day in the P.O. box, I had two checks for five bucks each. The next day seven, next day 13. And about a month into it, I was pulling 50 to 100 checks a day for five bucks a piece out of the P.O.

Box. Huh. That's pretty impressive.

It was fun. I didn't know anything about books, really. I mean, I know how to read, but I wouldn't say I was a lover of reading. And that was what launched this. The premise there was really. Greenleaf Book Group was a company that I put out there because there was no way to get into bookstores in the mid-90s if you weren't published by a major house. I wanted to Change that. So 15 years into it, we built up a system that allowed a relative unknown author to be able to produce a book and then get it into bookstores without having a Random House contract.

Yeah.

So sold that in 2011 and I left in 2014.

Well, that can be a roller coaster business. Can it? I mean, it's like, what's your next hit? Like, if you have a hit, it's like, where do you get the next one? Isn't that right?

Oh, absolutely. And, you know, I made so many mistakes along the way. I like how you fast forwarded to the end where it actually worked out for me. There were so many mistakes along the way early on. You know, first of all, I didn't know much about how to manage people, and I went through a lot of. A lot of mistakes and trials with that over time.

Was that because you carried over your Marine training like a drill, you use your drill sergeant as your model or something like that?

I definitely paid drill instructor more than I should have. You know, telling people that the beatings will continue until morale improves doesn't really work as far as a strategy. But also, too, I mean, you know, I didn't really know what the model was, right? So early on, I thought if we were helping people publish books, I was playing a numbers game, so I thought I was collecting lottery tickets, and each book that we brought on would be a better shot for me at having eventually a big enough shot of having book sales. And what I learned over time, and actually, there was a great woman named Marcella Smith at Barnes and Noble who kind of destroyed our business model in one call. But the next day, what we did next was kind of what fixed it, right? So she came to us in early 2004 and said, Stop sending me books. Barnes and Noble will not carry any of your books. Everything you publish is garbage, and you're wasting my time. I throw it all in the trash. Which is really hurtful to hear because clients were asking us to help them get into bookstores. And what we realized was it wasn't about the quantity of books we brought. It was about the quality of books. So we had about 600 titles at the time. We had to cull our list by about 90%, removed a lot of the books that weren't selling well. We added a bunch of standards and started really charging people to create great books instead of just saying, sure, throw anything out there. We'll see what happens. And we built an empire based on having incredibly great books that were beautiful, that were well written, that had sales potential, that had markets that were easily addressable, and it gave us a better model on how to help our clients do better books.

Why did she. I mean, she seems like she singled you out for abuse there.

You know, she might have. We became friends later on, and she's awesome, and she's a great person. I think she just got tired of seeing trash come across her desk, and it filled up her trash can. And every time we sent her a book she just got tired of it. So she was trying to help herself not be bothered by garbagey books as she saw it. And over time, it became a really neat idea for us to be able to use that as kind of a rallying cry to improve the quality of what we did. Because she said, you'll never get through. And I said, well, let's assume for a second that you're wrong. What would it take for me to prove you wrong? And she laughed and said, you never will because you have to say no to 90% of stuff and you have to get rid of the garbage books and you have to hire great designers and you have to go out and do all these different things. And I said, cool, let's say I do all those things. How long am I going to be in jail in this world? And she said, I don't know, probably a year or so. Six months into it, she let us back in the door, which is great.

And what were the. I got several things jump in my mind. You got the job. The job offers without the 4.0 grade.

Oh, at Deloitte, yeah. At the big six firms.

At a big six firm.

Yeah.

And, you know, how did that happen other than you, you know, you were dressed for success.

Well, really, that's pretty much all it was. I mean, I guess I was intelligently spoken so I could say yes, sir and no, ma' am and not act like a jerk. But at the time, grunge culture was a big, big deal. And if you remember to the good old days of the 90s, you had kids wearing flannel, slouching in their chairs, kind of being lazy and not really looking the part because they were too cool for school. They were Internet savvy kids who thought they could bring technology wisdom to a job. And what you learn pretty quickly is an accountant, a staff accountant, at 22 years old, getting the first job out of school is not there for anything other than really to expel carbon dioxide and absorb oxygen. So they want to be able to have you in the room and not look like an idiot when the CFO walks into the room. Your job is to shut up and listen and be respectful. So if you look like you're slouching, if you look like you're too good for school, if you're not willing to pay attention and engage with people, it doesn't work. And I think I was just intelligent enough that I could fog a mirror, and they let me in for that. But the fact that I was presentable, that really mattered back in Those days.

Well, we could spend a second talking about the fact that what causes people to do well coming out of school, really, in any job environment is can people get, you know, can they stand you? And you know what I'm saying, are you somebody that they would like in there? Because, you know, when you come into an office, you bring a presence. You know, there's a. Everybody's got a vibe, everybody's got an attitude. And we, you know, I. We just recently, in the last couple of years, had to make a change in our senior staff because we had somebody we tried for two years to accommodate because they were so good. They were like a robot, you know, like the perfect robot. But they were just miserable. I don't have personal life, what it was, but I mean, we tried this. Got a staff, gave it pay raise, gave it titles, you know, changed this change that gave them more responsibility, let up, you know, all those kind of things. Still miserable. And I said, finally, we said, you know, fantastic. Strangest thing, experience, phone call of my life. But you're great. You gotta go because you're miserable and you bring that misery. And it just, you know, we breathe the air, you know, it pollutes the staff.

You know, it's the hardest thing to do, right? Because, you know, a bad performer who's toxic is super easy, right? You kick them out, they're terrible, no trouble whatsoever.

Yeah.

The hard ones are the ones who are either incredibly awesome human beings and can't perform and they have to go, or the people who are incredibly great performers but are total jerks. And the problem is, if you don't have both, you can't make it work. Right? So I'll tell you. Remember, I stayed at Deloitte for seven months. I passed the CPA exam and retired. I'm not saying they would have kept me for an eighth month, but luckily it was my choice to step down. I think at a certain point, I'm not sure I was cut out to be a cpa. There's a lot of accountants who look at me and say, he's not one of us. I'm not sure that guy really fits. But, yeah, you have to have both sides of it. And so the toughest fires I've ever had have been that moment where you're like, wow, this salesperson's amazing. But everyone in operations hates them. And I'm either going to sacrifice my credibility as a leader and the morale in the office for someone who can sell, or I'm going to have to let them go and figure out A.

Better sales option or give them another. Get another office or the other side of town with her own secretary.

Maybe Covid's good for that.

Isolate them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just put them in quarantine in their house.

Yeah. The thing is also about the grade issue, is that one of the greatest gifts I had in my life, Clint, was when I went to Georgia Tech, I met two. First week, I met two graduating fifth year seniors, which should have told you something, but they both told me separately. Let me tell you a secret. They said, don't worry about your grades. And I said, what, because I'm naive coming out of grades or everything, you worship at the altar of grades? And they said, look, I said, what about when you try and get your job, you go out for the job interview? And they said. They both said this. They said, nobody's ever going to ask you what your grade point average is. And unless you're going to be a research scientist and you're too dumb for that.

Not an issue. Yeah, no risk factors.

No risk factor there. So they said, that's not what they're looking for. And, you know, I had. So I said, you know, to both of them, I said, thank. Thank you very much. The most valuable gift I've received in my life. So when also that was reinforced because I would know graduating seniors who would go through the job offer process, you know, engineering jobs from out of Georgia Tech, and find. Talk to them later. And they, you know, know the ones who had the 4.0. And they said, you know, I killed myself to get a 4.0 and I get the great job. I go in and I got a job that a actual adult monkey could learn how to do with a week of training or something like that.

Yeah. Well, I remember I did an internship at the Cleveland Clinic. I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and I did an internship there. And I thought I wanted to be a doctor. And I met a guy who probably was not the chamber of commerce member of the medical staff, but he said something about, why do you want to be a doctor? And I said, oh, I think it'd be nice to help people. And he looked at me square in the eyes and did everything short of grab my collar and yell at me. But he said, if you want to remember your twenties, do not become a doctor. And he looked like death warmed over because he'd been up for three or four days in a row. And I remember thinking, hmm, you know, I'm only 14 right now or 15 right now, but that seems like an important time in my life. 20s are probably pretty good for me, so I'm gonna go ahead and heed this advice. And in 96, when I got hurt, I remember the. The Navy captain who was talking to me said, look, you can't be a Marine. Your shoulders busted up. You can go in Navy if you want to, but the military is obsolete. We're never going to fight a war again. It's 1996. I remember thinking like, well, heck, you know, I can go be a civilian. And that. That beats being in the Navy like any good Marine, obviously. So it was an easy choice for me to jump into civilian life then, too. But I will tell you that I did not suffer from the need to get a 4.0 at any point in my college career. Well, could I have if I wanted to, by the way?

Right. Well, you know, if you could have stuck it out at Deloitte for a little longer, you know, you might have found yourself to be perfect partner material. Because those suckers never work. They just go schmooze for new clients. You know what I'm saying? And they graduate to salesmen selling their firm to the new. So they're in the golf course, they're at the lunches.

That was a sales pitch, by the way. Spend 12 years of your life working to become a partner. And I thought, I don't want to wait that long. Like, if I retire now, I'm 22, I'll be a CEO today. Right. So I'm going to do that and start right now, and I got to jump into sales immediately.

Yeah. And if you're working with one of the big six firms or any CPA firm, just be aware of the fact that the CPA that you met when you started the relationship is never going to be looking at your stuff except maybe at the final end or something like that. But they spend so little time on that that they're not the ones who are going to notice that, hey, we need to find this extra strategy. And it's going to be the junior people who are doing the bookkeeping and accounting, and every one of them despise doing it. Because if all they wanted to do is be a book, do the bookkeeping, they would have just avoided the CPA gauntlet and test and all that, had just gone to become a bookkeeper, you know.

That's right. That's right.

So just as long as you're aware of that, folks, you know, to watch out for yourself. But you got to have it, you know, you got to have a good bookkeeper and CPA to survive. But just be aware of the realities of this thing. I mean, I've lost hundreds of thousands of dollars learning that lesson, you know, but trusting them, you know. And when you go, when you, when you got out on your own, what do you think? What was your vision of your publishing company? What were you start, what kind of idea did you start with? Did you have a role model?

I had a lot of great role models. I knew what I wanted to eventually become. But my goals when I got started were to be able to earn enough money that I could go out on a lot of dates. That was pretty much it. My first office was above my parents garage and I was trying to sell books as fast as possible just to try and make enough money that I could actually afford to go out. And I meet lots of neat people. That was fun. That changed for me a little bit after I met my wife. Kind of changed a lot of the business policies and practices. But early on I wanted to build something that would be able to withstand the economy that may or may not change, that was actually going to do good for people. And I don't think I started with this goal, but eventually we got there, which was that I wanted to build something for my team so that I could help them and really build the staff. Because in the end, I realize it's late in the game, but the real joy that I got from starting and building a business and eventually selling it was the joy that I brought to everyone else there. And not that every day was joyful, but generally speaking, being able to provide someone a means of earning income and being able to put their kids through college and being able to pay for their house, that made me feel really good and that was really kind of the ultimate goal for me.

Yeah. And also being able to help people get published and get their message out in the world and being a part of that.

Right, specifically about that business. Yes, yes. Being able to share ideas, for sure. That was a big part of it.

Share ideas. Yeah, absolutely. That wraps up this episode. Consider leaving a rating and review if you like what you heard. In addition, I have a free video for you and it contains my back best insights from 20 years of running my own business and also coaching million dollar earners. You'll find it@whitelownwinning.com webinar. Thanks for listening and do it big.