I Met 16 Of The World’s Smartest Authors (Their Best Advice)
In this episode Nathan Barry, co‑hosted with James Clear, recaps a private mastermind held in Nashville that gathered 16 top nonfiction authors. The conversation weaves through a wide array of practical tactics the authors use to launch and market books. Core themes include testing content on TikTok and Instagram trial reels, replacing traditional lead magnets with paid "tiny offers," building hyper‑targeted street teams and creating highly visual, shareable book assets, and investing massive prep time (up to 80 hours) for podcast appearances. They discuss 15‑minute podcast formats as a scalable interview model, the debate over whether listening to an audiobook counts as reading, and strategies for leveraging audiobooks with multiple narrators. The group shares methods for repurposing old media clips, using AI as a brand‑consistency checkpoint, and pricing speaking engagements through tiered price‑testing. Additional insights cover personalized outreach (letters, chapter highlights), mental‑health‑focused social‑media habits, local bookstore partnerships, airport book drops, and email automation for review generation. Throughout, the hosts highlight the grind behind perceived "overnight" success, emphasizing preparation, experimentation, and community‑driven promotion.
Chapters
16 of the smartest authors in one room and learning like what's working in book marketing and launches and everything else.
It, it's insane.
I co-hosted a private mastermind with James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, and we invited some of the top nonfiction authors in the world to Nashville to share what's actually working when writing books. We talked about book launch tactics that most creators never try, what they're testing on Instagram right now, including trial reels and the posting strategies that are actually moving the needle.
They were testing content in TikTok, and then if it did well on TikTok, then they would move it over to Instagram. It was like a good testing ground for virality.
So there's a couple people who have very large Instagram accounts, and it was interesting hearing them talk about how they used— on Instagram to reach new audiences. There were so many crazy things, but one thing that really stood out to me was how much prep goes into an appearance on a world-class podcast. I would have assumed that someone's doing like 15 to 20 hours of prep for the most important podcast they're going on. It's like, nope, 80 hours.
80 hours.
So this episode is going to be us sharing our favorite moments, takeaways, all of that from getting 16 of the smartest authors in one room and learning like what's working in book marketing and launches and everything else.
Okay. Before though, before we go into that, be honest. We're going to tell, we're going to tell everybody who came, right? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, it's on Instagram.
Okay.
Yeah. Be honest. Who did you fanboy over? Or in fangirl over? Who is your one person that you fanboyed, fangirled over?
I would say Will Guidara. Unreasonable Hospitality is such a good book. And he also, we did an episode on the show. He was fantastic. His business partner, Brian, uh, came to, uh, to the podcast as well. And they have great energy and their stories are so good. And just the experience they've created for so many people running like the best restaurants in the world. That was pretty great. Another fun moment, you can talk about this more, was the hotel staff, like, fanboying over the fact that the, like, number one person in hospitality is staying at their hotel.
The concierge. She was like, what do you do? How did you get him to come here? Like, what do you do? But yeah, they really loved that. It's required reading for every single person at this hotel. It was required reading for them to read.
Yeah. To read Unbelievable Hospitality and then just waltzing in one day to stay at their hotel.
Yeah, she was just like, you must have the coolest job in the world. But yeah, that was funny.
Yeah, that's awesome.
It was fun watching him watch everything too. You know, it's like he can't, I don't think he can't turn it off, you know?
I'm sure, yeah. He was just like a pure, pure joy. Yeah, it was great. Okay, Chelsea, I know yours now. I wanna see what you got.
You do know mine. Mine was James Clear. Who co-hosted the event with us. James, it was actually funny, my LinkedIn banner was a quote from James forever, and then I changed it this week because I felt like—
Right before the event?
I was like, oh my gosh.
Right before you met him? I was like, I don't want to be a clear fangirl.
What was the quote?
Right before the event, it was that you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.
Oh yeah.
Which if you know me, systems.
It feels very much like you.
Very on brand for me.
Accurate, I like it.
So yeah. James got me back into reading after finishing a couple degrees and I was over books and Atomic Habits came out and kind of reignited that habit for me. So that was exciting.
I like it.
What about you?
I've met her before. I had met her before, but I'd probably say Jen Hatmaker because I read, I mean, I listened, let's be honest, but I listened to her book For the Love and she just has a very iconic voice too. And then her newest book that just came out, which is called Awake, was just wonderful. And spending more quality time with her was really fun because I've just, I've been a consumer of her content, if you will, for a really long time. And so I'd probably say Jenn Hatmaker. The other thing is that I love about her in particular is she kept saying, she has words that she says like tickled. You know, I'm just tickled about that. You know, and like I have found myself— another one she said today, I said it on 3 calls today. I said, "Yeah, I'll noodle on that." And that's because she said that multiple times and I was like, "I'm taking that. I'm taking that." So I feel like I'll just pick up anything that she says, but probably Jen Hatmaker.
Yeah, there were so many good people.
Yeah, there were.
One thing that was fun about the format is on— well, we did dinner, a happy hour dinner and all of that the night before, basically just let people get to know each other, ease into the group because I think A bunch of people said like, I actually don't know that many of these people, which is interesting. We knew many of them already. Yeah. I mean, we, we and James invited everybody and so, um, you know, I felt like, okay, I know most all of these people, but a lot of people were like, I'm going in knowing very few people. Um, so just let everyone get to know each other. All of that is a great group. And then on the morning of the first real day, the thing we kicked off with was everyone sharing one tip or strategy, something that's been working well for them. And it just immediately got, you know, all these people talking about things at a very high level. And you're like, okay, wow, the brainpower in this room and the accomplishments are pretty great. So I thought we'd kick it off just sharing a few of the things that stood out to us, uh, that was shared in the group.
Are you going to kick it up? Kick us off?
You want me to go first? Yeah.
Yeah. Kick us off.
All right. Uh, one. That stood out. So there's a couple people who have very large Instagram accounts, like million, uh, many million follower accounts. And it was interesting hearing them talk about how they use trial reels on Instagram to reach new audiences because it very— you know, for everyone who doesn't know, the trial reel is Instagram taking something and saying, we're not showing it to any of your existing followers, we'll put out only to, uh, new followers. And I think people, you know, might be like, oh, I'll do one of those a week or something. But these top accounts were like, look, we've kind of saturated our existing followers. We're actually getting shown to our same followers a lot. So if we wanna grow more, we have to go outside that. And so they're posting really a lot of content to trial reels. And then they were saying they don't repost it. So if it does really well reaching this new audience, they don't press the button to convert it to the main feed. They leave it running over there. In trial reels, and they post a slightly different version, uh, to the main feed. And that way they get the benefit of those two posts, and the audiences will never cross, which I thought was really interesting. Instagram won't show the same thing. Um, I guess if it did, you should be like, oh, I've seen this video before.
What's interesting though about this particular one is that I actually feel like we got in the— just for the format, for the sake of the format, one person would say a thing that was working for them, and then if people wanted to jump in, they could be like, oh, I've had a similar experience, or Or if we wanted to dig into that particular thing and ask questions, people would ask questions. And so for this one, some people did repost it to their feed after it did really well and some people did not. But I thought that just for sake of, you know, setting the stage, we did dig into some of these things.
Yeah. Sometimes people would share for a minute or two and be like, oh, that's interesting. People take notes.
Yeah.
And other times it turned into a 15-minute discussion.
Yeah.
Of people building on it and say, oh, I love that. Here's the version that I do.
Mhm. Yeah.
What about you, Haley? What was one of yours?
Ooh, probably, you know, I think this is interesting because obviously we work at Kit or own Kit, some of us, some of us in the room. Anyways, um, we have forever, we have talked about the use of opt-in incentives to grow your list. Um, and one of the folks in the room completely kind of threw that to the side and they now do what they call tiny offers. And so rather than giving away free incentives to grow their, their list, they're— and I'm not saying that they're not 100%, like every single one of their opt-in incentives is gone, but they are doing tiny offers. And so it's like $59 or $47, um, for a really, really high-value incentive. And then they're using that to further convert high-ticket offers. And so it shows— it's a, it's a show of extreme high intent if they're willing to spend $47. Um, and I thought that was really interesting because I hadn't heard of anyone doing that. Um, I hadn't heard of anyone doing that quite as prolific as they were doing it.
Yeah, it kind of split the room because I feel like a bunch of people heard that and were like, oh yeah, of course. And they had their version of it where they were like, charge early, it gets to this smaller but very targeted audience. And then the other half of the room was like, I'm sorry, what? Lead magnets are out? And like, yeah, you know, obviously it depends on what you're building towards. The person who was sharing it originally, they've moved from like a low, like a more of a beginner audience to like serving a much more advanced audience. And so they've had to like recalibrate.
So their lowest ticket item, I think, is like $6,500.
Mm-hmm. For their main offer.
Yeah. For their main offer. And so this is an incentive into that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then in their ads, they're able to recoup a bunch of their ad spend on this, like, 50 or $100 tiny offer. Um, and I thought that was, that was really interesting.
Um, well, you have a book coming out. That was one of the most exciting things for me being in the room as somebody that is helping with that strategy and everything that we're going to do to launch that. Um, I think one of the things that was interesting is being really intentional about how you're asking people to promote your book and making it as easy for them as possible. People are busy, you know, you're not just sending a whole book and say, here, to whoever, you know, will you read my book? It's, you know, having them opt in. Yes, I want, or, you know, I would like to read your book or sending them specific sections for what makes the most sense for them. And yeah, just trying to make sure you curate a team that's really gonna support you and give you the feedback that you need.
The two things that I think were really tactical about this particular one was, doing unscalable tactics and then having a really strong street team.
Yeah.
And so the unscalable tactics component of this was writing letters to every single person or like a handful of people.
Yep.
Very Will Goddara-like, you know, like unscalable tactics. Yeah, right. Going above and beyond and then highlighting individual chapters or parts in a specific chapter that was specific to the person that you were sending it to. And so I'll just make up an example here, I guess. Us is, um, Sahil Bloom's book The Five Types of Wealth. He has, um, a chapter of like for parents, you know, and so if that particular person was in that season of life, he might highlight that particular chapter and then put in, you know, like a sticky note or something along those lines. And that was a very unscalable tactic, um, and so that was one that came from that, I think. And then the other one was, um, a strong street team.
Yeah.
You know, and there were several people, you know, everybody—
Seemed like pretty much everybody.
Everybody there was a New York Times bestseller?
Just about.
Just about?
Yeah.
Most, most people. And so the street team was a huge strong component, like part of that.
And they developed those teams early on. Like that was, you know, we're taking all these notes for my book launch coming up and it's like, okay.
Yeah.
They had people by city and they had all of these different things and then very specific asks of what they wanted their street team to do. But, um, building on the, the example from Sahil, which he's talked about this publicly, so I feel totally fine, fine sharing it. But he talks about how important it is to have visuals in the book that can be shared easily on Instagram or wherever else. And so he would specifically have somebody who was sending out the book to— everyone was saying basically send lots of, like, give away lots of copies of your book, but make sure to do it to people who opted in. So don't just like mass email or mass mail to the PR address for our creator. Like it has to be, hey, would you read this? But then what Sahil would do is he'd find something like in his book, he has this graph of time spent with your children by age and how like you spend tons of time with your kids when they're little and then it really drops off. And so all the parents, you know, that's what was highlighted. And the specific ask was like, read this and if you enjoy it, will you share this? And so often it'd be those photos that got shared. And a bunch of other authors, you'd get some version of, um, I did that as well. Like, my book is very visual and that worked super well. And then other authors being like, yep, about 6 months after publishing, I was like, oh, I should have made a book that was much easier to share a snippet of or much more visual.
Yeah. Um, this is not something that was shared, but I did just think about it and I think it's a great idea.
Go ahead.
I can't wait. My friend Hannah, who I actually met through the Creator Leaders group. She did all of the drawings for Cody Sanchez's book, Main Street Millionaire, and she has a very large audience. And so when you think about your street team, like, how easy would it be for you to go out and create those drawings or visuals in your book using AI now? But AI doesn't have an audience. Hannah does have an audience. And so she actually didn't have the capacity to do all of the drawings in the short amount of time. I actually loved it. She told this story on LinkedIn recently about how Cody had DM'd her in Hannah on Instagram and was like, I love, I love your work and I'd love to include you in my book. And she responded and she was like, there's no possible way that I could do this in the amount of time. And Codie responded and said some version of what would have to be true for you to prioritize this project? And so Hannah went out and she found like 5 different collaborators that did very similar work that she did. And so, but collectively across, you know, set what the 5 of them, they had an audience of well over a million. And so they were all then sharing Codie's book, you know, the animations and the drawings in Cody's book. And so that's just like, you could consider her part of Cody's street team, you know, because she was obviously a part of the book.
But yeah, one that stood out to me is how deliberately people think about Instagram stories.
Oh yeah, that was an interesting one.
Like, I, I just do some things and I post some stories and I'm like, oh, this should probably be on stories. Really, the rest of you harass me about like, I can't believe you went to this event and didn't post anything about it on stories. Yeah, it's actually a sarcastic remark. It's like, oh, you finally posted on stories, good job. Um, Justin's Patreon.
Sounds right.
Yeah. But everyone was saying, basically people with these huge accounts, like 1 million to 5 million followers, they don't post like just as things happen. They pump— they mostly post sets of 3 stories. And basically their reasoning was, if some— if someone— if you're going to pop up in someone's stories list, you want them to interact with each of the stories. And if you get to, you know, 5 or 10 or And I do this too. You see someone who posted 17 stories in a row and you're like, skip.
Yeah.
Because you're like, there might be good stuff in there. So they will post 3 stories and then nothing for 24 hours and then 3 stories again. And so it's like this package thing that's showing up every 24 to 36 hours rather than a constant drip of here's what's going on in my life.
Sticking on the Instagram theme, one of our guests had a very viral and like public experience on TV. And so they had a clip that's 12— from 12 years ago that still gets millions and millions of views, and it's pinned, uh, to their Instagram, like, page. And I thought that was really interesting because a lot of people are moving so fast with the time. And so that clip, or iterations of that clip, still today in 2025, 12, 15 years later, still draws, um, attention at the same rate that it did when it actually happened. And so don't be afraid of leveraging old content, which everybody talks about, like leveraging and repurposing content, but like 12 years, that's a long time. Right. Um, but that is really the first step into like, or first kind of open gate into her content for a lot of people. So yeah, I thought that was really interesting. Are we posting things? Are we something Chelsea can Nathan post?
I don't know if people would recognize 12 years ago Nathan.
I was 4. 100%.
Um, but there was a lot of conversations about repurposing content. Yeah.
Don't make things harder on yourself than you need to be, figure out ways to, you know, create that flywheel of using content. Yeah.
That, that came up a lot.
Yeah.
And actually looking at the library of all your past talks, um, and saying like, you have a ton of material here posted a bunch of different ways. One thing that stood out to me about a few of the TV appearances that people talked about is they would make another video about something else and use a clip as B-roll or a hook or something from the TV appearance, cuz it gave instant credibility.
Oh yeah.
And then they'd go on to make their separate point. And so when you see, you know, like, oh, here's this national TV appearance, and then you can make content about whatever you want, um, you're like, oh, I mean, from an Instagram perspective, it's like, okay, what's your title hook? What's your visual hook? And it's like, well, that is a pretty good visual hook of you on national television.
Yeah, yeah. Okay, still sticking to this Instagram theme because I think this is, is relevant to the conversation, uh, we talked about trial reels being a good testing ground. But several people, which I thought was really interesting, and this is again one where the room was totally split, but several people talked about instead of posting or testing content in trial reels, they were testing content in TikTok. And then if it did well on TikTok, then they would move it over to Instagram. So they weren't even messing around or playing with trial reels. I'm sure following these conversations, they absolutely will. Um, but several of them that were not playing around with TikTok are going to start testing the ground and sharing that content on TikTok, see how well it does there. And then move it over to Instagram, which is where they certainly feel like is a, um, their deeper audience lives and exists on Instagram, but access to new audiences, obviously. And it's just, they said, I think they said it was like a good testing ground for virality. Yeah.
And just the quality of the idea and the packaging and the delivery and all of that.
Mm-hmm.
And I think, cuz on TikTok, what people find is they can just post as much as you want. It feels like much more of a I was gonna say a slot machine, and it is in that sense of like put it out there and see what happens, but like a very, uh, like merit-based. It's just like, how good does this stand on its own?
Mm-hmm.
Whereas often if you're posting to Instagram or somewhere else, it's like, how much does my audience already like this and resonate with it?
I was thinking about the idea of a book launch too, and we've been talking about like a podcast tour for you and what it's gonna look like to do, you know, however many. And someone was talking about their 15-minute podcast.
Oh, this was a very good idea.
I thought that was really good as well. Um, so they were saying basically instead of doing these hour-long whole podcasts where you say the same thing over, you tell your whole story over and over, they're 15-minute appearances. You block them in a couple days. You tell the people what you're going to talk about, what questions to ask me, And then you just have a really snappy 15-minute conversation and you're able to get through the points that you need to and be on all these appearances without spending 60 hours in.
What was interesting about this one was how, how in, um, how the audience took like essentially the rules, how they followed the rules. And so the rules were you have 15 minutes, there's no fluff, there's no like chit-chat in the beginning, and here's exactly what you're talking about. And, uh, they said that, you know, the, the podcaster or whatever, whoever it was. And also what's important to note on this one is they were micro creators. Yeah. And so they were people that had smaller audiences. So they actually went out to their audience. They said, we are going to be doing this book launch and we'd love to have these small micro appearances on your podcast. And so they were super excited because they normally wouldn't have had access to someone like this.
Right.
And so rather than capitalizing on one large audience, they spread their time over several small audiences, which I thought was a really smart idea and really activated the street team. Um, it was just like one additional tactic on, on like leveraging those micro creators because they're strong in numbers. Yeah.
Well, I thought it was so clever. Uh, first making the appearance on the podcast an incentive. So that was the street team. And it was like, in most cases it was, hey, if you sell at least 10 copies of the book or 20, something like that.
Yeah.
There's a criteria. Then you're eligible to be selected to have the author appear on your podcast. Doesn't matter how big your podcast is. It's like this reach. And so then people would apply, you know, meet the threshold and then apply and then they get selected. It's like, oh wow, I, this person that I love their content, I've learned so much from them. Uh, I now get to interview them on my show and there'll be credibility that I have forever. So that was one thing that was really clever, you know, being able to use it as a reward. The other thing that I thought was clever is the way they packaged it of like teaching people how to make this a great episode. Because like if I did it, it's like, okay, great. There's now 20 15-minute interviews with Nathan Barry. Like, okay, why are these little things scattered around? But what they, you know, what the team said is you can add your commentary the lessons you've learned from this author, and you can interweave the actual interview with the author.
Mm-hmm.
So you can tee it up, don't ask background questions or all that. Like you can say that and then you put in the, the 15 minutes with the author and then yeah, you know, 3 minutes of takeaway. Now you've got a, a full 30-minute episode that's uniquely yours and you know, not the copycat of, we've all heard the authors on the podcast where they just hit the exact same talking points over and over again.
Yeah.
And this made something unique.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay, let's take a pause really quick.
Okay.
And let's lean into a little bit of a debate. And I would love for you to put in the comments wherever you're watching, Instagram, who knows what this is going to become, but put in the comments what your vote is. Okay? This is because the next thing we're going to talk about is audiobook strategy, right? So here's the debate. This is an internal debate that we have, and I love to ask people about it because we all have varying different opinions. Let's say that you listen to a book. Do you say that you read the book? Or is that, I listened to the book? So if you listen to a book on audiobook, does it count as reading it? So if someone says, have you read A Court of Thorn and Roses? We'll stick to fairy smut. Have you read ACOTAR? Are you going to say— actually, we'll stick to one that's true for Nathan. Nathan, have you read Fourth Wing?
I have, and I have read it, not listened to it.
Okay. Okay. Chelsea, Have you read Fourth Wing?
I have not.
Oh gosh, you know the answer's wrong with you.
I know.
Um, okay, so, but as an example, right?
But as an example, yeah, um, with Unreasonable Hospitality, I would say I have read Unreasonable Hospitality, but you haven't. But there's people on your team who'd be like, nope, you listen to it, it does not count. I'm like, I consume the information, what more do you want from me?
So please vote in the comments.
Does listening count as reading?
Does listening count as reading?
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Moving on to the valuable part of this is one of the participants. I thought this was really interesting because their book outsells their audiobook, outsells the physical book, which is becoming digital, outsells Kindle, hardcover, and paperback. Yes. Which is becoming increasingly more common.
Yeah. All these people aren't actually reading books.
Yeah. Well, with me.
Sorry, did I bias the vote right there?
But what made this one more interesting is there are guests, we'll say, that come in and actually provide, like, like read a section of the book. And so I thought that was really interesting. But because she's— they're looping in more people into the audience.
So the example was doing a memoir. Yes. And then, you know, you're telling your stories and all this and you're reading it, but then having people, like the actual humans who played a part in that story, go and read their section.
Mm-hmm.
And that making it like this, uh, you know, three-dimensional audio experience in that way. They also mentioned that it took a few more takes, you know, for someone who has not done like 100 podcast episodes or more and, you know, to deliver it well.
Yeah.
But just, but thinking through this, I, Admit that I am a listener of books. Okay. Actually, that's not true. I whisper sync, so I go back and forth, but I'll say 90%.
You only do that so that you can't guess I read it.
Exactly. 90% of it I am consuming through my ears, not through my eyes. But I think that's an interesting component because I think that's going to become more and more, more and more common. And so, you know, everybody there was very interested in that part for that particular guest. They were all very interested in that because that was a huge component of their strategy of what had made their last book so successful. Yeah.
And I think we're seeing more people make unique audio experiences.
Yeah.
Um, this came up at a, at a dinner conversation, a smaller group, but people were talking about how important it is, they believe, for the author to read the book themselves.
Yeah.
Like you're gonna get, you know, 6 or 8 hours or whatever of the words come through. It should be in your voice as well.
What if they have a really odd voice?
Is this your way of telling me that I shouldn't read my own audiobook?
I was trying to find the right segue into this, and here we are.
So, okay, well, this is, this is a real thing though, because once upon a time I did a couple of episodes of a podcast for a project that I worked on at Kit called Creator Sessions, right? And so we did a podcast version of this like YouTube show. And I remember nobody likes to hear their voice. It's kind of gross. Nobody likes to hear it. In fact, I, I just heard Dermot Kennedy, who's my favorite artist, his new album just came out, Way to the Woods, FYI, but he just he— I just heard him say that he never, ever, ever listens to his music. He can only listen to him doing a cover. That's the only thing that he can listen to him doing. But everybody hates the sound of their voice, right? All that to say, I listened to this podcast episode and I was like, oh my gosh, I kind of like the way that I sound. And I was like, I was like, did you guys like doctor this at all? And he's like, yeah, obviously. And I was like, oh shit. Yeah. Really?
You could have just give that to me and just say no.
Yeah.
And I was like, for the first time ever in my life, I liked the way I sounded. Yeah. And it's because it wasn't how I sounded.
I feel like the only two acceptable ways to answer that question are no, not at all.
Yeah.
And yeah, we did a little bit and here's exactly what you can do in the future to recreate it.
Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
But yeah, obviously is—
Yeah.
A little harsh.
Ego shattering.
Yeah.
Ego-shattering.
Yeah.
So anyways.
Let's go to, we can jump around to tactics and all of that, but I want to go to what's something that you've heard someone do of like, could be a level of preparation or attention to detail, all of that, that you're like, oh wow. Like basically we'll call this segment, there are levels to this game.
There are levels to this game. Okay. This was actually probably one of my most, my favorite conversations that we dug into and the reason why I knew it was good and I knew that everybody loved this conversation because this was kind of during someone's hot seat and then someone made this suggestion and then the entire hot seat was commandeered like by these parts. They were like digging in, asking a million questions. Now I think like 6 of the guests, 6 or 7 of the guests had been on Diary of a CEO.
Yeah. Or Mel Robbins or like, like some really big time podcasts.
And so the particular conversation was centered around the amount of preparation that goes into preparing to be a guest on a podcast. But more importantly, the difference, the amount of, how would we say it, the variance of things that the stories that they tell across the different podcasts that they go on. So for example, a lot of times, and we know this to be true now, Nathan, not to put you on blast here, but like I've heard I've heard your same stories. We've worked together for a long time, but I've heard them a lot. And sometimes you get into the habit. It's easy to get into the habit of saying the same story on every podcast that you go onto. So this particular guest was saying only 20% of her content is the same. 20%.
And the other 80% is unique to that show and has been prepped.
And they prep it. Extreme, extreme prep in an effort to make it essentially like, is this a viral clip? And it's practiced and it was like, what, 80 hours of preparation?
Is what I think was between 60 and 100 hours depending on the show.
Preparation for a podcast appearance. So that—
How many hours did we prep for this one?
For this podcast?
Uh, hours.
Approximately 6 minutes.
It'd be in decimals. That's why we have our laptops with us.
Um, yeah.
But it was just this moment where I was like, oh, and you could see like half the room was like, like, there are levels to this.
Yeah.
And these are, like, podcast appearances that have done millions of views.
Yes.
And so you're like, oh wow. And so then this woman who we won't name specifically, though I don't think she would mind, but she was basically saying, yeah, and I know how to tell every one of my stories with a different hook specifically. And, you know, and she just rattled off, she's like, oh yeah, hooks are easy. She rattles them off and everyone's like, hold on. They're like writing down all of her hooks.
There was one that I loved though. That it took 6 times. She went on 6 different podcast episodes. It was never used in a clip and it was always edited out. But she kept trying to make that one a thing. And so finally it was the 6th time and it turned into be like one of the most viral clips that, that has been shared across any of the podcast episodes. And I loved that because it was like she didn't, she didn't give up. She's like, I know this is going to hit.
It was like a comedian working their material at all the little you know, comedy clubs and then be like, okay, that's the way that I tell it that works.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think, you know, we can talk about this, but because so many of them had been on Diary of a CEO, many of them talked about that experience. Right. And so those episodes during the recording are 4 hours, 6 hours, 4 and a half hours.
I think it was 3 to 4 hours.
Yeah.
And so, you know, there's often times for you to like, they're obviously editing it down and they're trying to, you know, make the most viral and compelling and easy to listen to episode. Uh, and so they had a lot of times to practice that particular clip.
But well, that was the other thing that I, I assumed, that they just sat down, had a long conversation that was really well researched, and that got to Good Stories and that, that spread.
Yeah.
What we learned is a lot of these top shows are recorded for the clips.
Yes.
So they've gone through the back catalog of everything you've put out on social. What are the most viral things you've ever said over the last 5 years?
Yeah.
And then it's not even they try weave the conversation to get to that story. They just ask you the question.
Mm-hmm.
They just tee it up.
They have magic editors.
They just tee it up so that you deliver your viral clip and they tee it up for another one. And I was like, oh, that's—
I mean, are we surprised by this? We like know Grace, our friend Grace Miller, who Nathan obviously just had his episode come out. She's the director of experimentation and failure for Diary of a CEO. So this doesn't surprise me in any way, shape, or form, but I think that it's like a conversation. I thought that was a really, really interesting— I just, I wouldn't have guessed. Yeah, I wouldn't have guessed.
So it's not just as a guest prepping to be on shows, but as a host doing your research to know how you're going to get—
someone said this to me, I actually don't even know if this was at the event, honestly, but someone was like, if it feels like magic, it's probably magic, right? It's like they're not sitting down and just having this naturally free-flowing conversation. There was so much preparation that went into it. And so it might feel like it was just a viral clip that went because, you know, but it was practiced meticulously. And I thought that was really interesting because level of preparation that's like Kobe Bryant level preparation. Yeah. And, um, they're going viral for a reason because they're practicing their craft.
Well, and that's the thing of realizing, oh, these people aren't just naturally good on camera or like you're gifted and charismatic. It's like, no, you have refined this and you have practiced it over and over again to a level beyond probably like 5 times. I would've assumed that someone's doing like 15 to 20 hours of prep for the most important podcasts they're going on. It's like, nope, 80 hours.
Where would you find 80 hours? Chelsea's like, can you confirm he does not have 80 hours? Absolutely not. He does not have 80 hours. Unless this is while you're flying or something, you know, and his like plane is flying itself, you know, and then turn on the autopilot and then just rehearse your hooks. Exactly. Exactly.
My favorite thing when this person was rattling off their hooks hooks. She said one and everyone was like, blah, blah, blah, here's the, you know, and then everyone was like waiting for the story. Oh, cause we're all, we're all like, and what happened? Oh, that was, that was you. And she's like, no, that's just a framework for a hook that you can use.
Yeah.
There's no story to follow.
Flawless execution there.
Flawless. Okay. What other moments or stories when you realize like, oh, people are playing on a different level than what I expected?
This one might be kind of the opposite, actually, of what it is that we're talking about, which I thought was really interesting. I kind of want to expose this person, but I feel like it's a great— I think it's a great comparison. Like, you know, it's— yeah, it's soft and dark, whatever. What's the—
Soft and dark? Those are not opposites. No, no.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think a good opposite to that is, and I'm going to expose who this one came from, is our friend Jefferson Fisher. Because Jefferson Fisher's stuff in a lot of like his, his growth on Instagram and social media has been insane. Yeah.
0 to 5 million.
No, he has 6.2.
Well, but 0 to 5 million in 2 years.
Yeah, it's insane. And he's obviously come on your podcast. And I've had the chance to, you know, go— I invited myself to dinner with him last time and I was very excited about it. But Jefferson is exactly who he is in person as he is online. And I think the thing that makes him so compelling is that he is not putting on any show and people can kind of feel that, right? He's, he, I actually, he said, He said, I'm different from y'all. He said, I talk slow, I think slow. And, and, and he said that. And I was like, I was like, oh my gosh, I'm obsessed with you. Yeah. But all that to say, that was just a vast— it was, it was, it was very different from other people's. And that is what his secret sauce actually is. It's, you know, it's, it's the, the fact that it's in his car, it's underproduced. And so sometimes you just find what the magic is for you, and that's what ends up working for you. And so sometimes people would be digging into this, like, deep, deep, deep, you know, like, work. And Jefferson's like, I'm just talking in my car. Yeah.
You know, I'm just, you know, and he, he says that and it's totally true. But also, speaking of levels to this game, right?
Yeah.
As a trial attorney, he has done thousands and thousands of hours. In very high-stakes environments in a courtroom.
Yes.
Yeah. You know, convincing 12 people that they need to side with his client or, you know, whatever that is. And so you often see people who are very good, who had very important skills in one area and then translate to the creator world and they, they come in at the top of the game. Um, but it was interesting. There was another creator that I thought was interesting who doesn't have social on their phone. Like at all. And it's like, wait, but you post all the time.
Mm-hmm.
And they were like, uh, I, yes, I do post all the time, or my account posts all the time. And they record all the videos and they just record a video, send to their team and say like, this is a story. This, and basically talking about how at that, you know, half a million plus followers, there's interesting things happening on social all the time. It's not just even that you're scrolling other people's feeds, it's like the comments and the interactions and the famous people following you. On your own feed can draw you back in every like 2 or 3 minutes. And they're like, it's honestly not a great way to live. And so I interact with it on like a weekly basis.
Yeah. This person was protecting their mental health. Like really, they were protecting their, their space, their mindset. And it's funny because then there were other creators in the room that were like, I've posted, I've edited, I post, I do absolutely everything. I engage with every comment.
I was surprised by that.
Same. Um, and I loved it. I love both versions of it, to be honest. The point is, is that they, they all know what works, what works for them. And I could be wrong, but you'll have to remind me if this is actually true. I feel like we can say this person's name, but maybe you told me this. James Clear for a long time had his assistant have his password to social media. Is this right?
He said this on stage at Craft and Commerce, I believe.
Okay. Okay. Where? So we can't talk about it.
Yep. Yep. Um, where during the work week. His assistant changes his social media passwords and then doesn't give him his passwords back until he completes his workout.
Taking notes.
Change Nathan's passwords.
That's so good.
That's so good. But yeah, I did think it was interesting how many people that have millions of followers or, you know, somewhere in there are like, no, I'm the one posting, writing, editing, all of it. They are doing it. And you'd be amazed at how much that that doesn't happen. So that was really cool to hear.
Okay. What about the fun AI things that people are doing? Because that's like, obviously everybody's talking about it, right? AI, should we talk about it? I don't know. I feel like we could. Yeah. Okay. What about the fun AI things that people are doing?
One that I liked was someone was saying they had an almost like an AI checkpoint.
Oh yeah.
Where it was basically like, here's, here's how I want to show up in the world. Uh, these are my values, these are— this is my writing style and all of this. And so everything they would post, they would, you know, go and ask Claude in this custom project, like, does this match how I wanna show up in the world? And be like, yep, totally, except for these two things.
Mm-hmm.
You know, you told me you wanna incorporate those. And it's like, oh right, okay, let me go out and do it. And so many people use generative AI to generate things, but I thought it was such an interesting aspect to have, you know, sort of the checkpoint and like answer the question, am I showing up authentically in line with how I said I want to show up?
Yeah, because then it would come back and it would say, you say that you want to show up in this way, and then it would give you actually feedback on how that does not— how you're not showing up in the way that you said that you wanted to.
And I do a version of that where, you know, if you, if you ask AI, is this good? It'll be like, yeah, it's so good, great job, you're the best writer. It's so complimentary. And you're like, I am the best writer. Wow.
Wow.
But then if You say, hey, what are the logical fallacies or like the flaws in my argument? It'll be like, oh, well actually, you know, and it'll just then tear apart your writing and you're just like, oh, I feel terrible now.
Yeah.
But it's so good to get that feedback.
Mm-hmm.
Because then you become a better writer, better communicator. Mm-hmm. It will spread and reach more people. And so I love that idea of a, a checkpoint or using it for very critical feedback.
And this person does have a team too, or suggested that you could use this for your team too, to make sure that they're running it too, if they're writing any copy for you.
Something else I thought was really interesting was how many of these authors leverage speaking into their monetization strategy. But specifically, what was really interesting about this is the various different rates that people charge for speaking and the psychology that goes into setting your speaking rates.
And so, um, and the range was something like $20,000 to $250,000 per talk. Exactly. And so you had the whole range. There were a lot in the call it $50,000 to $100,000. That was probably where the bell curve averaged out.
Yeah. And so there were several people that were like, oh, I'm worried about going up to that next tier. Right. And so I think we can say who said this one, but this one came from James Clear. And you could imagine that he warrants a pretty high speaking fee. And what he said that he did, which I loved this, is that he would do 5 speaking engagements at a specific rate and then he would raise it and then 5 engagements at the next rate and then raise it. And so he just continued to set that bar to see where he basically, what is his ceiling?
Just price testing and just like, yeah, let's find out. And so he figured out what his ceiling was and he tried to raise it and it, it, he got fewer bookings and he was like, oh, all right. Yeah. And it, when that came up, people were like, but if I do that, I won't get, you know, if I raise my rates, people won't book me anymore. And this is like a, a key part of my income and how I grew my audience. And he was like, then you just bring your rate back down slightly.
Uh-huh.
And he, you know, but then you also, you figure out where your rate was, should be, right? Yeah. And I think what's interesting too is like, let's, let's be candid about this, right? There were a couple of people, if we're, if we're saying there's 3 tiers, there are people in the room that are tier 1 and we'll call tier 1, you know, $50,000 to $80,000 or $50,000 to $100,000. And then there were people in the room that were like $100,000 to $175,000. And then there were people in the room that were $175,000 5 and above, right? And so they were basically saying is you're trying to go from tier 1 to tier 2 to tier 3. And so they didn't want to move up from tier 2 to tier 3 because then they're competing with the people in tier 3.
Right.
And so it was a really interesting, like, the psychology of it, you know, is they're saying, well, I don't want to move into that tier because then I become Mel Robbins tier.
Right.
And then I'm competing against—
Someone's trying to decide, well, if I'm going to pay that much money, then I might as well book. Exactly. Robbins or a James Clear or someone like that.
Yeah. All that to say, it was very interesting because everybody in that room really could probably demand a tier 3 rate, but the psychology of them thinking that they couldn't is what really limited them from getting that rate.
And I've heard that, you know, if you hear people talk about like, oh, charge more, you're worth more than that, everything else, it's like you get into mindset and all of these things. And James's solution was so simple because he's like, like, give every 5 talks, raise your, raise your price by $5,000.
Yeah.
You know, or whatever the number is for you. And you're like, oh yeah.
And he said that ahead of time, so he wasn't thinking about it in the moment of questioning.
And so even when he was— yeah, in the moment when he's like, oh, maybe I, I don't know if I'm worth this, or will I get more gigs? He's like, no, I made an agreement with myself that I would raise it, and if I don't get any gigs in the next 3 months, then I'll drop it slightly.
I mean, we, we've talked about this, but like, I just got my first paid speaking gig, and I still can't believe that they paid me.
Can we talk about how much they paid you? No, no.
We can talk about the fact that I'm officially a higher paid speaker than Nathan Barry.
That's true.
Let's talk about that.
I was like, that's— no one's ever paid me that much to speak.
Yeah, but, but it's— my point is, is that I don't have a huge social media following and I was not speaking on behalf of Kit. I was speaking on a totally separate topic. And so for somebody like me, I have no audience, no meaningful audience, right? Outside of my relationship with Kit, I guess. and I was— and no website, and I was able to land a pretty decent speaking rate, honestly. And so I'm still surprised by that. And so the psychology of that in my mind, I'm like, if I can get this, you can get 10 times that.
Yeah. I think another angle to talk about is just a few of the people in the room who were really impressive. Um, one person is Madeline McIntosh, who is the CEO and founder of Author's Equity. So she and James, you know, have co-founded Author's Equity together, which is this new publisher. And they really have the perfect blend between self-publishing and traditional publishing and all of that. And I knew she was impressive. Like, I've talked to her a good amount because Author's Equity is publishing my book. It's just, you realize there's levels to it where like, oh, she was the CEO of Penguin Random House US. So it's like, wait, you actually got to the top of of one of, if not the largest publishers in the, in the United States, and then said, oh, I can't change it from the inside, I'm gonna leave and start my own public, you know, and change from the outside.
Yeah, yeah.
And there was this other moment where someone, you know, they're asking all these questions about like, oh, well, you have— how do you get distribution? And they're like, well, it's through, you know, Simon Schuster provides our distribution into all these physical retailers. And someone's like, well, what if Simon Schuster sells and that deal goes away? And she was just like, well, I'm on the board of Simon Schuster, so, you know, you're like, oh, there's Okay.
Yeah, I think I actually want to change my fangirl answer. I didn't know going into it that Madelyn was going to be who I was most excited about. Yeah. And she's incredible. So I think leaving it, I was so impressed by her.
Yeah. You want to talk about my worst nightmare with Madelyn? I'll tell you.
Let's do it. You brought it up.
Okay, fair. I've never— I would say I don't make mistakes like this. I haven't made a big mistake like this in a long time. And We had very limited time. I'm getting nervous just thinking about it. We had very limited time to record an episode with Nathan and James and Madeline.
Yeah.
And now I'm dangerous with video equipment, we'll say. I'm da— meaning like I know my way around, I can put something together, but it's not my full-time job sort of thing. And I don't do that professionally, right? I'm a little out of practice in that I've done this on the road before. All that to say, Nathan Barry and James Barry and Madeline Barry, they're 25 minutes into a really great—
the future of publishing, you know, conversation. So good.
Like, I mean, they're really good. And I look down at the Zoom recorder and I see that there is not a red light blinking.
We're not recording audio. I—
my nervous system has never been so stressed out. And I was like, I'm going to have to interrupt. Nathan Barry.
Well, so like James has to get to the airport.
James has to get—
we're on a very tight timeline.
We're on a tight timeline. I'm going to have to interrupt this. And I'm like thinking, I'm like, Haley, you're going to interrupt Madeline and James Clear and Nathan's finally recording with them.
All right.
You're going to keep it cool. You're going to keep it cool. And I just, I was like, hey team. And I've never been so mortified in my entire life. Now I knew it wasn't recording. And both Nathan and— Nathan's like, I've got the backup audio on my phone. And I was like, no, No, you don't. Nope. We're sorry, guys. We're starting over. And James is like, just test the audio. In my brain, I'm like, okay, I'll just test it.
You were very calm, cool, collected about it. Like, I would not have known that you were dying inside.
It was the most mortifying thing that has happened to me in a very, very long time. I don't— not one that you want to screw up.
Yeah, that was, uh, that was a rough one. It was, you know, we had enough time to record. We were definitely cutting it close and then starting over 20 minutes or 25 minutes in. We tightened it up a little bit.
Yeah.
And then I think James is like, don't worry about it. I like to get out of the car at the airport and just walk straight and not have to pause at all. Yeah. You know, I don't want to have to wait in line and all of that. I don't want to sit at the gate. So, and he texted later, you know, he's like, What did he text? It was like 3 things. He's like, uh, made it on the plane. That was a fantastic event. Tell Haley, don't worry about the issues. Like that happens. And it had the perfect moment where I walked straight through security. I walked straight onto the plane. Like I only had to pause briefly as I walked.
Yeah. Um, I, I listened back to the audio today and I, I, I couldn't even listen to it because it gave me hives thinking about it. I was like, I can't hear myself. I can't hear myself. Oh God. It was so bad.
So stressful.
Yeah.
So stressful.
On that note, James was lovely.
Both of them were so lovely and passionate or like compassionate about it.
And we're just like, it's fine. Don't worry. And also the entire group was, the entire group was so nice and just like really wonderful people.
Uh, okay. There was another funny moment.
Oh no.
Where?
Probably with Haley.
I'm sure.
Was it me?
What did I do?
Well, there was the time when you knocked over the wine glass. It falls on the, like, granite countertop, makes so much noise, and somehow it doesn't break.
It did not break. The funnier part about it, though, is it was a fresh glass of rosé that went 100% down my leg and in my shoe. So my sock, just my left sock, just has a little— sopping wet with really nice rosé.
Yeah.
So that was not ideal. You know, it just, like, poured into my shoe.
You know, it wouldn't be an event without a Hailey moment like that. Oh, but where I was going is there was an author, you know, we're talking about what were the most impactful things in your book launch and all this. And there was an author there who had recently hit the New York Times list. And they said, um, they, they had a whole thing where they're like, email is still undefeated.
Oh.
And they went on to talk about email strategies. Like, you can email way more often than you think. Like, the bulk of the sales came from email, and that's a common trait that we we had from around the room. But the funny moment is like a little while later someone was like, oh, well, you know, on Creator Network you can do this and this and that and you can cross-recommend and it'll work so well. And I always love it when, you know, our customers are doing the selling for us. And he, and he goes, yeah, I'm not on Kit. And like the room erupts and they start like mass shaming. So we have like the top authors in the world shaming this other author for not using Kit. And we're all just sitting back being like, no, no, do your thing.
Yeah, exactly.
I didn't say anything.
I'll watch.
I'll watch.
And they're like, this would be, if you use Kit, you could have done this. And in your launch, you could have like had, when you did your newsletter tour, they could have clicked one button and opted in. And you're like, this is great. Yeah.
Keep going. Keep going. It's all about curating the right room. You know what I mean? Yeah.
I loved that.
That was fun. Oh, I, we should, we could talk about the venue because the venue was I'll just give the venue a little bit of a shout out. Yeah, we did it at this insane, amazing venue called South Hall Farm and Inn in just outside of Nashville in Franklin. And their team was insane, amazing. They were so, so wonderful. But it's like a 500-acre regenerative farm, and so everything was farm to table. So the food was exceptional, the service was exceptional, the venue— like, it was It was beautiful. And we also had the most perfect weather. Yeah, we had the best weather.
It was perfect.
Yeah. Not a bad— I had the sexiest room.
You had a great room except for those couches. I don't know what was up with those couches.
They should reconsider those couches.
They were not the ideal, uh, for the podcast scene. They were not the most ideal.
The dining table setup, I thought, was great. Was great.
Okay, Chelsea, one of the ones that you and I talked about afterwards was um, how creators or authors were leveraging their local bookstore. You loved that.
Yep, I did. You know, like I said, one of my favorite parts about this was getting to hear everything that we're going to use for your tactics for launching your book.
Um, are we going to use Hearts on Fire down the street? Yeah, it's a romance— it's a romance bookstore.
Ladders of wealth.
Shout out Hearts on Fire. Yeah. Um, but seriously, keep going.
Um, but on that note, uh, using your local indie bookstores or just indie bookstores across the country actually to support them and also spread, you know, the word about their books through these indie bookstores.
This is a good one. We can totally give credit where credit's due in this one too. The two people that do this really, really well are Tori Dunlap and James Clear, and both of them have their local bookstore in their hometown. And what was great is James talked about for his bookstore, and I don't remember the name of it, but we could probably add it in the comments, but for his bookstore, it works out great great for them and it works out great for him because he has all of his books shipped there and then they do all of the distribution. He can go down and he can sign and, you know, sign the books. And then every time if he does, you know, he'll do author signings in that local bookstore fairly often. And so I can't remember the exact number. Do you remember what it was? It was like how many books they have sold.
It was a crazy, some crazy number because he, for all his speaking engagements, he's like, yeah, just buy books for every attendee and do it from this, this bookstore.
Yeah.
And then, uh, Tori Dunlap was talking about the same thing of having, I think she picked 4 or 5 indie bookstores around the country that she particularly wanted to partner with. And so she would have them buy the books. Um, and then she would, you know, also, you know, make sure they had signed copies and, and all of that.
Mm-hmm.
There's another fun one where, uh, Will Godera was talking about, uh, a partnership that they did for Unreasonable Hospitality of getting the book in all of the copies in all the airport bookstores.
Oh yeah.
And then he would specifically go around each time he's in the airport, right? You're on book tour, you're in the airport a lot. Like he would sign the 4 copies that were there and then you take a photo and be like, all right, you know, whatever, the Hudson Books or, you know, next to Gate 34 at Nashville. And then people, he had examples of people realizing they were close, like seeing that Instagram story, realizing they're close to the airport, buying a refundable plane ticket. It, going through security, buying the signed copy of the book, taking a photo and sending it to him, like, you know, 30 minutes later and be like, I got your book. Also, I'm not traveling anywhere today. Like, let me refund my ticket and then go back out through security.
One of the things that I really loved, and this is just like to kind of summarize some of this, is, you know, sometimes you have this perception in your mind that it's easy for people. You're like, you're Will Godera. You're James Clear, you're Sahil Bloom, right? And the thing that I loved is how they were all grinding, right? Like they were all doing, like, you know, when he talked about Sahil doing things, unscalable things, right?
You think individually mailing out himself.
Actually, even better to elaborate on the Sahil story is that his publisher, he wanted to gift a lot of books. And he ended up buying those books himself because they wouldn't essentially allow him to gift that many books. And he knew innately that that was going to be a huge component to his launch, building out his street team. So he did all— he, he grinded. And sometimes you have this perception that, okay, it's Sahil Bloom, he has a huge social following. It's Will Godera, he has a huge social following. The reality is, is that these authors are all doing really hard things to make their books a success. And not saying that, you know, everybody's not doing that, but they're doing it. And it's—
well, another example of that is, uh, Madeline had a lot of stories since she's published over 1,000 books, you know, and been in the industry for so long. She was like, look, so many of these authors who we read and they're like so gifted— like, uh, she brought up Amor Towles. Oh yeah. Who wrote A Gentleman in Moscow and, and, uh, Rules of Civility and others, like these fantastic books that I love. And she was like, no, he built like bookstore by bookstore. He went into every single indie bookstore, built a relationship with them. And 'cause I, I think he was in like finance or he had some corporate career. He was like, I wanna be a writer. And so as part of this transition, as he's written the books, he just, he, he was grinding it out. And I, I, you know, I read A Gentleman in Moscow. I'm like, this is incredible. Like, this is the kind of thing that someone should just, you know, you write that and it just sells on its own. It's like, No, it really doesn't. It takes the hard work over many years to build it up.
And I mean, if we talk about James Clear in that light, right? We've talked about this a lot of times. You've taught on it as well. Like you were actually with him and you built this out. But you wonder, you're like, okay, Atomic Habits is a great book. And so you would assume that people are going to naturally go rate it 5 stars on Amazon. But did they do that on their own or did they do that with a very slight push that was built, right, in a strategic flywheel Leveraging Kit.
Yep.
Um, right? Like we were encouraging people or the backend systems that tactics that he had built were encouraging people to actually rate the book 5 stars. Um, and that is a huge component in his strategy. And so it's not just luck.
That is a clever one.
Yeah.
We'll, we'll talk about that. That's something that, oh, we actually have an automation for this inside of Kit that you can, can copy in, but inspired by James. Um, where basically what he does is inside of Atomic Habits, there's various things, additional chapters, you know, places to go deep in it, like lead magnet type things where if you put in your, you know, in the book, you put in the URL and then go to that to download the resource. So then what he does is he only links to those from in the book. And so then he tags someone who signs up for that as a reader. So now he doesn't just have an email subscriber. He knows this person has at least read, you know, to page 74 in the book where that was. Is. And then he waits a little bit. He has a follow-up sequence because you want people not just to buy the book, but you want them to read it. And you want them not just read the book, but you want them to finish it. And so then the follow-up sequence is where he's reminding them, you know, through other content to come back and finish the book. And then after a little bit of time where he's like, you've probably finished it by now, he sends an email and doesn't say, will you go rate the book? He says, how did you like the book? 1 to 5 stars, each of those being a little image that you can click on and it's a link. And so depending on what they click, if they click 5 stars, he says, thanks so much. I'm glad you loved it. Would you post that to Amazon and Goodreads?
Yeah.
If they click 1 to 4 stars, he says, uh, you know, I'd love to hear more about what you didn't like or all that. And that goes to internal feedback.
But the better part about that one is, is that he says, what do you, I love this part because he's like, what don't you like? Or what feedback do you have? And that's a whole deliverability hack, right? Because he's getting them to actually respond to the email and reply, which the reply is a, it's a great deliverability hack. So all the negative response, he's getting them to take action, which is further selling, which benefits him even more.
And then the positive response, he's like, amazing. I'm glad you loved it. Go tell the world. And so you end up with this flywheel where, you know, the more book sales you have, the more readers, the more readers, the more 5-star reviews, the more 5-star reviews, the more sales. And, you know, that's how he sold, well, a part of selling 30 million copies of Atomic Habits.
I mean, 30 million. I loved this though. At the event, I had bought a bunch of books. I bought a book of pretty much everyone that was there. So, you know, I don't know, I just thought it would be cool.
Yeah, it ended up being— I saw a lot of people taking the social content, like recording a video of the books all laid out. Yeah. And it's interesting from a little like a status thing. Because it was their book in amongst all of these others. Because everyone— I've talked to probably 10 people who were like, I cannot believe that you invited me to this.
Yeah.
And we're like, I can't believe that you came.
That was a very last-minute addition, actually. I had them all sent to our teammate Alyssa, who lives in Franklin. I had them all sent to Alyssa's house because I was like, I just feel like we should have all their books. Right? So I'm glad I did that very last minute. But the thing I loved was that James, he's like, I haven't even seen the one that says 30 million copies on it. He's like, I don't have a copy of my book that says 30 million. Could you fricking imagine, Nathan? Well, maybe Ladders of Wealth crushes it and sells 30 million copies.
Manifest it.
We're manifesting a million. That's it.
Okay, we're manifesting a million, but 30 million, like, Good night.
Yeah.
Good night. But all— okay. It wasn't magic. The book is so good. But I think like when I— every single person, like talking about people playing a different game, they were playing, they're building the systems that is making them as successful as they are, which was just, it was like I said, it was kind of, I did not belong in the room. I loved that I got to put the room together, but I promise you, I, I, I did not belong in the room. And there were a couple of moments where I was like, wow, I'm in the room. Same. Very much the same.
They were all so grateful. Like the number of texts.
They never made us feel like that at all. You know, it was just like, thank you so much for creating this space.
Yeah.
Uh, some of them were like, I only get invited to like marketing conferences. I love that I'm in the room with all of my. My, uh, peers as authors. So I think that also goes to another point. The number of people that reach out to you and I and said, when the book comes out, yeah, here are the 5 ways I can help, you know, or like, you better tell me, you know, how I can email or, you know, promote the book launch or any of that. And it's just such an important thing of this, like, invest in the community, give. Like, we could have— we know all those people well enough that we could have sent an email and been like, hey, book is launching. Hey, you know, in a month, can I come on your podcast? Can you send emails for me or all that? And be like, they'd be like, yeah, sure. I only get asked that like 10 times a week, but you know, we'll try to slot you in with everybody else.
Yeah.
And the promotion for the book or, uh, getting them to talk about Kit was not the goal of the event. No. But you realize that like investing in them, their businesses, their relationships made them be like, okay, so how can we help you?
100%. Yeah. Okay. I love to talk about failures too. And let me tell you a failure. Not a failure. It's just like a miss, I think. So we had in this room, it was pretty much exclusively nonfiction authors. We had a couple of people that fell, that were slightly outside.
Memoir.
Yeah. And all that to say, we talked a lot about this with Madeline actually, is that there's the nonfiction world and there's the fiction world, and both groups do incredibly— they do things really, really well, right? And so this world, the nonfiction world, they're typically pretty dang excellent marketers, right? So they're very good at the growing the thought leader business. Where then you have the nonfiction world, and the nonfiction world is insane at like book talk and grassroots marketing.
The fiction world.
Sorry, the fiction world is insane at that grassroots book talk sort of thing. And the two of them, I wish and for the next one, we'll, we'll do something where we actually bring together a few non-fiction and fiction authors, right? Because then you're learning from someone that's doing something slightly different. And I love to do this in the creator world as well, where we're saying, okay, you're a food content creator and you're a, you know, a business coach. Like, let's help you learn from one another, because there's often a lot of things that we're all like in our own lane doing our own thing, and we forget to look, you At the strategies conference.
There was a few different people who said like, 'cause it started like, oh, what could nonfiction learn from fiction or all of that? And then a few people were like, actually, who you should really learn from is the romance authors.
Ooh, yeah.
Because the volume is so much higher, like units sold. They also tend to be very digital first, you know, of like tons of Kindle sales.
You know what was shocking to me is how many people in the room didn't know what smut was. Tori Dunlap and I are like, let me tell ya. Nathan also, because as I said, you know, maybe not Slythe, but Fourth Wing.
There you go.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I also love when Madeline was like, yeah, you all have good book sales numbers, but like romance, you know, are these categories like they put the sales numbers, put all of you.
Sarah J. Maas, like, and, you know, like I said, her being on Call Her Daddy, like, very recently. Come on.
We also tried to brainstorm what James Clear's Call Her Daddy appearance would be like. For some reason, that didn't Didn't take off yet. It'll happen.
Um, but so true. Yeah, I was very— I loved my contribution to the, to the group. I was like, well, let me— I got you. I'm going to bring one value add and it's going to be—
it's going to be smut.
It's going to be smut. Tori was right there with me. She, she led the charge though.
So she was all about it. Something else that stood out to me was the whole conversation around year 2 and beyond, because a lot of these people have, you know, launched their first or their second book. It sold well, maybe had a big spike on the New York Times list and then started to drop off. And they all wanna talk about, okay, where do you go from here? And basically everyone that has had, uh, sales that have, you know, endured or stayed consistent, never stopped promoting the book.
Mm-hmm.
And they went to theming it around specific events. Like, how can I tie my book to high school graduation?
Mm-hmm.
How can I tie my book to Mother's Day? Father's, you know, whatever to, yeah. Um, you know, the near New Year to Christmas, anything that's like giftable. And then they're just promoting relentlessly and they're like figuring out a way to put their book into a bunch of different places.
I just remembered one that I loved that we forgot to talk about, um, is the experience of reading a book in a specific place. So one of the authors posted like on social media, it was like every day kept posting. He wanted people to be reading his book on the beach and like he wanted to create that.
That's the vibe of the book.
Yes, it's the vibe of the book. So the, the social media posts that went out that were constantly sharing or like any time somebody— and it just became the identity of the book is to read it in a place that provides you, brings you extreme amounts of peace. And so that is something that lives on in a totally different way. You're like, oh, I'm like, oh, I saw my friend Chelsea reading this book on the beach. I'm going to read this book on the beach.
You know, I helped shape the identity of the book, which Which was kind of crazy to think about because in that example, it was after the book was released.
Yes.
And there's these broader themes where you're like, of course they would fit in with that, but it wasn't a deliberate thing until starting to notice this trend. And then it's like, okay, let's take the spark of something and let's make it a whole thing. And that's driven a ton of sales and, you know, shaped this idea.
And for many of the authors in the room, their, their books were very evergreen, you know, like Jefferson Fisher's book, The Next Conversation. Is never going to go out of style, right? I can promise you this world needs the help of learning how to have hard conversations more easily. But all that to say, that was an interesting part in the conversation because many people were like just riding the wave of that one book. James still hasn't written a second book, right?
He hasn't written a second book.
But he's built in all of these systems to continue to support the growth of that book. And I think actually it was James that was talking about graduation. You know, you're going off into the real world, child. You should probably build some habits. Yeah. But yeah, no, that was a, that was an interesting conversation too, thinking about everyone's different mindset around how they promote and continue to promote these evergreen books or if their book maybe feels less timeless, where they think or how they think about promoting it.
This event was such a hit that we were immediately like, okay, we have to do more masterminds. Ones. And we've done quite a few, and they— yeah, you know, but we wanted to make a space for it. And so that's something that we're doing deliberately in New York, where in, you know, Kitsu's Boise and Chicago, you can host things here and, and there, but they're not made for events. And so with New York, you got me to splurge for the, the big fancy expensive space.
And I love spending other people's money, particularly mine. Yeah.
Um, and our idea is that we want to host a lot more of these things. We want to partner with specific creators where they could bring in an audience, we could bring it as well. We can co-teach, facilitate this, and just create this community. Because really all we did— I mean, I don't want to downplay the amount of work, but we didn't—
yes, let's say we— there's a—
it's not like we planned a conference worth of programming or all of that. We curated a great group of people, brought them to an excellent venue and then said, hey, what's on your mind? What do you wanna learn? We curated the programming around that and really leaned on the people in the room. And so it's a format that we can do over and over again and really a format that any creator could do where they could say, look, I have friends who are at my level, uh, or a little bit beyond. Um, and I want to, um, you know, I wanna learn from them. So let me book a space. We all split the cost in some way and let's make this happen. Happen. And that's something that, you know, James and I did early on with our mastermind, and it was fun.
Now, I don't know, 7, 10 years later, I was gonna say, when was the last time that y'all did a mastermind with you and your group of guys?
2017? Probably 9. Yeah, probably 8 or 9 years ago.
Yeah.
Was it that photo on the bridge that James hasn't aged a single day?
No, that was the first mastermind.
Nathan has aged aged 10 years. He was a teen and now he's a man.
Yeah, I did show Chelsea that photo and she's like, James looks exactly the same.
He's drinking the Fountain of Youth. Yeah, yeah, that—
continue.
Yeah, sorry. Yeah, uh, no, that was, that was the whole thing.
As far as New York goes, there's nothing more, um, I— what I think about my role, and sometimes it's, it's hard to like quantify my role sometimes, but I, there's nothing better than bringing people together in a room, whether it's Craft and Commerce or a small-scale event like a mastermind like this, or it's at another event, right? You're just creating a dinner or something like that. The unique thing about this particular event is that it is hard to get a room full of New York Times bestsellers together, right? Because there are very few people that are at that level. And so I think a really good takeaway is you find someone, to your point, you find a group of people that are all at very, you know, know, your stage and maybe one or two levels above where you're at. Um, and you all get to work on this shared goal together. And I mean, really, that's how your and James's relationship was established in the first place. And look where y'all are at now.
When— I think that's an important thing to call out because most people would say like, well, of course you can do that because you're friends with people at this, at this caliber. And it's like, that's not where we started. We had nothing going on and we just said, hey, Hey, we have similar goals. We're equally driven. Let's, let's make something together and then, you know, like build our businesses together.
Yeah. And this is pre-Atomic Habits James, you know, and by like 6 years. Yeah. But by a lot, by a lot.
Okay. This ties into actually my, um, strategy for City League Sports.
Okay.
I'm so excited for you to see this transition. I am not very gifted when it comes to soccer and volleyball. I did not play either sport in like high school or anything like that. And I often wanna play on teams that are better than my skill level.
Uh-huh.
And so you would say like in that, like, oh, you don't belong here, right? The way that you belong is you curate the team. If you register the team, do all of the work, recruit everybody and all of that, they're like, like on my soccer team, they're like, you're not good enough to play on this team. But like, we're all really grateful. Like, none of us would be here if you—
None of us would have put this together.
Would have put it together. And so they're like, yeah, of course Nathan gets to play. You know, on the volleyball team, you know, I can recruit all of these college athletes to come play with me, teach me how to play the game. And no one is like, why are you here? How do we kick you off the team? They're like, I'm so glad you put it together. Now will you please get better?
They're invested.
They are.
Well, you know, it's funny because I do talk about this every once in a while because my friends think it's weird that you like to play They think it's weird that as an adult man you want to learn how to play volleyball. And I'm like, I think it's awesome. But all that to say, I am invested in you getting better at this point. I am invested in you transitioning behind the 10-foot line and keeping the ball in front of you on a quick attack. Like, that is— I'm invested in it. And it sounds silly, but it really is true. It's like, I am several levels above you. Yes.
Several is generous, I think, too.
Several. But, but no, I'm invested in your growth.
And, and, and I think the same thing is true for masterminds or events or something like that. I've seen it over and over again where a creator will, you know, maybe they have 10,000 followers and they're like, I don't belong in the room with people with 50,000 followers or revenue or whatever the number is that you're using.
Yeah.
But they get in the room and they provide value because they're the ones who curated it.
Mm-hmm.
And so they're the ones who pulled everybody together and everyone, basically two things happen. One, people say like, yes, I'd love to come because of the other people in the room. You may not have the name pull yourself, but the people that you brought and, you know, do. And then the second thing is in your journey, you now have all of these other people like my roster of, uh, you know, D1 college athletes, uh, who are then invested in your journey and they're like, oh, we wanna help you. With your book launch, with whatever else. And you end up in this, you know, it's the cliché of like, you know, you are the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with. And so it's like, okay, be really deliberate with how you curate that.
That was my goal. I was just trying to get all the people in the room. I was like, how can I have all these people help me on Nathan's dime?
That's right.
All right, Chelsea.
That actually was a really good analogy. So I'm glad we went there. I was just going to say to also get on the plane, right? Like if somebody invites you somewhere, we had somebody fly in from what, Belgium just for the day, even though they're already a 3-time New York Times bestseller. And, you know, and then they flew back to Hong Kong or something the next day because they're on a book tour and just like, get on the plane and go if you're invited or, you know, you just never know what you're going to learn. And, you know, they sent us such a nice message of being like, this was so wonderful. I'm so glad I came.
And we're like, you flew for 24 hours to be here.
Yeah, to be here for 48.
Would you let Nathan fly 24 hours to go?
Are we going back to Dubai again? Is this—
I'm not going to say it. You said it.
Now that I know.
The value of being in the room. Yes.
All right.
Chelsea, who's in charge of my schedule, has just given Haley permission to push me all around the world.
Okay. The entire reason why I hired Chelsea, I hired Chelsea, is to further manipulate Nathan. Let's be honest. Yeah, exactly.
Control.
Control.
Mm-hmm.
Control.
Now that this episode is fully off the rails.
Yeah, exactly.
Any closing thoughts?
Let's leave it at what Chelsea said. Like, get on the plane, be in the room, and if you can't be in the room, create the room.
Yeah.
Right? Because you can put in the effort to put together a stacked soccer or volleyball team. So if you can't, if you can't be in the room, create the room. And, I mean, that's my favorite thing is, is creating an experience for other people. So sometimes you're just not going to get invited and yeah, you can make the room, make it yourself.
I love that. If you enjoyed this episode, we also recorded two more episodes while we were in Nashville that you won't want to miss. One's with James Clear and the other is with Will Godera. Those are coming out soon, so make sure you subscribe. And if you're looking for something to watch right now, check out this episode here. Like the video if you enjoyed it. It, hit subscribe on YouTube or wherever you're listening. I'll see you next week.
