Leveraging Thought Leadership Live featuring Michael Bungay Stanier

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the LinkedIn Live extension of the podcast, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. I'm really excited about today. Today my guest is MBS, but I can pronounce it, or I have properly pronounced his name, which is Michael Bungay Staner, an old Perfect. And a multi-award-winning author. So his books have sold over a million copies. His last book before the most current was The Coaching Habit, which has become, you know, a standard in the industry, the standard. His newest is How to Work with Almost Anyone, which is phenomenal. He has been happily married for 30 years, so that's an accomplishment.

Thank you.

He's been a Rhodes Scholar. He's raised $40,000— no, $400,000 for Malaria No More. And he's been—

okay, I did that as a collab book with Seth Godin in that year where he did, uh, where he did Imprint Books. And, um, it's a project I'm really proud of. We kind of figured out a way to partner with Amazon to take all the money from book sales into donations to support, uh, buying mosquito nets.

Yeah, that's cool.

Yeah.

So, so let's dive in. This is not your first rodeo, as they say, and you and I were chatting a little bit earlier. Um, you are sort of on the tail end of the craziness of the launch phase.

Yeah.

But tell us about, 'cause you and I were just having this interesting conversation. I want to stop it so we could have it here about what you're thinking, how you think about a book launch in terms of phase 1, phase 2, et cetera. 'Cause I think it's important.

So the starting point for me is like, it is really hard to write a book except compared to marketing a book. And it's really hard to market a book except compared to trying to get people to read a book. So, well, do we even try to get them to read it?

Let's even talk about that. We write them, we market them. I don't know anyone that has been pounding the drum saying, and I know that I've gotten everyone to read it because that's, that's a whole different level.

You know, that, that is a whole different topic. And I'll just say that, you know, as a design principle I have, I always try and go, what's the shortest book I can write that's still the most useful? Because my goal is to get people to the end of the book. So I'm constantly trying to take stuff out of the book so that there's fewer excuses to stop reading. But you're right. So I'm 6 weeks after the book launched. Um, and before that, I probably spent 3 or 4 months thinking about, worrying about, preparing for a book launch. And I'm balancing 2 tensions, Peter. One is, Yeah. I wanna make a splash. I want people to know that I've arrived. Um, I want it to be a thing. And at the same time, I don't want to be seduced into thinking that the book launch is everything. The book launch is just the start of something. And one of the ways that I can—

Stay there a minute, because I think there's this tension around the industry, if you will, the publishing industry, the PR folks, the book launch folks, whatever. Yeah, all have good intent, but they have limited bandwidth, right? So they typically look at a book launch launches, a month or two before planning, getting ready, 2, 3 months, and then onto the next thing.

That's right.

And with a book like The Coaching Habit that's now 7 years old, you're still getting sales every week from it. You're still getting inbound interest from it. It's still building your brand.

That's right.

And nobody really cares when they get that book today and say, oh, let me look and see, that was written in 2001. It doesn't matter, right? I think that's a big shift that authors need to make in their minds.

Well, I, I, I hold this perspective, which is certainly if you go with a traditional publisher, they're like, we're done and dusted after 6 weeks. We've got other books to write and produce and publish and launch. You're on your own. Um, but in many ways you were always on your own. So that's just helpful to know, which is only one person really cares about this book and it's you, the author. And what I think of, somebody told me this the other day, really, rang true for me, which is it normally takes 2 to 3 years to get a business up and running and really going. Your book could be a business. Certainly the people who are listening to us who are thinking about thought leadership, not just as a book, but as an ecosystem of stuff that gets done, you're like, this is part of a book. You should be touring this book for 2 to 3 years. This seed first got planted with me when I talked to David Allen, the guy who wrote Getting Things Done.

Yeah.

20 years ago he wrote that book and I spoke to him, I guess, in like 3 or 4 years after that. And he said, look, my book has sold more books each subsequent year from the launch year. And I was like, what a great goal that is. Yes. Not just to have a big splash of a launch, but to sell more in year 2 than I did in year 1, more in year 3 than I did in year 2. That is absolutely—

Well, most nonfiction business books in this market do sell more year 2 than year 1. Nobody talks about that because what we want is this immediate gratification, this dopamine hit. We want to go on Amazon and say, at 2:33 on a Tuesday afternoon, I am number whatever in what category. I think the true test is that books should be a marathon, not a sprint.

I agree.

I'm just giving out copies of In Search of Excellence, Good to Great, Never Read Alone, books that have just made an impression on me. And nobody ever says, oh, that's so dated. Right. Yeah.

So I think often in book sales, you have that kind of peak on that kind of the launch week or so. And then there's a dip. And then, and then sometimes people abandon their book. They're like, okay, I'm onto the next thing, or I'm tired or I'm exhausted. And often that is the death of the book. But I think the authors that get to thrive in thought leadership are the ones who go, great. Okay. The dip happens. And then. I'm, I'm going back to find the books level. And I'm doing that through a more consistent, steady drumbeat of ongoing marketing. So my team, for instance, in 2 weeks' time, so 2 months after launch, we're doing a regathering and then we're like, okay, what are we excited about? What's landed? What are people actually picking up about this book? And what does that tell us about the next phase of marketing, which is going to do it for a year? And then after a year, we're going to stop again, and then we're going, now what are we learning? And now what should we be doing? And now how will we adjust?

Pause you there. So when you talk about marketing, I just want to double-click on that, right? When you say marketing, yes, at first blush, that means marketing of the book. What are we doing that's working? What's not working? Who's it resonating with? What are the patterns, etc., etc.? But the other piece in marketing a book, you're not just marketing a book, right? So the book should be the beginning for many people Because you've been at this game a while, this is an ongoing part of the relationship that your followers have with you.

That's right.

For many other people, this is the first time they've been introduced with you. So now they're going to your back catalog as well as Box of Crayons, all the products and services. So talk about sort of what the marketing really means. It's not the $20 or $25 that the book sells for per se.

Well, it depends on what your business model is. But for me, a book should always be a gateway to an ecosystem.

Yes.

And, you know, I, I hybrid publish my books with a company called PageTwo. You know, Jesse Finkwist, I'm one of the founders. And part of what I love about working with Jesse is it effectively means that I am the executive editor of my own book, which means that I get to not only call it what I want and have it look and feel like I want to, but I get to put calls to action throughout the book, the ones that serve me most. So, you know, in this new book, a third of the way through, there's a call to action to say, hey, would you do me a favor and would you write a review on Amazon? Because in early days, getting to a certain critical mass of, uh, reviews is really helpful for a book. But there's also all sorts of QR codes and reasons for people to come to the website to get the free stuff. Yeah, so that I get to introduce them to me. I get their email address so that they're on my list, and then I can move them through a nurturing sequence to encourage them to be part of my world, and for some of them to give me some more money so I can sell them different things.

So I, you know, I want to talk about the publishing side of this because Page Two is phenomenal. I'm a big fan. I've worked with a lot of their authors, and I love what Jesse and the team do over there. you could theoretically pick any publisher that you wanted, right?

Right.

But that's different because you've got the track record to walk into a Simon Schuster or self-publish or whatever and say, I know I'm going to sell within A and B, plus or minus, and I've spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars developing the brand, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. What are the things that people should be thinking about? Because I think people don't understand that the choice of a publisher Is largely a business model choice, number one. Number two, whether you like it or not, I love that you said you're the executive producer from a content standpoint, but what most publishers don't tell you is you just earned the title of head of sales and marketing and business development for the book, which might not be a title that you want.

Right. So if you go with a traditional publisher, the upside is you've got a bunch of people making a book for you. You don't have to worry about any of the minutiae about how a book gets made or how it gets distributed and the like. Um, and you're— if you're lucky, you've got some sort of advance. So you've been paid a bit of money upfront and it hasn't cost you anything to do this. Right. Um, the downside of a traditional publisher is you probably don't have final say on the title, on the look, on the feel, on the distribution, on, on, on how it's kind of tagged and coded.

Um, as well as timing, right?

They say, well, this is timing.

These were going spring, like, Yeah. So controlling is a broad term that applies to lots of variables against a book.

Yeah. And you also have a business model, which means approximately you earn about 10% of a cover price and you've got to, you've got to earn back your, your advance. And then for every book you sell, $20, you're going to get $2.

So think about that for a minute. I just, I just want to just like put a highlight on that point. If I said to you, Michael, I've got a, I've got a deal. We're going to be business partners.

Right.

I'm gonna do that. You're gonna do all the work, you can do the writing, whatever. I've got this machine to print it, and I think a good deal would be 90/10.

Right.

You would probably tell me the— because you're Canadian— the polite version of flip off, right?

Yeah.

But yet publishing, you say, oh, thank you very much. Like, in many instances, it doesn't make sense for a lot of people, right?

It doesn't make sense to me to go, look, I, I would love to sell more copies of this book, but it's going to take me time and effort and money to do that. And I only earned 10%, 10 cents on the dollar. It feels like, well, where's your investment on your share of that, that book to help drive it? And mostly they're like, you know, our, our investment is getting it distributed for you. Um, we're on to the next thing. Exactly.

Or paying for offices on 6th Avenue and, you know, overhead and, uh, all that stuff.

And, and honestly, I've never met anybody who's gone, you know, my traditional publisher, they were amazing at marketing my book. Then they're not that good at marketing books. To be fair, I don't think anybody has it locked down on how to really brilliantly market books. It's a, we're all competing. It's hard to get people's attention, but I don't think publishers have some secret knowledge that they're not shared with us.

But I want to use that as actually a bridge to the content for a moment, divert. So the subtitle of your book is 5 Questions for Building the Best Possible Relationships. And my point is, one of the ways that you are brilliant at marketing, not just this book, but your previous books, is through the relationships that you have and have developed, as well as your reputation in the thought leader community. So how critically important is that, that you've, you know, you're in a unique position that you've got lots of friends, and we know a lot of same people that are thought leaders, authors, etc., that are actually your best marketing engine?

It's certainly one of the key marketing engines I have. And for me, a lot of the pre-work is knocking on doors of people I know a lot or a little and asking for favors. I mean, if you look at this book, you know, on the front page is a, is a blurb by Brené Brown, who I got to meet before she became, you know, amazing and very well known. In fact, she asked me to blurb one of her early books, which just shows you how far she's gone and how not far I've gone. On the back, I've got Kim Scott and Amy Edmondson and Seth Godin and Liz Wiseman. These are all big names, but they're also people who I've built relationships up with for 10 years. There's not a single person there who I haven't known for less than 10 years.

So, but just, I just want to unpack that. It's not just that their names are sitting on the book. That's lovely. And in the ancient days of when I used to walk down the aisles of Barnes Noble with my Starbucks in my hand and look and say, I don't know who this Michael Bungay— can't pronounce his name— is, but all these other brilliant people said something. The real juice that you get out of it today is when a Liz Weissman or Brené Brown then promotes it to their followers because they've already curated an audience that has a much higher propensity to buy when their person says, check out what my friend Michael did.

That's right. So you're trying to find hubs of influence to sort of say this person's worth doing. You know, as an example, I reached out to Liz a month before the book launched and also to another author, Tasha Urich, who's also brilliant and is working on stuff. And the 3 of us ran a joint summit together, which is the 3 of us coming in and we, we taught stuff and we each promoted the summit out to our lists. And it meant that 1,000 or 2,000 people from everybody's list showed up and registered for the summit. and they got to hear about all of our work, and we got a chance to cross-promote each other to our people.

And now people that were Liz fans that might not have heard of you— exactly, there's a trust transference. Yeah, right. And say, oh, this guy's kind of neat too, and he's kind of interesting too.

Exactly. And I arrive with Liz's blessing. And for the people on my list who haven't heard of Tasha, Tasha arrives with my blessing. Yes. And we have fun. And, you know, I, I selected these people because They're smart. They have a followership so that they're known and loved by people. Our work is simpatico. So there's a way that we fit well together. And I like to co-create with people. So there's a sense of shared responsibility around it. And I love doing that, but that's one of the ways I'm like, how do I find people who might want to hear about my book? And, um, I'm not a big believer that social media by itself does it. Like, right. I've seen the numbers and it's like, something grim, like you sell one book for every 10,000 followers you have. I mean, something like that. It's, it's, it's sad. It's, it's, it's not an indicator of great success, but finding people who can say, I know Michael, this is a great book. Hey people, read Michael's book because it's wonderful. That's a great endorsement.

Yeah. And I also think that the, in general, the thought leader community is a very generous community. So even— and I've seen lots of clients and friends that might be first-time authors or whatever reach out to, quote, rock stars, tell their story and say, hey, I've been a big fan of yours, would love your help or testimonial. You'd be shocked at how generous folks are because they remember, like, yeah, like, it's funny that you said, you know, you gave Brené a testimonial before she was— if she was Brené. Not the Brené of Netflix, right?

That's right.

Um, and now her testimonial, if we put a number, probably worth more than the one that you gave in terms of the juice that it—

I would think so. Yeah, I would think that's true. But yeah, you know, and I get asked all the time by people who know me or don't know me about whether I do this. And I'll just tell you, I have a standard reply, which is, send me your manuscript. Yeah, I'll take a look at it. If it's not a hell yes, it's a no. So it means that I, I end up saying no to a good number of people's books that get sent my way because I'm like, it's not quite a fit for me.

Yeah.

But I'm, I'm almost always willing to take a look because I've done the same. Like, I've knocked on a bunch of people's doors and some don't answer and some answer and say no and some answer and say yes. It's, it's persistence that gets you the testimonials.

Yeah. So let's, let's shift it for a couple minutes to business models. We've been pretty book-centric because it's topical and I think it's important, whatever. You've done some, one other thing, well, maybe more, that I think is really, really interesting in that you kind of fired yourself at some level or replaced yourself because most thought leaders become the founder and CEO of them incorporated. In your case, it was Box of Crayons.

Right.

So you were smart enough to not name it after yourself, and then you got smart enough to replace yourself.

Yeah. So I have 2 companies and Box of Crayons has a business model, which is selling training to enterprise companies. So big companies, Fortune 1000 companies. So, you know, our clients are like Microsoft and Salesforce and Telus here in Canada and Gucci, kind of really significant companies. And the book has been critical to the success of that company. You know, I can point to 10 books.

Mm-hmm.

Bought by 10 people who have each bought in more than $1 million worth of business over time. So more than $10 million worth of business are just coming from 10 books. And in fact, in the early days of the book, I kept saying to myself, remember, Michael, you're selling coaching programs, you're not selling books. Because I make, I make more than 10% royalties per book in my hybrid publishing model. Um, But I sell a, if I'm selling a program for $10,000 or $15,000 or $20,000, um, I have to sell a lot of books to generate the same sort of amount of revenue and profit. So that's how I work it on the, on the corporate side, the B2B side, business to business.

Yeah.

And then on the B2C side, which is selling to individuals, I have a different model, which is like a book leads to an individual course, which is like $100 or a bit more, a bit less depending, which then leads to a membership site. Yeah. This idea that membership sites is a great business model for commitment and recurring predictable income. It's a kind of a moving people along. So there's a place for people to hang out and do their important work. And that's the key business model on the B2C side.

So I love how you separate the two. And I would say that if we were to spend more time, which we won't, on, okay, let's drill down on who the avatars are in the B2B side, you can answer that question with a high level of specificity, both demographically and psychographically.

That's right.

And that's who you're writing to, who you're marketing to, because yes, maybe it's random-ish that the 10 books lead to $10 million, but I would also argue that you're putting your thumb on the scale saying, How do I get the 11th, 12th, and 13th buyer? Because not all buyers are created equally that have the ability to spend $1 million on behalf of Oracle or General Electric or whoever it might be.

That's true. And at the same time, I'd say that, you know, I think in part accelerated by COVID, the profile of that buyer has actually shifted quite a bit. The profile of buying big programs at an enterprise level has shifted quite a bit. from, let me talk to your sales team, to, let me figure all of this stuff out, and then almost come and place an order. So I know at Box of Crayons, which I still own, even though it's now run by a team and I'm not that involved in the day-to-day, but they're just going through the process of resetting who their avatars are.

Yes.

And what's interesting is that's starting a conversation amongst us around, do we need to do an update to the Coaching Habit book, right? But that it speaks more to this next version of whoever the avatar is that might be for, for Box Your Crayons, right?

So that could be a product extension that starts as a version 2 of the book, or different versions of the coaching, whatever it is.

That's right. That's exactly what we're playing around with, which is like, should we be launching a, a, a kind of a different version of The Coaching Habit? The Coaching Habit for C-suite executives. The Coaching Habit for frontline employees. Should we be doing that? What would that look like? How would we put it out there in the world? We're wrestling with all of that at the moment.

But you're doing that not because you woke up one day and said, I think I'm going to do The Coaching Habit for sales managers. You're doing that because you've observed patterns after a ton of book sales, 7 years of the product being out there. It's like, ah, we might not have thought of this when I wrote the book, but These newly minted sales leaders or whatever resonate with this more. Let's make something a little bit more bespoke for them because there's a lot of them and that's a viable market.

Spot on. That's exactly right.

So let me ask you this. Speaking. So everybody wants to be a speaker because it just seems so damn glamorous, right? You get on a plane, you go to Scottsdale, you get paid a ton of money, and in 45 minutes your day's work is over and it ends in a standing ovation. Who wouldn't like that? So tell me your experience there.

Um, you know, the very best of speaking is exactly like that, where, you know, you want— you fly somewhere nice, you have a crowd that is happy to see you, you speak in a way that feels meaningful and moving, and you can see that you're actually nudging people in their lives. You can get paid really well for your 45 minutes or 75 minutes or 90 minutes or whatever it is. You get to hang out in a nice hotel for a bit and then you fly home. So the best of it, it's amazing. Um, there's a way that if you make speaking all of what you do, you have to get— you're basically on the road touring a lot, you know. Um, In years past, I had one year where I did like more than 100 gigs in a year. And I was extraordinarily depleted at the end of that year because you also spend a bunch of time on planes, spend a bunch of time in airports, spend a bunch of time watching your delayed plane in an airport, spend a bunch of time in very non-glamorous hotels, spend a bunch of time in front of audiences that aren't that interested in anything that you've got to say. Um, so there's, um, and also you're like, and also I'm just saying the same things over and over and over again. So there's a way that you can get a little tired of your own jokes, your own voice, and your own opinion about everything. So it depends a little bit on your wiring, and it depends a little bit on your business model. Like, I have a number of friends who go, I deliver 100 gigs a year, I'm charging somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000 a gig. So they are making somewhere between, let's call it $2 to $4 million a year. But these are people who have spent years building a reputation, winning their craft, having a bestselling book, and go, this is my favorite thing to do. I love this stuff. I, on the other hand, go, I love speaking and I can, I only want to do 20 gigs a year at the very most.

Stay there a minute. So If you just love it, then do it. You're basically a performer, and I don't mean that in a bad way. There's no better way to make a living than getting up every day going, wow, I've got another group of 300 people that I get to share my message with.

Yeah.

However, I think what you said is, okay, you got to a point and you said, 20's a good number for me, right? So it's one every other week or some week, maybe 2 a week here, and then summers are slow or whatever, but you have to have the business model. And this is where we do a lot of work that says, okay, Where most speakers kind of miss it from a business model standpoint is a keynote should not be the extent of your relationship with an entity, right? So every speaker has their logo page where we've worked with Microsoft and we've worked with Dell or whatever. And it's like, no, you didn't. You did one speech one time for 45 minutes for the President's Club in Hawaii. Big deal. The question becomes, do you have the products, the offerings, the services, et cetera, to further penetrate that enterprise at scale? And we always look at models and strategies that say you should easily be generating 5 to 10x the revenue in non-speaking generated activities.

That's right.

You don't have a business, you have a practice.

That's fantastic. Because for me, I am always trying to de-risk my business.

Yes.

And one of the ways I de-risk it is getting me out of the way because I am a, you know, I'm a flimsy, weak-willed, increasingly old person who I'm like, I've never been reliable.

That's going to be your new bio when they—

yeah, exactly, exactly.

Really flimsy.

Yeah. So I'm, I'm constantly going, look, I— how am I setting up ways of working so that revenue can come in that doesn't depend on my capacity to perform in the moment?

Well, and then here's a, you know, a Captain Obvious comment. Nobody has ever bought anybody's speaking practice. Right. But when you have the things that you talked about earlier, subscription-based revenue, enterprise clients, et cetera, that is exitable regardless of—

that's right—

what you're doing at the moment.

That's right. So, you know, if you look at Box of Crayons, if I wanted to sell that, I could probably find a buyer for that.

Yeah.

Um, that's not a, that's not a priority for me at the moment because for sort of different reasons, but it is, um, we've, they've I initially, but now the team in the last number of years has worked really hard to go, this is a really good business and it, and it works without Michael's involvement.

Yes.

Um, you know, the, the, the membership site that I have set up, um, for mbs.works, the B2C thing, um, my involvement in that is once a month running a 1-hour teaching session or a coaching session around that. So we've set up structures and a community support that means that the community leans in on itself and that there's other ways to get kind of stuff about me or stuff that I've thought of. But I've removed myself from being at the center of that because I don't want to be at the center of that. And it's also too risky around that. And part of the idea of discipline that you bring, Peter, is build structures that are about amplifying your IP that generate revenue beyond The personality. Yeah.

And I think that's a key point. The other point I wanted to make is, so the membership site requires one Michael hour per month. Now, there are other resources that support that, feed that marketing, customer support, technical, whatever.

That's right.

But you don't have to know anything. I mean, you have to know something about it, but that doesn't take away from the things that you want to do. You can hire the right people or outsource or vendors, whoever, to put the systems and processes in place to keep that up and running at a high level.

That's right. So there is a, there's a small team of 2, 2 and a half people involved in keeping that community running. And they set up structures, they create personal interaction. There's all sorts of just systems that are set up to run in the background. And it means that I, I like at the last minute, I need to go back to Australia next week for 2 months to help out with my family around stuff.

Yeah.

And We looked at The Conspiracy, which is what our membership site is called, and Ainsley, who leads that, just went, great, here's how we'll remove you from your 2 1-hour obligations in August and September. We can do that easily. So now the whole thing carries on without me, which is perfect because for me, the point of being a thought leader is to find freedom. Yeah.

No, I love that. I love that because, you know, there's this tension between, wow, it's all about me. That's sort of, that's good for the ego. That's good for lots of things. But then there's the, uh-oh, it's all about me, right?

That's right. So being able to do both.

So there are parts of your business. So like when you're going offline to Australia for August and September, the part that's about you is, so you'll turn your speaking business down for those 2 months. Okay. Or do remote or accommodate that way or whatever. But everything else doesn't come to a grinding halt.

Yeah. And just kind of to finish up on the speaking business, I'll tell you, I have 5 criteria that I use to decide whether to say yes to a speaking gig.

Yes.

This might be helpful for people. Is it a friend? Is it in a cool location? Is it with a cool company? Is it a big audience of more than 1,000 people? Can they pay my full fee? And if they can tick 2 of those 5 boxes, I'm interested in a conversation with them. And then the overriding thing was, if this was happening next week, would I say yes to it? Because—

Well, I think that's a great question because oftentimes we look at our calendars and say, oh, I can't believe at 3 o'clock today I'm talking to that idiot, right?

All the time. I'm like, who's the idiot who said yes to this? And I'm like, I am the idiot who said yes to this, right?

Because 2 months ago when you said yes to it, you're thinking, oh, some point in the future.

Yeah, I'm sure it'll be fine.

Yeah.

And I'm like, no, test that now. So that's just useful rules of thumb for me to help me kind of get over the pain of saying no to people because the pain in that, I feel pain in turning it down because I, I, you know, I'm like, I'm walking away from opportunity and revenue and profile and status, but I'm like, I've got the structures there because I'm committed to a bigger thing, which is the freedom to write the next book.

Right. So you, but now someone else might have different criteria if they're earlier in their career saying, if they meet my fee, period, that's my criteria. If it's a cool location and they meet, like, the criteria could be whatever is aligned to your life. Right.

And the criteria at the start of my business 20 years ago, 22 years ago was, do they have a pulse and do they have a wallet? And I wasn't, I wasn't even fussed about the pulse, quite frankly. I was like, I just need work because I'm, hustling and I'm trying to build and I don't have anything and I don't have any reputation. So I had a completely different criteria back then. Yeah.

And those criteria evolve as we start to wrap. Um, let me ask you this. If, if, if you were to give some counsel advice, maybe even coaching to someone who's, let's say where you, where you were 8, 10 years ago. So up and coming, kind of there. what, what might it be that you would tell them today? No pressure, but this could be life-altering for many people. No pressure.

Well, I think part of being a thought leader is it's not just about your thoughts, it's about your voice. It's about how you take ideas and how you bring them into the world. Um, and I see a lot of people striving for thought leadershipness, but their content feels kind of the same. It's not that interesting and it's not that different. And so this may be survivor bias because this is kind of how I think about it for me, but I'm like, I'm always interested in going, how are you different and how are you interesting around the opinion that you have? And then I think it's really helpful to go, who am I really trying to help here? Who am I really trying to serve? Um, and for Me being mission-led around some of this stuff rather than business-led can be really helpful. Like, you know, in this new book, How to Work with Almost Anyone, I was like, I'm not that motivated by just trying to sell a lot of books. You know, I've done that already with The Coaching Habit, sold a million and some copies of that. But we, as a team, we came up with this. The book, this book is the start of a movement to improve 10 million working relationships. And I'm like, that gets me excited. That makes me think about business models and outreach and marketing in a way that I'm like, I'm trying to make the world a better place through the work that I do, not just I'm trying to get known for the work that I do.

Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, I appreciate your time. Uh, I appreciate your work. I appreciate you.

Thank you, Peter. It's been delightful. Thanks for wrestling with this. I love This idea of your commitment to like elevating thought leadership. So it's not just about, look at me, I've got ideas, but it's like, how do you scale your ideas to make the world a better place?

Good stuff. Thank you.