The Book As A Brochure For Your Business
James Taylor interviews Ron Kaufman and they talk about the book as a brochure for your business
In this episode, we cover:
- The book as a brochure for your business
- Getting the page experience right
- Business models for authors
Resources:
For More of Creative Life Podcast By James Taylor
Artificial Intelligence Generated Transcript
Below is a machine-generated transcript and therefore the transcript may contain errors.
James Taylor
Hi, I'm James Taylor business creativity and innovation keynote speaker. And this is the Creative Life, a show dedicated to you the creative. If you're looking for motivation, inspiration and advice, while at home at work or on your daily commute, then this show is for you. Each episode brings you a successful creative, whether that's an author, musician, entrepreneur, perform a designer, or a thought leader. They'll share with you their journey, their successes, their failures, their creative process, and much much more. You'll find Show Notes for this episode as well as free training on creativity over at Jamestaylor.me. Enjoy this episode.
Hi, it's James Taylor here. Today's episode was first aired as part of International Authors Summit. This inspiring virtual summit reveals the secrets of making marketing and monetizing a best selling book. If you would like to access the full video version as well as in depth sessions with over 40 Best Selling authors that I've got a very special offer for you just go to InternationalAuthorsSummit.com, where you'll be able to register for a free pass for the summit. Yeah, that's right. Over 40 New York Times and Amazon best selling authors, book editors, agents and publishers, sharing their insights, strategies and tactics on how to write and market your first or next best sellers. So just go to InternationalAuthorsSummit.com, but not before you listen to today's episode.
James Taylor
Hey, it's James Taylor here, and it's my pleasure to introduce my guest today, Mr. Ron Kaufman. Ron is the world's leading educator and motivator for uplifting customer service and uplifting service cultures. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller uplifting service and 14 other books on service business and inspiration. In 2018 Global gurus rated run the number one customer service guru in the world. Ron is a man on a mission to uplift the quality and spirit of service everywhere in the world, including with us here today. Welcome Ron.
Ron Kaufman
Thank you very much James. pleasure to be with you and your Viewers all over the world. So
James Taylor
share with everyone here what's going on in your world just now who
Ron Kaufman
I was recently scuba diving with my wife in the Maldives. It's our avocation passion. And I'm about to jump on the road I'll be traveling for the next six weeks all over the world clients family, working with different members of our team. And looking forward to being here right now with you and with everybody we're about to talk
James Taylor
with so we met for the first time in Singapore a convention I got a chance to hear you speaking incredible speak and then also got a copy of this book which is uplifting service. Fantastic. We this this obviously was New York Times Scylla but as I was kind of going through it, one of the things that struck me is it has one of the best formats of any introduction for any book I've ever read. So this was this was how I kind of like I love making notes on on format and structure and things. And so the format you had was like you had kind of crisis problem one, problem two solution outline. Imagine if taking a backup and what you get by reading on and I just thought, I'm so going to take that and use that. So. So there's this book here. And I know you're saying to work on on your neck on your next one as well. doesn't get any easier. I mean, you're going to 15 book does it you know, from that very first book you're writing up until then writing this one, does it get any easier or do actually the challenges become bigger, who?
Ron Kaufman
Great question. I would say that in in my case. The challenges now become bigger because the next book is embarking into a whole other area. Yeah, not just more about service and more about service culture, but the whole phenomenon of, you know, why do human beings care about what we care about? And how do you take better care of what really matters. And that's not an area that I've had three decades of domain expertise accumulated in. So I do have a new challenge in terms of content development in terms of story illustration in terms of architecting and shaping and crafting the overall message. I think if you're writing in the same space of expertise, but with a different angle, or the digital twist, or for this particular industry, or it's the action Field Guide, rather than the step by step, you know, that kind of thing. It could be easier because you know what you're talking about? So there's two different areas. One is how much work do you have to do to figure out what you want to talk about? And then the other is, once you've got what you want to talk about, how much work are you willing to put in to make sure that that book is an outstanding book, which is the number one thing I stand for with anyone who talks to me about I want to write a book, make sure You put in all the effort, all the investment all the time, get all the advice you could possibly get. Because once it's published, that book is associated with you for the rest of your life.
James Taylor
So you're kind of doing a bit of a repositioning here with this, this new book that you're working on. I'm wondering then as you can go into this, this new book is a bit like the, you know, the Bob Dylan, we kind of did everyone kind of got to know him really well for doing this kind of certain thing. And then he went electric. And then there was like, people going to going, no screaming, don't do that. We want to go back to the old stuff that you used to do is, is really loud is a fear for you that you know, you're going to come out with this, these new ideas as this this new book, actually people will just kind of say, actually, we we kind of wanted like version two of the previous book
Ron Kaufman
of the customer service service culture. Well, it's fascinating that you use that example because this week I saw Bob Dylan live in Singapore. 77 years old, the guy's still rocking it and the range and depth and variety of work that he's done, as you say, over different genres over the year. I mean, deserves that Nobel Prize. And when they equate them to Shakespeare or a homer, I mean, there's a good reason for that. If you dig into Bob, in my case, I'm not so much making a complete pivot of genre, I'm just going deeper with what I consider to be the essence of the same message. So in my case, I'm known worldwide for being that service guy. Well, what is the essence of service? It's care, we care about each other, therefore, we're willing to take some action to serve one another, you know, what's the essence of care? Well, when you get right down to it, that would be love the experience of genuinely heartfelt meaning for and with life and someone else and, and I always say, at this point, I'm too young to teach about love. I'll do that when I'm 80. But to get from the service guru, over to that kind of uplifting of humanity, there's going to be this era here, this period of time, where I'm writing about what is essentially a new topic, which in this case, we can call it care or dynamic neurology word that didn't even exist until I came up with it. And then means migrating, that's a very different kind of thing that a lot of professional speakers will never really have to do. Because they find a domain area creativity, innovation in your suitcase, for example, or sales expertise, or somebody on leadership and they may need a different flavor, a different twist a different application, but a genuine shift to a related but not the same topic. That's a more what would I call it a, you know, more vigorous endeavor and undertaking and, and so I'll be bringing even more of what I was said earlier about, you got to make sure that what you come out with is fabulous, because people are then going to associate you with that your credibility with that, your reputation will be riding on that. And a book is a brochure for whatever your business is. If you're a pure author, then you're writing books. But if you're an author, speaker, or if you're an author, consultant, or you're an author, trainer, or you're an author, something else, then what's in that book is gonna guide your reader towards the larger back end, ongoing offer that you have built your business to be and you want your whole name and reputation and contribution in the world to be. And in this particular case, I haven't figured that part out yet either. So I'm not in a rush to come up with this new book. But, you know, since we're talking about this in terms of an author summit, it really for anybody who's listening to this to be thinking about, am I putting in as much effort as I should, in every aspect of developing that book, every aspect, because any one of those you don't really pay attention to can come back and bite you. So
James Taylor
if we think about that, that that move from service to to care to, to kind of love you know, we often talk to the you know, to think of your ideal reader, have the ideal reader in your mind. What does it then mean to, to care to provide service to to kind of delight your your ideal reader when it comes to writing writing a book and that
Ron Kaufman
James points to just how nascent and how early in this work I mean, the fact that this is a public interview, and you're gonna be going live and people around the world are watching it, you know, we're kind of showing people very, very early. Because if we look at this phenomenon, take somebody who's in high school, and they're getting ready to graduate, and they're not sure where they should go to work, or should they go to university? And what's it all for anyway? And should I be chasing the grade? Or should I be, you know, connecting with the naked, somebody who's in university, and they're looking at the work world going, you know, what do I really care about? And how do I know that the company that's offering me a position is something that I'll be happy with? And what should I be doing? Is my meaning and contribution in the world with young people that are struggling with? Or Hey, how about all the people midlife? You know, you've got the two kids and all the responsibility in the house and etc, etc. But are you really doing what you care about? Is this the way you want to spend the rest of your life? And what about the people who are about to retire who have retired and saying, is that all there is now what? How do I reengage in the world where it's something that really matters to me? So this topic of neurology, it will apply to everyone. Which of those is my ideal Raider Well, that begs the question, you know, where's the first place to land? Yeah. And then how can it expand from there and the advisors on that they're not people who necessarily help you design the interior of book or or edit the copy of your book, or, or so much develop the promotional campaign as the early early positioning of the project itself. That's where I'm at. I mean, that's, I mean, that's, that's such a critical decision. And because it's done well, if you make that first step, that first audience that you're really writing to and you're speaking to, you choose them Well, then, then everything you do after that, it will be easier and quicker, because like it's like a domino effect. It's domino effect. So it's choosing that lead Domino that you want to go for first. Yeah, and in my case, it's a little trickier because I already have a global reputation as the world's number one guru, as you politely pointed out, thank you, but in a very specific area, which is service quality service, excellent service culture in business. And to a certain extent, government, little bit nonprofit. But if I suddenly pivot, and say now what I want to do is work with personal development and individuals and families and, and volunteer communities and faith based communities. What happened to that guy? And so I want to be able to harness the credibility of one and bring it over in service to the other. So it just adds an extra layer of Oh, this is interesting. You have to really think this one through for someone that's watching this just now who is perhaps a speaker that maybe news being a very experienced speaker or they have a you know, a consulting business in the same that you have a global consulting and consulting business. What role does the book play? Is it still is a book still relevant today in this very digital world? Absolutely. Absolutely. The book is a brochure for the business. Now in today's world, we can self publish, you can lay things out, you can print your own copies, you can go on Amazon, you can just be purely digital, you can record your own audio Book etc. But the history of book publishing means that somebody put in all the effort to write it, somebody put in the effort to actually lay it out and design it on the page, somebody believed in it enough to invest in publishing and printing in some bookstores believe it enough to put it out there, some reviewer did enough, you know, credibility associated with it, to write about it. So then if you're able to say, I'm the author of that book, then it's not just because I had an idea. It's the volume of other people who looked at that idea, looked at the work you did on that idea, and then gave you the salute that said, Yep, that actually is a book. So that's the tradition. That's the historical space in which book publishing lives. And all of us really are beneficiaries of the generations of authors that came before us that we can now say,
James Taylor
I want to write a book. And I mean, that gets to that expression. Oh, you know, she wrote the book on it, you know, that there's that that thing, we kind of think and I guess I mean, you You also really know I think of you. First of all, in my head, I would think he was an incredible speaker. This is, you know, speaking all over the world, especially around around service. And I guess, you know, one of the challenges that anyone that's booking a speaker, as a keynote speaker, is they're looking at risk mitigation a lot of the time as well. And and for them for that. It's almost like having a trust indicator, it's you know, having that you've, you've can, you're de risking it for the client, because they know you are going to know your, your topic, you have your expertise. Well, the word author is the root of the word authority.
Ron Kaufman
So if you wrote it, you know something about it. And at least in terms of de risking, if you're the author of the book, they know they've got an expert. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean you're a great keynote speaker. Yeah, that's a whole nother topic. So then you get characters like us who really put in the effort to learn two distinct domains, but see the linkage between the two.
James Taylor
Now you've you've mentioned that an expression to me before page experience, which I'd never really heard of, and I'm really going to thought about so. In this process of someone going from having an initial core concept of a book that they want to write to getting it out into the world and people reading it, what is page experience? Where does it sit amongst all this?
Ron Kaufman
Well, when the reader picks up the book and opens it to a page, the font that is used the point size that is used the size of the margins that are there, whether or not they're illustrations or icons, whether or not they're call out boxes, how is the chapter heading done? What is the Table of Contents look like? In other words, is this book attractive? Nevermind what it says is this book something that my eye is drawn into, or was this a self published where you know the the typos are found in there, unfortunately, or, or you know, the page ends sort of in a weird, ragged way, and so it looks amateur. If you go into a bookstore and you pick up there are a lot of books that are just pure text, but if they're published by a great house, they're generally going to look pretty good. Then you pick up some other books again, I got to tell this has been self published by somebody who didn't really get the advice that they needed to make sure that it looked like a highly professional publication. Now in my early books, I did them all self published, and part of it was because I wanted to design here you go a page experience. That was, you know, so engaging and dramatic. And I'm just showing you one page right here. But on this book, I mean, I could open it up to any page. And you can say, Well hold on a second, is that a workbook? Or is that a book, and in this particular case, my very first book from the year 2000, this was sort of a combination of the two, it wasn't a workbook because there wasn't room for you to write down your thoughts. But it was a book that you could open to any two pages or even one page, and you'd be able to get enough right there to go. Wow, that was useful. That was helpful. Oh, and it was a little bit entertaining. Because of the photo he put there. Oh, there's a caption. I'm gonna read that too. Before I close the page. You click it, then close the book, get value and I know you're going to open it again in another time. Yeah. Right. So I mean, that's, that's one kind of page experience. Of course, the challenge with that is, Try translating that into Japanese. Try challenging that translated into German, where the language length is going to be longer. And now you got to wrap it around all the graphics. So when I went to this book, this book was not self published. This is the 15th book that I've written. And the page experience, though, is still something that we spent a huge amount of time and rigor and hiring great people to look at. So that for the reader, the enjoyment and the engagement with what's on that page, is something that gives them a sense of awe and you focus their attention on what you're talking about. For example, you would never want to have on one page, italic, and bold and underline and all caps, please, if it gets a phrenic page, well, it's called it's called in the publishing industry. It's called page noise. And what does it mean? It means that you're cognitively distracting your reader at a slightly unconscious subconscious level, and you're making them work harder to figure out what it is that you're actually talking about. So as you as you were kind of getting going from this self publishing, and then obviously into publishing 15 books as well. Were there any guiding lights that you had any authors that you can have? Look, maybe he didn't maybe he wrote in a very different topics to you. But there was something about the style, the way that they wrote the way they were able to communicate or maybe that their overall business that they had in relation to the writing. Yeah, the volume of time that I spent in the bookstore, James, just pulling titles off looking through pulling titles off looking through, take my phone, take a picture of what do I like about this? What do I like about that? What's done well, on the back cover, what's on the flap? How does that cover design? Look, how does the Table of Contents what so that was one kind of study. Then I really looked at business models themselves, because in my case, I am a keynote speaker and the author side of my business is really not the part of the business that I'm looking at to be highly profitable. I'm not an author like a Seth Godin, or a Tom Peters. I mean, these guys are making a lot of revenue from their authorship and the volume of book sales. In my case, I need that book as the credibility, I want that book to be in the hands of every single person I give a keynote speech to, so that they in turn will take it back, they may look to it right away, and they may look at it later, but it sits on their bookshelf as a reminder, I need that book to serve the leadership team of a large organization that we're serving, like Hewlett Packard, General Motors, Coca Cola, these are clients of ours worldwide. And every single member of their senior leadership team should have a copy of this book and be able to talk about it. We as we're consulting to them should be able to say okay, we want you to go to chapter 17. You know, read the three examples that are there look at the list of questions at the end of the chapter. So as I said, it's not so much that it's a workbook like right in but I need that book to give people the guides of do this next,
James Taylor
I guess as the difference between is great is actually demonstrators are always always wanted why why academics were paid less than consultants. And someone said to me, it's because consultants, you know, the academics will describe this to problem very well. And they will give, you know, the the background to it, they'll give the data on it, but what people really want, okay, what do I do with that? You know, that, you know, so So what? So what, in Miles Davis question and so so what you're what you're kind of doing there is you're, you're kind of providing, obviously giving all that context, everything but you're actually saying okay, with this, this is how to move forward on this particular challenges problem, and they could just pick it up from the shelf. When you're writing, you mentioned I can senior leadership. That's an interesting one there. Because when you're writing in terms of thinking of your ideal reader in your head, for someone who maybe doesn't understand the corporate world, there's there's quite a difference between someone that's just starting an organization, maybe on the shop floor, someone that's in management, senior leadership C suite as well. So are you writing very much for the vice Present type of level. How are you thinking about that?
Ron Kaufman
Yeah, it's a fabulous question. I'm just flipping here into the book to show you at the end of one of the chapters, every one of the chapters here actually ends with a section that says, for service providers and for service leaders. Okay? So in other words, I'm writing that chapter with enough of an engaging story, some interesting case studies and examples highlighting the key points, but I want to summarize every chapter with if you're a frontline, you're a first level supervisor, here's what you can do. If you're a senior manager, if you're a leader, if you're in the C suite, if you're on the board of directors, here's what you can do. And actually, the topic is something that you share with each other. But remember it it works in my case, because what the book is about is how do you build a organization wide culture of uplifting service. If I wanted to write a book just for the leadership team, I would have skewed it that way. If I wanted to write a book just for frontline, I would have skewed it that way. But in This book, I actually wanted to write it in a way that both of them can embrace. And that was one of the developmental challenges for creation of the book. And I'm just gonna dig into that a little bit deeper. You say you want to write a book, you've got some content expertise. You've even got a target audience. Number one, who's your developmental editor? What's the developmental editor? This is the person that comes in and says, Wait a minute, you got this over here, and that over there, and you should reorganize this and this chapter is too long and throw that stuff out. And I know you like that story, but it doesn't work anymore, because the time has passed on. That's a rough rough stuff. Are you willing to have your book developmentally edited? If not, you're gonna be risking going out there in the world with a book that really taught people who know how books structure well, so that they succeed in the market, you need a developmental editor, and that doesn't mean your mother. Right, then you need a copy editor, somebody who's actually looking at the words you chose. I'll give you an example. In my first book, I had these four different stories and one of the copy editors pointed out that in two stories back to back, the customer in both cases was a man and the service provider was a woman. And this person said to me, would you like to mix that up just so that it flows better? I would never figured that out. That's when you'll get to the proofreader, and the proofreader is the third and final person on the page. Aside from page layout, which is more of a graphic treatment, the proofreader is the one is finding you put the comma in the wrong place. You know, the one that makes sure there is no typo, the one who might even look at it and say, you know, the word that you use the historical meaning of that may be slightly different for people in another culture. How about try this word instead? Whoa, that's different than Hey, I wrote a book
James Taylor
that that's a little bit that one on the copy editor reminds me of something I noticed that you used to do in your speaking, where you when you're using examples, you're using examples from people from different backgrounds, maybe different cultures, different nationalities, different industries as well. And I'm guessing because you're doing that because from the reader all the time Attendees perspective in their head they going, Oh, I should I know someone like that, or that's me, or when they, you know, when they A week later when they're at some dinner or something and someone said, Oh, what do you do? Oh, I went to run coffee and I'm reading Ron Kaufman's book and actually mentioned a story, someone just like you are just in this situation. So is it kind of word of mouth thing that you're kind of baking into the product?
Ron Kaufman
That's important. And James, the other reason I do it is, as you know, I'm a very global person. I'm from the United States. I live in Singapore on more than 100 flights every year. I've been doing it for 30 years. The world is my audience. And so I don't want my topic is a global topic. So I don't want people going, Yeah, he's the retail customer service guy. Or he's the food and beverage customer service guy or he's the airline food and beverage service guy. Actually, I'm the manufacturing service guy. I'm the supply chain service guy. I'm the technology service guy. I'm the financial services service guy. I'm the government service guy. I'm the community service guy services a global topic. That means when I'm teaching or I'm speaking or I'm writing, I need to make sure that my examples as you pointed out, come from enough different aspects of the universe that people can say I got it this is a global topic. Not this is a put it in a niche and it doesn't apply to me.
James Taylor
Now the marketing the selling for a book like yours, if we press on, you got the Seth Godin folks on on one side who are very much you know, very b2c, you could argue, although they have big business audiences that are reading them, and then you've got yourself who I'm guessing you know, because you're you're you're looking at this as a way to help bring you into organizations whether it's a speaker or as a consultant for them How does it how does that change the the marketing and the kind of selling distribution of a book, as opposed to someone like you know, that some like Seth?
Ron Kaufman
Yeah, from from Seth's standpoint, you know, okay, you got your book, you're so glad you finally got it written. You know, it goes into the Page Layout, it goes into the the final publishing stage, etc. And sometimes, especially if First time authors think their work is done. Your work is just beginning baby motion of that book. It will never, never, never never end. And and if you take someone who writes a book that's more b2c business to consumer oriented, then who do you want to review it? Which magazines? Do you want to write about it? Which bloggers Do you want to show up on? Who do you want to interview you? How are you going to excerpt that book and tweak it in certain ways so that it's easily accessible from your own website? What's the PDF download that you're going to let somebody have as a checklist or a list of tips, that's very different. If you are going b2c then in our case where we're going primarily b2b, where we're looking at leaders, organizations, competitive positioning, internal culture, appeal of the culture to attract talent, the ability to attract and retain customers to develop loyalty, all of those are business issues that I just articulated. And so the kind of audiences I want to speak in front of industry associations, that kind of publications, I want to be in business publications. Kind of you get the point. Now that kind of thinking about where am I going to promote this? Who's going to write about it? Who's going to interview me on this? What? How am I going to excerpt it into different smaller bite sized chunks and make that available? That's as important as writing a great book. Because otherwise, you wrote a great book, but how is anybody gonna know about it?
James Taylor
One thing I noticed as I was going last time I was going to Changi Airport in Singapore is i see i, you would definitely in the store, you may even had like a part of the table, as opposed to just being in the actual thing you I think you can highlight it, and that's in our bookstore there. And I actually seem to remember there was a, like a billboard of you there as well. So how does something is that something that you and your team coordinates as something your publishers organize?
Ron Kaufman
Well, I work closely with our book distributor in Singapore because they're the ones who supplied the books to in this particular case, all of the stores in Changi Airport, which is my home airport, Singapore, and that that's an investment that comes From our marketing budget, bookstores don't do that for you for free. But the investment that we make, to have the billboard, to have the tablespace, to have the layout to have the promotion of the book in that location makes sense for us because again, think about what's our businesses, pure b2b, large global organizations, I need to get that book into the hands of the CEO, or someone who reports to the CEO. Well, those people are flying through the airport. Well, how do I get them to see this then I can't just have it sitting up on a shelf, I'm gonna have to attract their attention. That means the billboard So then how do you get the billboard that's retail space, you're then competing with you know, the whiskey that wants to be up there or the the other publisher that wants to put some other book up there and is willing to invest in making that happen. And that's a substantial part of our marketing budget and it works. Absolutely. It definitely made a big impact on me going to the store and I thought wow, to be able to NSB and something like Singapore, which is such as you say such a global airport as well as it is a hub airport for people in the world. And many other parts of the world as well thought, that's a great position.
James Taylor
That's a great position to have as well. And as you've been going through your careers as an author, as it been a specific aha moment or lightbulb moment, a time when you went, Okay, this is direction I want to go with my writing, or you just made some key distinction in what you do as an author and as a writer.
Ron Kaufman
Yeah, there was a moment James after 14 books, when I'd been writing about service and how to improve service and how to deliver service excellence. When that whole era of books that I wrote, which is called the up your service series of books, you can find them on Amazon and elsewhere, succeeded. And the implementation of that with companies is what required us to realize, ooh, there's another equally enormously important area, which is not how do I give good service? But how do I build a strong culture of service in this large organization, so that we're serving each other Well, so that we're helping each other serve the customer. Well, that's different than how to give good service. It's, it's there's all kinds of other issues involved there. And so over the decade, if you will, from 2000 2000, all the way up through 2010 2011, we learned an enormous amount. And then I wanted to put those two together into one book. And then that one book, which is the one that went to the New York Times bestseller list, I knew that the level of commitment and investment in that was not just I needed to have good writing, I needed to actually architect the entire set of intellectual property that we had developed over 20 years and bring it out to the world in a way not where it's like, you know, an academic tome. But like, it's actually an enjoyable bestseller to read that at the same time inspires you to action. I mean, and so the commitment to write that book was very different than Hey, I've got a lot to say. It was okay. I have to now take another level of maturity as a thought leader and it's paid off
James Taylor
by I'm probably sounding bad being bad towards academics at this point. But something to bear in note, Ron is you have the book, which obviously leaders are reading, but also a Harvard Business Review. There was so much study and case studies and research into creating this book. I believe that Harvard Business Review actually created something on the back of that.
Ron Kaufman
That's right. That's right, we published a white paper about how to lead a service culture transformation in the world. And it's, you know, full of data and case studies and real examples, applying our principles applying our architecture, and Harvard Business Review had a hold of that and they said, We want to excerpt this and turn it into an article. They call it revolutionising customer service. And, you know, were named in there by name and the principles are cited in there and the CEOs of some of the companies in the examples. So you know, that was a real nice solid pat on the back and but Harvard Business Review is not purely academic. Yeah, Harvard Business Review is writing for the business community worldwide. Now I do want to say something about academics since you brought it up now twice. Number one, in the world of acting academia because a lot of people right there, there's a huge competition going on right now. There's always been a competition in the academic world. I don't consider myself an academic. I'm a practitioner. I want to know what works and I want to help make you make it work. You know, an academic, as a teacher, and academic, as an intellectual and academic is, is sharing, you know, new knowledge or they're in there. They're assessing and evaluating knowledge, making you more knowledgeable, I want to make you more effective. We're a bit of a difference. Yeah. But a very, very good publisher, author, and presenter and promoter who's an academic today is going to make a lot of money. Yeah, because you can have 1000 academics around the world teaching a class and using your textbook. So whose textbook are they going to use? It's the one that's best written. It's the one that's best promoted. It's the one that everybody else is talking about. But that's not going to be every academic that wants to write a book. Same thing is true for us as keynote speakers or author or consultants or trainers. A lot of people want to write a book Some
James Taylor
of those books are going to stand out. I want your listeners to have their book stand out because they're willing to do the work necessary to make it a great book. That's a very interesting observation. I'm definitely seeing that also in the online world, where a lot of these top academics, who are also great presenters, great, you know, they're great communicators, as well. There's a bit of a bidding war going on now with some of these, these big universities, because they're rock stars on whatever their subjects, you know, forensic anthropology, or whatever the topic is that they speak on. And that attracts people into the brand of the university. So as we as we start to finish up here, I would love to know, what tools do you use to help assist you in your writing? What would you what is the tools or apps you use to write with?
Ron Kaufman
I'm going to answer in a slightly different way. I'm one of those people that if I can see what it's going to look like at the end, I can make it happen to get there. You've seen for example, a picture of the video production studio that I'm setting Sitting in here right now in my home office. And you know, it's an incredible room and it's got all kinds of equipment, and it's soundproof and etc. But before we built it, I had a designer make a picture of it for me. So when I'm writing a book, it's may sound funny, but the first thing I need to do is see the cover. So I'll actually invest in I got a 99 designs or something and, you know, take what I think is going to be the title. And I'll pay some people to generate a bunch of book covers for me, because when I can see the cover, now I really want to write that. And then what I'll do is I'll sit down with the content, and I'll start to break it apart into Well, actually, there's is it two sections or three sections? Waiting, maybe it's four sections? Well, okay, three sections. Now, within that section, how many chapters are there? I don't know, what's the sequence of the chapters, but I actually when I write my books, I have a ring binder. And in the ring binder, I have those, you know, folders in separate sections, and I actually build out a section for the different chapters. And then as I'm writing it, printed out, I'll stick it in there. And I come up, oh, that's a good idea. I know where to write it down. I see an example in a magazine or something, you know, I'll rip it out. And I'll stick it in that part of the ring binder. And then over time that starts to accumulate. And it helps me gather into the already defined space. Everything I need to write that book, I love that I was you know, there's that idea of begin with the end in mind. Warren Buffett's business partner Charlie Munger, always said invert, always invert. And that was that was his phrase. And, and so you mentioning that how you kind of get the book and it's almost, you know, there's a strong visualization element to that as well in terms of making making it. So we had David Allen on as well. And he said, the first thing he wrote was actually the reviews for his book. He sat down and wrote the reviews, including the names of who would be reviewing it, which magazine or publication they were with as well. It's very, you know, we can love it, but actually, it's incredibly powerful, and especially if you backed it up with implementation And then you know, just getting stuff done is he would say, that's, that's very powerful. David's David's a friend of mine. And you know, I'm so glad I'm doing this interview with you. And you shared with me from one of the other interviews, and I would encourage the viewers of this, to watch as many of the others as you possibly done, James, because you just taught me something very important for this next book that I'm working on, where I just sit down and go, who do I want to rather use? And what do I want them to say? Thank you.
James Taylor
What is it? What's your writing ritual? You mentioned you having these binders? Do you tend to write in blocks of time? Are you writing every single day? How does it work for you?
Ron Kaufman
Tim Ferriss did a wonderful piece on manager versus maker. And it may be that he was just pointing to it, but I'm sure you can find it online. If you just Google manager and maker manager versus maker, you know, manage your time his meetings and decisions and quick reviews and all of that email maker time is carved out time to focus on the need to pay attention to and bring your creative and intellectual powers to focus on something will long enough to produce good result. I'm just now reading a wonderful book called The War of Art. The Art of War, the War of Art. Yeah, great, great right now he says, Look, there's this thing in the world called resistance that its job is to prevent you from doing what turns you on and keep you from doing what you really want to do. And you'll never get a chance to be who you really hard because resistance one. And so what he does every day is he sits down and gets himself ready. And he writes for four hours and he doesn't care whether there's good writing or bad writing. He's writes, and he sells it. I do my work. I do my work. I do my work. That's not me. Okay, I am a deadline driven extraordinarily successful procrastinator. And so what I need to do is set up deadlines, where I've promised something to someone by a certain date, or there's an event coming and I need to have that ready. Or as you know, I'm about to go to Seattle and I'm going to carve out 48 hours of time, maybe make it 72 and sit down and just Work on gathering all my content for this care ology concept and project, laying it all out on the table. And knowing that that effort there, I'm not telling people that I'm telling you that I'm going to go there, but I'm not going to give you the phone number where I'm going to be, you're not gonna have my address, and I won't look at it much of my email, I'm going to focus, but I had to carve out that specific time in place to make it happen. Once I get into a book project, it starts to really gobble up other available moments of time. And you know, it's not a pretty process to write a book. I don't know anybody said, Oh, god, that was so much fun writing my book. It's hard work.
James Taylor
That's great. I mean, it was really nice about interviewing all these different great authors is everyone's got different rituals, different ways of doing things, some people really early in the morning or late in the evening, like yourself, you're you're very good at kind of batching work very strongly to deadlines as well. So there's no there's no right way but you're you've obviously found that time you know that how you how you operate best in terms of creating, you know, that mentioned that the making versus Managing side of things as well. Yeah.
Ron Kaufman
Versus manager. I'll say one other thing about a very, very famous offer the the fellow who wrote the book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
James Taylor
Yes, it's been back. So I've actually got it on my desk just now to read it. There you go. He's a friend.
Ron Kaufman
Okay. I met him many, many, many years ago when I lived on Orcas Island in Washington state where he also lived, and actually got to go to his house and met his wife and you know, we had a little food together. And he showed me where he writes and they're on his computer remember this and this is 3540 years ago. And so computers were still pretty new back then. But he had the right equipment and there was a post it and the posted in the lower right hand corner of his monitor said, I hate to write. I love writing. And I looked at I said, got it when there's something I need to write. Ah, but once I get in To write in, whoa, baby, here we go. Here we go. So the challenge is not writing the challenge is getting yourself to sit down and write.
James Taylor
And that's great. And I want you as you mentioned that a couple of great books there already, but if you do recommend one book that would help everyone with maybe the craft of writing, you know, the, or even in the business of writing, perhaps even getting a book out there. What would that book be?
Ron Kaufman
There's a book by I think it's Anne Lamott called Bird by Bird, Bird by Bird. She's an author, she wrote a number of other books, traveling mercies. You can find her online, but the book title is Bird by Bird. And it's sort of a reflection on the challenges of writing. And she talked at one point when she was young, and she had to write a book report, and it was going to be about a bunch of birds and she was struggling, she was suffering with it and her father was there, a very compassionate, helpful, warm hearted guy. And he said there am Bird by Bird. Yeah. So she started writing it Bird by Bird until her book report was done. And actually,
James Taylor
that's a great book in terms of just the mindset and I know many other things that she does. She has this very small one inch by one inch little picture frame on her desk when she writes in order to get her to remind yourself like when you're you're thinking all these ideas are so big and it's so you know, you can't get your hands on it. Just that just that just you know that for who is that right. That's true. That character, right that does thing. So we're definitely a great book Bird by Bird by Anne lamb. We'll have that there as well. And finally, I want you to imagine, Ron, you wake up tomorrow morning, and you have to start from scratch as an author. So those 15 books have never been out. No one knows who you are. You have no platform. We don't have the speaking platform you have today. You if you have to start from scratch, what would you do? How would you restart things as an author,
Ron Kaufman
I don't recall who first said this to me. But if I had to restart all over He said, You know what people want is to get rich, get thin, get happy, and get a kiss. And if you can help them do any of those things, you've got an interested audience. And I think I would have sat back and clearly with the care ology project, it's going to be around, you know, get happy, but in a really deep meaningful way. I would have, you know, scanned the, the range of potential customers, and also, especially at this moment in the evolution of human history, I think, you know, scan what's going on culturally in the world, politically in the world, economically in the world, technologically in the world. And think carefully about Who do you want to be in one, two or three decades time? What do you want to be known for? What do you want to be asked about? What kind of conversational set do you want? To be a participant in Who else would you like to be considering to consider you know, a colleague and intellectual colleague, what kind of evolution of humanity is of interest to you? So for example, yes, customer service and service cultures my field was mostly business but I'm an educator, I'm an educator who helps you apply it that makes me a practitioner in the business space. Now as I make the shift, and in this area of cardiology, I'm still an educator that I love to do but what am i educating people for? And it's it's a you know, very different, larger and hopefully even more meaningful contribution in
James Taylor
life wonderful. If people want to connect with you want to learn about your writing, maybe start learning about this journey you're having on the on the care ology and even check out your previous books and you're speaking, where's the best place to go and do that
Ron Kaufman
best place to find me is that my website, which is my name, calm, so it's Ronkaufman.com You're just getting the real b2b side of the business you'll find a link in there that will get you to up your service calm. But there are contact forms on both sites and I see all that mail that comes in my own email addresses easy it's Ron at Ron Kaufman calm and I answer my own email. I don't promise 24 hour turnaround time because sometimes on on a plane or I'm on stage, but I do answer all of my mail. So people are welcome to get in touch especially if they're listening to something from you.
James Taylor
Well, Ron, it's been a pleasure speaking with you today I love I love your speaking what you don't say this is a great book as well uplifting service phenomenal, but I'm really looking forward to, to watching where you go next with it with your writing. So thanks so much for coming on today.
Ron Kaufman
pleasure to be with you, James and all your viewers worldwide.
James Taylor
If you're interested in living a more creative life, then I'd love to invite you to join me as I share some of the most successful strategies and techniques that high performing creatives use. I put them all together in a free downloadable ebook that you can get by going to jamestaylor.me. That's jamestaylor.me. To get your free downloadable ebook on creativity.
To get your free downloadable ebook on creativity. If you enjoyed the show, please rate it on iTunes or Stitcher and write a brief review. That would really help get the word out and raise the visibility of the Creative Life show.
