00:00
Alright. We're live, Sean. I've got a little bit a few actually stories, but it starts with a person I hung out without the other day. You know Ryan Holiday. Right? The author, Ryan Holiday? Of course, came on the pod. He's awesome. I was hanging out with him the other day, and he said something actually to me in person, but he previously said this on the podcast that we had I think he's been on twice.
00:19
He said something about how he actually made a funny comment. He's like, most most authors say they make more money through speaking than they do actually selling their books. Those people, they just didn't sell a lot of books. However,
00:43
Ryan has sold a ton of books. We know that for sure. But he also mentioned to me that his other things,
00:51
like the daily stoic, which is his daily newsletter. So Ryan Holiday wrote a book on stoicism. He's written six or seven now at this point. But he has this other property, the daily newsletter called daily stoic, where they sell coins and merch and advertisements,
01:05
He has told me that that has made more money for him than selling books,
01:09
like, which is crazy because that's what he's known as as an author. And so what I wanted to talk to you about today was I went down this huge rabbit hole where I found ways that authors are making money other than just, like, writing a book. Well, you got you gotta tell the coin thing because the coin thing is the perfect simple example of this. I don't know what he confirmed exactly, but explain the coin thing because I think it's the perfect simple example of an author making money Not off their book, but a lot of money in some other way. Ryan Holiday's whole schtick is stoicism. It's a philosophy that is fairly useful, and it's just like how to deal with hardship in your daily life. And for some reason, he decided to come up with a coin. And it's a coin that in Latin, it says, like, you're gonna die or, like, today is one of your last days alive or something like that. Like, some, like, in operational thing, but it's in Latin. So I'm not exactly sure what it says.
01:53
And a coin is a great product to sell because it costs twenty five bucks to sell. It costs, like,
02:01
a dollar to make. It ships for whatever, a stamp, two stamps. So however much that is eighty cents. There's no returns. There's no sizes.
02:09
It's just like the easiest thing ever to sell. And on the podcast, I don't remember if he said the exact number, but I believe he said tens of thousands of coins which is millions and millions of dollars. Is that what he said? He did he did say that, and he also said that he works with some mint, some mint in the United States. And I guess it's it's one of the old famous coin mints, and he I think he was, like, their biggest customer. Also, like, he's, like, they're minting more of his Momentumori coin than they are. Anything else. So what I wanna do and that was surprising to me. I had an inkling and then he kinda revealed that that is true where he made more money not from selling books.
02:43
But I had,
02:44
I went down this rabbit hole, and what I wanna do is I wanna show you three people who are making significantly
02:50
more money than you would think And they are doing it in ways other than just writing one book, making whatever ten percent of the revenue that they of which they sell. Alright. So we're gonna start with the first one. Sean, do you know who James Patterson is? I do not know who James Patterson is. Who is James Patterson?
03:06
I did not think you and w was. Sandwiches.
03:09
Maybe a former baseball player?
03:10
Who are we talking about? You
03:12
you're very smart. You're a very high IQ smart person. Oh, god. Here it comes. The fact that you don't know some of the most basic things, like, of pop culture, like, it's it's beyond pop culture at this point. This is these are things that you see all over bookstores, whatever. It shocks me that you don't know this. Is he the vampire in Twilight?
03:29
Yeah. I mean, what about you?
03:32
No. Okay. Your second guess was a lot further away from the first guess. So listen to this. So have you ever heard of this Strat Meyer syndicate? You probably haven't. Right? Of course. If you haven't heard James Patterson, you also probably haven't heard of Nancy Drew or the Hardy Have you heard of those things? I know who those that they write murder mystery they write mystery novels, right, for kids
03:49
or
03:49
something? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So they are the main care in murder mystery novel. So the way it starts is in the nineteen thirties, there was this thing called the Shrap Myers syndicate. It was this one guy. He came up with company in the thirties where he was like, hey, not a lot of people are writing children's books. I'm gonna go ahead and start publishing children book children's books, and then He was like, you know what? I need to write more books, but I don't feel like dealing with the hassle of working with these artists authors who, like, are just a pain in the butt to deal I care about is making, like, kind of cookie cutter novels that children like.
04:20
So what he did was he goes, I'm gonna actually just come up with these character Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and he had a variety of other series. And I'm gonna have these authors write these books, but I'm just gonna say it's written by the same author every single time. I'm not gonna give a a person, like, their little bit of fame. I'm gonna pay them a fair rate,
04:37
but it's in and and they're gonna follow my rules. And maybe eventually they'll become a famous author, but for now they're just gonna follow my rules. And that's what he did. And there was at one point where, like, every kid in America could name Nancy Drew, the hardy boy, things like that. Stratmeyr syndicate. What a name.
04:54
So wait. Sorry. The syndicate is
04:57
I think I missed something here. The syndicate is the set of novels. The syndicate was the name of his company. He called it a syndicate, which sounds like a drug like, a drug syndicate. It sounds like something illegal, because usually it said that was just the name of his company. It was a legitimate company. This wasn't, like, anything shady, although he did a bad job of name It'd be like naming, like, your kid's children's book like warm candy and bands or something like that. Like, he did a very bad job of, like, naming his publishing company called the syndicate kinda weird. Gotcha. But, basically, he came up with these rules where he was, like, all books and he'd be part of a series.
05:31
Every chapter needs to end
05:33
with a preview of what the next chapter is going to be. The beginning of each book needs to give a summary of only one page what has in the previous books, and he just had this, like, outline of how to, like, make hits.
05:45
Well, fast forward,
05:47
seventy years, there's this guy named James Patterson.
05:50
At this point now, he's seventy five years old. He started,
05:53
an advertising in New York for the Jay Thompson advertising firm, just some huge firm. But on the side, in his late twenties and early thirties, he starts writing novels.
06:03
And they do okay. Like, they're not, like, that big a hits.
06:06
But he keeps at it, and he's a workaholic, and he keeps going. And eventually, at the age of forty seven, he retires from advertising and goes all in on publishing these novels.
06:16
So he's been doing it now at this point for about twenty years, and he's finally starting to see success. And the whole point of his novels is they're thrillers.
06:23
Some people might say they're kinda like trash formalaic
06:26
thrillers,
06:27
but the thing is is people love them. And at this point, he sold something like five hundred million copies of his books.
06:35
And at one point,
06:37
he,
06:38
accounted for sixteen percent or sorry, six percent of all hardcover novels sold in America. So the guy's a hitmaker. He's still he sells a ton of them. But here's the craziest part.
06:49
Since he started writing,
06:51
about forty eight years ago, he's published on average,
06:55
seven books a year.
06:57
And at this point, even though he's seventy five or seventy four, He's doing something like thirty books a year. Now how on earth does a guy do that? That's, like, ridiculous, right, at this point. To be doing that. It's ridiculous to be doing that at a young age. It's more ridiculous to be doing seventy as well. More than a book every two weeks.
07:14
It's ridiculous.
07:15
Well, here's how he does it. He has coauthors
07:18
and a little secret with James Patterson, even, you know, he's well loved in America.
07:22
He actually has only written about twenty percent, like solely written, twenty percent of the books that his name is is credited with as writing.
07:31
The way that he does it, he has a team of, of coauthors.
07:35
And so what he does is he pays these guys out of his own pocket. He kinda comes up with a framework. They flush it out. He reviews it almost like a movie script. And he's like, writes notes in the in the in the margins, and he gives it back to him, and they kinda flush it out. And at this point, he's done it so much that you'll see that there's James Patterson
07:52
with Dolly Pardon. I think there's a James Patterson and then the co author is Bill Clinton, and then the other co author, who's, like, the person doing the actual work, is listed below it. But this has been so successful successful that at this point, he's made something like eight hundred million dollars.
08:08
What?
08:10
Yes. That's how richest guy is. He owns, like, three or four homes. Each of them were worth forty million bucks. He's donated something like fifty million according to his website to small bookstores. But this has been a smashing success. I'm shocked you've not heard of James Patterson. I think I have seen the name. What's like his most famous book? I don't even know the name of his but he's almost like, do you know Tom Clancy?
08:29
Yes. Okay. He's like Tom Clancy. Does Tom Clancy do the same thing, or does he write all his own books?
08:34
No. Tom Clancy,
08:36
would write them, but Jim Patterson does not write as much. But, you know, like, Jim Patterson at this point is sort Clancy, where you're like, oh, it's a Tom Clancy novel. I don't even know what Tom Clancy. I can't even name his novels, but I know it's it means, like, it's like a spy novel. Right. Okay. So
08:50
let me ask you a question. Did this guy start out writing all his books? And then over the years, was, like, how do I scale? And he's, like, what if I got another author? Or from the beginning, was he, like, Did he have this plan from the beginning, or did this come about organically trying to scale up? So over the last twenty years that he's been killing it, I don't I don't think one of his books. I'm not sure exactly, but most of his books have not themselves been bestsellers.
09:14
However,
09:15
He has been a best selling author
09:17
if you add up all of his titles for many decades. And he learned early on, he was like, well,
09:23
Like, I don't know if any individually are gonna be a hit, but I'll just make a shit ton of them. And so we discovered early on to on his career. He goes, we're gonna be about quantity. And at this point, he says that for the last forty years, he's worked something like, seventy hours a week, and he writes all day. And when we talk about writing, it means working with a team and things like that. But he discovered early on, he's like, we're just gonna do quantity. We're gonna pump these babies out. And so at this point, Jim Patterson,
09:49
he's a face, he's a guy, he's a real person, but it's almost like a brand. And he's, like, gets these authors to kinda come under his brand. And he makes jokes, but he'll say things like, they should pay these, like, these referring to his co authors. They should pay me to be a co author I'm teaching them so much and they're giving their name out there. And he actually gives them press. So they're able to, like, list. But it's almost,
10:10
it's almost, like, the boy, the music industry works. Like, have Nicki
10:14
Minaj coming on your song. You have to pay Nicki Minaj. You know what I mean?
10:18
I like that. That's the first one you went to. Nicki Minaj.
10:21
Alright. So
10:23
this is interesting.
10:24
What what do you like about this guy? You like that he basically
10:27
to me, what I one thing I like is I feel like he broke the, like, precious rules
10:31
of, like, like, writing and book, like, being an author is this, like, high prestige.
10:36
Usually, it's a high prestige, low volume,
10:40
labor of love,
10:41
you know, that may, you know, almost never makes money. And if it happens to make money, you you kinda got lucky with this one smash hit. And,
10:49
you know, the honor is in slaving away at this novel for four years. And he's that sounds like he broke all those rules. He's not precious about it. He's like, Cool. Let's write books people wanna read. Let's make it formulaic.
11:01
Let's make it so that I can hire people that are gonna write these books. Let's scale this baby up. No individual. We're we're hitting singles and doubles maybe. We're not going for home runs necessarily because these will all add up. And it sounds like the cool thing is that this guy almost, like, productized
11:15
this type of book and Exactly. Like a business person, then he did a artist.
11:20
Well, in reality, what he is is he's an he was a he was CEO of the Thompson agency group. It so it that's like a that's part of a huge corporation.
11:28
And he's basically an advertising executive turned author. And he brings some of that
11:34
pizzazz to
11:36
being an author. And it has worked really well. So he's both a business person and an advertising person. Alright. Everyone, a quick break tell you about HubSpot, and this one's easy because I'm gonna show you an example of how I'm doing this at my company. When I say, I, I mean, not my team. I mean, I'm the one who actually made I've got this company called Hampton. You could check it out join hampton dot com. It's a community for founders. And one of the ways that we've grown is we've created these surveys where we'll ask our members certain questions that a lot of people a lot of times people are afraid to ask. So things like what their net worth is, how their assets are allocated. All these, like, interesting questions And then we'll put it in a survey, and I went and made a landing page. So you can check it out at join hampton dot com slash wealth. You can actually see the landing page that I made And the hard part with this is with Hampton, we are appealing to a sort of a a higher end customer, sort of like like a Louis Vuitton or a Ferrari. So I needed the landing page look a very particular way. Hubspot has templates. That's what we use. We just change the colors a little bit to match our brand. Very easy. They have this drag and drop version of their landing page builder, and it's super simple. I'm not technical, and I'm the one who actually made it. And once it's made, I then shared it on social media, and we have thousands of people see it in thousands of people who gave us their information, and I can then see over the next handful of weeks, this is how much revenue came in from this wealth survey that I did. This is where the revenue came from. So it came from Twitter. It came from LinkedIn. Whatever it came from, I can actually go and look at it, and I can say, oh, well, that worked. That didn't work. Do more of that. Do less of that. And if you're interested in making landing pages like this, I highly suggest it. Look, I'm actually doing it. But you could check it out. Go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started. Alright. Now back to MFM. Let me give you two more that I think are even more interesting.
13:13
Have you seen these books lately written by this guy named Jack Carr? It's kind of all the rage right now. I've I've heard the name, but I I haven't read anything now. Alright. So Jack Carr is a former Navy seal. He served in the Navy seals from nineteen ninety six, I think, to two thousand sixteen.
13:28
And he started writing these books called, the first one was called the terminal list. It came out in two thousand and eighteen. And if if you go to the terminal list on Amazon, you'll see it's it's one of the highest reviewed books I've ever seen given the quantity of reviews. It has tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of reviews, and it's like a four point five I read one of them two weeks ago. I think I even suggested that you read it, but it's really great. It's basically, like, the equivalent of a romance novel for a woman, it's, like,
13:56
James Bond for the man. It's, like, basically, the story of a guy who goes through all these hardships where he's a he's an ex navy seal. His family gets hurt. He's gotta save them. He's gotta get revenge. Whatever. All that, like, epic manship.
14:11
However,
14:12
I started reading his book, and I noticed something really interesting.
14:15
He names
14:16
products and brands like crazy in his book. And I'll give you an example. So this is a a a few excerpts or one expert from from one of the books where he talks about he reached inside and removed the nine millimeter Smith and Weston m thirty nine from his chest. Better known in the seal teams as the m k twenty two hush puppy. And then he goes on to saying he grabbed a of his nine millimeter Supervel subsonic ammunition
14:40
that was sitting next to his yeti cooler.
14:46
I swear to god, he'll talk about things. Like, for example, he'll talk about, like He sipped his athletic greens.
14:54
He names brands, like, crazy. Like, there was one point where he was talking about, like, they're, like, he needed the best, most durable equipment we started using a hill person fanny pack or something like that. I'm like What? How and, like Dude, can we can't even get, like, my he's like, He did he put on his headphones and turned on my first million. His go to under seven thirty six for all types of entrepreneurial inspiration.
15:17
And then, dude, he was poor.
15:20
He named stuff like crazy. And the the main character's name's James Reese. He's like a James Bond type of guy where he does a lot of bad stuff. Like, you really like him and you kinda wanna be like him. And he just names all of the products that he uses, and it's crazy. And so I was interested. I'm like, why is this guy naming all these products? So I go to his website. I googled jack car brands. I just Google that. He's got this whole website. I think it's just jack car dot com. But if you Google
15:44
jack car brands.
15:47
What you'll see is he has jack car dot com and he creates do do you know, like, that website,
15:53
uncrate or,
15:55
gear patrol. He basically has created his own version of that where he has all these gift guides, or he'll be like, Here's all the gear that, James Rees used in this book. And he has these beautiful guides on his website. And lo and behold, if you highlight over a lot of them, they're all affiliate links. And in fact,
16:16
and in fact, oftentimes
16:18
on Jack car dot com, he sells his own stuff. And so one of the main parts in this first book that I read is he's got this fancy tomahawk,
16:25
which is basically like an ax. And he uses this Tomahawk to kill people. And it's, like, a really high quality Tomahawk. Well,
16:33
jack car dot com sells that exact same Tomahawk.
16:36
And I thought that this was brilliant because when reading these stories, he's talking about the cars that he's in. Like, the type of car that he's in is, like, a main part I'm like, I want all this stuff because this character James Reese is so cool. All I have to do is go to jack car dot com, and I couldn't buy all of this stuff. And it's amazing.
16:52
I love this strategy.
16:54
Yeah. This is brilliant. I've never I never would have thought that product placement in books would work like product placement in movies does, but that makes perfect sense. This is his, this is his feastables. This is his prime. Tomahawk.
17:07
Dude, it's awesome. And by the way, I was just giving him shit. Not all of them are affiliate links, but a lot of them are. And if you go to, like, his Amazon page, he even has this cool feature on his Amazon page where it lists all of the products in the books not And those are filters. This is just like,
17:22
you know, for example, a lot of people ask us a bunch of questions about, like, oh, what do you use for this, whatever? And it's, like, sometimes writing the shit down is
17:30
actually just it's valuable to them. It's useful to me. It saves me time. And I know that a bunch of podcasts do this, but it's it's like small income. It's signing income. It's not their main thing. Do you think this guy is, like, He's gotta be making more off of his books than he is off of this, this Amazon affiliate thing. Right? I think he's making more off his books. But my third example is I'm gonna show someone who's making way more off this thing. And I think there's a world where Jack Carr will make way more off that side thing than the original thing. Meaning, when you think of a navy seal, you think of, like, many things, including, like, the cool types of gear they have. And you, like, see what they're wearing. You're like, that's neat. I would love to have that thing or, you know, that you it's like caused playing to be a tough guy.
18:08
There's a thir here's
18:10
right? I mean, like He says in on your part again.
18:18
Yeah. Yeah. As he walked around his home wearing broken socks.
18:24
It's JCPenney, like, sell, like, really good boxes or something I could talk about.
18:28
The third one,
18:30
Steve Renella. Have you heard of Steve Renella?
18:33
Three for three. No. Who is Steve Renella? Okay. This one, it's I would I would not think you would know who this guy is. So he originally start as a magazine article guy for outdoor magazine. So he basically he's from Michigan, which is Google Montana. He loves the outdoors. He also loves writing. And so he starts as a freelance journalist. He works for outdoor magazine. He works for, like, men's healthiest things where he he's able to, like, talk about the outdoors, and they pay him a small amount of money, whatever.
18:57
His first book that he writes is about foraging, so which is basically just he wanted to create the the book sounds silly, but they're actually awesome. He wanted to write about how he went and hunted and foraged his own Thanksgiving dinner. But, like, in doing that, you find, like, the meaning of life And you see, like, the history of food, whatever, and outdoors, it's awesome. The second book that he did is called American Buffalo, and it's this amazing book about him hunting Buffalo and how the Buffalo are really important to American history, whatever. If you're not into that, you're not into it, which I don't think you are. But for the people who are What gave it away?
19:30
Yeah.
19:32
This is, like,
19:33
you know, my body language right now is the body language of a girl who's about to get grinded on by a guy at the club unwanted leave. No. No. No. Thanks. Foraging for my food. No. Thanks. I'm out of here.
19:45
Would you like a free copy of my book? It's signed.
19:48
No.
19:50
Yeah. You're you're not into this guy, but you're gonna be into what what I'm about to explain. So he writes his book American Buffalo. It gets pretty popular. So then he creates this website called meat eater dot com. Have you ever heard of meat eater? I have heard of meat eater. Yes.
20:03
So meat eater starts as a series of podcasts, they have a show on this thing called the the outdoor or the sports channel, something like that, and it starts working out.
20:12
Well,
20:13
Eventually, churning,
20:14
I think you know churning, they invest into it. And at this point, in two thousand twenty three, Meet Either is a website where Steve Renella,
20:22
blogs about outdoors. He published his books his books under the meat eater name. He has recipe books. He has, more podcasts, whatever newsletters.
20:31
However, they went and bought a bunch of brands. They bought a duck call business. They went and bought,
20:37
a clothing line.
20:39
Now in two thousand twenty three, they announced that they did a hundred million in revenue from selling all of the products on meat eater dot com, of which
20:48
his kinda claim to fame or at least where he gets a lot of the traffic from is his books and then his podcasts and things like that. And so this is an example of a guy who I think has made significantly
20:58
more or will make significantly more in terms of enterprise value from
21:03
selling the product that he talks about in the books or selling the lifestyle. This guy is super fascinating.
21:09
Dude, going from American Buffalo,
21:11
a book about buffalos in America or whatever,
21:15
to
21:16
having a hundred million dollars in revenue on your business is like that that's not the American dream,
21:22
but it's it's something.
21:24
It's someone's dream somewhere. It's it's an American's dream. Yes. That is I can't believe that that happened. That's insane. Turnin is so smart, by the way. They took this one thesis
21:34
of
21:35
content to commerce. So they were like, hey, anybody who's world classic content is not valued properly in the market because media is such a shit business. That they're valued as a media business, but if you can flip their business model from content to commerce,
21:49
then
21:50
this thing is gonna this thing is gonna take off. And it's gonna take off in the same way that our YouTube subs are gonna take off when you go to YouTube and you say to yourself,
21:59
God damn. I'm learning a lot from Sam today about meat eaters and about authors and about all these people, and they're gonna go to YouTube. You're gonna go to my first million, and you're gonna click subscribe. Because you love us so much. Thank you very much. That's the plug. That was a good pretty seamless. Right? Good job. I think, if I had to make a prediction,
22:16
I think that meat eater will be worth many, many, many hundreds of millions, maybe even a billion dollars in the next ten years. I I believe it. These these lifestyle brands, once you get, like,
22:27
there is no no niche too small with these lifestyle brands. Meteor is actually pretty big compared to some of these lifestyle brands. Like, the Hodinky, the watch brand, luxury watches only. Right? Or there's things for, like, you know, how people when they get into biking,
22:40
they become, like, you know, lamer. They start dressing like spongebob.
22:44
Yeah. Spend it to, like, clip ons and they walk into a coffee shop after, like, a ninety thousand mile ride that morning. Like,
22:52
those people are super valuable as an audience, and they need content that's, like, so lame. Like, that that is the thing that they care about. And so there's, like, an endless niche of these, like,
23:01
really, really hyper specific lifestyle content brands that I think can be built.
23:05
You just have to come from that space. It sounds like this guy, Steve Bernella, you know, came from that space, which is pretty pretty cool. You wanna know the, here's a curve ball to the situation. He lives in Brooklyn.
23:16
It's
23:18
for real. He lives in he lives at four three Brooklyn.
23:21
Yeah. I well, he lives at Brooklyn. I was doing research on him, and he's, like, from Montana, and he's, like, I know Montana better than anywhere on anywhere, anyone else the country. I knew enough to get the hell out of there.
23:32
Yeah.
23:33
And now he lives in Brooklyn, which is what I thought was kind of weird.
23:37
But, anyway, those are my three examples
23:40
of strange ways or shocking ways that a bunch of these authors are making money. I know that you are thinking about becoming an author does this change? But I think you've paused it. I'm not sure if you've paused it or if you've I think becoming an author, to make money is just, that's like saying
23:55
You know, I was hungry so I went to church. It's like, yeah, just because they have some food there doesn't mean that's why you go. And so, like, I don't think making money is the reason to to write a book if you're gonna if you wanna make money and you're smart about marketing and all that, there's a hundred times easier ways to make money. Did you just make up that analogy? That was a really good, that was a really good analogy. I did my morning routine today. So, you know, the brain is on.
24:17
The brain is awake.
24:18
The
24:19
thing that I've looked into is how much these authors make. So
24:23
There's, like, tiers to this. So,
24:26
if it was ten tiers, the first five tiers, you know, tier ten through five,
24:31
is just all of them made no money. Actually,
24:34
maybe it tiers, you know, like, ten all the way to number three, all made no money. But a couple of interesting data points that are in our world. So I think the top tier is, like, the JK Raulings of the world, JK Rauling, James Patterson,
24:48
which is, like, you actually are
24:51
mainstream
24:52
Canon. Right? You are you're a part of the meta. Like, you you you became the equivalent, you know, you're gonna get a Netflix show type of thing. Have you ever thought about by the way, have you thought about JK Rowling and how she invented an entire universe and made up rules to, like, a game or a language that people refer to now, like, the word muggle. Like, she just thought of that word. At least twice a week. You know, people do the Roman Empire thing. I don't give a shit about the Roman Empire.
25:16
But, dude, I do think of, like, diagonal. I think about Hogwarts. I think about all these places. Right? Like, I think about that twice a week, how cool that is. Someone just made it up. Yeah.
25:27
It's weird to me. That that when I think about that, I'm just like, that's that's so odd. No bullshit.
25:31
What percent of you is, like, might be real?
25:35
Is there any part of it that's like well, I I I mean, I am just a bogle. How would I know?
25:41
The way that I think about it is
25:43
it she is so good at inventing this thing that she couldn't possibly have invented it, and she's just telling a true story. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's just impossible to think that one brain, like, our brains are each six pounds, but that came out of hers. I don't understand
25:58
how that happens. Dude, I've been at an airport where it's, like, you have the smart cart thing. And I'm walking between, you know,
26:05
nine and ten.
26:07
I don't run at it, but, like, you know, I'll take finger and sort of drag it against the wall just in case there's a little little give in that in that wall, you know, I'll I'll play I'll see.
26:16
So there's that, that tier. Right? That's, like, god tier. Then there's the James Clear,
26:21
you know, atomic habits, David Goggins, Mark Manson.
26:25
I think these guys have cleared, like, thirty to fifty million dollars off of a single book.
26:29
That's a lot. I would say more like twenty. So James clear, I think, I don't know how many he's sold out. It's his thing is escalating, by the way, which is really interesting. He tweeted this out recently and it was it was something like I'll try to find it, but it was basically, like, he first year was, like, you know, maybe, like, a hundred thousand. And then the next year was, like, two hundred thousand. The third year was a million. And then the fourth year was, like, four million. And the fifth year was, like, fifteen million. And he's just gotten up and up and up. I think now, he sold,
26:57
of, basically, I don't know, twenty million copies or something like that worldwide. And so, you know, in a way. Really? That's me. Twenty million. Yeah. Yeah. His book is, like, It's like a runaway train, basically.
27:08
So I I think I'm pretty sure his his book has grossed, like, a hundred fifty to two hundred million dollars. A hundred probably a hundred fifty million dollars worldwide. It's my guess. You know, I might be off by thirty million in either direction, but but I'm not off by by half, you know, And he's just a guy in Ohio. I think, like, he's just a he's just a guy. Like, I I knew him before here. I I talked to him before the book, and he was just like, a blogger in Ohio. Like, it didn't seem particularly fancy. And it's not a million years what I've
27:36
Yeah. I knew him before. He stopped talking to me.
27:41
So so I think the that's, like, the next tier. David Aggan's book, I think, has done, like, thirty five, forty million dollars in sales, and he did it through Scribe. So he kind of, like, owns more, own a lot of it.
27:53
Tim Farris, surprisingly, didn't sell that many copies of four hour work week. I thought four hour work week was, like, To me, it was, like, that was a huge book. It obviously did super super well, but I think it sold two million copies, you know, so two million versus twenty million. Right? Ten x more for for atomic habits, which is pretty crazy. A fun one is Eric Jorgensen. So, you know, Eric Jorgensen,
28:14
he
28:15
he was like a startup growth guy
28:17
He lived in some I don't know where he lives. He lives in, like, Kansas City or something like that. And Eric Jorgensen
28:23
wrote the Navalman Act. Which is basically, he's like, you know, Navell's tweets are the shit. What if I printed them out?
28:31
Basically, like, what if I printed it out and stapled it together. Right? Obviously, he did more than that. But the core idea was he didn't write the book. He didn't do a he didn't study to evolve life and write a biography.
28:41
He didn't create a bunch of original wisdom. He just took Naval's existing wisdom that was super fragmented,
28:46
packaged up into a really easy to use book, and then And he actually gives away, like, the ebook for free, I think, online.
28:52
I'm pretty sure Eric he's never told me this is this is my my guess work based on some so back of the envelope stuff. Pretty sure Eric has made, like, three to five million dollars off of the Devulmen Act himself.
29:03
No way. I don't believe that. That is so my money. Eighty two percent confident that that's a a real number.
29:09
Dude, if you're even half, right, I would be He's definitely made more than a million dollars. I think it's, like, three to five million dollars off the Mac.
29:16
Okay. Well, that's insane. Does Navalall get anything?
29:20
Navalall got distribution.
29:22
I don't think it gives Navalny money from don't know. I'm gonna make you famous, baby. You're gonna be superstar. That's what I'm gonna tell you. I'm gonna create the shauna shauna Mac.
29:29
Did you say that way too match your
29:32
That was not the first time you've said that.
29:35
Is that what you told Trunk?
29:39
That's insane. I, that that and, basically, the concept is ridiculous. Right? I mean, it's good. The concept is genius is what it is. He's he took somebody else's genius was fragmented. It was, like, why would I write nobody must read the Eric Jorgensen book, but a lot of people wanna write the Navell book, and Navell is kinda open source with it. He has he said this many times. He's like, the the best thing you could do
30:01
is let other people reshare your ideas. They're, you know, stealing your ideas, but really they're propagating your ideas. It's one of the highest compliments, one of the best strategies you can have to get more distribution. And so, yeah, I think he was happy that or, you know, and it took him like a year. You put a lot of effort into it. Not nearly as much effort as the guy who actually came up with the content.
30:19
Well, in the vols, like, five hundred million in his life. I think he's done fine too. Right? That's that's the whole idea. No. And Eric, by the way, I think Eric's now the CEO of Scribe. David, the the company that did David Goggins book. So Yes. And the company that I think you might you be using.
30:35
Yeah. Not yet. But, okay. So
30:38
another
30:39
Crazy story. So I've never heard of this book, and I doubt you have either, because are you a sci fi reader? Not exactly. Only like the most famous ones. So have you ever heard of this book called wool No.
30:49
Talking to me about science fiction is like talking to you about Bison.
30:54
You know what I mean? It goes on very far. The conversations got a lot of data. Yeah.
30:59
That's a hard yes, Dan. Well, basically, here's the, here's the idea. I was looking at the,
31:03
at the charts, and I saw all of the Game of Thrones books. So it's like, you know, a song of Ice and Fire, and it's basically George r Martin, George r Martin, George r Martin, there's five of his books, and there was one book on top of it. Called wool. And I was like, I have never heard of this book. What is this book? So I went and researched it. So the author, this guy Hugh Howie, which sounds like a fake name might be. I don't know.
31:24
His the his origin story is he's living in North Carolina.
31:27
He's broke. He was doing some odd jobs. He was like, oh, there's a roofing gig. Yeah. I'll gonna help you you know, I'm a technician. Sure. I'll help you out. And, basically, at some point, he's unemployed. And he's like, you know what? I'm gonna write a book. His wife was kinda supporting the household.
31:40
He's like, I'm gonna write a book. And she's like, okay, honey. Great.
31:43
Sure. You don't wanna get out there with the old resume. And she's like, no, no, no, I'm gonna write a sci fi book. Like, it was like an ideal, it was like something. He's like, what if aliens of this flying car or whatever. I don't know what it was. Some crazy idea. He This conversation could go way different. It'd be like, hey, by the way, like, I know that you love having these action figures in the plastic still, but can we make a little bit of room for the baby?
32:04
Oh, you're gonna write a book. I'm gonna go find another husband.
32:07
Yeah. So
32:09
he puts the book out. He sells less than a thousand dollars of the book. Okay. So first first try and it failed. Most people would obviously quit. Strike one. He's like, Oh, I'm just getting warmed up. He's like, I that was that was good, but I can do better. And he still has no job. He needs to kind of start, you know, paying for the bills a little bit. So I love this part about the story. He gets a job, but he's like, he's trying to find not the highest paying job. He's trying to find a job that will make a minimum amount of money that he needs to live with the maximum amount of free hours. So he ends up finding this job that he could do for about twenty five, thirty hours a week. It pays only ten bucks an hour. But he's like, I'll take it because there's a lot of downtime where I'm just sitting there not doing anything. I could be writing during that time. And it's only thirty hours a week so I can spend all of my free time doing this. And I also don't even want a good job that'll make it hard to quit later because I wanna be an author. And I'm not gonna trap myself in a job. That's, like, hard to leave. Then he changes his schedule. He's, like, I'm gonna wake up two AM every day. I'm gonna write before my job. I'm gonna write during my lunch break. I'm gonna write after dinner. It became a compulsion for him. And in three weeks, he writes this book wool. Three weeks, So, again, just like James Patterson was always precious about the whole idea of writing books. This guy was, like, three weeks, not three years.
33:21
And so he banks He bangs out this book. He puts it on Amazon for ninety nine cents. And he sells, like, a thousand copies. He's like, boom. Thousand bucks. Alright. Love it. And he's like, and the but, like, you know, his small reader base, it's kinda like YC. They say you want, like, a small number of people. You'd rather have a thousand people that love you a hundred thousand people that just kinda like you. So you had a thousand people that really love the book. And they were like, dude, you gotta write a sequel. So very next month before they get cold, He writes a sequel. By the way, wool,
33:50
wool's five hundred and thirty pages. He did that in three weeks. Yeah. So then he, He writes the sequel a month later. He, or, like, you know, or two months later, whatever it is. And he sells three thousand copies of that one. And he's like, alright. I gotta keep going. So he writes two more.
34:04
And he sells ten thousand copies. And finally, he puts out the collection, all five of the books that he's written in a very short period of time, And the first month, he sells twenty three thousand copies of the set. And now he's selling it for six dollars and seven nine nine cents. He makes, basically, a hundred forty grand that,
34:20
in in gross revenue that month, And he's self publishing this whole thing. So he's keeping seventy percent of it. Whereas a normal author is gonna keep ten percent, maybe fifteen percent of it.
34:30
And all of a sudden,
34:32
you know, the months roll by, he's now sold five hundred thousand books.
34:37
Before, you know, before anybody knows it, which is a shit ton of books to sell. That's like, you know, you're in the top top, you know, percent of a percent
34:46
that are are of authors at that stage. And he's getting approached by publishers, and they're like, he and he's like, okay. What's the deal? And they're like, we'll give you you know, two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Like, I'm already making two hundred fifty thousand dollars. They're like, okay. We'll give you more money. He's like, well, I'm what why would I give you why would I take some money today for, like, Now I give up all my upside. And they're like, well, we can help you get distribution. He's like, I've sold five hundred thousand copies myself. And they're like, how the hell did you do that? And he's like, And so his strategy, his, like, guerrilla tactics to get this book out there where he's like, alright. I need to influence the influencers.
35:18
So he sent, basically, like, copies of the book to bloggers and reviewers at good reads. So not like influencers, but book influencers. So people who review books and good reads like high ranking good good reads people. Then he's like, alright. That's good.
35:32
Next step. He goes on Reddit, and he's got, he does an AMA on Reddit for twelve hours. And so he's just like, I'm just gonna, like, soak up all the Reddit love for this day on on Reddit. Alright. Does that? Then he starts encouraging fan fiction and fan art, whereas most authors are pretty, again, precious about, like, it's my IP.
35:50
They try to, like, you know, take down anybody who writes, like, variations of their book. He's like, no. No. No. Go crazy. I built the universe, but you guys can fill up at all the stories. And he would basically incentivize people to design other alternative book covers for it. So now their little audience would you know, there are that artist audience would see them designing a book cover for this book called wool. That was pretty cool. He picks thirty of the die hard readers. And he's like, okay. How do I get my die hards to help me and become, like, you know, super evangelist? And so he made them beta readers. Again, everybody's so precious. They keep everything under lock and key. He took his super fans. It was like, you're gonna be readers of the of the early editions of new books before they come out. So we did a bunch of community building essentially, like stuff that doesn't really scale that each one individually wasn't a game changer. But if you add up that and the twenty other things they did, You could see how he, like, that's not what made it successful, but he did start turning the crank. And at the beginning, the crank is pretty hard to turn. But eventually,
36:45
you know, you you you if you power through that first part of the crank, it'll start to move on its own. And that's basically what happened for this guy. And so then someone comes up to them and they're like, look, I don't think you should sell your book rights.
36:57
But I do think you should sell your film rights. You haven't actually you're not gonna make a film yourself. So he sold his film rights and,
37:04
and he kept his his, book rights, you know, as an independent person for a while. I I think maybe he sold it now. I'm not sure. But he he also met George r Martin once. He went to a book signing for, for George r Martin, and he's, like, Hey, George. Like,
37:18
it's me. You know, Hugh Howie, and the guy's, like, never heard of you. And he's, like, I'm the number six guy on the sci fi list. Like, you know, it's your five books. And I'm number six, said George Armar and he posted this thing. The George Armar and signed his book and said, to number six, keep trying.
37:33
And then a couple months later, a couple months later, he actually hit number one. And so, just a pretty cool story of, like, a self published author that that really made it happen, like, an entrepreneurial hustle story.
37:44
That's a great story. Do you use goodreads? Do you know anything about goodreads? I've used goodreads. Yeah. I bet founders of Goodreads,
37:50
and I was like Yeah. Otis Chandler. Yeah. They're they're really cool people, really nice people. It's a cool product, but but it's old now. It's been around for a long time. But it's got a great mo. I I I can tell you a little bit about Goodreads, but this guy Hugh Holly, he has
38:04
so I'm I use Goodreads religiously. I'm I'm I'm I'm That's kinda like my it's where my library I keep everything. This guy has seven hundred and fifty thousand ratings, which is huge. And if you're in the hundreds of thousands of ratings and you have over a four star review, you're, like, the best of the best. He has a four point one five review
38:23
out of five for almost a million reviews. That's amazing.
38:27
Yeah. And it all started with a standalone short story, basically. It wasn't even, like, book. It was like a short story that he published at the at the beginning of that first three weeks. But again, that's kinda what you want. It's a prototype. Right? He treated it like a entrepreneur would, not like a author would. He's, like, the blue collar version of sci fi. This guy's, like, the Larry bird of sci fi. You know what I mean?
38:49
Dude, how insane is it that Larry Bird was so amazing and would just literally drink beers, like, on the bus to the game. And, like, people used to smoke cigarettes at halftime
39:01
of those games. Like, isn't that absolutely insane now? Like, now LeBron James sleeps in, like, a hyperbaric chamber.
39:07
But, like, the guy who was basically the LeBron James of his time was literally just, like, downing blood lights after
39:14
And he was, like, so skinny and so pale. Had the worst haircut, the shortest shorts.
39:19
And he, yeah,
39:21
the best mustache, but he, like, kinda looked like a like, a human version of, like, Big Bird, and he just killed it. And he's considered one of the top five. Yeah. That guy's amazing. He he gives, he gives the weirdos hope.
39:32
This story is amazing. Hugh Holly,
39:35
that's a good story. You wanna do one or two more thing? Yeah.
39:39
Michelle.
39:41
You Shepard. It's great. You need to hire somebody. Go check it out. It's how I hire a bunch of people. If you wanna hire people like I do, use Shepard.
39:49
How's that? Alright. There. That's perfect. There was no thrill in that show. But I kept it short. Do you have one more thing? Oh, well, I guess we didn't talk about this. This is kinda cool. James cleared just launched an app yesterday, which I think was the stimulus for this whole thing that we didn't we didn't talk about. Andrew Wilkinson,
40:03
he put out this tweet where he said, we partnered with James Clear. Tiny owns forty percent. James owns sixty percent. We made this app. I actually didn't look at the app. It's a productivity app or yet. Yeah.
40:15
It's one of those. It's just something completely different. It's just a social media app. It's a network. It's a photo
40:21
sharing app. It tastes weird. It's just something like the stupid game. It's like, you like, they recreated, like, snake from Nokia.
40:31
That's so good.
40:33
By the way, okay. So let's talk about a couple things here.
40:36
Great idea to release a habits app.
40:39
You want an app to be habit forming. Literally, that's, like, only successful apps are ones that you use habitually.
40:45
So creating a habits app is a good idea. There's lots of there's habits apps, but they're not made by James Clear. So I think this is, like,
40:51
No brainer idea. You could just create anything that was a habit, like, just like some supplement or drug. Like, I'm gonna get you addicted. We're gonna make this habit. Oh, watch this. We're gonna call it crack.
41:02
So I think genius idea by him
41:05
maybe doubly genius idea by Andrew to
41:08
pull this off. I think it's amazing what he's doing. He's done this now with Huberman. So he launched,
41:13
the Yerba mate drink with Huberman, which I think is also a genius idea. I think what Andrew's doing now is the new playbook of what churnin did. Remember I was saying, like, churnin's playbook with the content to commerce, They did it with barstool. They did it with eater. They did it with, like, a bunch of these media media publications.
41:29
That was a really good model, and it it's played out over the last ten years. Think what Andrew's doing now is gonna play out over the next ten years, which is he's partnering with these experts and authorities.
41:39
And he's like, look, I already have Metalab that can do the design, the engineering,
41:44
I have I I own a portfolio of businesses. I've, you know, made a billion dollars doing this whole thing. So let me find a CEO. We'll build the whole thing. You just have to promote it, and it's a perfect fit with what you do. I think it's just, like, such a good model. It's also really fun for him. Right? Cause he's gonna get to hang on rub shoulders to people who he likes and respects.
42:03
He's got, like, a cool cocktail story of being like, oh, yeah. We built the James Clear app. We did the Hebrewman drink. We did the whatever. Right?
42:10
They've done a bunch of these these apps now. So I just think it's an awesome win all around. Like, I'm I'm really happy for her. We should have Andrew on to talk about it, but my prediction is that this won't make nearly
42:21
as much money as some of his other boring things that no one would ever talk about, but
42:26
it's cooler than all of the other ones. Yeah. Like, it's significantly
42:31
cooler. It won't make as much money, but it's way cooler. Like, to be able to, this thing's gonna make a lot of money. Why do you think this is not gonna make money? Well, I just think that it's his other stuff just does so much better if I had to guess. I think the If Paul can do, like, hundreds of millions on meditation. I'm pretty sure that you can get, like, thirty, forty million of ARR on a habit app. I think maybe you can, but Andrew also owns all these boring agencies that are like
42:56
the thousand most popular agency, and they also make many, many tens of millions a year in profit. No. No. If you add them all up, they do. But each individually does not. Right? Like If you add them all up, they do. His agency. If you add up what he's gonna do with Huberman with James Clear in the next five that he's gonna do like this, those are gonna add up to be much bigger. The Huberman drink is a brilliant idea. That is a absolutely brilliant idea. The James Clear app, like, he's getting the right type of things. Like, you don't want necessarily
43:25
the a list celebrity, because the a list celebrity for every, you know, George Clooney or Ryan Reynolds that you get that that have a hit, there's tons of others that they don't really care about promoting it. They're too busy, but it's not a fit. They don't have, like, a direct relationship with their audience because they're actually on in Hollywood, they're not, like, have a direct channel through social media.
43:43
And so the people that he's finding are like, this is meaningful for them. It's a perfect fit with them. They have a direct relationship with their audience, and they haven't, like,
43:53
they have, like, love from their audience. It's not just, like, people who are fans of them. As people have deep trust in them. And I think that that is a think he's picking the right influencers to these years. I I would bet that he's gonna make hundreds of millions off of these plays. If you if you add up the, you know, three to five that he's gonna do in this category, would bet that that's a three to three, like, a three hundred million dollar prize. I guess we'll have to have him on and, ask him about it. I'm
44:17
He
44:17
he's like a spider man. He's or like an octopus. He's got his tentacles, like, all over the place. I see this. I'm like, how the fuck did you weasel your way into that thing? Like, he just, like, He knows everything. Like, he not knows everything. He knows everyone. I don't know how he gets his fingers on all these things. I'll be like, check her out. I'll be like, hey, Where's our email?
44:35
We're influencers, Andrew. Where you at? Well Where's our offer?
44:39
He also plays dumb with me all the time. I go, like, you're I I'm I'd probably be like, hey, have you heard named Hebermann. I might love it as podcast, and Wilkinson will be like, yeah. I think it's a nice podcast. I also enjoy it. And then, like, weeks later, I'd be like, We partnered with him and launched this company we're gonna do for eighteen months.
44:55
Yeah. I'm like, okay. Like, he does that. He does that kind of on a regular basis with me where I'll be like, if you're into this thing, it's kinda neat. Yeah. I agree. That is neat. He he is a super networker. He is a absolutely,
45:06
like, incredible networker. I am I I I am I I admire his networking skills. Like, he's like, cool. I like Bill Ackman.
45:14
Now I'm friends with Bill Ackman, and he's an investor in my company. Oh, Charlie Mungers my hero.
45:20
Years later, I'm having dinner with Charlie Munguer, and he's offering me, you know, x y z. It's like he is really able to when he puts his mind to it with who he wants to meet, He is able to make that shit happen. And,
45:31
and I think he does it in a way that's mutually beneficial. It's not, like,
45:35
yeah, most people when they're, like, oh, I wanna meet this person. It's, like, just begging for a, you know, time or attention in a way that's not additive to the other person. I think he does it in a good way that's additive to the other person. Yeah. He's he's fascinating in the way that he's able to but he also
45:49
he also turns
45:51
a weird networking
45:52
opportunity
45:53
into, like, real businesses. Like, usually, a lot more often than not when I meet people, I'm like, that was nice to meet you. I'll see you never again.
46:00
It's awesome. Right?
46:03
That's like where my brain stops.
46:05
Yeah. What a guy? Yeah. That's
46:11
Like, I'm literally, like exactly high. You know, dumb and dumber when he's walking out of the seven eleven. He's like, big gulp.
46:16
Oh, yeah. Alright. Get to later. I think that's that's me at every networking event.
46:21
Same. That's exactly how I am. Where it starts and ends right there. And it's just like a passing memory. And, yes, Andrew, somehow, like, makes it into money and turns it into dollars. I don't know how he does it, but he's very good at it. Well, he he told one story on the pod where he was like, I wanted to meet Dan Gilbert. I met Dan Gilbert, and then they had this challenge with the like, or he had a product. I have a design agency. So we just made him a website for free. That was really nice because I, you know, use that as his currency to, like, you know, hey, I think you're awesome, and we did this thing.
46:50
This is awesome. Right? Oh, it's because my agency's awesome because I'm awesome. I mean, he just uses it to sort of, like, open the door. He'll put in the work, basically. And he's he'd be like, oh, whenever you're free, I'll fly there and let's, you know, I'll I'll beat you. You know, I'll make the effort to come to come make this happen. It takeaways to have an agency.
47:06
See that have, like, a an agency or, like, a sick house. It's like, oh, you're in town. Come stay in my home. And then, you know, immediately, you have to have, like, some, like, awesome
47:13
I do that. Anytime someone's traveling, like, oh, do you wanna stay in my house? And I just rent an Airbnb.
47:18
They can stay in. They're just absolutely indebted to me.
47:23
Well, it's kind of a good tactic Chris Sacca said that he had this house and trucky. And,
47:28
you know, he would, like, lure, which sounds weird. More weird than it actually is. He would lure these, like, interesting founders.
47:38
Come to my bed. Yeah. I got AWS credits come over.
47:42
And he would, like, get these guys to come up and you become friends with them. And it was, like, they're they're, like, well, I would love to hang trucky, and just what happens if you have a house, and that's how we become friends with them. But maybe having an agency, somebody that goes,
47:52
when I lived in San Francisco, was just constantly getting, like, meeting requests or event invitations. And it was, like, a good problem to have, but at it's still a problem. He's, like, I was playing defense. I was just reacting to whatever was going on. He's, like, when I trucky, then I played offense. I would figure out who who it is that I wanna actually spend time with, and then I would proactively plan and, like, set it up so that Travis's calendar came for the weekend and stayed with him. He's like, we're not gonna just get coffee. We're gonna hang out for a weekend.
48:18
And, like, for every fifty coffee meetings I do, like, one weekend is just so much more powerful than fifty coffee meetings. And so he's, like, we hang out We spend time together. They meet my family. We chill in the hot tub. We brainstorm in the morning. Then later that evening, we a new idea comes. I'm just very helpful for these people. That's how he did his Uber investment. He did the same thing with the founder of Instagram. That's how he did his Instagram investment too, was he invited Kevin System to come stay at his place and trucky And he stayed there for whatever, few days a week or whatever it was. And by the end of that, like, they were kinda bonded. And I I think that was
48:50
Chrisaka did a lot of cool things, and that's definitely one of them. I don't know if
48:54
a three bedroom
48:56
place
48:57
in the Burbs is gonna do the trick. I think both of us are gonna have to step it up
49:02
Can I introduce you in Walnut Creek?
49:05
Yeah.
49:08
We'll go to Safeway.
49:10
We'll come back.
49:12
It's like the only appeal you like marble countertops? I got I got marble countertops. Like,
49:19
alright. Is that it? Is that the pod? That's the pod.
00:00 49:42