Michael: Hello, everyone, and welcome to the HaBO Village podcast, I'm Michael Redman.
Kathryn: And I'm Kathryn Redman.
Michael: This is the podcast to help you, the business leader, you, the business owner, build companies that are more successful, more fulfilling. To build companies with more profit, purpose and legacy, you need a plan, you need a strategy? This podcast is here to talk about all the different stuff that goes into that and give you support. Hello, Kathryn Redman.
Kathryn: Hello, Michael Redman.
Michael: How are you today?
Kathryn: I am so dang tired.
Michael: So, for everybody-
Kathryn: Holy mackerel.
Michael: This is the first podcast we have recorded after our book launch. And our book launch was last Tuesday and today is Thursday-
Kathryn: Of the following week.
Michael: ... the 13th or 14th, or something.
Kathryn: And I have had almost like a week long book launch hangover.
Michael: A book launch hangover.
Kathryn: That's what I'm calling it, a book launch hangover. There is not enough sleep to make up for the last three months.
Michael: Well, you just kind of [inaudible 00:00:57] and everything else, and then you just got to keep grinding in the middle of a pandemic and everything else, the staff isn't in the office and you're still doing Zoom and you have Zoom fatigue, who would have ever [crosstalk 00:01:08] Zoom fatigue? Zoom fatigue.
Kathryn: Is anyone else out there as tired as we are? I don't know. [crosstalk 00:01:13].
Michael: But is anybody out there tired of this pandemic? Are you tired of... You have Zoom fatigue, you're ready to just try and get back to something. And I think the concern we have, everybody in the country, maybe the world, is that even though we want to get back to normal, the idea that this isn't just all going to get back to normal quickly, it's not-
Kathryn: There's going to be a new normal and-
Michael: Who knows what that's going to be? So, we're going to be in kind of a... There's an interim phase now that I think we're getting ready to enter into that might be on, off about worrying about the disease and infections and all that kind of stuff. And so, we're just going to have to figure out what that looks like. There's no more this, we're in this moment, now we're kind of in a long moment. So, today, what do we get? Let's talk about today, kind of give everybody a picture. We're going to pull back the curtains, show behind the scenes a little bit on what a book launch is, and what's going on. And we did well, we did really well. And we did really well because of you, our listeners, and everybody out there who jumped in to help out and everything else.
Kathryn: Amazing.
Michael: Let's talk about... What were the numbers? We talked last week, what were we trying to achieve last week?
Kathryn: So, we had the e-book on sale for 99 cents, and we were trying to achieve 200 sales of the e-book and 50 reviews, that was our-
Michael: That was our goal.
Kathryn: ... goal that we set, was a little higher than the goal that the publisher set, and they set-
Michael: They gave us a goal of 150 in 50.
Kathryn: They did.
Michael: And we figured, well, we've seen enough, we've been around the-
Kathryn: The Launch Bay.
Michael: We've been around a lot of things a lot of times doing these kind of projects, and not specifically book launches but different types of launches and stuff like that. You set goals and then you almost never hit them. It gets a little discouraging at times. Sometimes, we're learning to get better at setting goals and accurate goals.
Kathryn: So, Michael is like, "If we're going to hit 150, we have to tell everyone in our world that we need 200, or there's no way we're going to hit 150."
Michael: Yeah. So, I mean, set high and let's see if we can get there. And so, by the end of Sunday night, midnight, we hit-
Kathryn: Well, no, no, you got to back it up.
Michael: Oh [crosstalk 00:03:20].
Kathryn: You have to understand.
Michael: Not ready for the drum rolling yet?
Kathryn: No, no, no. No. Because here's the thing, the publisher set a goal of 150 for the week, right?
Michael: Right.
Kathryn: Which was basically Tuesday through Sunday, that was how long the book was on sale.
Michael: Right.
Kathryn: So, day one, by the end of close of business, midnight, whatever, day one, we had sold 174.
Michael: It was awesome.
Kathryn: So, they were already happy with us. And we had only gone through day one.
Michael: What they never told us is the average person sells about 40 in the first day.
Kathryn: Right. They didn't tell us that till much later, so-
Michael: And for those of you who've been listening this podcast for very long, you know-
Kathryn: We're slightly competitive.
Michael: ... we're slightly competitive. I didn't think I used to be, or I didn't used to think I was competitive, and now I am very clear.
Kathryn: So, competitive.
Michael: I'm a bit competitive.
Kathryn: He's a bit competitive. So, we were super excited. And then, the second day, we sold another 108.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: So, okay, now we're well over almost 300 mark, actually. And then, the third day, we sold another 60-ish, 59, 60, so it just kept going and ultimately, when it was-
Michael: And it was dribbling off a little bit-
Kathryn: Absolutely.
Michael: But, by the end of the week, we sold 402. 402.
Kathryn: 402.
Michael: 402.
Kathryn: 402.
Michael: We're pretty excited about this.
Kathryn: Yap, [crosstalk 00:04:35].
Michael: I mean, we're really excited about this.
Kathryn: And we ended up-
Michael: It's amazing.
Kathryn: We ended up with... I think, we have 37 reviews now.
Michael: 37 reviews as of last night.
Kathryn: Yeah. And Amazon is a bit dicey, because one of the things we're realizing is that there are a lot of other people who posted reviews, we know that from interacting with folks and them telling us-
Michael: Yeah, we had a lot of interactions with folks over the week. It was amazing, emails, messages.
Kathryn: But not everyone's review gets okayed by Amazon, they have full control over that so we can't control it. So, we didn't quite hit the review numbers that we wanted and we're not stopping on that, we're going to be continuing to ask people for reviews.
Michael: When it was all over, I feel like they did to us what we did to you, what we did to our listeners and everybody on our team, is we told everybody 200, they told us 150, and they told us 50 reviews. And then, the other day, they said, "Well, you're doing really well, if you have 20." And I'm like-
Kathryn: So, we're like, "Okay, you guys are killing us."
Michael: So, I see what you did there. So, that said, we are very, very, very grateful to all of our listeners, to all the folks on our email list, to all of our friends near and far, all the way around the world. And by the way, this is like... We had people in multiple countries helping us out, supporting us, stepping up, writing reviews, I really think we got over 60 reviews, but for some reason-
Kathryn: But you may never know.
Michael: ... we may never see. The other thing is, we found out in the midst of this launch that because of the virus, there's all kinds of problems going on in Amazon.
Kathryn: Yeah, so the other thing is that we know what we sold from an e-book perspective, but we also know that people, because they told us, bought paperbacks and hardbacks. And normally, paperback sales show up immediately on Amazon but because of the virus they're about 30 days behind, so we're not going to know probably for another couple of weeks.
Michael: Because they only trigger as a sale once it's been sold.
Kathryn: Once it's shipped.
Michael: Shipped, yeah. So, when you order it, as far as their analytics go, it's not a sale yet. So, we don't know what that looks like for paperbacks and we don't know what that looks like for hardbacks, but we're actually kind of excited about that, too. I mean-
Kathryn: It's just like waiting for [crosstalk 00:06:36].
Michael: Our neighbor ordered both, he ordered-
Kathryn: An e-book and a-
Michael: And he wants it signed. By the way, they're moving, our neighbors now are sort of moving and what I was going to tell you earlier is, he's all nervous that the book that he ordered is not going to show up in time before they move.
Kathryn: So, we should give him one as a going-away gift.
Michael: So, I told him we'd get him.
Kathryn: We got this.
Michael: [crosstalk 00:06:55].
Kathryn: We got you. We got you, [inaudible 00:06:56].
Michael: I didn't tell him that I'd bring it home, or something like that. Let's talk about this super exciting, super successful... We'll talk about what's next in the HaBoverse verse later, but right now, let's talk about what it looked like to get ready. So, how long did we spend on the book?
Kathryn: So, we started actively working on it with... In the mode that we're working on it-
Michael: In the mode we're working on right now.
Kathryn: April, May, last year?
Michael: Yeah, April of 2019.
Kathryn: Yeah, so-
Michael: It was like we signed the contract and we started working for the publisher.
Kathryn: So, basically a year.
Michael: So, it took us a year to write a book, get through all the edits, design the cover, get the layout designed, actually pick the name, the name we went in with in April turned out not to be the name of the book, Passionate and Provision Strategy. Passion and Provision is in the subtitle. It was our working title. And that changed writing the back of the book, writing the bio, there's all these things that you've got to do.
Kathryn: Collecting people who are willing to say nice things about you on the back of the hardback.
Michael: On the back of the hardback.
Kathryn: So, they call them blurbs, book blurbs.
Michael: So, we're asking people, we're thinking, okay, who's a good person to ask for the blurb because there's only going to be three or four, maybe five, but probably three or four on the back of the book.
Kathryn: And they're telling us they want them to be famous people, and we're like, "We don't know any famous people"
Michael: We don't know any famous people. I'm like-
Kathryn: I'm sorry.
Michael: Well, we knew a couple of famous... I feel like the Ryan's are famous in their own little world.
Kathryn: That's true.
Michael: Terry Walling is famous in his own world.
Kathryn: In his world, that's true. Everyone that we know is famous in their small sliver.
Michael: Smallest [inaudible 00:08:32] sliver.
Kathryn: [inaudible 00:08:32].
Michael: So, as Ryan Deiss says a lot of times, I'm really, really famous in a very small niche.
Kathryn: Yeah, that's right.
Michael: We were having lunch in Boston one time, and I don't know if we said this or not, but he loved it because those weren't... We were all at this conference, and they weren't his people. Nobody knew who the guy was. So, we could all go out in this huge crowded lawn where there was all these food trucks and the four of us could hang out and have lunch. And he's like, "I love it, because nobody-"
Kathryn: Nobody knows me.
Michael: But the week before, we'd all been at one of his conferences in LA, and the guy has to have guards when he comes from his suite, down the elevator to the stage. And then he has to go back up to his suite. He can barely walk around at his own conferences because he's like this little superstar. It's pretty funny. And he laughs about it a lot, he tells a lot of jokes. So, we had to find blurbs of folks, so we got some of those folks, and one of our students is on the back of the book. That was [crosstalk 00:09:32] one of our success stories that we're very proud of. So, you have all this stuff you've got to do, not to mention, folks, you actually have to come up with content and write the book and have a theme and everything else, and all that kind of stuff.
Kathryn: Figuring out the structure and organizing it, and the stories that you want to tell, and how to keep the flow moving from chapter to chapter, and all those things that move a book from being okay to being really good.
Michael: Yeah, it's funny because we've had a model for a long time that we look at copy and content with, and I realized it's actually in this book. And it's the four temperament buyers journey model or buyer's temperament model, or buyers personalities. And each one of the four has a major characteristic that's important to that person before they're willing to listen to anything else. And so, you really have the big ideas in the book and in every chapter.
Kathryn: Yap, a big idea.
Michael: You have some kind of system or structure of, here's the bigger system and structure that exists in pretty much every chapter. And then you have, here's... A something very specific that you can start doing now, here's a couple of exercises that you can do. Because some people are just like, "Just tell me what to do." Okay, here's something you can do. And then, examples in story form about how this all goes.
Kathryn: How it impacts humans.
Michael: How it impacts humans, and what does this do?
Kathryn: And then, fun.
Michael: Absolutely.
Kathryn: Entertainment.
Michael: It was fun and entertaining. And so, when we look at the book, we've talked about this and actually, we learned this model years ago from a friend of ours who'd learned it from other people he knew, about how to write a book and that system of writing a book, and it was pretty impressive the way it's artfully woven together in that. And a huge amount... We came up with the content, it's our stories, we're engaged in it, you can hear us, but our editor that helped us write the whole book, or walked with us through the whole thing and did all the work on it-
Kathryn: She was amazing.
Michael: She was amazing. And the team behind it, having a publishing team was amazing. If there's one thing that I have been thinking about this last week is that, I have been reinforced the idea very pleasantly, that there are so many great things we can accomplish if we do it with somebody else, if we do it with a team. Because there's just so many things that you either can't get good enough at or you don't have time or anything else, I mean, putting a book together yourself, you got to be good at graphic design, you got to be good at pithy things to say, you got to have the content, you got to have the expertise, you got to have the craft, you got to have the knowledge of how a good book goes together, there's just like... There's no way we could have done this this well.
Kathryn: You got to know how to get it on all the different platforms. And I mean, just the structure-
Michael: Just the mechanics-
Kathryn: [crosstalk 00:12:19] mechanics of selling it is like, holy cow.
Michael: It really is. You can write a great book and never get it out there well because you don't know where to put it and what to do, and how to do it, or how to do it well. I mean, in essence, right now, I don't know... I know there's a list but I can't keep it in my head all the different places that our book is online where it can be purchased, where the audio book is going to be. Well, there's another thing, right? There that we've learned that... Now with Amazon, the pandemic, their strikes, and their warehouses not working full, all their warehouses and printing and everything else is not working full time. We did everything they said we were supposed to do to have the podcast... Not the podcasts, the audio book-
Kathryn: The Audible version, yeah.
Michael: The audio book on audible.com ready for them, so it can be ready for the launch. It's still not up. And nobody will tell us when it's going to actually be available on Audible. But for those of you who are excited and like listen to this podcast and you want to hear the whole book, we recorded it in our own voices.
Kathryn: We did. And so, if you just can't stand to wait for Amazon to get their act together, you can email us at info@habovillage and we can send you a link.
Michael: With a shopping cart already set up so you can buy it from us.
Kathryn: So, you can buy it from us. I think it's also available on iBooks or something, at the minute, I'm not an audio person.
Michael: Oh, it is?
Kathryn: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Michael: Oh, I didn't know that.
Kathryn: Yeah. So, it's just Amazon that doesn't have it together.
Michael: So, when it came to why we did this, I mean, I don't know if we've talked much about this, but I think as we're pulling back the curtains, the strategy behind writing a book, the reason for writing a book is probably one of the most applicable things right now, at least it's important to say, I think, because we have a business podcast that helps people build passion and provision companies, except for what some people might think is, this is a great way to get rich. It's not. It is so not.
Kathryn: Yeah, probably going to be a little while before that could ever happen.
Michael: Writing a book, you will never get rich from a book, or at least your first book. There are very, very, very, very few people who ever make a living just writing books. It's all the other business stuff that goes along with it. Which kind of leads to the strategy and the purpose of why we wrote the book. So, if somebody were to say, "Kathryn, why did you guys you write the book?"
Kathryn: I would say, because we have this burning desire inside of us to get the message out about what passion and provision is. And a book is the most efficient way to do it, and it is probably the easiest for people to step into. So, it's an inexpensive entry point essentially, into this HaBoverse, this village, this world where we're saying, "You know what? We care about these two concepts so deeply that you would have profit, purpose and legacy, that your company, that you as a business owner would experience both passion and provision in running your business. We care about this so deeply, we want it to get into people's hands."
Kathryn: And getting that word out to people is just hard, it takes time and it takes energy. And not everybody is going to sign up for an online course, not everybody is going to do the things that we've been doing to try get the message out, not everybody is a podcast person. But books, they're kind of universal, right? And so, the opportunity to have a book that we can use to just begin to work our way into people's hearts and minds in terms of the message is the biggest reason. And it seems to create a platform that is different.
Michael: Yeah, I agree. I think that's a great way of putting it. It really makes it accessible to people because people can go.. Okay, when I come up with 10 bucks or 20 bucks or 30 bucks depending on what version I'm buying in the hardback and where I'm buying it, or whatever, it's like I have something. I am at the point where I buy e-books for easy searching, I buy audio books to listen to it, I buy the physical book-
Kathryn: So, you can highlight and mark it up.
Michael: So, yeah, so I can highlight, mark it up and reference it very quickly. I don't enjoy e-books nearly as much, it's more of a function of the search function. So, when I'm buying e-books, it's like I'm either on the road and my iPad is the easiest way to carry a bunch of books, or it's a search function. How do I get to a quote or a piece of information quickly?
Kathryn: I like e-books for fiction, for novels, but not for business books.
Michael: Yeah, you read on your iPad a lot more than I do when it comes to that kind of stuff.
Kathryn: But it's for novels, it's not for education. It's a different different animal for me,
Michael: So, it makes it accessible, and here's one of the things, whatever you're doing and we've learned this from several of our friends out there and peers in business building and stuff like that, and our mentors, that a book is really... It's so ubiquitous as a thing in our world. But even though it's so ubiquitous, it's ubiquitous, it's so big, it's so common, there are books everywhere. So, few people actually read. It's amazing how few people read, but a lot of people who don't even read buy books. And so, you get this idea that it's like, it makes it super easy to get in people's hands. There's a certain level of credibility when you've written a book because it's really hard to write a book. It takes a lot of energy, a lot of effort and perseverance.
Michael: Now at the same time, I would say, this sounds... I'm going to say something completely opposite, [inaudible 00:17:46] It's really hard to write a book, it's really easy to write a book. It's not like there's a mountain you have to climb over, it's more of a flat level kind of muddy bog you have to make sure you keep going through.
Kathryn: One foot in front of the other, however slowly.
Michael: Really, it's a game of perseverance. And there may be levels of quality and that's really determined on your team and who you got around you, and who's a good editor. And if you think somebody in your family is a good editor, that's a good place to start. And what I would encourage you is that many of the people who have written a book and I've had a single editor read it, and they've even paid them, have still had problems with their book. We've found them. And what we found is that we had our writer who's an amazing editor working with us, she put together a really good draft after she compiled everything we worked on. We edited the snot out of it to go back and go, "Did I mean this? Did I say this? Did I mean this?" Whatever. Then we worked on it together. Then we had a couple of people on our staff read it. Then they had two professional editors read it. Then we locked the book-
Kathryn: Locked the manuscript.
Michael: And then we-
Kathryn: And then we did the audible version. And we found 17, 18 major things-
Michael: Major things that we needed-
Kathryn: That we needed to fix.
Michael: ... to fix.
Kathryn: And we're like, "What the heck."
Michael: And our publisher opened the book back up, opened the manuscript after the lock, and they had two more people going through it, and on staff and a hired hand editor to go through and make sure they're cleaning and catching everything else. And I guarantee you, there's probably some mistakes in the book. But we caught with about six or seven revs, maybe 10 revs, and five or six people looking at it. We caught most of them. And that's the thing that you need to do is stay on... I'm saying this to go, if you're going to write a book, whatever it is, have two or three people read it, one editor is not going to be enough. Have a couple of people who are good editors and flow and everything else read that.
Kathryn: Well, and if you can stand to... I mean, we say this about regular content, it's just much more ridiculous in some way to say it about a book, there is nothing like reading it out loud-
Michael: Nothing.
Kathryn: ... to find the errors. So, we will say that to our staff, if you want to know if something is is right, read it out loud, because when you're just reading it on paper, it's like your brain and your eyes stop seeing things and you skip over things.
Michael: And we're taught in school also, to read and write differently than people talk often. So, there are little things that made... It sounded good in your mind. And it may have flowed well at some level but when somebody, especially when you're the one writing it, but when somebody else sees it, they don't pause there. There's times when you may not put a comma in and then you think, that just totally messes everybody up, but you were fine because you knew that there was supposed to be a pause in that place. So, the reason I write the book is to help with businesses, is to help to get the message out, is to help really get it accessible to people. It's to allow a really cool tool that's really low pressure, nobody feels like they're being sold when they buy a book. Nobody feels the pressure of a salesperson breathing down their neck, but they get an idea, a feeling, oh, this is what it is. Oh, this is what you mean.
Michael: And with the 400 people who've purchased so far, it's amazing how many people that love us. But they wouldn't have sat through more than about three minutes of us trying to explain what we do because they don't have a business or they don't think it's relevant, or they don't think it's relevant for them, or they don't need our services because they've got it figured out, or whatever. And all of a sudden, they're reading it, they're going, "Oh." Or somebody who's really experienced in business who says, "Oh, this is'"
Kathryn: This is what you've been yammering on about.
Michael: You're going to need to read this book, you're going to need this content. This is-
Kathryn: Yeah, it's been amazing. I mean, just the reviews on Amazon from people who know us and people who don't, but the ones who know us, it's like all of a sudden they're like, "I get what you've been up to all these years." Like, "Oh."
Michael: Oh, yeah.
Kathryn: And it's hilarious. Even my big brother, right? I mean, we've been talking to him for ages, he just read the book and he [inaudible 00:22:26] "Okay, I totally get what you're saying. I really like it."
Michael: It's like people will put up with... It's like our minds will put up with walking the journey through when it's in book form, if it's well written. Because you can say things and start and finish an end in a way that people aren't going... It's really hard to do when you see somebody you know and you're just having casual conversation, you can't go back and go, "400%-"
Kathryn: That's how much we grew.
Michael: Or, we didn't know how bad it would get until the money started rolling in.
Kathryn: Right.
Michael: But in the book, they're like, "Oh, this is interesting." So, there's some cool stuff about having that if you ever think about doing a book. Also, we have learned that no matter what industry you're in... Now, this is a business book, which some of you might say, "Well, business books are in high demand, that makes sense. You write a business book, if you're in business helping businesses do that." But it turns out that there are a lot of different industries where I've been strangely surprised, pleasantly surprised, maybe, sometimes, where it's such a mundane area, but somebody wrote a book.
Michael: And what it does is, it's a simple little book, not very long, Caleb's isn't very long, but all of a sudden, it allows you to go, "Okay, I'm going to sit down without listening to you and I want you to have given me... Walk me through your concept and your process and the main points you're making in a logical way, and I want you to do in an efficient way, so I can just sit down, absorb it. And I can absorb it in little chunks and pieces at my own pace." That's what a book does.
Michael: And so, our friend, Caleb, is in the financial industry and he's selling certain types of financial products that are a bit unusual from the mainstream. And he's got quite a following going. And young man in business, and he's doing a great job. And he's super enthusiastic and friendly, and has a podcast, and better wealth. And we've been on the podcast, and if you're interested... Some neat stuff, especially, if you're interested in different ways to handle money and money needs and finance needs, and stuff like that, personally and professionally also.
Michael: And he wrote a book, he wrote a small book, and it was the first introduction we had to really like, "Okay, what are you doing" What's different about you?" And we were able to explore it. Well, that has opened up a little bit more of our relationship with him because I understand it more and I get him to do it. And sometimes, we're not always that great at communicating what we do and the value of it to somebody, unless we take the effort to put it into some kind of written form that has a beginning, middle and an end.
Kathryn: Aye, aye, captain.
Michael: How does that sound?
Kathryn: Yeah. No, that's-
Michael: I mean, it's been really cool. So, moving forward, we're going to be now moving into what we've been advised to do, is the first week is the big launch, you get to step out on the stage, everything's great. Now we've got a two to five year walk. One of the things we found, the stats we found out this week, was that the average book, whether it's digital or traditional publishing, across the board, the average book only sells 250 books in its first year.
Kathryn: That's just crazy.
Michael: I'm feeling pretty good about our stats here, the way we did with our documentary 15 years ago, and how well we did there. And we were in the top 5% of filmmakers on that one with creating a profitable film. And now we're doing great with our team and all the people that have helped support us and encouraged us and purchase from us, our readers. We have readers.
Kathryn: We have readers.
Michael: And then, from there, going forward and really looking at... For us, thinking about the next two to five years, three to five years of really thinking, this is what's going on with the book. But I was listening to a gentleman yesterday that specializes in book publishing... Not book publishing, book marketing and stuff like that. So, he's in this book world and he's also written several, and he's been doing this a long time. And I was intrigued about some of the examples he gave. He's like, "Okay, here's a book that sold over 2 million copies. It's been out for 18 years. And it took them over three years to find their audience." Literally, the first three years the book was out, almost nobody bought it.
Kathryn: Wow.
Michael: And then it found its audience and took off. And what it says is... I mean, in my mind, it said a lot of people... I think a lot of people think this, but I definitely did, is, in the beginning of a book, the majority of your sales, if you're ever going to be successful or not, are in the first few months, maybe the first year, if you don't do well there, you're never going to do well again, the book is going to find itself in utter obscurity, so on and so forth. And there's a lot of stuff, when you start looking at these books, you're like, "Oh, that's it." Because it's just a regular process. And actually, what was interesting, this guy said that it isn't till after about the first year, with some authors, that it starts to take off. He knew this one guy who wrote a book, I don't know, it sounded like four or five years ago, and had a great launch and was doing all this PR, and was going out and speaking and pushing the book, but literally, from the launch date through the whole first year, sales went really up at the beginning and then they just regularly settled down to almost nothing at about a year.
Michael: And then he says, "It was right around the year mark, still a little after, and all of a sudden, something started to change." And he wasn't pushing it nearly as hard, but all of a sudden, there was this momentum. And then his movement of a steady growth of the popularity of the book, the opportunity to do speaking, the opportunity to have exposure to his company or whatever he did, I don't remember what this guy did, allowed you to do that. And if you don't want to just... If you're thinking, I don't want to be an author, but putting down your core thoughts and philosophies about the area of work that you are in, the business you're in, even in a 50 page pamphlet or something like that, and like, this is what it is, this is what we do, this is... And kind of get somebody to help you make it a little bit entertaining and tell lots of examples, tell lots of stories about how it works. We have a friend. We have several friends who are in-
Kathryn: Just one or two.
Michael: ... an engineering company.
Kathryn: Just one or two.
Michael: An engineering company, and one of their specialties is in wastewater management. Poop water.
Kathryn: Poo water.
Michael: And so, you're thinking... This came to mind, random example. Because there is some main reasons why you do this. There's some main philosophies people need to understand. And wouldn't it be great if you said to people, "Hey, are you thinking about doing this? Or you're in development, you're trying to understand this a little bit more. We think that if you could understand it more, it would be better in the design stage, it would be better for you in... It might cost you less if you understood it better. I've got this little book we actually wrote on poop water, It's Got To Go Somewhere, here's the name of the book. And-
Kathryn: Is this true?
Michael: No, I just-
Kathryn: Really, you're making this up?
Michael: I'm making all this up.
Kathryn: All right. Nick, get on it.
Michael: The name of the title is-
Kathryn: It's Got To Go Somewhere.
Michael: It's Got To Go Somewhere. And the subtitle is, You Want It To Go To The Right Place. And so, I've got this little book, it's called It's Got To Go Somewhere, and it's to help people developing, and understand it from the single family developer, two or three houses or five houses on a lot, to big things and all that. Because this wastewater... It's not just poo water, but wastewater is a really big deal for licenses and permits and the Environmental Protection Agency, and literally, just for people being healthy and everything else, and so it doesn't ruin the drinking water and all that kind of stuff. So, what a great opportunity.
Michael: And he could hand that out. And he could tell four or five stories in this little thing about different scenarios of what happened when something went wrong, when something went right, what did it save? But when something went wrong and they fixed it, is always a great story. So, here's some examples, how does this apply to you? Why would we pull this back? This has been a great experience and I hope you've enjoyed just listening to us today to talk about it. I have one last question for you, Kathryn.
Kathryn: I'm ready.
Michael: Are you ready?
Kathryn: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Michael: The question is this, and I think our listeners want to know.
Kathryn: Yeah, do they now?
Michael: They do.
Kathryn: Okay, I'm ready.
Michael: This is a great question that a friend of ours who now lives in China asked me the other day, it was this, what's the one thing or what is one thing that you learned about yourself while writing this book?
Kathryn: It's a good question. I feel like I have... Can I give two things?
Michael: Yeah, because we always do.
Kathryn: Okay. Right? So, one of the things you've already alluded to, and I wrote it down before you alluded to it so that you know that I was thinking of it, and that was-
Michael: You're not competitive at all, are you?
Kathryn: No, no, no, I just don't want you to think I stole it, or I'm cheating. So, I'm not. So, I learned that working with super smart people who are excellent at what they do, really delights my soul. I mean, I've known that, but part of it is because it's such a focused project, right? Was such a... The look, the feel, everything, and to work with excellence and to see all the different people involved in their little pieces, and having that come together, it just made me happy. Right?
Kathryn: So, the idea that we get to do this with a team of people, that it's not just us, that it's fun to celebrate the expertise of different individuals, sings to my soul. The other piece that I think I learned is that I... When we first started talking about this book a long time ago, there was a period of time where we thought, we would just let you do it, that this would be your thing. And part of that was not quite knowing how to integrate, not knowing what it would look like to co-author, that's a complicated thing. Everyone said it was difficult. And so there was the-
Michael: Even our publisher said it's not easy.
Kathryn: And so, there was the question of, are we still going to like each other when this is over? Because this is going to be really, really hard. And I think-
Michael: The answer is, no.
Kathryn: This is where I tell you, no. I think that what has been so surprising to me is that, it was so much more fun than I thought it would be. It was really hard and there were moments of just wanting to pull my hair out. But it was so much more fun than I thought it would be. And the capstone of that, for me, was the audible recording, which I thought would be really, really hard, right? Figuring out how to split up, because if you read the book, you'll see that there's places where it's Michael narrating, it's very clear, there's places where it's me narrating and it's very clear. But 70% of the book isn't that, it's the two, it's basically from a we perspective. And so, just trying to figure out how to split that up.
Kathryn: And I remember going into it, and because I'm a words person, and I'm faster at it, I just was like, "I'll just split it up, and we'll figure it out." And I really thought that would be hard and it would be... I don't want to read that section, [inaudible 00:33:58] And it just wasn't, and it was really fun. And it was really fun to read it, finding mistakes aside, but it was super, super fun.
Michael: Yeah, absolutely.
Kathryn: And that just made me happy. I just didn't... I thought it would be harder to do it in team with you than it turned out to be. So, I think I learned that... I just don't think there's anything we can't do together. I don't know, I think we're in it for the long haul. I think 27 years in, I'm going to keep you.
Michael: You heard it here [crosstalk 00:34:28]. I actually get to stay in my little world the way it is.
Kathryn: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Michael: Well, at least at home.
Kathryn: Yeah. So, back at you, what's one thing that you learned about yourself through this process?
Michael: I think there was a lot of things that I learned, one of the ones that I have thought about is this opportunity for teams, like you said, because I said it first even though you wrote it down, I'm not competitive-
Kathryn: Not at all.
Michael: No, I don't want to sound like we're copying each other, for sure. The team part is important. Here's another thing, I learned something about my own... I feel like I moved forward in my own self development as a leader, as a person, I think I grew a little bit more in the process, in this specific area.
Kathryn: I think [inaudible 00:35:13] my heart grew three sizes that day.
Michael: Grew three sizes that day.
Kathryn: Sorry, grinch .
Michael: I was looking at two. So, how do I say this? One of the challenges I've had is an overdeveloped sense of confidence, at times, matched with an amazing sense of fear that I actually can't do any of it. And I know not everybody wants to hear the psychological and they think this is just maybe mumbo jumbo. But for me, as I was thinking about this, I move back and forth between, holy crap, I can't... What is it that I... If I had enough time and energy, I can find it out, I can do it. And I can probably do it better than most people around me. Now, that's the general percentage of life where it really... I do have... I mean, our staff would say, I have a high capacity for learning, and I'm probably the chief learner in our company. And I have a high capacity of implementing a lot of stuff when I sit down and apply it, a kind of a jack of all trades kind of guy.
Michael: I'm not a virtuoso in anything. I'm not a virtuoso in music. I'm not a virtuoso in being a narrator. I'm not a virtuoso in being a writer. But I have a high degree of confidence and competence in a lot of areas. So, the idea that... It's almost stupid, you get caught in this thing as a leader of, I can do that, I can do it. Look, it's not that hard. I just do it. Those are the general things in life. But when you want to become an artist, you want to become a master at something, you know you can't do those things. You know you're not going to be amazing, and there's lots of people who are way more amazing, no matter how much I practice or try, I can't play the guitar very well. No matter how hard I try, I can't play the piano really well. And when I went back to college, when we were young, I always said, I don't need a college education because it would be easy and I could do it, and everything else.
Michael: And when I actually went back to do it, we talked about this, I was scared that I actually wouldn't be able to stick with it and get it done. That was my biggest fear is, will I have enough sticktoitiveness to do it and do it well? Not perfectly, but do it well. And can I live with myself if it's not good enough? And what I realized is in writing this book, I went in going, "Okay, we can do it." I had a little bit more realistic perspective of, that's a lot of work. It seemed like a mountain that I didn't know we would be able to get through, and we got through it. But there was a sense of this, wow, we could accomplish that. We accomplished one more huge thing that we always wondered, could we do it? Would we do it?
Kathryn: And if we did, would it be any good?
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: Wouldn't be.
Michael: And for me, on the leadership development side, I go... I feel like I have a really significant moment packed into this last year and the launch of being able to say to myself, and I like being able to say this, "I can't do everything. No matter how much time I have, no matter how much I would learn, no matter how much anything else, there's only a finite amount of time, money, energy, and everything else in the world, and I have a sweet spot. And I can't do everything outside of my sweet spot. And I can't even do most of it well, passing well." And I like being able to say, "I know that now." Because it means that I can focus more on building our team and the people around us. And I feel like I've had a level of that, in some levels I've gotten older and hopefully, grown in humility and everything else.
Michael: But there's a new place for me where I can go, "Yeah, I love the fact that there were so many amazing people and I wouldn't know where to go, or I don't have the time to look at it [inaudible 00:39:06] figure out how to design a great cover, or where to put the books when they're done." Yes, it's all accessible. It's all learnable. But that's not the point. The point is, you can put together a team and you can accomplish so much more together than you can alone. And I want us to impact companies and people's lives so much. So, then it's okay to really reach out, build a team, invest in other people and let them be rock stars and superstars in front of you, and not believe it's taking away from you.
Kathryn: Yeah. I love that. The concept that your excellence doesn't diminish me.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathryn: In fact, it calls out more excellence in me. So, as we partner with people, as we team with people, as we connect with others who are phenomenal at what they do, rather than being threatened by that, it calls out the stuff that we meet them in those places, and we bring our excellence to their excellence, and the result is phenomenal. And that's a huge thing. Because I think we live in a world that says... Especially in the business world, you compete, you have to get your share of the market, there's not enough room in the market for two people doing the same thing. And it's just not true. Do you need to be competitive? Yes. Do you need to figure out how to move forward, how to grow? Absolutely. But to not be afraid of someone else who's excellent. But to be able to celebrate and learn with them and from them, and then keep being excellent yourself, it's just a much better way to live.
Michael: It's pretty exciting.
Kathryn: It is.
Michael: It's really exciting.
Kathryn: It's a lot fun.
Michael: So, I think that's what I learned from this process of just, yeah, working with a team is super awesome. And we're never going to accomplish certain things that we want to accomplish, as we dream big to do that. So, that said, we've come to the end of this podcast.
Kathryn: You said, that said, again.
Michael: Oh, I did. Here we are at the end of this episode, thank you so much for joining us. We are now able to say, if you would like to know more about passion and provision and all these strategies, the things we talked about here, in a great read that's entertaining and educational, and you care about business or care about really some fundamental principles of life when it comes to getting things done and working with others, our book Fulfilled is available on fulfilledthebook.com, you can also go to habovillage.com and find the link there, and we're available on Amazon.
Kathryn: And just about anywhere else you buy books.
Michael: And if you buy the book at fulfilledthebook.com, the paper book is half price compared to what it is at Kindle or on Amazon. So, you can get it for $10 with free shipping at fulfilledthebook.com. We would love for you to have this in your hands. Give it to anybody you think is valuable, maybe your leadership team, I think it would be a great read, a great book study for them. And it will create lots of discussions. There is a wealth of information here from the different things that we've learned over life and experienced and pulled together. And this is not a book full of the Redman wisdom, this is a book full of a lot of people's great ideas and wisdom pulled together in a recipe that the Redmans have used. And we want to thank you for today, thanks for listening. Tune in next week when we talk about something different, we have no idea what that's going to be.
Kathryn: Oh, we do know.
Michael: We do know?
Kathryn: Yes, I know exactly what [crosstalk 00:42:31].
Michael: So, want to tell them?
Kathryn: We're going to talk about who you are as leader and why we believe in you.
Michael: I love it.
Kathryn: Yeah.
Michael: Okay. So, tune in next week for, who you are as a leader, and why we believe in you. And with that said, I'm Michael Redman.
Kathryn: And I'm Kathryn Redman.
Michael: And this the HaBO Village podcast. Have a great day.
Kathryn: Bye.
