430: How To Make Money In a Downturn When No One Is Hiring With Charlie Hoehn

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into the strategies they use to grow their businesses. today I have my friend Charlie Hohn on the show and Charlie is a bestselling author who has worked directly with Tim Ferriss, Tucker Max, Seth Dodin and Ramit Sethi. And his book, Play for a Living was referred to by Tony Robbins as the cure to your stress. And personally, he’s actually taught me a lot about internet marketing over the years. And talking to Charlie today is timely because we’re going into a recession.

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and things are about to get really bad. And in this interview, we talk about navigating a downturn, how to play for a living and writing books and a whole lot more. But before we begin, I want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. Postscript is my SMS or text messaging provider that I use for e-commerce and it’s crushing it for me. I never thought that people would want marketing text messages, but it works. In fact, my tiny SMS list is performing on par with my email list, which is easily 10x bigger.

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Anyway, Postscript specializes in text message marketing for e-commerce and you can segment your audience just like email. It’s an inexpensive solution, converts like crazy, and you can try it for free over at postscript.io slash dev. That’s P-O-S-T-S-U-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash dev. I also want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they’re the email marketing platform that I use for my e-commerce store and it depends on them for over 30 % of my revenue. Now you’re probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another provider.

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Well, Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for ecommerce stores and here’s why it’s so powerful. Klaviyo can track every single customer who has shopped in your store and exactly what they bought. So let’s say want to send out an email to every owner who purchased a red handkerchief in the last week. Easy. Let’s say I want to set up a special auto response sequence to my customers depending on what they bought, piece of cake, and there’s full revenue tracking on every email sent. Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I’ve ever used and you can try them for free over at klaviyo.com slash my wife.

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That’s KLAVIO.com slash my wife. And then finally, I wanted to mention my other podcasts that are at least my partner, Tony. And unlike this one where it interviews successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the profitable audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw entertaining way. So be sure to check out the profitable audience podcasts on your favorite podcast app. Now onto the show.

02:24
Welcome to the My Wife, Quitter, Job podcast. Today I’m happy to have Charlie Hoen on the show. Now, Charlie is an amazing guy who graduated from college probably during one of the worst job markets ever back in 2008. But instead of like randomly sending out resumes and waiting, he actually took control of his life. He is the bestselling author of Play for a Living and Play it Away, which is a book actually that Tony Robbins referred to as the cure to your stress. And I personally fell in love with Charlie’s work.

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with his first book, was called Recession Proof Grad, which he talked about on the Tim Ferriss Show. And over the years, he’s worked with Tim Ferriss, he helped launch the Four Hour Body. He’s worked with Tucker Max, Seth Godin, Ramit Sethi, and countless other high profile clients to help with book marketing and events. Now I got a quick story to tell here. Way back in 2009, Charlie was actually responsible for getting me started on email marketing.

03:22
At the time he was working for Rumeet, I think it was to launch his course, Earn 1K. And I remember I wrote a blog post reviewing the course and I think I made like 10 sales or so at 500 bucks a piece. And then Charlie comes up to me and says, hey, would you mind sending this out to your email list? And I was like, what’s an email list? And then he took the time to explain the benefits of email. And today email actually generates, I would say 80 to 90 % of all the revenue for my blog. So Charlie, thanks for the tip and welcome to the show, man. How you doing?

03:52
I had no idea I was responsible for your success. Exactly. I mean, you can put me in the collection with Seth Godin, Tucker Max, and all those other guys now. Did I’m so happy for you. That’s awesome. Yeah, I don’t know if you was it was it earn 1k I don’t even remember exactly the details. Yeah, I think I think it was earn $1,000 on the side was the was the program. Yeah. Yeah. And you were running it for him, right? Or something like that promotion? No, I was I was helping him a bit.

04:21
When Rameet and I started working together, he was putting together the marketing strategy for his book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich. And I just had some ideas on other things that he could do, namely video. And so my skill set was in video. I was like, know video is super cumbersome. Why don’t I do that for you? I’ll do it for free for a while. And then let’s talk about doing other work together.

04:49
And so that went well, then the book launch went really well. And then, you know, I was involved with, I think, just a little bit of the creation of earn 1k and helping that kind of get its legs. Yeah, I mean, it was very impactful for me, actually. I mean, I started email, I never looked back after that point. Yeah, yeah, that’s great. So I’m curious, with how long did it take you to get to the 80 to 90 % of your revenue coming through your email list?

05:18
I would say it took a year after we had spoken. Yeah. Cause that was one year in or one and half years in on the blog and I hit six figures in my blog in three years and that was largely due to email. So probably over a year, year and half, would say. And you were selling courses and no, actually at that point I was, it was all affiliate revenue. Nice. Through email. Yeah. And then later the courses came. That’s amazing. Dude. I heard

05:46
a the other day of a guy who created a YouTube channel has he had an average of three to 400 views per video less than 10,000 subscribers and was doing over a million dollars a year in affiliate sales. is nuts. must be a really high priced affiliate.

06:07
program or something. It is so like the products are kind of like the biometrics, you know, health optimization stuff. So like $10,000 infrared saunas and cold plunges and that sort of thing. But I was just amazed. I think affiliate sales, it tends to be something that we I guess a lot of people don’t think about as a viable business path. Sometimes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean,

06:36
You know, Charlie, I know you’re probably most well known for your books on the power of play and how to find work that makes an impact. But I kind of wanted to start this interview out with your experiences over a decade ago when you kind of wrote Recession Proof Grad. And mainly because I know some of the listeners here, they feel stuck. Maybe they’re waiting for like the opportunity to come by and they want to make a change. And I remember when you graduated with no offers in a horrible market, I remember reading that you started landing all these high profile clients.

07:04
Tim Ferriss, Tucker Max from EAT. And I thought that was nuts. How did you get those? Yeah, yeah. So like you said, I spent three months applying to over a hundred jobs. I got two responses, which were, one was from a staging company. So like doing physical manual labor, which I have no problem with, but I was not looking for that type of work. And then

07:32
Uh, well, guess I technically was, but I got that as a response. Uh, was desperate, Steve. And, uh, two was a pyramid scheme. And so I hit a point where I just thought, no one’s responding to me anyway. No one’s giving me work that I want to do anyway. Why am I waiting? And so I just started pretending I had my dream job or I was in the process of obtaining it.

08:02
And just having the mindset shift and I was very clear. Like I was like, want to, I want to work with Tim Ferriss because the four hour work week had come out around that time. I thought it was a groundbreaking book, very brilliant. And he was just such a unique thinker. So I set my target as that. And then I just told the story to myself that everything that happened was in progress toward that. So.

08:31
I think that’s kind of a unique thing is from the beginning, a lot of people when they’re looking for opportunities or like they’re open to everything. And this is a mistake entrepreneurs make, right? It’s like, Oh, my product’s for the masses. And it’s like, no, it’s not. It’s for one specific person. And it probably should be for you at the beginning. Right? So it’s, it was being crystal clear on the target that I wanted to work with. And then.

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The other unique thing that I was doing was an audit of their online presence, their marketing, their video, everything that they were doing and kind of assessing it like a doctor who’s searching for problems, right? Or symptoms, or I was looking for areas of opportunity for them and things that they could improve upon. And I would just kind of note those things and then think about how can I use my gifts

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my skills to create gifts for them. And so a couple of examples of that are like, I saw on Tim Ferriss’s blog in the comments that somebody was asking for the audio version of a video that he’d posted. And then I saw a few more people asked for that. So I created it. And not only that, I, I put it in an uploaded player and gave him the embed code and like, you know,

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put an image of his blog post and said, here’s where you need to embed this. And so I would send that to him, no expectations in just was like, what you do. I see your readers are asking for this. This might help, take care basically. And so I released the expectation as well simultaneously. So I call that method the tag method, target audit gift.

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And it starts with that mindset shift of, I’m not gonna wait for somebody to give me the green light and assign me work and tell me what to do. We’ve all been conditioned to do that for at least 15 years of our lives in school. We need to break out of that. And the easiest way to do it is simply to say, I’m gonna pretend I have my dream job. I’m gonna try a bunch of stuff. I’m gonna work for free for a bit.

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And the worst thing that can happen is I walk away with some portfolio pieces that I can show others and say, I did this work. Right. And so if you want to do something cool, go do something cool. And so, um, I have had, I’ve taught this method to a bunch of people over the years. A recent example of somebody that worked for is a guy named Michael Lim. He came to me, he was a consultant who just felt really stifled in his company. He hated his job.

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and he wanted to work with creatives. We were able to land him a job with MrBeast, has a 50 million subscriber YouTube channel. And we did it by effectively doing this. He created a really powerful gift that showcased his skillset and made MrBeast want to hire him immediately. And he ended up getting a six figure job running the philanthropy channel for MrBeast. Another guy,

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was, and if you don’t want to work for creatives, let’s say you want to work for a company. I worked with a student named Steven, who was an engineering student who he told me his dream company was SpaceX. And I think this was like five or six years ago. And so we did this process together of let’s do an audit of their website, everything they’re they’re working on and come up with a gift. And he was like really challenged by the idea of doing a gift because

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I’m just an engineering student. I don’t have any experience. I can’t work with these guys. And at the time they had just learned how to land a rocket, right? Like right then they had just learned how to land a rocket. And it was like this mind blowing thing. And we came up with the idea of, if you tried to build a model of that? Like what if you just tried it? You’re not gonna succeed probably, right? Respectfully, it’s really difficult to do what they did.

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But what if you did? What if you just shared what you learned in trying to be like SpaceX and being motivated? He hadn’t even graduated yet and SpaceX called him back for numerous interviews. He didn’t end up getting hired by them because they were like, yeah, you are too experienced. But they were like, we were so interested in talking to you because of the project that you did. We wanted to learn more about you. And he ended up getting a dream job working with a very similar

13:22
I don’t even know like aerospace type right? Yeah. Uh huh. But yeah, I mean, like I’ve just seen this work over and over and over again. And that’s really the principle. I think a lot of people misconstrue in the in recession proof graduate in the book, they think, oh, I’ll just do, I’ll email people and tell them they have problems with their website. And, I’ll just like, all blasted out.

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to a bunch of people and see if they want to work with me. And it’s like, no, you didn’t pick a clear target. A, you’re, you’re, if you tell them they have problems, which you cannot fix, you’re just a jerk. It’s not, it’s not a kind thing to do, but I’ve seen gifts work at the highest level. I’ve seen, I told a story on, uh, you can find it on my Instagram reels of, uh, a guy that Steve jobs hired on the spot.

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because he used this method, he went in for a job at Apple and he bombed the interview. He like walked out with his head hanging, HR and like didn’t like him. And he happens to see Steve Jobs in the hall and he runs up to Steve and he’s like, Hey, do you mind if I show you something real quick? And Steve’s like, sure. He pulls out his laptop and he shows the

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magnifying glass effect. You know, when you hover over applications on a desktop and it blows up the app, he showed that to Steve Jobs and he was like, I think you guys should do this. And Steve Jobs said, my God, and hired him right there on the spot. And so it’s like, we all have these capabilities where we could come to somebody with a gift, but we’re, need a paycheck first and we need to go through the interview process first and the resumes and all this BS. If you’re creative, if you’re skilled, like

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use this tactic, it works. It’s funny. So my daughter, I’m trying to instill all of these things. And it’s a problem because I’m Asian and we believe in going to school and going the traditional route. after creating content and entrepreneurship, you know, we’ve encouraged our kids to start their own businesses. It’s the same principle, right? You do what you want to do. And worst case scenario, if it fails, at least you gained all this experience putting together this business.

15:43
This is why I like content also, because if someone happens to see your content and they like what you’ve put out, they’ll come to you and not the other way around. It’s, it’s similar to your philosophy. I agree a thousand percent. I have tried both outbound sales and just creating content. And when I looked at the numbers, I realized it makes no sense for me to do outbound because people come to me after resonating with something I’ve

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created and piecing together in their head, oh, this could be a guy who could be helpful in this regard. And I think one of the biggest insights I had in therapy was to be the sun. The sun does not try to save people. doesn’t try to like interrupt them and like get in their face and like try and help them. What it really does is just like gives abundantly and it gives life.

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to everything around it. And I think if you can come from that place of abundance rather than fear and scarcity and I got to get mine and all this stuff, if you can, with the right people and you do it consistently, good things happen. And whether that’s through content, whether that’s through direct outreach and giving gifts that way, good things happen. And I know for you, once you landed Tim Ferriss, I’m sure all the opportunities were much easier to get after that, right?

17:07
Yeah, it just needs your first one. Yeah, yeah. So it gave me an air of credibility in which I did not have before him. Well, I had in some regard, right, because I’d worked with Seth Ramit Tucker. Oh, was that after Tim Ferriss wasn’t your first one? No. So I did a virtual internship at the very beginning of the summer after college after I graduated.

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And what happened was I applied to be a real world intern with Seth Godin and got turned down. But he said there were so many great applications that, Hey, I’m going to open it up and you guys can do a virtual internship. go to the very first like get together on the virtual. It’s over 500 people. Wow. And I just thought I went to the next one and it was like 300. And I realized if I just stick with this all summer.

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I’m gonna be one of maybe 10 people left possibly. And that’s what happened. And so I was one of, think like 15 resumes or whatever that Seth posted. He said, hey, these are good people. You should hire them. So I had that leg to stand on around the time that I started talking with him.

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19:01
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19:41
I’m having my kids read Recess and Proof of Grad by the way. And since then I know you’ve done a lot of other stuff. I know you had problems with anxiety in the past and I know a lot of the listeners out there, they might be stuck in doing something they don’t necessarily like and I can actually relate to this as an Asian. We’re conditioned in life to grow up to be engineers, lawyers, doctors. And I know most of us don’t like that. I like being an engineer but I have lot of friends that are lawyers that hate it.

20:07
I’m just curious, and I this is like the topic of your expertise, like how do you overcome this? How do you do stuff that you love so like work feels like play and not the other way around? Such a good question. So the place to start, I always say, is to look at your play history, which is what were the activities that you repeatedly and voluntarily turned to when you were growing up?

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which your parents were not forcing you to do, teachers weren’t judging you or grading you, no one was paying you to do them. You were doing them because it was you seeking novelty. It was you discovering something about yourself. It was you being excited. It was you laughing and having fun with your friends. And so when I did this exercise, it came back, you I was feeling lost at one point in my career, right? And this exercise kind of re-

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anchored me into where I needed to be. It was, I loved creating art growing up. I loved pulling pranks and practical jokes. I loved playing catch and home run derby. So baseball, I love doing sketches with my friends. So improv and I love building things with my hands in fixing things.

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What emerged from that? The first thing that happened was I started just committing to incorporating play into my daily routine. So instead of doing coffee meetings, I started doing catch meetings. Instead of watching Netflix on the weekend, I would go play Home Run Derby for a bit. Or instead of like grinding it out on a treadmill, you know, I would go play a sport or play a Robie or Frisbee in the park.

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And then I started doing improv comedy classes and that was a real breakthrough for me because that’s like the most aligned with me spiritually and who I am as, a person who plays, everybody plays different. So improv is hell for a lot of people. For me, it’s great. And so what happened from that was it re centered me into who I was. And so I was no longer being driven by external forms of pressure.

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I was being pulled by intrinsic forms of motivation. And the strongest intrinsic form of motivation is play. Some people think it’s purpose. It’s having a strong mission. It’s not because you’re still requiring something that is not just you, your being to drive your behavior. It’s not growth opportunities. It’s definitely not salary. It’s not.

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emotional pressure from parents or teachers. That’s one of the worst and most harmful forms of motivation. And I think it needs to stop. I think it hinders everybody’s self-development that we have these systems and social pressures that push people into being not who they are and play is who you are. And so, I mean, the worst form of motivation is inertia.

23:22
Right. Is, once I’ve been doing this for 10 years, I’m going to do it for the next 40. Like that’s the worst form. Um, and so the, the benefit of doing your play history and reincorporating true play for yourself is it centers you and it gets your energy in a much better place where instead of interacting with the world kind of mechanically and fearfully, and I’m just going to fit in and stuff, you.

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of show up as your full self. You radiate this playfulness that gets reflected back to you. And what’s cool about that, I don’t know how spiritual you are or what your beliefs are, Steve, but I have noticed time and time again, it attracts similar people. It attracts opportunities that are aligned with you. It’s like

24:10
getting onto a frequency, know, Tesla, Nikola Tesla talked about thinking of the universe in terms of frequencies and it up levels your frequency in this way, where things start to click and make sense and things feel much more effortless and in flow and you’re, you’re just going and passing through time rather than like watching the clock, you know. So figuring out what you enjoy and play is one thing, but how do you combine that with just paying the bills? I think

24:39
A lot of people have problems believing that what they enjoy doing can actually make money. Yes. Yeah. So the realization I had when I was working on Play It Away was I kept seeing these people who were at some of the most successful, most innovative people in society who’d like shaped our culture and they all viewed work as this first.

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but they all approach their work as a game. They viewed it as play and they were driven by it intrinsically. And so the question is, how do you make money doing it? And the answer is you keep playing the game until you’re so good in, in Cal Newports, whereas they’re so, you’re so good that they can’t ignore you. This has been everybody from Ray Dalio has explicitly said he, he did his career in investing this way to

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uh, Brian Cranston to Oprah to, have a note from Bob Iger, the former CEO of Disney on my desk that talks about, I approached my work this way. Um, it’s a handwritten note after I sent him play for a living. And for me, it was just looking at, okay, what do I play at still that I love that I’m really good at and that people value and pay money for. And so it’s a little bit.

26:03
It can be a little bit tricky and kind of figuring out this dance, right? So, uh, the immediately obvious ones were people value video, people value editing, they value marketing. Everybody’s got a marketing problem, so to speak. And so I would kind of meet people where they are and assess, Hey, based on the problems that you have and the goals that you have, I think these tools can help you get there. I can do this.

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Here’s how I fit into your equation. And so I was good at a number of things that were play for me, public speaking, editing, whether it’s video or writing, coaching. like, that’s frankly not a whole lot, but that has allowed me to insert myself into so many situations where I can get paid. And it’s just for me personally, it’s just been a matter of escalating.

27:01
the skill set in the price in the outputs. Is that funny? I’m working with a student in my course right now. And I actually just went through the same exercise with him because I’m I’m a believer in what you’re saying, right? You should do something that you enjoy. And most of the people that come to me and say, you I can’t make money doing this. They’ve never tried. Right. So I know when I was growing up, I enjoyed playing video games and

27:30
At the time there wasn’t an industry for it, but it became an industry. Now there’s professional video game players and people who just document stuff on YouTube and they make a ton of money. Or people just make millions just playing on Twitch, right? And people are just watching them play games. So the question is whether you’ve tried. And then this one student that I was talking about, he likes playing games and he likes basketball. So what I was trying to encourage him to do was to sell some sort of physical product based on a problem that he’s…

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experienced every day playing basketball. Like what are his pain points? And then he came to the idea is like, Hey, I could sell this product and offer like shooting lessons or something like that. And I guess one of his big hangups was like, not the, I’m a good shooter, but I’m not like an NBA player. Like how do get over that? So what would be your answer to that? So for one, Scott Adams, I think has one of the best points on this, which is like,

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you’re never going to be the best at one skill set. And it’s, the worst if you’re just trying to master this one thing, but your unique makeup of your skills can put you into the number one in the world in a category of your own. And so for this person, it’s like, yeah, he’s, he’s not going to be the best shooter, but could he be the best coach as well? Could he be entertaining in the process so that he could share

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with others and impact them on like, like, God knows, I knew somebody who was running a basketball tutorial, YouTube channel that had like 3 million subscribers, you know? So I think that is the other part of the equation is you, you can, you look at the math, right? It’s like, do you want to impact millions or do you want to impact a few people who will pay you a ton of money and just go super deep with them?

29:24
and filling in those gaps so that you have somewhat of a pyramid or a funnel that operates well. I think that has been some of the best advice I’ve seen is like, if you wanted to do it around content, you have to be thinking in terms of how can I impact millions? But if you want to not impact millions, be thinking in terms of how can you create a luxury high-end experience for the right person?

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who’s like overjoyed is happy to pay you six figures because those people absolutely exist. They do. And you don’t need, I think one of the things that I’ve tried that was very difficult for me was helping people with their dream jobs and coaching them because it was like, it was kind of this weird middle ground, right? Where they’re like, I’m in transition. I don’t have a lot of money to pay you, but can you help me figure this out?

30:23
Right. It was like, okay, I remember I made 50 grand over the course of three months, which is nothing to sneeze at. Right. But the amount of effort in convincing it took, was like, this doesn’t even feel good to like half the time. If these people are like reluctant to go into this, you know, I want to work with people who are like, let’s go. I super value this or, uh, just give it away for free and build an audience that way. And so that’s.

30:53
I have seen many, many others do those things and have it work well for them. think where people get caught is a, that story, right? Of like, I’m never going to be good enough. I’m like, there’s so many people better than me. And it’s like, yeah, if you compare them, I struggled with that for a while too. But if you compare them to just that one skill set, yeah, you will feel bad. So come up with your creative combo that.

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only you can bring to the table. My philosophy has changed on this over the years because in reality, like everything’s kind of like a commodity these days, right? I feel like if you can get them to like you as a person, they’ll follow you and they’ll want to learn from you or whatever service you have just because they like you. I sure, have to be good at what you do, but like your personality is unique and that’s someone no one else something that no one else can take away from you. So this particular by I’m thinking of though, he just happens to be Asian.

31:50
And there aren’t that many Asian basketball coaches. So he could like own like the whole Asian demographic. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a unique combo for sure. So I think for you, like you would combine the power of like the gift giving method plus content to transition over to something that you love. So so what you’re doing feels like play. Right. I think it’s you.

32:19
Not everybody’s a content creator, right? Okay. Nor, should they become one, but anybody can create a potent experience for an individual that they want to work with. Right? Like there’s nothing, there’s nothing stopping the average person from saying, you know what, I could help a business with this specific problem or an individual with this specific problem.

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put together a two page PDF in Canva that lays out who you are, how you’re going to help them specifically, what you can bring to the table or save them or whatever. And just talk to enough people in conversations like we’re having over Zoom and say, what do you think of this? is this come up with an easy yes and put it in front of them. Charge five grants, see what happens, you know, like just get started.

33:17
And Noah, our friend Noah Kagan is great at this where he’s like, he’ll have an idea. He’s an ideas person. He’ll have an idea. And instead this is, this is the trap that a lot of people get in is they, go, Oh, I’m going to go like create it. I’m going to go create the software. Whereas Noah’s like, Hey, can you pay me upfront before I go out and make this thing? And if he can’t get enough people to pay him upfront, he doesn’t do it. Cause he’s like, it’s not going to get any easier to sell this.

33:46
So I might as well figure it out right now if they would buy it or not. so I think that, I think that is another easy way to test like what is going to be play for you and can you make it profitable? How do you make your play profitable is you, you come up in design the experience enough on like a one pager that you can put it in front of people and convince them and they give you the money and then you go create it.

34:17
Charlie, what do you tell the person who’s working like 60, 80 hour weeks as a lawyer who’s getting paid like $300,000 a year, but they hate every minute of it, what would you advise someone like that? For one, I feel you, you’re not alone. understand, even though I wasn’t a lawyer myself, I understand what that path is like. But the thing I would advise honestly,

34:45
is what I mentioned earlier, which is like take your play history and incorporate one thing in it that honors you and your drive for play. Because the danger of being on that path is the disconnect you have from yourself, your spirit, your soul, what you know deep down you need to do. And what happens over time

35:07
is your body’s continually chirping at you to make a change, right? Your mind is continually telling you something’s got to change. And if you don’t honor that with the slightest movement in the direction toward honoring yourself, it’s going to manifest as a disease, an injury, an illness. It will happen where something will fall apart and it’s either you’re unconscious or like something.

35:35
will wreak havoc to make sure that you stop what you’re doing. And so I would say start doing the thing that you know you need to do and do it at the smallest level. You don’t need to like burn the ships right away. I think that’s in fact dangerous and kind of crazy sometimes. Don’t burn the ship, start small. And for me, truly, the thing that started to shift for me was proposing to somebody to go

36:04
play catch in the park instead of getting coffee. It was that simple.

36:10
I just want to let you know that tickets for the 2023 Seller Summit are now on sale over at Sellersummit.com. Now, what is the Seller Summit? It is the conference that I hold every single year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. And in fact, every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e-commerce business

36:39
entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. The other thing I can assure you is that the seller summit will be small and intimate. Every year, we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets always sell out fast, and in fact, we sell out every single year many months in advance. Now, if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over $250,000 or $1 million per year, we are also offering an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers.

37:07
Now the Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, from May 23rd to May 25th. For more information, go to sellersummit.com. Once again, that’s S-E-L-L-E-R-S-S-U-M-M-I-T.com, or just Google it. Now back to the show.

37:24
Interesting I know I’m just looking back on my history. I liked my job, but I I wanted to spend more time at home. So I started out Writing content actually and Then that started making money, but I did it at a pace where I knew I could maintain it forever So it wasn’t really that big a deal The only difference is I actually hated writing but I felt like you need some content actually when we were talking just now like everything involves Putting something down on paper, right and I consider that content

37:54
Because you have to be able to project your ideas onto someone. However way you do it, doesn’t matter, right? Whether it be writing, video, or whatever. I think you have to put stuff down somewhere, right? And then, you know, it took me three years, which is a long time, gradually over time, things just build. That’s what I like about this. If you don’t feel like it’s work, then it just builds over time. And before you know it, it’s kind of like kids growing up, you have something that you might want to, that you can transition to in the future.

38:23
Was that similar to your path? My path has been kind of all over the place. think I’ve, I’ve in, may sound like I’m painting it as a very purest thing, which I don’t want that to be the case, right? Because I, the reason I got myself into a state of burnout and anxiety was because I shifted from like, I started my career by, by play, right? I started off and then was able to land all these gigs that way. And then slowly, but surely it shifted into pressure.

38:53
economic pressure, emotional pressure that was both self-imposed and coming from other outside sources as well. was just like, took my eye off the prize or my heart off of the path or whatever. And so for me, I think when you’re describing for you, it took you three years, right?

39:20
What was your reward? What was your internal reward that you were getting? My internal reward was I was making as much as my job, which was the job was taking me away from being at home with my kids. And that allowed me to consider quitting that job or going lesser hours on that job to be at home. I just remember like I missed. One of my kids walking for the first time, I got to see it on video, but it’s not the same.

39:49
while I was at work, right? And I didn’t want that to happen again. So that was my goal and reward. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you’re driven by relationships and family and rightfully so, right? I’m, very similar where I, you know, I wasn’t, I wasn’t going to take any job unless it allowed me the flexibility and freedom that, that I wanted. And so I think the, the components, I think in, in rain me in if I’m

40:19
going a little off track here, but I think the components of understanding, are you playing for a living or not are important, right? There tend to be three major components, which is freedom, mastery and connection. And freedom is the freedom from these intense economic and emotional pressures. It’s the freedom to do the work the way you want to do it, how you want to do it. And I think

40:47
part of the reason why the great resignation took place. Everybody tasted freedom for the first time and then they wanted to take it back and they were like, no. also having the freedom to escape and detach from the work when you need it and feeling fully supported to do so. And then mastery, you know, are you in a game that you enjoy mastering, that you would enjoy the process of leveling up indefinitely?

41:17
And then connection, does it give you meaningful connection with yourself where you feel the intrinsic reward and connection with the people that you’re serving or working with? Do your coworkers feel like playmates rather than backstabbing bureaucrats? Do your clients and customers, do they feel like they’re an extension of yourself and not people that you can’t stand?

41:42
You know, if you can kind of focus on those three areas and getting those aligned or at least examining what’s off here, you can get closer and closer there as well. And I think based on your experience, if you go down a path that doesn’t feel right, eventually it’ll manifest itself in symptoms. Right. mean, yours, I think, was was anxiety. Right. I know for me, like I always like my job, but there’s certain aspects I didn’t like about it. But like my

42:12
For me, it manifested in not being able to sleep as well. I think I attributed to that. So if something’s not right, it just means that you need to make a change. And the sooner that you make a change on the path, I always believe in little baby steps. As long as you’re making a little bit of progress every day, that’s fine. I wanna switch gears a little bit for selfish reasons, and we don’t have too much time left, but I know you’d help. let’s do it. Let’s talk about your book,

42:40
You’ve launched bestselling books for like, Tim Ferriss and a whole bunch of other people like, give me a framework for what makes a book work. Yeah, I’m gonna give you a few. So yours, yours is a knowledge share, right? It’s like a how to or is it more memoir? It’s both. Okay, but if you had to assign a percentage of or a weight, which part is not knowledge here?

43:09
Yeah, probably more how to 60 % how to 40 % philosophy. Cool. All right. So to start off, I have made a lot of resources, so I’m just going to list them right here for people up front. Okay. I’ll link to them. I created or produced, I should say, not created. wasn’t like the creator, but I produced scribe book school scribe book school.com teaches you for free.

43:39
how to write, publish, and market a book. We have had well over, think at this point it’s between 40 and 50,000 people who have gone through it. It works really well. It’s based on the process that Scribe came up with that they have used to publish over a thousand books with their authors. So that is a good resource. there’s…

44:06
The next resource I put together is called how to sell a million copies of your nonfiction book. And this distills, asked for a framework. I think the most important thing you can do in making a book, Steve, like, for one, write a really good book. And two, have an amazing title, right? But three is stack the deck in your favor by having the DNA

44:36
maximize marketing opportunities, right? So the book is the thing that markets itself. You’re not the one marketing the book. I think this is one of the myths that, or traps authors fall into is they think, oh, I’ve got to go out and market my book. And it’s like, no, that’s actually kind of a losing battle for you. And it’s going to slowly drive you insane because your metric that you’re going to be looking at is copies sold.

45:06
And that is a terrible metric because even if you sell 5,000 copies in the first year, which is a really respectable number, you’re going to feel bad. You’re still going to be like, why didn’t I get 10,000 or a hundred thousand or a million? And it’s like, okay, that’s a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of books. It’s like one out of 500,000 books. It may be a little bit higher, but you know what I mean? It’s a very low chance.

45:36
I’ll give you kind of the framework I talk about in this, seven tests that reveal whether your book has the potential to sell a million copies. And more importantly, more importantly than selling a million copies is really, will this book resonate with people and will they talk about it? And so that’s test number one. Will people talk about your book? So does your message have an amazing story or an unconventional message?

46:03
that readers fall over themselves to share with friends? Will your reader elevate their status every time they talk about your book? Is it going to make them look cool or smart? Do non-readers get into passionate discussions about your book topic? This one doesn’t so much apply, but it is something, will celebrities and influencers probably endorse your book, et cetera? I’ve got a bunch of questions that are basically like, will people talk about your book?

46:30
Test number two is, is this the right book at the right time? Almost every book that sells millions of copies like strikes a cultural zeitgeist of some sort. And it usually comes in with a really remarkable story or an unconventional solution to a huge problem that a lot of people are frustrated with. Almost always challenges an assumption that we hold something that

46:59
It has secretly trapped us. It’s usually a dated concept. So that’s test number two. This is kind of like a high bar, right? I mean, this is this gets into the guts of just even before you even start writing. Right. Yes, yeah, it certainly can. It’s but which is not to say like during the editing phase, you can’t repackage or reword things to meet a lot of this stuff. I think

47:28
My buddy James Clear, he was the bestselling author overall on Amazon, on all of Amazon with Atomic Habits. He talks about like, he stacked the book so that the best content came first. Like he hit people with so much value and then it ramps down throughout the book. And I think authors often make the mistake of like either it ramping up or being an uneven thing.

47:57
where it’s like, well, first I got to get into the history of why this is a thing or the theory behind it. And it’s like, what if you just hit them with value immediately? What if they, they were like, holy shit, right out the gate, you want that reaction throughout, throughout the book, but especially upfront, you know? Um, and so I’ll just read through the other tests just on a high level real quick test three.

48:26
Does your book transform the reader? It has to transform them. It has to change them. Test four, will your book create a cult following? This is a little bit different. I did an analysis on David Goggins, can’t hurt me here. That’s like 10 minute video you can watch. Test number five, is buying and gifting your book a no-brainer? Is it an instant impulse purchase? And if it’s not, why?

48:54
Why can’t this be a Christmas gift? Why can’t it be a corporate gift? You might want to think about that. Test number six, are you the author or your book polarizing for the media? A local minority group ought to probably hate your book because otherwise you’re not saying anything that is worthy of attention, right? And so like,

49:21
people can be upset when marketers do this and they make these bold statements. Like I had a post go semi-viral on LinkedIn and my opening line was start with Y is bullshit. And I could have nuanced it and said, start with Y is kind of right, but it’s actually not where you start. But no one’s going to pay attention to that. Like you kind of have to hit people and cause an argument.

49:51
in order to get people to actually pay attention because you are competing with millions of books, millions of other things online websites. do you want them to pay attention or not? And test number seven, can your book get massive distribution? Yes, you can self publish and be on Amazon and everything, but is there a major platform that’s going to continually promote your book? Can you get into major retailers internationally?

50:21
Could this potentially be a movie, a training or certification program? So those are kind of the high level overviews from people who want to write a best-selling mega book, which is really hard. I didn’t include anything about the traditional publishing process, which is its own beast slash nightmare. But for you, Steve, if you wrote a book that we, what are, what is the like ultimate

50:50
thing that could come from your book? Like what is the thing that you would pop a bottle of champagne and be like, this was my dream scenario. What is it? You know what’s funny about this Charlie is I started working on this book because I just wanted to have it on the shelf and I could take my kids to the store and say, hey, look, your dad’s a Polish author. Ironically, I think that was my number one goal and that was my bucket list item. It’s a great goal. Okay, so the secondary goal is just to

51:19
project my message out to as many people as possible. Mainly because I don’t miss, I don’t want to say, like I want everyone to go to college still, but because everyone would get mad at me otherwise. But I think that in this day and age, based on my path, like you can find your own way now. Like I don’t think college is nearly as important as it used to be. And the reason why I say this is because where I come from, like it’s like an arms race here in the Bay area. Like everyone is just,

51:49
paying these consultants like $20,000 a year to help get their kids to a good college, for what reason? Right? So they become a lawyer that, I can’t think of any of my friends who enjoy being a lawyer. I mean like, know, the ones who work in corporate at least. And so you spend all this time doing that and then what, or you can live a much better lifestyle taking a path like what you took.

52:19
Right? Totally. Spend time with your family and whatnot. And so that’s the message I want to project. And of course, the third op, the third area is like, teach classes on this stuff, right? Lead gen. Now you asked me about like, I don’t even think about this in terms of numbers, but since I have a, a big five publisher publishing this, I, in my heart, I feel somewhat obligated to, to meet a certain sales threshold. I think that’s the only pressure that I have for making sales. Totally. Yeah.

52:49
So because you’re with a big five publisher, mean, that’s their business model, right? Right. is like we otherwise, you know, the, can I get the advanced back and all that stuff? So it is their model. Um, and so, yeah, it would be helpful to strategize and think about how can I make that back as efficiently as possible. Um, but I loved your first goal. Like that’s, that’s great.

53:19
Fantastic. think it’s the, the, the problem runs, the challenges run, uh, well, can’t even speak. Uh, the biggest challenge that authors will run into is when their fantasies are tied around these hitting these big numbers, getting on, you know, like these massive media things. And it’s like, you can’t control any of that. Right. You cannot.

53:48
control if your book sells a million copies. You don’t have control over it unless you buy 995,000 copies of your book. so your goals, I think, are very much grounded in will all be accomplished. I don’t know how big your advances you don’t have to say. That would be the only one that I would be like, all right, we would have to sit down and kind of strategize how to get Steve to this as quickly as possible so he can focus on other things or do or.

54:17
You don’t even have to really worry about it, honestly, but like, um, yeah, here’s my philosophy for everything that I do. Like, uh, I’m going to try my hardest to get on a bestseller list and whatever happens happens. So I’ll have a budget and I’m going to make sure that I do the work and come up with a plan and then just let it ride. And then that way, even if it doesn’t do well, I can at least justify to myself, Hey, I did everything that I could to make this work. And you know, I’m comfortable with that.

54:47
I think it’ll do well though. have some amount of confidence. And I was just thinking about the criteria that you just, you know, whipped out as we were talking. I think I meet a lot of it and maybe I can massage the book to meet like the rest of it. Yeah, quite possibly. So a few thoughts on that. Trying to hit the bestseller list to be listed as a bestseller is a bad goal. Trying to hit the bestseller list because you only get one opportunity to launch a book and why not go all out? That’s a good thing.

55:17
That’s a good mindset to have. So I think a big important thing that comes with doing this, Steve, that I heard you say is like, I’m pretty confident. I think it’ll do okay. I would encourage you to get to the point where you can get that statement as strong as possible of this book is awesome.

55:46
I know it’s going to be great. Even if I don’t hit bestseller, even if it doesn’t sell X number of copies by this amount of time, this is a book that I’m confident people will love and get a ton of value out of. And one of the simplest ways that you can do that is to do multiple rounds of beta readers, like have them apply, have them be people that are like either have some experience or, or they’re your perfect reader.

56:16
Right. And have them just tell you when they get bored and confused and when they roll their eyes and, you know, fix all that stuff until you get around where people are like, this was awesome. I highlighted on every single page or I went off and did this or whatever, until you can maximize the user experience.

56:40
you’re not going to be able to say that with confidence, right? And so you have to treat your book like software. You have to treat it as though you’re developing a video game or something that like you just handed the remote control to somebody who’d never seen this game before. How far did they make it into level one? Did they get bored? You know, did they get to the final boss? What percentage are getting to the final boss? You know, they’re like, what are, what is their experience and treat it like software?

57:09
And that can serve you really well. So these pool of people, are these your friends or is there a way to get just. I don’t recommend friends unless they are experienced authors, because that can mess you up emotionally. It’s it’s it’s same as like.

57:31
Mom, will you edit my book? Like, don’t ask your mom to edit your book, she’s gonna hurt your feelings. And like, she’s gonna tell you these weird things that are gonna mess up your headspace and make you doubt the journey. And so I’m not saying my mom did that. I’m saying I’ve seen that happen to other authors. I get it from my mom all day. She’s like, who’s gonna read your book? So I’m used to it. Yeah, so no, you you want people who are your ideal target reader or other authors who like

58:00
get how to structure books, what books need, like they’re experienced in writing good books. Everybody else is like, you definitely don’t want to hand your book to a lawyer who’s convinced they hate their job, but they’re going to stick in it and they don’t like hanging out with their family. don’t give your book to that person. Okay, got it. Yeah.

58:30
Okay, I think I have a couple people in mind. Yeah, yeah, it’s really that’s that’s the part where you know, you’re you’re forging the sword. It’s it’s you’re making something really strong. You know, what’s funny about what you said earlier, like, it’s not up to you to market the book. And the book just kind of takes off on its own. That kind of blew my mind, actually. Yeah, one of one of the I had an author I spoke with semi recently, he was like, dude,

58:58
He, cause he was on his fifth or sixth book and I was like, man, I’m so proud of you. That’s so awesome. And he’s like, you said something on launch day that changed how I approached my entire career as an author. Um, he was like, I was only going to write one book. And then you said a book is a seed treated accordingly, plant seeds and let them bear fruit. Like you don’t stand around the seed that you just planted being like, Oh, come on, come on, come on. Like what else can we do to get this thing to grow? It’s like.

59:29
No, you planted it. It’s in the world. Let it ride. Like if you marketed it pretty well, good to go. So I think if you can view your book as a seed that can bear fruit for other people for many, many years and long after you’re gone, then you’re you’re in a good headspace to make something great. I mean, that’s how I feel about my blog post. But like a book is like hundreds of times more

59:58
in depth than a blog post, right? Different journey. Yeah, different journey. Yeah. Well, sweet, Charlie, this has been amazing. I’m so happy to actually have you on this podcast after so many years. Me too. person who got me started with email marketing. I’ll give you credit for that. I’ll give you credit for everything I’ve ever done. Awesome.

01:00:24
Well, Steve, I’m so I don’t say this to the patronizing way at all. I’m so proud of you and how you’ve stuck through everything and grown it into something that you’re proud of. And I’m just super happy for you, man. So thank you for this is a nice little reunion. And thanks for having me on. And Charlie, I don’t know if you do these consulting services like we kind of started out this interview with just talking about how you get unstuck and how to incorporate more play. Do you?

01:00:52
provide consulting, like what are some of the services that you offer in this department? Yeah, thank you for asking. Yeah, so I have a business that I basically just help elevate company cultures who want to infuse play meaningfully into the work and not just throw a ping pong table in the corner, have a happy hour once a week and call it good. Like how do you do it so your people love showing up to work, they don’t burn out, they don’t get sick, they

01:01:21
get more sales, they’re more productive, all this stuff. And so I’ve done that for clients like Microsoft and of course I’ve worked at Scribe for many years. Scribe has been the number one company culture in America, number one in Austin, number two in Texas. And so play is, I see it as like the next iteration of people first culture. It’s gonna be, I think a lot is gonna go toward play first culture because

01:01:50
this generation coming up, they see the writings on the wall. They have opportunities to play for a living and so companies better keep up. So I offer workshops in doing that. can do, they’re like little sprints that help companies and the individuals examine their personal and professional lives and then come up with a plan on how to actually implement it into their routine, into their work, whether they’re at home or at the office. And I also do

01:02:19
I’m going to be speaking to 2,500 leaders, CEOs in Mexico in October. Nice. Yeah. So, um, yeah, it’s, uh, the reason I love speaking to leaders specifically is that like it all falls from them. Everybody models their behavior in the company. They take their cues. And so if the leaders show up playfully, which I’ve helped leaders do, and it’s completely transformed their relationships with everybody in their life.

01:02:49
coworkers, other execs, their kids, wife, you know, that’s, that’s what gets me most excited is because they can transform the entire organization by changing themselves. Absolutely. Do you want people to just go to charlie hone.com? Is that, is that where all this is? Okay. Yeah, that’s, that’s the best place to reach out. And, uh, yeah, I would love to hear from anybody. And by the way, if anyone’s, uh, anybody who listened to this episode, just to hear the feedback, uh, on it, it would be great.

01:03:19
I just want to say Charlie’s an amazing writer. And if you go on his site right now, he actually lists out like his best blog posts. And I believe you can still download a electronic version of your books, right? Yeah. If you sign up on charliehone.com, I give all my books away for free. didn’t do it. I just like being able to give them out. And so you can get them all there. And I can plug Recession Proof Grad. That book really resonated with me and

01:03:48
Even though I wasn’t a graduate at the time, it helped me plan out what I wanted to do in it. And especially for someone like me who went the traditional path, school, job, everything, it just makes you think about what the different possibilities are and how you can actually take control and action to make changes in your life and not just sit around waiting for something to happen. Thank you, man. Thanks a lot, Charlie.

01:04:17
Hope you enjoy that episode. Now I want all my kids to grow up just like Charlie. And if any of you out there are looking for an incredible book editor, Charlie is your man. More information about this episode, go to mywebquaterjob.com slash episode 430. And once again, I want to thank Klaviyo, which is my email marketing platform of choice for e-commerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned card sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign. Basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot.

01:04:43
So head on over to mywifecoderjob.com slash KLABIYO. Once again, that’s mywifecoderjob.com slash KLABIYO. I also want to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform, a choice for e-commerce merchants. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big O in marketing platform and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash div. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash div. Now I talk about how I these tools in my blog,

01:05:13
If you’re interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to mywifequaterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and they’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.