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Future-proof your leadership with High Octane Leadership, a place where business leaders—whether by title or aspiration—share cheat codes for unlocking workplace excellence, lessons learned along the way, and insider tips for future generations of next-level professionals. With a career rooted in building people and businesses, Donald Thompson is an award-winning CEO, speaker, and author who empowers leaders to scale with purpose. Over the last 25 years, he has helped startups and enterprises alike drive cultural change, unlock performance, and deliver exceptional results through strategic leadership.
Find him on LinkedIn, and listen here to learn how you can become future-proof too.
High Octane Leadership Ep. 168
The $40K Secret: Why Executive Thought Leadership
Beats Million-Dollar Ad Budgets with Bob Batchelor
[00:00:05] Donald: Welcome to High Octane Leadership with Donald Thompson. This season, we're diving deeper with
[00:00:10] Don: more solo episodes, where I'll share the experiences that have led to recognition by Forbes, Fast Company, and others. Not as a boast, but as milestones on my entrepreneurial path. From growing multimillion dollar firms to successful business exits and building high performance teams with a global perspective. I'll reveal the insights and strategies from my journey and share them with you so that we can win together. Alongside these solo episodes, we'll have industry visionaries and thought leaders who will explore effective leadership. Ready to empower your leadership journey with real success stories? Let's embark on this transformational journey together. Hello, and welcome to another episode of High Octane Leadership. I'm your host, Donald Thompson, and I have my good friend and creative partner, Bob Bachelor, that's here with me today.
[00:01:03] Bob: Good to see you, Don. As always.
[00:01:04] Don: One of the things we're gonna do today, and and we always have a good time chatting about one of the reasons we're smiling is because we can get lost in just talking about how to build the future, grow the future, and doing fun, cool stuff together. And one of the things we're gonna talk about today that I'm really excited about, that I really think our audience is gonna benefit is so you wanna write a book. I can't tell you how many people I talk to at the executive level, emerging leaders, people that have experienced tremendous insights in their life that want to write a book, but leave the story untold because they don't know how to get started. They don't know who to ask for help, and they don't know how to manage the time and the process to get it done. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna do a little bit of Bob's profile, but really quick, what we have here is a world class author, world class strategic communicator, and somebody that's authored 15 books under your name. You've helped with a bunch of others, including my book. You've advised on projects all around communications. What we're gonna do today is I'm gonna ask Bob a series of questions and let him just share on the process and the thinking of what do you do if you want to write a book. And so, Bob, as we start, I'll throw out the first question. But even before that, first question, you gotta do a little humble brag. And I know this is difficult. Not my thing. I it's not your thing, but I'll give you all example. I'm gonna turn it over to Bob. I promise. We were talking about the book that you did on Stan Lee, the creator of Marvel, and then you talked about the number of copies you sold. And you've never told me that before, but you just dropped it in the sentence. Right? What was that number?
[00:02:40] Unknown: For some reason, I'm a best seller in China. So there's a good reason. Chinese audience, they love Stan Lee. They used to call him grandpa. And so wide readership in China.
[00:02:51] Bob: What was the number, though?
[00:02:52] Unknown: I think it's somewhere in the 60,000 units range, something like that.
[00:02:57] Bob: One, most people never write a book. Two, most books in the data, under a thousand copies sold. And so when you're talking to somebody that sold 50,000 plus in one of their books and it's one of 15, what I wanna share with you all is you're talking to an absolute expert. And so, Bob, now I'll field the question a little bit. No. Because it's gotta be said.
[00:03:16] Unknown: Actually, the numbers are about 200 to 300. The average book sells 200 to 300 copies, and that makes it an even more important discussion to have.
[00:03:26] Bob: As we segue into your credibility, your willingness to share your insight. Because most people that know the secret sauce of how to be successful in an area don't share it. Because they're not only afraid to, but it's not in their business interest to. And you're at a point in your career to where you wanna hear more voices heard, and you wanna help amplify voices of others. And so with that, what are some of the things as we get into the topic that people need to think about when they're starting to broach the topic in their mind and their mental model that they would like to write a book someday.
[00:03:59] Unknown: And I think it's interesting because our relationship began with our good friend, Bob Osmond, introducing us. Bob Osmond saying, hey, I've got a friend who's writing a book. And Bob Osmond saying to you, I've got a friend who's an author. I think he can help you. And that's how it all started. You know, five years later of working Right. Side by side for five years. So I love the conversation. It's a mountain. Writing a book is a mountain, and I break it down into two primary categories. A, it's the manuscript. So somebody flips open their laptop, puts up Google Docs or Microsoft Word, and now somebody says to you, you need 75 to 95,000 words. That is just a daunting task even if you've led the most amazing life to suddenly have to 95,000 words, publishable words, because quality is always the linchpin. That's the foundation. You have to think first and foremost quality. So manuscript, one part. Second part, how do you get from manuscript to publication? That's a process as well. Now that is not rocket science, but you need to understand that process so that you don't make ridiculous mistakes or rookie mistakes or let people guide you in a way. There are companies out there that will take that production part and try to convince new writers that it cost x, and that x might have a lot of extra zeros on it that are unnecessary. And so blank page to finished book, finished book to publication, And that publication can go across. It could be a paperback. It could be an audiobook. It could be the ebook or all the above. Yep. So there are different streams that you take. So that's how I would say, first of all, if somebody's thinking of writing a book, here's the two pieces. And you gotta start thinking about both of those. And that's a lot.
[00:05:56] Bob: One of the things that you mentioned how we connected because I had fits and starts of writing my book. And over a period of years, had a manuscript that was partly done, had some interviews that were done with some different writers, and it just never got finished. And so I remember asking Bob Osmond, and he put us together. And one of the things that gave me comfort and confidence is that not only did you give me insight into the process, but you said you've gotta find somebody that's already been on this journey that is not anxious about it, that can really show you the way and teach you and coach you. So what did you think about the fact of somebody having a ghostwriter, a writing partner, somebody that's been in publishing? What are some of the advantages of not doing it
[00:06:43] Unknown: as a solo project? You said it right. Humble bragging. I do such a poor job of it. And I made it my mission. When I was an academic, the number one thing that you want as an academic is to get tenure. And a book from a reputable publisher is one of the major ways to get tenure. So I used to help professors figure out how to write a book so that they could get tenure because that made me feel good about myself. You're giving them lifetime employment. You're giving them their dream come true. And, you know, like you, I like to think that I help people make their dreams come true. Amen. And it's important to me. I've helped people at every walk of life. I've talked to college students about writing books. I've talked to professors, PhDs with lots of publications that can't get over that hurdle of going from article, which they're trained to write, to book, and then countless business people. So the idea is whether you need some help, just support along the way, that's what a lot of people need. A lot of people have the skill set. They're so stymied by where to turn next. Other people could tell the story, but they're gonna have a hard time actually doing the writing based on various parameters. Not everybody's superpower is writing.
[00:07:55] Bob: That's right.
[00:07:55] Unknown: And there's nothing wrong with having ghostwriter. You just wanna have a good ghostwriter, somebody that's has some accomplishments behind them, has some connection with you. I have no problem with anybody using any resource. I've told people in the past, you don't even have to type it out or whatever if you don't want to. Just pull out your phone and talk into the recorder, and we can use AI or whatever, even pre AI. We could use a transcription service to get that stuff onto paper where you then give it to the writer that you're working with.
[00:08:27] Bob: One of the things I wanna jump in here for a minute, right, because you hit one of the roadblocks that stops people. Right? Is I don't see how I could write a book. One of the things that you did to help and support me that's really, really powerful is you described, Domba, can you tell the stories of your life and what are the main things you wanna get across to an audience? I was like, absolutely. I can do that. So, really, it's about what part of the literary partnership do you feel comfortable about, and then building a small team around the rest. Yeah. And I think most people get intimidated by things that are new to them because they think they have to do it alone. One of the things that gave me confidence, both yourself and working with Jackie Ferguson, who helped support that process, and you all are the two keys for a lot of the content that I produce, is you all gave me confidence to be the storyteller that I can be, and then you all could put it into a package with that quality publishable content Mhmm. That you described before.
[00:09:27] Unknown: Yeah. Anybody could publish a bad book. And you don't wanna publish a bad book because even if you take all the shortcuts in the world, it's still a bad book. And you do not want that. One of the things that I bring to the table, and it's just because of my career experience, I love books. I love writing. I love the creative process. I'm a nerd for publishing the way I used to be a nerd for baseball cards. If I meet somebody who's in publishing, depending on whether they like to talk about themselves or not, it's either their worst day or their best day because I will pepper them like you. I will pepper them with questions. Curious. All day, I will spend all day with that person because I wanna know every piece of it, and I've worked in every part of the publishing business.
[00:10:09] Bob: Let's talk it's not a pivotal topic, but it is actually a drill down into talking to business leaders that their goal of writing a book is to build thought leadership, to build executive presence, to build credibility so that they can grow the quality of lead flow through their business. Talk to me about your perspective on the value of thought leadership, how that works. Certainly, book is a part of it, but other elements of thought leadership that really raises the profile of that executive and cuts through the noise in today's environment.
[00:10:41] Unknown: That's a great question because when I look at the broader spectrum, I'm a context person. What's the context? The context is that we live in a world full of noise, and everybody is trying to break through that noise. And what they need to break through that noise is authentic communications. For some people, that's a podcast. For some people, it's within their company doing a newsletter, like a op ed internal, things like that. For a lot of leaders, it becomes obvious that they have a story to tell because they've done something interesting, and a book just becomes a linchpin, becomes the foundation. It doesn't have to be everything that a person does, but it's a great kind of foundational piece because you can send that book to prospects. You can use it internally. And early in my career, I worked for this company called The History Factory. And one of the things that we did was ghostwrite books for executives and write corporate histories for companies. So one of the projects I worked on, Kimberly Clark was getting ready to celebrate its hundred and twenty fifth anniversary, and they had just acquired one of their main competitors. So they were trying to bring these two cultures together. So they wanted to put have a book done that explained and Kimberly Clark, Kotex, Kleenex, Huggies, some of the most important consumer products ever in the world, one of the first companies in the world to do integrated marketing communications. I wrote that book to not only as a knowledge base for the year long celebration that the company orchestrated, but then we also had it published by the top university press as a way for the world to understand the greatness of this company. So for Kimberly Clark's leadership, it had no kind of direct impact for them, but it elevated the company. It had one book that's 02/1985 pages long that had 285,000 uses. And that's the way to think about authentic. So you wanna be authentic in your communication. And when you say something or publish something, you wanna then publish it umpteen more times. How many more time can I reuse? Because it's a basis of authenticity. And to me, it all come authenticity trust.
[00:13:00] Bob: We're all trying to build that authenticity and trust. And I'll use an example in my world in that independent of my title. What is my superpower as a business leader? It is communicating business value to other business leaders of the firm that I represent. And a little over a year ago, my current role is the CEO and cofounder of the diversity movement, and we were acquired about a year and a half ago by workplace options. And so one of my roles is to take what we've done historically in The US around organizational change, employee engagement, employee health, and globalize that and create that footprint. And so one of the things that we did on our team and what you're a huge part of is we wrote a book, uh, myself and and Kurt Merweather and the team put it together on inclusive leadership handbook. And the reason I wanna share this is because when we're talking about thought leadership, getting in front of clients that can make a buying decision. I'm speaking in November in a conference in Brussels to 500 c level human capital leaders, and I was found because of this book. And so the book became a part of growing my reputation, growing my credibility so that my brand could then become a halo effect to the company that I represent, which is Workplace Options. And now we're gonna get the opportunity to network, build trust with, build a workshop with hundreds of executives from global companies around the world. And so as we talk about thought leadership, I wanted to share this real time kind of example of how we're using thought leadership in our day jobs as well as how we really enjoy supporting dreamers in our part time and fun stuff with their adventures, and that you can do both.
[00:14:52] Unknown: Twenty years ago, there was a survey that raised a lot of people's ire because they said something like 85% of people think they have a book in them. And writers were like, uh, yeah. They think they have a book in them. It'll never come out because they can't do it. I tried to reverse that thinking. People have a book in them. You never know. It's like, I'm not big on sports analogies, but here's one that works. If you don't have your glove on, you're not in the game. If you're not in the game, you don't know what's gonna happen. You gotta know what you gotta be in the game. The book that you have in you that you need help getting it out, how do you know how that's gonna help somebody? You don't know how that's gonna change somebody's life? And it's not just the person. It's the readers. It's the employee they inspire. We had a client once when I was working at the History Factory. They did their leadership memoir, like underestimated, because they were one of the founders of a big company, and they wanted to have a legacy. And so we printed up these beautiful leather bound books. Guy signed them, gave them out to all the employees and 500 of his closest network. And this was pre LinkedIn, so it was a big deal. 500 of your closest network associates. Amazing consequences, including the fact about a year or so later, we get a note from one of his grandchildren who said, I never realized how amazing my grandfather was till I saw this book. Wow. Come on. Goosebumps. I'm almost crying. I'm almost shedding a tear right now from that. It's just amazing what the solidity of a book can do even in this AI information age, ebooks, all that kind of thing to have that thing that you can hold. It's beautiful.
[00:16:38] Bob: Let's talk about AI for a minute because there's so much noise about this new technology infrastructure that is in our our world today that people could think, well, I can write a book to choose an AI. What is your view of using technology in the book writing process? Where can AI be successfully integrated? Where does that human expertise need to be still ever present? What is that balance? And how do folks like you help people manage that balance?
[00:17:09] Unknown: I'll make a confession. I have a PhD in English literature. I've written 16 books, edited another 19, ghostwritten countless books. I should be the most anti AI person, including they used my books to train AI, the earliest models. If you go back and look at the things they used to train, many of my books were used to train the AI models. So I should be bitter about this because I didn't get paid for that. And it was one of these books is thousands of hours of hard work. But from the moment I found that out, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna flip the switch on them. I'm not only going to become an expert in AI. I'm gonna become an expert in how to produce good content with AI. So what I did, if you're gonna create some version of Bob Bachelor out there in the AI world as an author, I'm gonna create the real Bob Bachelor. So I started giving it things, giving forcing my work into the AI system. And then when you could create private GPTs, I created Bob AI, and it's built on my manuscripts. [a]And I've put different kinds of things. I've so things that I produced at the diversity movement, things that I produced at WPO that are public, that are white paper, nothing below board, stuff that's public that I created and then my own manuscripts. So it's pulling from me. So if you have a Bob Bachelor sitting around who's gone through that process, then I'm saying use AI as much as you can. It's smart. But if you're just chatting in, hey. I wanna write a book about psychological safety, and you're putting that into you're just getting the most generic information that Imagine AI is the largest library or the largest file cabinet ever created, and somebody is just very, very quickly in milliseconds going through and giving you back, spitting back to you what the general feeling is about this topic. The general feeling of a topic is not great content. It's not quality. Going back to our very first point, number one is quality. The writer that you work with or writing it yourself, you bring the quality because AI can do a lot of things really well. I could write a book and never use first person, And I could put that manuscript in and say, change it to first person. It would do a really good job of changing it all. It can't capture my emotions. It can't capture the feeling when my first mentee went out and got a CEO position, the feeling that I feel. It can't talk about, you know, when my parent passed away. It can't capture that at this point. Maybe someday it will, but I don't like to claim expert status on many things. Let's just say I'm a heavy user of AI, and I try to stay up as well as anybody can on how to use content well. And in my experiences, even with Chat Bob, Chat Bob is not a perfect representation of me. Chat Bob is like, I have a a student in a master's degree program who really has studied my stuff well. Got it. But they ain't me. They can't do the things I can do. Chat Bob can't do what I can do.
[00:20:32] Bob: One of the things that I've learned in partnering with you, and I am competitive learner. And so I like to surround myself with people to where I can produce great things, but I can also learn and be better and stronger. But you talked about being famous, and it's different degrees. Famous doesn't necessarily mean a list celebrity. But if you think in North Carolina, I'll just use me as an example and Humbly. I can reach out and and my reputation will precede me. Lot of different pockets in North Carolina. And whether it's the podcast, whether it's the wonderful relationship we have with WRL, the several years we've been working with WRL Tech and doing content there, the LinkedIn profile and the book and all the different things. So we've worked hard at it for a little bit. And so I've seen the benefits of that in terms of accelerating conversations. So I'm a believer. How would you share with someone that is working to believe in building their brand, which a book is a part of, that's working to believe in thought leadership, and needs that extra nudge to kinda get there. How would you shape that conversation with them?
[00:21:36] Unknown: Again, I would go back to authenticity and trust. Those are pillars of your personal brand that nobody can shake. So it's gotta be real[b]. The thing that you want to be quote, unquote famous for has gotta be real. I'm not a medical professional. I'm not a mental health professional. I know more than the average human being about psychological safety, but I would never profess to be an expert and never go after true thought leadership. Now I have a perspective as somebody who's led a global team, and I have a perspective of somebody who's worked at the diversity movement and worked closely with you. But I would never ever go out there and try to claim that. But as you said, there are measurements of fame that are important for every individual and that level of fame. Once I I had a CEO of a company that's about a $300,000,000 company say, I love what you're thinking about thought leadership. Authenticity and trust makes sense to me, but I don't want it to be about me. That's I hear that all the time. I don't want it to be about me. I'm like, I don't recall ever saying that it had to be about you. Do you have a story to tell? Yes. Are you proud of building this $300,000,000 company? Now you didn't do it on your own. Are you proud of yourself and the team? Yes. Would your employees be happy to hear some of those stories? Yes. Now we got something. Let's go to work because you don't have to be, I, Bob, bachelor, blah blah blah. You've seen me at work. I never take credit for anything. Even if I do something directly, I'll push the credit to the team. I don't need that.
[00:23:12] Bob: I'll have to be your agent sometimes. Like, I'm your hype man sometimes. You won't do it.
[00:23:16] Unknown: I won't do it. I won't do it. I would rather give over accomplishment to somebody who's a rising star on the team because for various reason. I'm comfortable with who I am and where I am and those kind of things. So you don't have to make it about yourself, and that's the number one thing that I hear over and over. You have a responsibility as a public figure to build your organization. You're employing people. You've talked to me many times about the challenges, and another entrepreneur just mentioned this to me the other day, the challenges of meeting payroll every two weeks. People are looking to you, and you don't know how your team is looking to you. Mhmm. Some of them just want to come to work and do their very best work, and they wanna go home. Others are doing it because they believe in you. And it's almost a disservice not to give them a reason why. A CEO, maybe twenty years ago, forty years ago, could just go sit in the office and show up at board meetings and have press release statements. It's not like that anymore. Everybody needs to establish that authenticity and trust. And because of the speed of the life's if you take the news cycle and say it's twenty four seven, your life cycle is in warp speed. Life has been geared up. It's constant flow. Even if you're a famous person or company, it's never concrete. It's always changing. Look at somebody like Bernie Sanders. You'd think his public persona has changed dramatically if you charted it over the last twenty five years. There were times when he was beloved by lots of people and times when he was hated and probably still loved and hated, but it's charts like a stock. Leaders need to be thinking about this. You wanna establish a legacy. You want people to believe in you. You want people to investors in your company. You've gotta give them a reason. Doesn't have to be about me. I've done x y z. It's we. We've done all these things.
[00:25:14] Bob: Out of all of that, what you said, the thing I'm gonna layer into even a little bit more is that building of reputation so that your reputation precedes you in the rooms you're not even in. And so when I talk to leaders in executive coaching, some are surprised when I talk to them about they need to build their brand. And one of the things that you described, and I'll put a fine point on it, is you need to build your brand internally and externally, and people wanna be proud of who they work for directly, their manager, their leader, and the company that they partner with. To the degree that you are known, to the degree that you are highly visible in your community, to the degree that you're an expert in your field is also something that helps you with recruiting and building top teams. Because people believe if you're a mover and shaker in your space, then you can teach them, not just lead them. Most leaders are good at their jobs. They can lead people. They can create results. But your high performers want to be mentored and sponsored and taught, and they wanna do that from somebody that has third party credibility that they've been there and done that. And that's something that I had to slow down and really think about. Corporate DNA is in business development, how to build partnerships, how to get the deal, different things. I don't need to spend time. I'll tell this story. I'm embarrassed about this, but I'll I'll just tell it. I don't know if you know which one, but this has been twenty years ago now. But I had a PR firm come into my office, and I was leading a technology company at the time. And they started talking to me and they said, Don, what you're missing in your game is a thought leadership plan. And I said, what I'm missing in my game is leads and prospects. And I don't know how thought leadership is gonna do that, so I'm gonna need y'all to get out of my office because I need more phone calls and more meetings. And I literally was closed minded. And now it's nightmare when I think about where would I be if I had taken the twenty years and done a little bit of a time in owning my space, but I didn't understand the connective tissue between the ability to work hard, hustle, grind, make the phone call, hidden the email, all the things, and how much faster it is if you're already known as a thought leader and an expert in your space where people are coming to you for insight versus you going to them to sell them something. And that moment of clarity is when I started to invest in my brand, which started out and sounded selfish, but my brand being strong benefits all of the businesses that I work with, all of the people that I work for, all the things I'm trying to do because I can get in and create credible executive conversations faster. Because here's the thing I share with folks. People do their research. Yes. They do. So what do you want them researching about you? And when I started to really get that in my brain, then I started that journey of building a book, building a newsletter, all the different things. And some of my early books weren't amazing. You see, you mentioned a bad book. Here's the only thing I'll push back on. Sometimes you gotta do a bad book till you get to a good one. Right? Bob's like, don't do a bad book. I was like, sorry. Too late. I didn't know you Yeah.
[00:28:31] Unknown: We we didn't know each other.
[00:28:32] Bob: We didn't know each other then. Right? But I had good ideas. One of my early books was time choices. It was not a great book, but the content was there. It just wasn't packed as well. Because I believe even to this day that you can't manage time, you make choices about time. I wrote another ebook on delegation that talks about the credibility you have as a leader is the strength of your team. And if you don't trust your team to empower them with strong, high performing stretch projects, then why'd you hire them? But I didn't have somebody that could help me package that knowledge in a way that could really grow and scale. So I had to try, fail, and adjust, try, fail, and adjust. And then by the time I met Bob Bachelor, I was ready. Right? I was open minded, ready to listen. So here's a more granular question. How long does it take to write a book? Even if you're partnering with somebody. How long should your book be? What are the different types of books? Help the audience understand some of the different choices they're gonna need to make once they've made the decision that, you know what, I'm gonna move forward. I've got a theme. I wanna build that credibility. Talk to a little bit about the universe of books, whether it's ebook or novel or all those different things. Love digging into that because it's the
[00:29:40] Unknown: way a lot of people think. People are surprised that I actually think about books mathematically. I reverse engineer a book before I start writing it. Once I have the table of contents, I can write any book pretty much on any subject. If you wanna write a book that's going to be physical, it's gonna be a paperback, something like the Inclusive Leadership Handbook or the the Inclusive Language Handbook, which both ebooks and paperbacks sold a lot of copies because they were very specific to helping people with very specific challenges they were facing in the business world. Those books are about 25 to 30,000 words. And that's about the minimum if you wanna have a physical book. So if you use that as a baseline, then anything under that and it's everything's so Kinda relative. Yeah. I've seen white papers recently, white papers that were, like, 2,000 words. That to me is a little light. The average traditional feature story in a magazine is about 3,000 words. So to me, a white paper needs to be five to 10,000 words. And then there's a little gray area from 10,000 to 20,000, which there's a lot of different things you could do. Maybe it's a series of ebooks until you have enough to go to a paperback at, say, 25,000 words. Then at the top of the scale is a book like Underestimated, which is about 95,000 words. Let's just say that. That's roughly in the early three hundreds range in terms of depends on layout and all those things, pictures, however people wanna do that. But 95,000 words is about 300 pages. Most first novels are in the mid sixties. So that's a good idea of I would shoot for most people for their life story or their memoir ish kind of thing to be somewhere between sixty and seventy five thousand words. That's the sweet spot that I shoot for. Most of my books are somewhere between seventy and ninety five thousand words. And it's a nice length because you can get in. It it's got heft to it. There's a story. There's real meat, but it's not a 600 page book. You see those biographies, you know, David McCullough books that Yeah. Yeah. 650 pages. Now there's a place in the universe for those. Ron Chernow's books, his book on Hamilton and other leading think figures. There's place for those books. But I would say the entry point to a book that's gonna be in paper is 25,000 up to 95,000. How long it's gonna take? How much money you have? You wanna hire me to ghost write a book for you? Honestly, you put enough dollars on that table, I write it fast as hell. But for most people, it's a process. It's a commitment. If you're gonna write something, the production is gonna take a month minimum. Even if you fast speed it as fast as you can to get a paperback book from finished product to publication, the fastest you're gonna do it is a month. If you publish with Knopf, it's gonna take a random house. It's gonna take this is another question you asked. Traditionally published would be with an existing publisher that you've heard of, that is reputable, that has published many, many books. Most of my books are with Roman and Litterfield, which is now part of the Bloomsbury family. Bloomsbury is a gigantic global publisher. For most of those books, unless there's a heavy current affairs connection that they need to get the book out fast, like, it's a journalistic thing, those books could take four months to a year from finished manuscript to publication. So if you're doing it on your own with publishing efforts or with a smaller publisher, you've gotta step it back a little bit. But a month is the very fastest. So how fast do you need to get a book out that's paper? How fast to how committed are you? I've heard done more than heard stories. In the publishing world, I've seen one person sell a book on a subject to a they get a big advance from a publisher, and a competitor come in and offer another writer a large check to write that book faster so that it gets out fast and beat them to market if it's a topic that you know is gonna sell. And that might be it's a 6 figure advance to do something like that. But how much should you write? So I'm using the latest studies here. From if you talk to ghostwriters, and I'm in a organization of ghostwriters, primarily to get their their studies and their information. 40,000 is a decent number to think about, and it can go sky high from there. There's lots of variables. That I would
[00:34:44] Bob: and I've seen all over the map. Right? It's a 150,000, and you have to be thoughtful. Does that include any kind of marketing, PR, different things like that? From what I've seen, looking the other end, having now published several books, some I've written with a small team, some I've worked with an expert team, you and and Jackie and others. Some we've done independent. With this one, with underestimated, we went and got a publisher. And that was kinda cool to get my first advance check. It doesn't even matter what it it wasn't a huge advance, but, man, when that thing came, I was super excited and proud. But 40 to $50,000 is around you need to be able to invest some money to get the right level of expertise to care. And for you to have a product that is your intellectual property, that can do a couple of things. Number one, build that trusted brand that you're trying to build. But number two, and here's the thing I don't think people understand, the process of writing that book, let's just now focus a little bit on business books for thought leaders, for people that wanna drive revenue in their business, people that are really trying to get their name out and jump the line from their competitors, you now have hundreds of pieces of other digital content you can create from that book process. Yeah. You're gonna be doing interviews with your ghostwriting team. You're gonna be interviews with the PR team. And all of this information, you need to record, you need to capture so that you can use the various AI tools to now create your own personal content supply chain. And that is really, really important because one of the things that I've learned as a consumer of this process and partnering with your expertise is that we did a wonderful job on the production, and we didn't do as strong a job on the marketing execution until after the product was done. So we didn't hit all the windows at the timing that we could. And that's something that we're helping folks with in the businesses that we're doing. And what we're seeing is that it's hard to do and manage all of those moving parts on your own, and that's why building that small team is super important. And when you look at the digital marketing spend of $10,000,000, $50,000,000, $100,000,000 company, the investment to create a book for your executive, your chief revenue officer, your chief marketing officer is round off error relative to the money you're wasting on the digital marketing slot machine. And I'm the chairman of the board of a digital marketing firm. I believe strongly you should have an integrated comms approach, not a single focused pillared approach because there's no way for you to touch all of the audience touch points in just a digital without having a physical piece, without having an event piece, all the different things. One of the things and we're gonna put a date on it, but you can reach out to Bob or I on on LinkedIn that we're gonna do here locally and we'll probably do a video is we're gonna do a private webinar on so you wanna write a book because we wanna share more of this information versus keep it to ourselves. And my motivation for wanting to share it is I don't think success and knowledge about success is to be hoarded. I don't wanna beat you because I know something you don't know. I wanna beat you because I'm better than you. And I don't know how that sounds. I don't even care. But I want people to understand how they can and should win in the marketplace, and I want it that little slice of goodness for me helping other people to win. I want folks in large corporations that are looking at their overall marketing spend and don't have a thought leadership strategy. I want you to rethink that. Because as a sales professional, selling for organizations that have a thought leadership strategy is easier than ones that don't. Because the quickest way to get into the c suite is to be able to deliver to an executive a content piece that gives them new knowledge. It raises your credibility as a sales professional, accelerates the relationship building. And I will say this, it is more valuable than the fancy dinners you're taking people to, the golf you're trying to play, and all that stuff. People don't buy for that anymore. Who can teach me, who can help me move the bottom line for the growth of my business, and who's gonna help me be better and more dominant against my competitors. And thought leadership shows those things. [c]And I'll give you and the team at WPO and the team that you lead a lot of credit. One of the things I do as I'm promoting organizational health and wellness, as I'm promoting employee engagement, is I use the psychological safety study that you and your team put together. We've talked about books. I wanna pivot a little bit to thought leadership in the corporate sense. Talk a little bit about that psychological safety study, how it has evolved, and then I'll come back and talk about how I'm using it to get in the door. Sure.
[00:39:23] Unknown: It's great. I love talking about the psychological safety study. So one of the great things about Workplace Options is that we have a great data team. Our data team is able to collect data from all over the world, and the team put together a report on the challenges in the workplace talking with actual employees. So it's not a survey. There are a lot of companies that we all know and we could name that are surveying people. And if you've been on the receiving end of those surveys, what are your answers based on? How you're feeling that day? How your day is going? What you're thinking about your boss that day? It's not what you're actually saying when you're calling in to your EAP and saying, here's a challenge I'm having at work. What should I do? Can you help me? People are in a real moment of crisis often. So we gather this data. It's all been made anonymous, so there's no names attached to it. But we can look at what's happening in a country and say these are the top three workplace concerns that are prohibiting psychological safety, prohibiting employee engagement. And so workload might be one of them. Relationship with managers. We've seen bullying. And what we did initially in the first year study is we took nine countries, and we just released publicly the top three challenges for each country. And we made a commitment that we're not going to just put this news out there and then let it die. We're going to use this as the foundation for talking about employee engagement and its foundational pieces, psychological safety, psychosocial risk, inclusive leadership. And we're gonna keep talking about this because we believe in it and we see this is what's happening on the ground in companies. So we put the first year, put the thing out, people were going crazy for it. Now not as crazy as they're going for McKinsey and Korn Ferry and some of the others because this is not something Workplace Options has done before. But how can we top ourselves the second year? This past year, we put the work the the psychological safety study out. We doubled the number of countries. So now it's 18 countries, and there's some easy ability to look how things changed over time. And this is all super easy to find. All you've gotta do is Google workplace options, psychological safety study. It's on the web page. And it just gives us this mountain of material that's employee driven without telling who these people are, so there's no privacy concerns like that. That's right. And we feel that it should be free because we're doing a service. WPO's number one goal is to help people. That's our benchmark each day. And Alan King, our CEO, says it every time I see him. The quote, are we helping people? And we don't wanna just help the people who pay for our services. We wanna help all people because all people around the world, what we see from the workplace options psychological safety study, people are dealing with the same thing. Doesn't matter if you're in Japan, if you're in Mexico, or if you're in Canada. People are dealing with the same types of issues because when we look at them, you see them on the chart. And so that's the study in a nutshell.
[00:42:50] Bob: I really appreciate that. Now let me now bring that full circle to how high quality thought leadership and that investment that Alan as our CEO and then your team executed against. Now I'm more on the frontline trying to get the business, client relationships, CEOs. I've been in Toronto and talked to 25 executives about this specific topic, and the hook to get them to sit down with me was the psychological safety study. I was in Nashville with doctor Kenneth Harris, and we were talking to executives and business leaders about the psychological safety study. I was then in Chicago, and this was in the last three to four months. So I'm giving real time of high quality content thought leadership, and then for the person that is out in market, how that changes the credibility profile. And so we're talking about a global footprint that now I have more credibility as that business developer, as that business leader, because I'm driving with the data that's telling people what problems exist, and then how we can create high quality, cost efficient solutions to then solve those problems. And so what I wanna share with you all from an audience perspective is when you're looking at, do you wanna write a book? When you're looking at thought leadership, think about the full service impact of doing it for you as an individual and your brand, and then the win win between you and the organization you represent because now you're different than the other sales professional because you are a knowledge evangelist. You are sharing with people a way they can think differently, think stronger, think more bravely, and people are addicted to that. There's so much noise in the marketplace. There's so much mistrust that when you become a source of insight, now all of a sudden you can position your product services in your organization much better. And Bob is a phenomenal partner in doing that. We work on a lot of different things together, but that is one in kind of our day to day that we're working on that I wanted to share with the audience. And then we gotta figure out how to write the psychological safety book and link it all together.
[00:44:59] Unknown: Let me tell you. So here's how the value that I add just from my career experiences. Most authors are not also strategic communicators, so I am always taking a holistic view. If you look at the psychological safety study, I didn't create that. The team had created it. They just didn't know what to do with it. So Alan asked me, take this and turn it into a thought leadership program. So I start thinking immediately, who can I make stars with this psychological safety study? Well, I can make our internal experts. We have internal thought leaderships. It so happens, inclusive leadership, I have this and I have these two stars right here named Donald Thompson and Kurt Meriwether. On psychological safety, I have Oliver Brecht who is a world class thinker on psychological safety. I have doctor Kanette Harris, who is our chief clinical officer. And so on psychological safety, psychosocial risk, inclusive leadership, and it funnels up to this idea of employee engagement, which we all know is probably the single largest, most universal challenge in the business world. So how can I use this study to make thought leaders out of people who nobody not enough people know about? And Alan had the, uh, uh, confidence in me and the team that I lead to give us the space and the time to build this out over two years. And I would say it's one of the proudest things that I've done in my career because all I did was apply the models that we had used earlier, models that we had used at the diversity movement, other points in my career to build this thing out and then spread the wealth, the fame. I don't need those people to be the most famous people in the room. I just need them to be recognized as experts in the room, and it all comes together. So that's the kind of thinking. The psychological safety study is a microcosm of the way that I think. And thankfully, we were able to execute it because I have a great team. And they were willing to follow behind me even though that WPO as an organization had never done something like this before.
[00:47:17] Bob: That is powerful, and I think it brings it full circle. The title of this podcast is so you wanna write a book. The underpinning theme and thought process is how do you build that reputational credibility, that executive brand authority so that you can stand out in your marketplace as one of one? And that's what we're all looking for is what's that winning difference that we can bring to the table. Bob, what's a final thought on any of these topics that I didn't ask or that you'd wanna share?
[00:47:47] Unknown: I'm glad that you asked because my final thought would be this. I know from experience that regardless of whether you write a 25,000 word handbook or a 95,000 word career epic, whatever that cost you, as long as you've talked to somebody and you know that you're not just getting ripped off. Because there are companies out there that will just take your money.
[00:48:12] Bob: And at least call us whether you use anything we're into or not. At least call us and, like, let let us help you vet because there's some there's some shady stuff
[00:48:20] Unknown: out there. It could be 20 or $25. For some people, that might as well be in a million. It could be multiple hundreds of thousands when you think about an entire campaign. No matter what that number is that you're comfortable with, there's no other way that you could put that into anything and get as much return on your investment. There is no way because I've seen it now in action. There is no way. The money that we spent creating the Inclusive Language Handbook, that return on investment was probably 10 x. It was probably 20 x. And when you look at the statistics from the Ghostwriter Association that I'm in and some independent writers groups, 10 x to 20 x is the general return on investment. So if you spend $200 on a book, a great book has potential for a New York Times bestseller, win some awards, is something you can be proud of, create your legacy, you build a campaign around it, and you get 20 x return, where's the downside?
[00:49:22] Bob: I could talk to you all day, and we have. Right? Here's the call to action for this podcast. Just connect with Bob and I on LinkedIn. That's literally it. Now we're just getting the information out, but we've got some cool things that are cooking. We really wanna share even more detail and granular insights on helping people build their brand, on helping people write their first book. We think it's good for us to share. And then selfishly, we wanna meet some of the movers and shakers in our community, some of the business leaders that are established, some of the business leaders that are emerging. We wanna know your story. We wanna see how we can collaborate with you. We wanna see what things some of the companies we represent can do for you. So we wanna give you and gift you with some knowledge and insight that we've learned, that's been hard learned over the years, and build some relationships. Because here's the one thing Bob and I agree, trust is the new superpower in the new economy, and relationships are gonna be the drivers of those trust. And you cannot do that without getting to know people and giving them value first. And then when they receive that value from you, then trust can be developed as something that is underpinned underneath. So this is DT with High Octane Leadership. Thank you so much for your time, effort, and energy. Bob, as always, man, I love it. Time flies. I just kinda glanced at my watch. I was like, yeah. We're only gonna be able to do one topic today. But it's always great to hear.
[00:50:41] Unknown: Thanks, Don.
[00:50:47] Bob: Thank you for joining us on High Octane Leadership with Donald Thompson. Today's episode is a step in our collective journey towards leadership excellence. Remember, every story we share and every insight we gain is a piece in the puzzle of our leadership journey. For more insight and detail, hit the subscribe button so that we can stay connected. For deeper information and more episodes, go to donaldthompson.com. Continue to lead with vision and purpose. And until we meet again, embrace your role as a high octane leader in the ever evolving world of business.
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