The Dialog

I spent months writing the one book I'd write if I could only write one. 70,000 words made the manuscript, and I cut another 150,000. My literary agent showed the proposal to several people, and they all said about the same thing: these are great ideas, but no one will buy it.

That's what feedback really looks like. It's rarely about whether you're right. It's about whether people can receive what you're saying.

Nick Surface and I pick the book story back up from Episode 33. It's a story with a lesson, and it's a lesson trusted people in my life have been telling me for a couple of years.

Isn't a great idea enough?
No. My friend Erwin McManus told me, "You've done a great job thinking about what you want to say, which is really important, but what you don't think enough about is what people need to hear." What you say is always at the mercy of a person's level of understanding.

Why does so much networking feel transactional?
At my first youth pastors' conference I just wanted friends. A youth pastor with about 2,000 in his youth ministry asked me to swap speaking spots. When I told him I couldn't pay an honorarium, that was the last time I talked to him.

Why does alignment matter more than opportunity?
My dad says it's never about what you're doing, it's always about who you're with. So when the agency wanted to represent me long term, I signed for one book.

What do you do when trusted people keep giving you the same feedback?
You listen. This is the kind of book you write as your fifth book, once people trust your voice. I'm in a season of learning that.

People and books referenced
Erwin McManus: think less about what you want to say and more about what people need to hear
The Way to Live by Josh Craft: Josh's first book

Chapters
0:00 Cold open and show intro
0:53 Closing the loop on feedback
1:48 What does a literary agent actually do?
3:51 "If you don't like it, go find someone else"
4:03 What Erwin McManus asked me
5:58 Your words are at the mercy of their understanding
7:19 Influence, approval and what counts as success
9:05 The game at church conferences
11:01 The youth pastor who wanted to swap
12:36 "How many are you running?"
14:13 The DM from a literary agent
16:15 If God wants to open a door, He will
18:06 "Why would you want me?"
19:27 Why I signed a one-book deal
20:03 Alignment beats opportunity
21:16 The partnership I didn't sign
23:20 Writing the book
24:56 When trusted voices keep saying the same thing
27:32 Three questions: What is truth? Who am I? What's my life for?
29:15 "Is this what people need to hear right now?"
30:15 "Great ideas, but no one will buy it"

Previous: 1.35 / Do you have to honor a leader you disagree with?
Next: 1.37 / How do you stop negative self-talk?

New episodes most weeks.

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Go to my website / https://jkc.is

What is The Dialog?

Ancient philosophers used the dialog to find answers to life’s greatest questions. The Dialog is a search for truth in modern life through the lens of ancient philosophy, history, and theology. This podcast will challenge your assumptions, change your thinking and show you how to master modern living.

No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. I'm interested in one thing, the future, and believe me, I know the only way to get there is together. What we've got here is failure. Milk Cake. You may think you know the tribute, but believe me, you don't what the truth. You can't handle the truth. For centuries, philosophers have used the dialogue to search for truth, because it's through conversation, through the logos, that we find it. This is the dialogue where ancient philosophy, history and theology meet modern life. Together, we'll wrestle with big questions and give our answers to the way we live. Let's start the conversation. Okay, man, look good. Whatever you're doing is working. Yeah, dude, it's amazing what happens whenever you just go full monk mode because your family's. Gone, can sin seeing discipline? Yeah, it's amazing what happens. And you need a lot of protein work out anyways, dude, So I want to close the loop. We gotta Yeah, we've started talking about feedback a couple of episodes ago. Yeah, but specifically, like I'm and I'm not gonna I want to stay disciplined here, okay, and like I'm going to ask you, I make no guarantees. Okay, that's not promising, but we'll take it. Okay. So dude, you've been writing this book man, and I'm gonna give my summary version because that I'll stay focused for a few seconds here. So, like you were writing a book, you were very excited about it. I remember like the only episode that we ever did this podcast that we said that will never see the light of day was because you were diving around this topic of what is truth for part of your book, Like you wrote this massive book, and because you have a literary agent who's now, I don't tell everybody what literary agent does. Well, you know basically what a literary agent does is they go and they present your They work with you to put basically a book proposal together. Right. Typically in the publishing world, you don't write the book first. Oh really? Yeah, So you have a platform, you have an audience, you have an idea, right, and you present that to you present that to literary agents, or literary agents approach you depending on maybe your level of influence or your level of knowledge in a certain world. So like literary agents will go to professors at colleges and they'll go like, hey, we think you should write a book on this because you of your level of influence or whatever. Then you put a book proposal together, you sell that proposal to a publisher, and then the publisher helps you write the book. So you sell the proposal, then the publisher, then you write the book, and then you work with the publisher to have it come out. Oh, dude's just like making a movie. Like they want to know that it's going to sell first. Yeah, they want to know. They want to know what your audience is. They want to know what the idea is, you know. Now, I mean, I'm sure you could say this is like a professional marketing. This sounds yeah, now a lot of marketing stuff with books. The market's so saturated that pretty much they're going to write you a book to sell to your existing life audience. Yeah. I mean it's it's good old fashioned content marketing, like it's been going on for a long time. It works. Yeah, And so I never I never really wanted to do any of that. I never thought I would. You know, I don't want to. I don't I've said this before on the podcast, but I don't really like marketing. And what I mean by I don't like marketing is that I don't believe it. It's still a lot of work. It's so much work, and it's work I don't want to do. Honestly, Yeah, I think I think you don't want to do inauthentic marketing. Well I like that. It's well not really, I mean it's yeah, it's and I don't want to be an authentic But also I don't want to sit down and go, Okay, well, how do we make sure and tailor this message to this audience person who doesn't really like It's almost like, well, this person doesn't really care what you have to say, but you have to say it in a way that gets them to care about what you have to say because what you have to say can actually help them. It's just very marketing conversation. Had So I have ideas. The way I feel personally is I have ideas. I have a lot of thoughts. If you like them, great, If you don't, go find someone else to listen to. Right, But that's really immature. Actually, okay, it's really you know, I've said this on the first episode we did on feedback that I was talking to I think I said this if I didn't. I was talking to ern mcmannu's friend of mine, and he's really well known author, right, and he's published books that have sold, you know, millions of copies. So I'm in this. I'll tell the story. I guess I'll come back and tell the story. But I'm making this point now some in this situation where people are like, well, we don't think this book is going to find an audience. It's a really great book, it's a good idea, but we don't think this book's going to find an audience. Or this happened to Irwin, this. Happened to me. I'm talking to him about it. Yeah, So I'm like, well, what would you do? Like what have you done? Because you've had maybe ideas that you really loved that you know, they didn't feel like we're going to sell. So I said something that I go, well, I don't really care. I don't really care how many people buy it, right, And so he's like, why would you say that, because why would you feel that way? Like what do you mean? He goes, you know, number one, if you're trying to make a career out of this, you should really care about how many people buy it, right, because that'll determine if you ever get another deal or if you have any money on the book. But the second thing is do you think this can help people? I'm like, yeah, I think you can help People's like, so, why wouldn't you want this to help as many people as possible? Why would you go, I don't really care if anyone likes it or buys it. You want people to like it and buy it because you want to help as many people as possible. So he said to me, he goes, you have to think about he goes. You've done a great job thinking about what you want to say, which is really important, but what you don't think enough about is what people need to hear. And it's very good And I wrote about this on on my substack, but I've heard that feedback quite a bit over the past couple of years where I was like, man, I really need to work on communicating in a way that actually works for people with where they're at and what they need to hear, Because I mean, I said this on a couple podcast lately, but you're always what you say is always at the mercy of a person's level of understanding. So if I'm talking at like a level ten, you know, not that it's just super high level. But if I'm talking at a level that people can't understand, then what I'm saying doesn't actually help them at all. Right, So the average person, for instance, the average person reads it an eighth grade level. And I can say, well, I'm going to write a book for you know, a twelfth grade level, or I'm going to write a college level book. Well, the only people that are going to read that are at that level. You're not going to change the average reading level, Like you're not. Me. Sitting down and writing a book about all the things that I want to talk about isn't going to change whether or not anybody's interested in it. But the ideas that I have and the ideas that people have can really move the needle and change the world if you package them correctly. And the problem for so many people, right, so many people with great ideas, so many people with great content, great things to say, is not what they say, it's how it's packaged and put together. And I think I'm in just an overall season of learning that because for a long time I haven't I I haven't cared, and in my default state. I don't really care, Like I don't. I'm more concerned with truth. I'm really interested in what's true and what's right and what's good. And if that doesn't resonate with you, I don't care because it's not. You know, for most people, their their idea of success has something to do with influence or approval, right of like the masses, Like people get on social media and they post what they post because they're trying to get the highest level of engagement. The county plays I got right, and that there's. There's a significant measure of metric of success to that people that when you think about publicly owned companies, publicly traded companies, the whole idea behind that is we're going to maximize shareholder value. Right. I guess in some ways that can be good, But in some ways that can be a very toxic way to live, not only as it relates to actually adding value to people's lives and actually solving problems, but it can be toxic about yourself because you're not really focused on maximizing who you are or living a good life. What you're focused on is doing things that are popular. Right. It can shift that way, Yeah, very easily. Yeah, And so I've kind of run away from that to the point where I've lived my life saying no to things. Right, Like, I've lived my life saying I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that because that gets me too close to maybe being a person like that. Right. Like when I wrote my first book, I didn't get talked into it, yeah by your dad's Yeah, because I'm like, I don't want to be a book guy. I don't want to be some guy that's walking around with my book, pedaling my book to people, trying to get them to buy my book. Yeah, right, because I've been annoyed at people like that, right, Like I've I've had so many people in my life who I'm like, I have friends who write books and who create stuff and so, but some of those friends, the only time I hear from them is when they wrote a new book they want me to promote, or they want to come be a part of my thing so that they can sell their book. Which, by the way, this episode is brought to you by the Way to Live by Josh Kraft. Get it now on. Amazon, which to me, it's just really transactional. So I prefer not to have transactional relationships, even if that's detrimental to me personally. Like I remember the first time I went to as a youth pastor. I was in my early twenties. I'm like, man, I gotta have friends. I gotta have other youth pastors that I'm friends with. Right, So I go to like a youth conference, and I don't understand the game at this point. There's a whole game that's attached to this. Okay, right, So the game is that a lot of people. I'm not saying this is the motivation behind why people go to church conferences, but a lot of pastors and want to be pastors and want to be leaders in the church, they go to church conferences and they go to environments like church environments because of how much they want to be on a platform. So they think, I'm going to go to this room, I'm going to go to this conference, I'm gonna go to this environment. I'm going to get a bunch of people's numbers or I'm going to become known there, and then I'll find a way to get myself on a platform in that room, I'll find a way to become known and and I'll be able to best case scenario, I'll be able to accomplish what I feel called to do, right, because I feel I've never heard someone say, for instance, hey I feel called to speak to a room of ten people, right. I've heard a lot of people say I feel called to speak to a room of ten thousand people. Right? So is that right or wrong? I don't know. It's just the way that it works. Well, I didn't know. This is the way that it works. This is just how it works at networking events. By the way, Like if you go to any kind of networking event, A lot of the ideas behind networking events are fine, but they're all transactional. Matt, I hate networking for that exact right, dude, Yeah. It's transactional. It's promote my business. You scratch my back, I'll scratch. Or is the church the church is not immune to that? Yeah? Right, it's human right right? So yeah, So I go to my first US conference and I'm like, I just want to have friends. I don't. I don't. I'm not. I don't have any ambition to preach or to be like a guy like that. I also don't have anything that's an opportunity for someone like, I had fifty people in my youth group, right right. So I meet this one particular person. He's a he's a pretty high level youth pastor and I didn't know him before. So I meet him before we exchange numbers, like, oh cool, man. I get home, I've made a friend. So he calls me like the next week he's like, hey, man, i'd love to I'd love to schedule to come out to speak to my youth. At some point, this guy had a youth ministry of like two thousand. People, right right. I'm like, I didn't like, we weren't posting videos of me speaking on YouTube, right right. So I'm like, have you ever heard me speak? Like have you? He's like no, but we could swap, so you come speak to my youth. I can come speak to your youth. Oh okay, And I go, well, you know, i'd love to do that, I said, I don't, you know, maybe sometime when you're in town. I don't have like money to you know, pay you like an honorarium, and I only have like fifty people in the youth Yeah, so you know, great, I'd be glad to have you, but I can't. I can't pay for you. To come in at all or anything like yeah, and he's like, okay, cool. I said, well, I still, you know, if you still want me to come preach for you, like i'd you know, i'd be open to talking about thay. He's like, oh no, I don't worry about it's okay. That was the last time I talked to that guy. No way. Yeah, I'm not saying every interaction goes that way, but. That one just got scored deep in your like rot your core memory bank. Like I was like, this is why. This is not why people have conferences. It's not the motivation behind a conference, but this is why a lot of people go. I realized so every time, So I haven't gone to like a church conference or anything like that in a really long time. You know, they did stid of going to friends. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff like that outside of going to like friends conferences that I'm actually friends with because you go in the room and it's like so now I'll go to stuff and people will be like, oh, what are you doing? Like I just help my dad, you know, I help my dad passes a church and. And they're like, how much is your church run? Er? What's it at I'm like, I don't really know. I'm just there to help. Is that The first question people ask is how. Yeah, how you guys doing. Usually they'll say how you guys doing, And what they're asking is how much you're run in? How many people you run it? If you were like, dude, the Holy Spirit is breaking out or seeing like lives transformed, making disciples, that's not a good answer. Yeah, Like we had you know, we had two hundred guys graduate from our MIGHTYMM paths last year. Whatever the number would be, it's only two hundred. Like, what are you guys doing wrong? For real? I don't know, Okay, but it's it's it's all uh, it's all uh you know, like like a lot of leadership rooms. I'm trying to come up with a better word, but there's a word that starts with the D and then it goes with measuring contest, right, So a lot of it's like. That, yeah and dog measuring contest, measuring contest, yes, and so uh So I I didn't ever want that. That's not really what I want. I want genuine, authentic relationships, and so I don't just like I don't hate the player, hate the game, I don't. I don't dislike people that do that because you want to build what you're doing. I just have always been like, I'm going to go as far away from that as possible. I get that, man. So I've spent a lot of my time saying no to things and saying no to like people invite me to come speak at their church. I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that. You know, people wanting to give me opportunities and me going, I don't want to be a guy who's it's which is? So I have questions I want to ask, but I'm not going to because I want to stay focused on what we're saying. So I want to close the loop on the story that we started. I don't even know how long ago. So you wrote this big book after having this literally agent. So so this guy Yeah. So this guy reaches out to me. Yeah, and he says, I still remember where I was. When have you ever thought about working with a publisher to publish your book? And I'm like, I DM this guy back. I don't really look DMS. I look at DMS every once in a while, but I'm not really super responsive. I'm not responsible my personal life. I don't respond to emails or text and all my friends know that. But anyway, it's. Like I've got like maybe a sixty to seventy percent hit right, And it's not that the intention isn't there. By the way, it's not like anybody that knows you knows that. So so I see this guy's like, would you ever think about going to a traditional publishing route because you self published a book? And I said no, And I send him a long text, a long here's like eight reasons why I wouldn't do the work with a publisher. I mean, he asked a very simple question and I gave him a very long answer back. And this is from like a well known place. By the way, I didn't know who this person, but I'm just I just want everybody to know this was not because like this, here's the thing. Me, Garrett and Josh have a text thread of homies and like we will just text each other stuff and like, I remember you put this to us and I was like, dude, this is awesome, and we were like very encouraging of you. And then you're like, oh, this guy actually and once you start talking like Josh, this is kind of a big deal, Like people dream of getting that DM I wasn't so a lot of people. What they do is they go around and they look for they find they want to find an agent who can represent them because they want to get a publishing deal or for me. Again, the reason why I'm telling it stories because I don't I've never can spent time on that. I've never concerned myself with that self published a book. It's you know, my book is fine, what a great review. I'm the best self promoter in the world. My book is fine, dude, I'll step in for a second. It's a great book. The Way to Live is a great book. Man. But you know it came out three years ago. It's probably sold a couple thousand copies in three years, which is you know, I mean, that's cool. It hasn't made me a lot of money or made me very successful, and a publisher is not going to care about me selling two thousand books. Yeah, but dude, it. Was a great It was about a rep Yes, he got a repetition. I'm not saying that to be negative. You know, it's just incredibly negative. That's cool. Well, no, it's just more like I've I'm pursuing this true thing, and I feel like, if if, if God wants to bring the game to me, then God will bring the game to me if I'm going to do whatever I can do to the best of my ability. And I don't want to ever be like a fake person or overly marketed to where it's it's I'm doing this for the wrong reasons because I feel like, if God's going to open a door for me, He's going to open a door for me. You want to keep your heart right, right, I get that, man. And I would rather make a mistake on that side than make a mistake on the side of ambition. Yeah, I'm the same way, right, So trying to figure out that balance can be really hard. But anyway, this guy, this guy reaches out to me and he goes, what did you ever think about doing that? I go, no, here's the reasons why. He messes me back and he says, look, I'd really love to just have a to a long text, but I he messed me back to this short answer. He's like, I just really love to have a conversation with you because I feel like the world needs your voice, and so what a. Great thing to hear. So I look this guy up and I look up this this literary agency. Right, his name is Rory Green. He works for a literary agency called a Live Literary and a Live Literary. A Live Literary is one of the largest or most successful literary agencies in the in the Christian quote unquote Christian. Yeah. So they're Bob Goff's literary agent. They're all these New York Times best selling agent people like they got the Bible recap, Alice Stucky, all that they do they do. Yeah, yeah, whoever, yeah, yeah right, they're working with a lot of big time people. I know they were terri I think bole recaps great. Yeah, and so I'm like, oh, this is so. Then like on their on their website they don't even take submissions. So even if I wanted to work with them, they probably wouldn't work. Don't find us, don't call us, we'll call you. Yeah. So there they called you, and you're like, get out of here. Yeah. They called me. They're like, hey, we want to work with you. I'm like, I'm not interested, Right, you got the wrong guy. So he's like, I'd really love to have a conversation with you. I look it up. I go, you know, it's maybe worth having a conversation. But the first thing I say to him on the call is I'm like, man, why would you want me to I don't have any influence. I don't have Like I mean, I shouldn't say you don't have any influence. You know, we have. We have good influence in our community that we're in every decent Instagram following. I mean, but that's it. I mean, I don't have like a big mailing list. I don't have, you know, like the guys that you see writing books are I've got a million followers and I've got this really big platform. I'm not even the main guy at my own church, right, right, So, like I don't even decide when I speak at the church that I'm a part of. Right So I'm like, even for me promoting a book in our church, it's not that my dad wouldn't be like all for that, but for me, like promoting a book in our church would be like, hey, can we maybe figure out some time for me to speak a little, right, right? So I'm not saying that to be self deprecating. It's just why would you Yeah, you're just telling peop where your mind susets? Well, why would you you want to. He's like, man, I just feel like watching your stuff and seeing what you do that you just have a lot to offer and we should work on a book together. So I go, okay. He's like, well, so with the way it usually works, like I'm saying, is you sit down, you write a proposal, you sell the proposal, then you write the book. I just told him, I said I can't. And we talked about that a little bit a little bit ago about John Vivere, Like, I just said, I can't really do that. I have to write the book first. So I long story short, signed a deal with him. He wanted to sign a long term deal. I signed a one book deal. Dude, he did to do one book. He wanted to do long term. I feel like there's a lot of books in you. I really we'd really love to represent you, like really long term. And I said, we'll just see how one book goes and see if we both like the process. You know, I'm very much about alignment. I'm very much about alignment, man, And we're about alignment. Yeah, I agree, And so me and me and Rory had a lot of great values conversations up front, like what are your core values and what do you, which I haven't really talk to him about that, but I'm sure was like a little bit different than. Dude, there's a lot of wisdom in that, man, because I think for so many people they would this and this. This is like a little side nugget that I want to put in there because I think it's so actually really love that you did that. As much as I kind of slapped my forehead when you re said you did a one book deal, but hearing the reason why is so good. Dude. The amount of people and I'm sure you could list off twenty we'd have to take your shoes off so you could count them all of people who got into a business deal with somebody, because what a great opportunity. In our church in circles we know well. And some of that was me learning like even though I grew up in a church, my dad talks a lot about alignment, yeah, and I grew up in an environment where I heard that a lot. And we don't just talk about that in church, talk about that in business, that it's never about what you're doing, it's always about who you're. With one yeah, And that sounds really great until someone comes along and they go dude, look at the market capital like, look at the opportunity of what could happen here? Yeah, we could. And then so next thing, you know, you're like, dude, I've got ten percent equity and I'm gonna do this. And then and then, like you meet their business partner, You're like, dude, this is the most selfish, arrogant. But what are you thinking when you basically. My twenties, yeah, and my twenties, I started a business with a guy and it went horrible, right, And and what I mean by horrible like we made money, but everything else was awful. Yeah, And I thought I could just quit. Well, you can't quit. When you own the company and you have a fifty to fifty partnership with a person. Right. So I had a mutual friend of ours, well not really a friend now, but was a friend about five years ago. They wanted to start a business and they wanted us to be us, to be fifty to fifty partners, me and them. And I said, I don't know you that well. I know they were they were a part of our tribe. They were with us, and they seemed like they were the real deal, right, So I said, I don't know you that. Well, so I'm not going to do a partnership, but I'll do I'll take like ten percent of the gross of whatever we do together, and we'll see about a partnership in the future once we've kind of been around each other. Yeah, so that person's no longer in my life, doesn't really like me anymore, and never paid me ten percent of the gross of anything. Sounds like a solid life. But the thing is I didn't have I didn't have a partnership. Well thank god you didn't sign your name up to yeah with that person anyway. But that's real quick. Really capture that because people get fixated on the side and they completely ignore the principle about who you're with and the principle of alignment. That the way I always say this, it's like going to Vegas and you end up marrying the stripper. It's like, no, no, no one thinks, you know this can work. Kenndy's great. No one thinks that's a good idea. I'm rescuing her, right. No, yeah, yeah, I swear she's gonna change, Like no one, No one thinks that, Like we're laughing, But that's what you do, because that's what. People do there they're just they have dollar signs in their eyes or they think about you know, in my in my situation, it's like, oh my gosh, this guy pursued me. There's all these green flag it's the ego and this could be amazing. Man, I could write New York Times best sellers and turn this in And of course there's like that potential, but also there's there's potential for worst case scenarios too. So so anyway, I just went, look, I I'm open to all that and if our alignments great, then hey, we'll do other stuff together. But I'm going to do I'll do one book, and we'll take one book to a publisher. So, like a lot of authors, what they want to do is they want to sign multi book deals. So they'll sign a three book deal. They'll write three books of the publisher, and that's really I'm like, we're going to do one at a time because we'll see how it goes. So anyway, I signed this deal and then I'm like, I got to write the book first. So I spent like eight months labored. I saw you labor. I mean it was I signed the book deal a year ago. Yeah, I remember I was in England. I remember I did signed the books I signed. I signed the REP deal a year ago, and uh. Finished the book. I finished the book in January, right, so seven months pretty much non stop writing. How many words was it? Just let everybody know, I. Man, I ended up with seventy thousand words, which is like a two hundred and fifty three hundred page book, but the amount of words I took out. So I have seventy thousand words in like the main manuscript, but then I have one hundred and fifty thousand words that I added that were in there that I edited out. Yeah, help me wrote like a J. R. Tolkien. Yah, I mean one book. So I just spent you know, It's like for me, it's if there was one book I was going to write, this is the one book I would write. Yeah, right, So, so, Matt. The reason it's on the story, I kind of like this. This is like a new episode first, it's like stories with lessons. The reason we're telling everybody all this is because we're trying to help you understand, like this is like a dream for a lot of people. You pour your heart into this, like because I you and I would talk about it, not on the podcast, but you would talk about how you were wrestling with it, and he'd be like, man, I've just been like so deep in this, And we would text back and forth about it, and I'm like, man, like you were laboring, you were literally pouring out your heart into this. Yeah, and so so I finished it. So so think about all that. And I know there's a lot that I just said, But think about all that and think about the lesson I need to learn. Right. So, at the same time, throughout my life, over the past couple of years, I've had really trusted people in my life tell me that I'm not presenting or communicating in a way that connects well with an audience. Right. So that's been said in our church, that's been set in like the mighty main room that we're in. That's been said by people like Erwon McManus, who doesn't really see me speak a lot but knows me pretty well. Yeah, it's been said by my parents. I don't know, and I could go trusted voices in my life. So I write this book and it's like everything I want to say, it's everything that I feel like, this is what God's put me on the earth to communicate these are all the dots that God has called me to connect. The Way to Live was like Kindergarten compared to this book for me, right, because the Way to Live the Way to Live my first book. I would never tell people not to buy it. But my first book was a series of talks that I gave in Mighty Man that was really about foundational Christianity and what it means, the fologies. I do think it's like I remember when I read it, I was like, dude, where was this book when I first gave my life to Christ. I really think it's a great. Read for this foundational approach to Christianity that's kind of rooted in Stoic philosophy. Well, it's giving people the real It's like you lay it out, like I'll just ruin it for people, and not ruin I mean you should get it. But like you lay out the right. Yeah, there's no there's no secret ending. Guess what Jesus wins. Guys like we all know that one. Yeah no, But but the but you lay out I think you do such a great job of laying out how the Like you go through the four hundred year period of silence that ends after the Book of Malchi. Between Malchi and and Matthew, there's four hundred years, right, fourhun and thirty I think between the time that Jesus comes, which not so coincidently, it was the same amount of time from the Exodus right until they got taken out. God likes to work and he speaks in rhyme, and so you talk about what happens in that period that then influences the writing of the New Testament and the world that Jesus comes into, and you talk about like how that influence is the way we need to look at our decision to follow Christ. And I just thought you did it so well because it is really like a hey, count the costs, understand the game you're playing the book, and it was so cool. And understand the practical Like I grew up in a version of Christian it's not very practical. Oh yeah, like similar to you know, I mean you had similar charismatic Pentecostal upbrings. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just things that don't need to be spiritual or overly spiritual. There can be something wrong with it if it's immature. So so anyway, I wrote that book from that perspective, all right, I did these talks and that became a book, but I didn't really talk about everything I would want to talk about because the biggest question is there's basically three questions in that book that you know, yes, that you ask, so that we ask in life that determine whether or not we live a meaningful life. One is what is truth? The second I haven't even thought about it. I haven't thought about this in a few months. That shows you where my head space at. The first is the first is what is truth? One of my kids is coming in on this podcast right now. Huh in just a minute, we're going to be done. That's a good, that's a alert. That's like, she's our producer, She's like, Ane, get to the point. What is truth? The second is who am I right? And the third is what's the meaning of my life? So that book is basically, here's how we've tried to answer that question historically as human beings, philosophy, history, all that, But then also here's how God answered those answers those questions, and how the how those things all tie together. So this is book I was really excited to write, and when I wrote it put it together, I feel like I just I spent so much time, like really just trying to trying to focus on what these what the universal truth is behind these these questions, right, and send it. I don't send the publisher, I don't send my agent. The whole book is sending the proposal. And yeah, because you were talking to me about that, you had to put a pitch together for this. Book, already written the book, and that's usually not how it goes, but for me, that's how that's how it goes, just based on how I write, and and so I put this proposal together and that was in That would have been at the beginning maybe end of December, beginning of January, and then for from January February March. We're just going back and forth on talking about it, right right, because I mean, he's a fan. He likes what I have to say, feels like the world needs my voice. But he's like, man, you have to really think about whether or not this is what people need to hear right now. It sounds like feedback you've had before. And he's like, this is a book. So the conversation basically landed on you know, he and he was great, man, He's been really so helpful that he went and had a bunch of different people review it. Oh wow, you know, supposedly we'll see right. I mean, I don't know. I don't. I don't want to. Well, I don't. He's like, Bro, the last time me and him sat on and met, He's like, Dude, I'm just telling you everyone's asking about when Josh Kraft's book's going to come out, which you're immediately going to find that hard to believe based on my current audience, right, but anyway, I believe that. But he's like, Dude, everyone's waiting for your book and all these publishers are really wanted to see it. I'm like, okay, you know, I don't. I don't know how much that is just. Mus What if that's true? Bro? So I might be, like I might get famous from being on your podcast shows. This show. He shows this this proposal to multiple people and they all pretty much have the same feedback, which is this is a these are great ideas, these are great things to talk about, but no one will buy it, dang. And I'm like, well, why why wouldn't anyone buy it? He's like, this is the kind of book that you would write as like your fifth book, right, this is the book you would write once people are because in the Christian world, He's like in the Christian world is mostly what they sell through. They don't want to have these conversations. So so the biggest problem for me in writing this book has been this is like our greatest issue. This what I'm talking about in this book is our greatest issue. The problem is most people don't realize it. Thank you for listening to the dialogue. Make sure to like, share, and subscribe, and also if you think someone else would enjoy this, please send it to them. If you want to get in touch or learn more about me, what I think, speak and write, you can go to Joshuacraft dot com or you can also follow Nick and I on Instagram. Our handles are in the show notes. We'll see you next time.