Mike Wicks | How To Navigate The Publishing Ecosystem

Mike Wicks

The publishing for profit podcast brought to you by ghostwriters. Incode earned more money by publishing better content and learn how do we increase your thought leadership? So you can build your brand head over to ghostwritersandco.com for more information that’s ghostwritersandco.com.

And now your host, Joel Mark Harris.

Joel: Hello, and welcome to the publishing for profit podcast. This is your host, Joel Mark Harris. We’re on episode number 23 today. And we interview Mike wicks, who is a professional ghostwriter. And we talk about some of them more interesting and fascinating and clients he worked with. He has some great stories that are hilarious and funny.

You’re in for a real treat in this episode. Mike comes from a background in publishing. He worked at some major publishing houses in the UK, specifically in sewing, books. he came to Vancouver. He started his own publishing company before starting out as a ghostwriter. We also talk about his writing routine, his meditation and mindful practices, which is a really fascinating episode with Mike. Hopefully, you enjoy it. And without further ado, here is Mike

Joel: Hello, Mike, and welcome to this show. It’s a pleasure having you.

Mike: And a pleasure to be here.

Joel: You are obviously a very experienced writer. You’ve worked in the publishing industry for a long time.

Can you tell me about your journey from publishing, working at Random House and where you are today and, and your writing career.

Mike: Well, books have been my life. I started with my first publishing company, at 18 as a junior trainee sales representative selling books to stores.

Well, my first job was probably merchandising books rather than selling them. And, I sort of came, fruit publishing firm from the ground up. And to fast forward, I went through from trainee rep to, getting my own territory moving around. This was all in England. Moving around the country three with different territories, getting bigger, better territories, being an area manager.

This was with various publishing companies. Random House was right at the very, very end of my career in mainstream publishing. I was working for a company called century Hutchinson, which was the company that Random House actually purchased. When they came to came to England or they had set up their own company.

They needed the infrastructure and the backlist of a mainstream publisher. So they, they, they purchased us, the management, come in a complete sort of takeover. But I was working, in a territory in the North of England. And I got it down to a point where. I could do all of mine, my, circuit of customers, with any given subscription period, within five weeks.

And we were given six weeks to do that circle. So in the sixth week, I started to look at, Other places to sell books that were not book shops or libraries. And so I started going into wholesalers. this was, I think, pre Costco’s though. That’s similar to Costco type stores. I go into pet stores and sports, sports retailers and, and all this sort of thing.

And I realized that there was a market for books that existed outside the standard bookstores. And so I put together a business plan and okay. I couldn’t believe it. The management in London, said, yeah, we liked this idea to come down and talk to us about it. And, long story short, I set up the special sales division, which was the first of its kind, certainly in England.

It was the first special sales division. And so we looked for markets for books that were, outside of the norm. And that could be anything from a book like we did the pins book of polo, pins of the drink. And, we did, social stationary for, museums. The big thing we did or I did was, look at, the series of books that we were doing.

Coffee table books on high-end music, I think design patterns, which sounds sort of strange, but there was a guy called cave facet. A and K facet was on TV at the time in a program called glorious color, which was syndicated worldwide. And he was really quite, quite this famous designer. And he did these amazing things.

I mean, I’m talking about full-sized coats that we’re hand-knitted in, in high-end yarn. And so, my department had this great idea. Approach the young manufacturer sell our books, which would have their patterns in. So we sort of combine the coffee table book approach with actual patterns produced by the company that Kate facet, bolt is young from.

And. But that time, you know, that type of thing. Well, we’d sell three or 4,000 copies, equivalent to in, in money in those days about $30. So these were expensive, beautiful coffee table books. And we, But we wouldn’t sell a huge amount of them, but that was a good mix of the many, many years. So there were good backlist titles.

So I, when I started up the department, one of the first things I did was I made a trip up to see Rowan yarns, which was back in my old hunting grounds in the North of England and said to them, why don’t you sell these books directly to the same stores that you sell young too? And they, they said, Oh right, cut a long story short again.

I started selling them 5,000, the copies upfront of every single book we published and in return they could put their own designs in. And we also then started calling the books, the Rowan yarns book golf, or whatever. And then I made the jump to, we did a machine knitting book and machine knitting was always really a downmarket product.

You know, it was for little old ladies wanting to do, Mattamy coats for babies and things and socks or whatever. But brother, the company that did most of the knitting machines in those days had a, wanting to go into high end. Machines. So I took together brother with, well, at that time it was brother plus Jones.

And, I put them together with Roman yarn. We did this book called the rowing a plus Joe, his book of machine knitting. And, I, so, brother 5,000 copies in England and $5,000 because in the U S as well. So this became the most profitable book that, at that time century, Huntington still had ever produced.

It was incredibly profitable. And, and so here we were, Jumping from three or 4,000 copies sales to almost 20,000 copies in sales. And so. That got me very interested in the whole publishing process. And, that point Rowan, said the books that we did in between times, but Rowan then said to me, why are we buying these books from you?

Why aren’t we publishing them ourselves? And I said, well, because you don’t know how. And they said, well, you do come and join us and we’ll give you 20% of the company that you can start, but we’ll fund it. Well, I didn’t have the heart to tell them I had no idea about publishing. I was a salesman. That’s all I knew.

I knew how to say it. I couldn’t publish. I knew nothing about publishing other than what I witnessed in all the years that I’d been publishing, which at that time was about 15 years. But I said yes. As you always do, you never say you can’t do something. Oh yeah, yeah. I can do that. And so. Over the next few years, I became a publisher.

I learned everything from the ground up. I learned about conceptualizing a book, structuring a book, hiring writers, hiring photographers, getting the print, the best print done, getting the book designed, just, I just learned everything about publishing and that was some of the best times in my life.

Unfortunately, the parent company got into financial difficulty and in the end that sort of all came tumbling down, which is why. And I ended up emigrating to North America. Not before I did a little bit of a stint in corporate sponsorship, primarily to do with, with books. So that’s sort of the publishing route and right towards the end there, random house came on board.

And, so I, I was with Random House for about six months or so, running the same department as I was before. They purchased the company, but it was a great, great moment. And we, we, the first two books, we put it with Rowan publishing company limited, both, well, great sellers. And we actually ended up getting a full-page review of the two books, in the Daily Telegraph, which is one of the most prestigious newspapers maybe after the times of London, in England.

So then they came to Canada and, I didn’t know what to do, ended up doing some, the idea I was going to come here to do a corporate sponsorship, but ended up doing economic development, with, an incredible guy, who was my mentor for many, many years, a guy called Ken Stratford.

You can’t see it, but right on my desk, I have a picture of him. He died in 2016. but he’s right by my side, and was always my great mentor. So I worked in economic development for a little while and then the economic development organization that can run, started getting into helping, Young entrepreneurs, through a government-funded program.

And I set up that program. I ran that program and that sort of morphed me into, writing business plans and that morphed me into writing grant proposals and a whole bunch of, of, of other stuff and I actually set up a company called your corporate writer. And at one point we had five. Five writers working for us.

but that ended because I was, I was paying my writers more than I was paying myself. And, it got like, it was, it was more trouble than it was worth. So I went back to just writing for myself and that’s where I got into ghost writing. I worked for a. I got approached to write a business to business plans for a couple of Karen and Ryan.

Karen was from England and Ryan was from South Africa and they were the come to Canada to, to, I hope I’m not boring you with all this. Never easy.

Mike: Yeah. So, but Carolyn might have come to England to us, try to, either, get residency, immigrate to, to either Canada or the U S and they needed, a business plan one for Canada, one for the U S and they were intending to. distribute a device. That had been invented by Karen’s ex-husband, who is a guy called professor Bill Nelson.

Awesome. and if any of your viewers want to, to investigate professor Bill Nelson. Look up professor. And, as in, as in the drink on YouTube and you will be astounded at what you find. And I’ll explain that in a second. But, after I finished the business plans for Karen, yeah, Brian, they said, we want a, you know, we need a book written about this device that professor Nelson’s produced.

Would you consider writing a book? And I said, well, I’ve never written a book. I’ve written articles but never written. This was back in 2000. And, so I said, yeah, yeah, sure. I said, well, you’d have to go to Budapest in Hungary because that’s where he is. Yeah, sure. You know, whatever, you know, and there were, there were an old delightful, but odd couple.

And the last day when we were putting the final touches and signing off on them, because these plans at the very end, they said, Oh, by the way, He, and they actually gave me an envelope and I said, well, what’s this you’ve already paid me. They go, no, no, it’s not money. It’s tickets, the Budapest. And so I felt I went to Budapest and I haven’t even got any plans.

It was just like, you’re going to Budapest next week. So it was like, Whoa, this is not how we do business. You’re usually buying these things and you know, and I, and I said, we haven’t got a contract yet. They said how much money you want? And I told him, I said, yeah, fine, no problem. And so I went to Budapest and Matt was, there’s a long story.

I won’t tell the whole story. but I was met at the airport by a bodyguard, driving a Ford Aerostar with Quebec plates. In Hungary and he was scared of the police and eventually ended up at professor bill Nelson’s house. And professor Nelson turned out to be a, A quantum physicists or quantum mathematician, across dressing, quantum, mathematician teaching it, but the best university.

And by day he was professor Bill Nelson by ear. Why 90 was Deseret, you bought a, and he created this machine called the quantum zero consciousness interface, which was supposed to be able to cure anything, including cancer and even autism, which was, somewhat of a stretch. And so I thought I was there to write a book about the device.

I ended up writing a book about him. It ended up not even being a ghost written book. He wanted my name on it and it ended up being parked. Fact and pop fiction and it was called the promise fulfilled and you can still get it all. And I believe God knows how, but you can. and, yeah, it was the weirdest experience of my life.

I mean, he had an illegal transvestite nightclub in Hungarian resistance tunnels under the apartment block that he owned on the outskirts. They’re very rough outskirts of Budapest. And so that trip was the scariest trip ever, but it was a baptism of fire into what I felt was ghostwriting. At the end of the day, my name ended up being on the books.

Like I sort of authored the book and that was it. That’s how I really got into, into writing. It’s a long story, but that’s pretty much the journey from, being a trainee sales rep to being a, a published author and, and, and established goes right.

Joel: There’s so much to unpack there. I’m gonna dissect it in little parts in a bit, but, One of the things with ghostwriting is there’s always, a fear, like a lot of, especially the clients that I take on, you know, there’s, there’s illegal activity.

There’s things that they’re not proud of there’s certain risks involved in. Exposing these stories was the professor worried that this book would, would have undue attention to his activities.

Mike: Oh, yeah. That’s why too. I put my name on it. I mean, he had two bodyguards and he lived on the top for this apartment block.

And there was a Fireman’s pole from the top, from his apartment on the top, his penthouse apartment on the top to the next floor, that, that was hidden in a secret passageway so that he could escape. yes, he was. He’d upset a lot of people, especially the, the big pharma companies apparently. so yes, it was, there was always some risk.

I no longer really get involved in. The the more risky, adventures. And I know that you’ve taken a look, a couple of lines that yourself I’m too old. Joel. I’m, I’m, I’m old and too long in the tooth to want to do that. I can’t run as fast as you, you know, I bet you, you could outrun me, you know, it’s like anything else, if you’re in, you know, in the forest and a bear comes, you don’t have to outrun the bear.

Joel: I want to talk about publishing companies. And it sounds like what you were doing was very entrepreneurial at the time and, you know, establishing joint ventures with other companies and publishing companies are known for being very like old school and not willing to change. And it sounds like if they had.

Embraced, you know, some of the some of the activities that you were doing more wholeheartedly, that they would be in a better position to, you know, to compete with companies like Amazon that are very entrepreneurial. Do you, can you talk a little bit about that? And, and do you believe that if, if that was actually the case that, you know, publishing companies would be in a better position than they are today?

Mike: Oh undoubtedly. I think it was sort of probably around 2008, nine. The publisher just lost the plot, in my opinion they started. I was just thinking about the past, but, but let’s stick with the future for now. I mean, they started, not wanting to take any risk at all. So they, they only started when you started dealing.

With orphans that had social media followings, you know, be like 20,000, they wanted you to have 20,000 followers. Then it was 50,000 followers. Recently, let someone say, they’re now looking, you know, for any author to have a hundred thousand followers and they, the publisher, the author to do a lot of the marketing.

It wasn’t like that in my day, it was working in mainstream publishing, that century Huntington and then Random House. we used to look for talent. We used to look for talent and a really good idea whether that was, In in, in as far as the novel is concerned, business book, a children’s book, a book on sport, whatever it may be, we were looking for a really good idea.

Yeah. And an author at least. Done some work towards conceptualizing his or her book idea and also structuring in some way. And then we would take that from there. And we would, you know, obviously we would have Tylee editors that would help work through the book would be with the author to make the book readable and accessible to the general public.

And then we would market the heck out of that book. And we did that with, with a lot of offers that are well known. Now we created those. It was office. It’s not that just didn’t happen now. They, you know, try to get a book published as a first time Author is extremely difficult. It’s not impossible, but it’s extremely difficult.

And, they, they have this, my, view of, of publishing and, you know, yes. If you’re a Kardashian, you can get a book published, but is there any good, so. I think that one of the ways that they could really look at things is to be a little bit more creative and innovative in how they approach books, especially in my area.

I don’t want, not all, I predominantly do a business books, business books. How do business books, prescriptive business books, met business memoirs. I do some other memoirs because I’m very interested in loss, grief, depression, mindfulness, all of those types of subjects that I do, some of those as well.

and I’m currently writing a book on trust for instance, which is a fascinating subject to me, given the circumstances, that we, that we see every day in the press, you know, with, with, Yeah, even COVID and, and climate change and the whole trust issue is huge. so, but if publishers could have, take some time to create alliances with organizations that would, would sell books that they could please sell.

Huge amounts of books. If it’s a business book, like I, recently wrote co-wrote with what was it again? It was originally going to be a ghost written book, but in the end, the author wanted my name on it. we wrote this book called, built, not born billionaires, self made billionaires, no nonsense guide for entrepreneurs and.

he actually, got his, the company that he founded. He’s still chairman of the board, but he’s not alone with the CEO, but he talked to the CEO. In fact, I was with him at the time. So we talked to the CEO and they actually bought running. I believe about 60 or 70,000 copies on a special edition, a softcover edition to give away to their customers.

And, the new customers predominantly and to some staff. and so that was, that’s a great way to get to the point where you’ve got some presales. You’re already making a bit of a profit before you even put the book into the, into the, into the bookstores and also. All publishing is economy of scale.

The more you publish, the more you can, sorry, the more you can print the cheaper the unit costs. So that’s why we used to do book clubs. So, so much in the past, in my, in, in the mainstream publishing days, that heyday of publishing, you know, we. Almost give about 80% discount or 95%, 90%, 90% discount sometimes to a book club that will take 45,000 copies of the hardback because that 45,000 lowered our unit cost tremendously.

So we made more profit on the, the copies that we did sell to the bookshops. So yeah, I think that the publishing needs to be more creative. What do you think?

Joel: Cause there seems to be some sort of mind shift or mentality shift where, you know, they would take on these authors and they would actually invest in them.

And now they’re not. They just want to share a thing. What do you think was it Amazon? That was the deciding factor in that were they just scared to, to have the same, the same business model and what’s yeah. What do you think went through those publishing? CEO’s minds

Mike: You know, w when we had the huge, massive economic downturn and they, they pop mainstream publishers laid off a lot of editors. I don’t think they have the staff to do that anymore. and, and I think they just realized that it was probably a lot easier to work. To do that. I mean, it’s not to say that there aren’t some still a lot of excellent books coming out, coming out, look more and more.

They are coming out from a grease, like a group of individuals. and I think what the publishers are missing. It’s some pure and raw talent that that is out there. And some people that have gone some authors, they’ve got some phenomenal ideas and depth of knowledge that don’t have that. Prerequisite social media following.

and, and, you know, maybe they don’t have the means to get it either. In some cases, you know, you can do it retroactively, in as much as I’ve got an author at the moment who, who has been out of the business world for, probably, you know, almost 20 years, He was hugely successful, but he’s been out of the limelight for 20 years and is now rebuilding his social media following or not rebuilding it because he never had it because 20 years ago it wasn’t such a big thing.

So he’s now building your social media following and doing very well. And you know, and so we’re going to publishers saying, okay, we don’t have a media social media following, but we’re putting some investment into getting one. but to go back to your original question, I really, I, I don’t know what their thinking was.

I I’m lows to, to blame them for, you know, just, or to accuse them of just trying to make more money. I think, I mean, it’s probably a lot more complex than that. And you know, one, it has to realize that publishers have to make money. And then we all know that, you know, when my day, I, you know, when I was in senior management in publishing, in my day it was used to say, you know, 20% of the books made all our profit.

and 20% lost all our profits at the other end. And the middle section, the, the, the books that just did okay. W was really where the profit was. And it was those in the back list, titles, the stock titles that just kept turning over every year, that made money because it’s very hard to tell you’ve got the 20%

Take off the 20% bomb and you got to Wars in the middle of just about breakeven and self reviews. So

Joel: going back to you moved to Canada, did you move directly to

Mike: Victoria directly to Vancouver Island, but not to. I was, I was in the nightmare of originally. I think it was only because my brother was, was here, so, and my parents.

Joel: then, so you went into economic development and then where you started a publishing company, it’s Blue Beetle Publishing books. Can you tell us a little bit about the Genesis of that and, why you decided to start it and what your clientele were.

Mike: Well, I started that in two, 2010. And what I was finding was that I had.Several, the office I was working with, I was working with, really didn’t have any hope or any desire in, in many cases to go the mainstream publishing route. And so they were asking me, So whether I could help them, design the book, get it, get, get a jacket designed for them to, get an ISBM number, and also help get it printed.

And so I set up with legal publishing originally. To try to fulfill that need and so for many of my clients, not, not so much in the last, probably five, three or four years, cause I I’m now send to be working predominantly with client mainstream authors that are I’ve already got all or will get mainstream publications, mainstream publishers to publish them.

But in that period of time, I had these authors that wanted the whole package. So I’d give them a turnkey package, which meant I’d help them conceptualize the book structure itself that we had a, table of contents, write the book with them, get it sign, and actually deliver copies to, to their door.

And, and also put our blue beetle books. A logo imprint on the jacket. So it didn’t look as if it was self published, even though predominantly it was. And this worked very well. My, one of my first clients that took advantage of that in, well, I actually did, did my first one. I want to correct myself here a bit.

I did my first one in 2005. So, but I did it without blue beetle books. I did it that gave me the reason start with the beetle books. but the first one was a guy called Tim Pasternak, who is a financial planner in, In Canada, he’s nationally known now then, he, works solely with hi. High income clients, doctors, and dads.

And just so we, we did, I’m actually done, one book, which I’ve written four times for him. You know, we’ve got new additions and split into two different additions. And then I did another book. So I don’t really find books with, with, with Tim and he just needed it. He didn’t want to sell it. He wanted to sell it himself and he wanted to use it.

on his speaking circuit, when you went around and spoke at medical point. And so really it was a, it was a case of. supplying them on. It was a demo day for me to help. We will do the whole thing. And so I did that with, we’ve done that with several books and then I decided to enlarge blue legal books and we started doing books for cities.

we would go into a city and, we would, get the, the mayor and council on side, we didn’t ask for any money, we just wanted their support. And then we were going out and we would approach major companies in that town or city and say to them that we were going to do this book to promote the economy.

And, we were happy to put a double page. Corporate profile in the, in the book at the end of the book, if they would just buy in advance 220 copies at 40% discount off retail. And it was an easy sell there’s no, we didn’t build logos in there ads that were part of the story of the, of the town or city, but it meant that we had, again, this is going back to what you were just asking about how publishers can be more creative.

and so what it allowed people to do was that we could guarantee a minimum print on the 5,000 copies. Which got the price down to them price that was, was, was great. And if we saw sold all those copies to people that were going to use them for not all of them, but if we sold say 75% or 80% of those copies to companies that were going to distribute them freely as promotional items, we had our distribution locked down.

So we didn’t have to sell 5,000 copies. You know, to the public, a lot of them were going to be given away for free. But we’d get the distribution guaranteed out there. And this, this work like your dream, there were high end, beautiful color coffee today. And, we, they sold out and, and they did tremendously well, and they were very profitable, you know, for us and the people that purchased them.

And of course the city we give the city 500 copies for free. Just for their support, just for them to say, yes, we endorse this book. We, you know, we support it. That’s all we ask and, and they get 500 bucks. Everyone won and the city got an economic development tool that really worked for them.

Joel: Can we, so you primarily, we write business books, but you said that you also write on a subject like depression and trust.

Can you talk a little bit, I mean, those seem very separate issues and very different. So can you talk about what inspired you to write on those? Like issues like depression and trust?

Mike: Well, this is very personal but, I suffered, I suppose I still do suffer from depression. And, it was, about six years ago that my, my, none of the pills ever worked for me.

And, it wasn’t severe depression. It wasn’t like, suicidal or anything like that. It was just. This ongoing lingering, pervasive, depressant depression. And I know suffered from it for years. It runs in my family. But, I had a doctor say, you know, like, let’s try something different. There’s a, a new, program that I can send you on.

It’s just six weeks to two, 12 hours or three hours per evening, over six week period. And it’s brand new, it’s a great program. and you know, Well, you know, you’ll, you’ll actually be one of the first to go through it, but I’ve studied the program. I really think it’s great. And so I went on the program and, I met a group of other people who were going through similar stuff to me.

And some of them were depressed. They had, they were had real anxiety issues and we learned, mindfulness and we weren’t, we learned, meditation predominantly, there were other things, but then I got really hooked on meditation and mindfulness. And they basically transformed my life. They, I meditate every day and I try to be mindful throughout my day.

I try to focus on mindfulness and my meditation practices. I’ve continued for the last six years. And now, I can say probably that. 90% of my depression is, is, is, is gone. You know, I do have my down days like anybody else, but I almost think that these days, The you know, I’m probably a level of, of just everybody that’s anybody that’s circled normal.

so that got me really into reading dozens of books, about mindfulness, about depression. And then I got approached by someone to write a book on loss and grief, which I’m in the middle of doing. And, That fascinated me, that loss and grief obviously have a, a major factor in depression. And so, it’s just a personal subject that, that I’m, if I can help write, if I can write will help authors write books that help other people go get the better of what I had to try and struggle through then that to me, that’s a win, win.

Joel: Can you describe your meditation practices a little bit?

Mike: I do all sorts of meditation practices. I, you know, I can meditate when I’m walking the dog. in which case I’m usually, silently, repeating a mantra. and that changes that mantra can change depending on the mood or, or what I wanna do chief, but predominantly it’s really simple.

Usually sometime in the morning, depending on, unfortunately, I know like you, I deal with a lot of us clients on the East coast. in fact I would say probably 90% of my clients are U S so sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I’m inundated with emails that need to be dealt with immediately.

If I don’t have those emails, the first thing I do is walk the dog have breakfast and then meditate. If not, I try to meditate, you know, mid-morning. But sometime, hopefully before lunch I’ll meditate, and basically, it can be as simple as just there and, in silence, and, I’m sitting upright and just focusing on the breath.

That’s it at its simplest. But also I find that probably the most difficult, because you have monkey brain that just wants to go all over the place and doesn’t want to, doesn’t want you to settle, settle down. And that’s natural because it’s part of our survival instinct for the brain, not to shut down and for the brain to be aware of everything that’s going on and to be thinking things through.

it’s, it’s not a part of our psyche to turn that brain off. so it takes a little bit of skill to do it. but often I’ll use, guided meditations. and, there are. Hundreds of thousands out there. If anybody wants to look up guided meditations, I use one at the moment called insight timer, which has hundreds of them for free.

If you, the more you can do different things, you have wrote a selection, you can pause and go back. And yeah, the free version is very basic. You play it and that’s it. but they have a lot, but they’re not the only one. There are, there are, there are dozens and dozens of calm. there’s just loads out there.

And if you use a guided meditation, it helps you to keep focused and it helps that monkey brain a little bit, get on under control. One of my favorites, for the last. month. So it’s got, what is a guy called David G one word David, and then J I, I love David G. His voice is just, mesmerizing.

And, and so you, you go through the guided manifest meditations and they will help you then also take some of the elements of a guided meditation into your own private meditation. And so, yeah, I do that every day. And a lot of people tell me, well, I don’t have time to do that, Mike. I don’t have time to do that.

And I go, you know, only say how, how long do you do it for 20 minutes? You know? Well, I haven’t got 20 minutes. You and I, you know, my answer is you really don’t have to wait 20 minutes. Okay. Then you need to meditate for 30. Because, if you haven’t got time you need meditation more, but the big win on meditation, and this is the big discovery for me.

It was the, after I meditate, my productivity goes up considerably. I’m not going to get a percentage. I don’t know, but it goes up considerably. You’re more focused and able to work. So if you sit there and you can’t work, you’ve got writer’s block, whatever, and you can’t seem to focus. You, you say, you’ll come back in the morning.

We’ll have just calmed down. You’ve given it a bit of a rest. You’ll go back. And all of a sudden. You’ll be focused and you’ll find it all comes a whole lot easier. So if you haven’t got time to meditate, you need to meditate more.

Joel: I think now would be a good time to talk about your writing practices. do you write every day?

And if so, what time do you like to write?

Mike: I treat writing as a job. it, you know, I could, I’m going to have a really nice home office. It’s big. It’s like I know 300 square foot office with its own bathroom and, and, and storage room in my house. So it’s, it’s great. So make my commute. Is is very quick.

It takes about like 30 seconds. and I treat it just like a job. I, I get up, I take the dog for a walk. I have breakfast. I don’t clean my brush, my teeth. I come down, usually by eight 30 and then I put a full day work as if I was in an office. I have a coffee break. at 10 30, usually, which is why I suggested 11 for this.

I have my coffee at 10 30, 15 minutes in which I read the times column is funny. The comics and switch off, in, in, either just before coffee or just after coffee, I’ll do my meditation. And then I go right back into the whole afternoon. I have a bit of a break. about, four 15 to walk my dog, which is also another form of meditation because you get out, you get some fresh air.

Now me come back and I do another hour or two. so I work with just a full day. I suppose if I was in an office walking, the dog might be, it might be a little, you know, if I was going to commercial office, but other than that, I work every day. and the problem with, with being self employed of course, is you work on vacations as well.

I just had a week away with my grandson, my wife and my grandson. And unfortunately, you know, they had to go down to the beach a few times what I did two or three hours of urgent work. So, If you were working for someone else, you probably wouldn’t do that, but I’m a real horrible boss.

Joel: I want to talk to you about, so you’ve got a couple, I’m going to call it the how to series.

so there’s how not to sell how not to manage people. And then, you know, this one you, which you mentioned already, which is probably a little bit different, but built, not born. Can you talk a little bit about those books and why you wrote them?

Mike: Well building bill bone was, was, I got approached by a, a writer, the agency, which I put my name for, well, actually, Marci Layton Jones of the association of ghostwriters, who, you know, she put me forward for, working with, New York, New York city agency.

And so they approached me with, sort of a difficult job, to work for a multibillionaire to, to write his book. And the difficulty was that the, the Jack was, Wasn’t really computer literate. It was an older gentleman and really didn’t want to do it by phone. And so wanted someone to go down to Florida and, and be there for a, a couple of months.

And, And so it was a tough one and I put my name forward and, and, and manage to get the job I wanted to do it because it sounded fascinating. and, he, he spends eat while his main home is in Naples, Florida. and it’s his second home. is in Rochester, New York. And so the idea of going down to Naples for a couple of months, to, to work in the sun in winter didn’t, you know, and this was January, it didn’t sound too bad at all.

And so, I went down and, he was, a tough guy. He was a ratable sort of tough guy. but I ended up loving the guy, and, ended up. In total, I’ve probably been down to, to Naples and Rochester. I’ve probably spent over three months, on-site with Tom. And I recently just finished his autobiography.

The Italian kid did it, and, that is, going to be published in 2021. he’s not chosen the publisher yet. He has. And, they’re, they’re still under negotiation, but, what I can say is that that will be, it will be published and, in, in late 20, 21. I wrote two books for him.

Built not born. And then the autobiography, it was just going to be a business memoir, but it was too big a story. And, the agent literary agent wanted the, the business side told first. so that’s sort of why we did that. The Herald too was funny enough. It’s my, I was approached again through the agency.

to be commissioned to write these two, how not to books. These are fascinating. These are not ghostwritten. These are purely, under my own name and. There’s going to be initially, I think for, how not two books in the series. I wrote two of them, on subjects that I knew, well, one was sales. One was the management and leadership.

Well, predominantly management, two subjects that I’ve I’ve well, sales I’ve been a salesperson, all my life management, a lot of management over the years, managing teams. So I felt that they were both subjects, but HarperCollins leadership who’s publishing them. I had this great idea for the series, that was going to take.

A more lighthearted, look at the topic and start, we each, each sort of have, you know, about 40 different how not twos, you know, things that you, you really shouldn’t do if you’re selling or whatever. And they, they, the idea was that we, we tell a story about someone who did it all wrong. That was disastrous.

And then at the end of that, say, okay, what could this person. Better, how could they have prevented the disaster from happening? And, and so, I, I went out and, I had probably for the sales one, I had pulled Billy at least half the stories that were my own stories or stories that I’d heard or seen firsthand.

And the rest were people I reached out to through. Have you ever heard of, HARO, Help a reporter out. So I went through Harrow and put a request. Yeah. Yeah. I’ve got several people that were in sales management or had been sales reps who came back and said, Oh my God. Yes, Mike, I had a disastrous sale once and there was some hilarious stories.

Some, I couldn’t put it in the book because there were more to do with it. I’m a dog poo on their shoe going into a sales presentation, which although funny is not something you can do much if you don’t recognize it until your feet are under the boardroom table.

and so the book is very lighthearted in that way. You’ve got all these stories. Of just stuff that people do completely wrong, you know, they, they just go about things in a total wrong way, but how to also to, to figure that out and what you, what you could have done, what you should have done that maybe would have helped you get the sale management, same thing.

horrendous management stories. A lot of them are gained from my own direct experience. a lot from, I have a friend called Ingrid Vaughn, who is a N HR consultant. And so she gave me some awesome stories, you know, and we changed all the names and the places and, and even countries to protect the guilty, Oh, how many innocent, I suppose, but also the very much the guilty and they just, they’re just pretty short books are only about 145 pages.

Like quick reads that they’re meant to be the sort of read, you know, that you could, read on an airplane going from Vancouver. You should be a, you know, you’d be easy to read the book and have a good laugh, but also. sticking to your head, all those things that maybe you’re doing the, it shouldn’t be doing, you know, maybe, maybe that’s why, you know, one of your staff members is just acting out, you know, maybe it’s you not them.

What’s this books they’re coming out on August the 26th. So they’re almost out there they’re available. I believe on Amazon already.

Joel: What’s the worst sales story that you have heard that’s maybe it could be in the book or, or maybe it’s just something that you’ve heard.

Mike: Oh, got me. Now. I can’t, there’s so many of them and, and, you know, you know, worst ones. I do a funny one. I put it in the book that, Yeah, it’s not really you’re learning much from it, but it was, it was very funny. There was this guy who was in book sales and what I’m telling you this I’ll probably think of something else, but I’m the tropics.

When you write books, Joel is, you know, you write them and then you forget them because you can’t have all that, all that sort of stuffing your head. While you’re trying to write the next book, you know, so you sort of push it out. But, there was one lovely story that I put in the book about not being pompous and that there was this sales rep who was the most pompous dude that I’d ever come across.

And he, he also happened to work for probably the, the best publisher at the time and had the best books to sell. So. He had a captive audience in as much as well. We went to bookstores and wholesalers. They really couldn’t not see him and they couldn’t not buy what he had to sell because you know, there were good stuff, but he was so Bombus and I remember him on occasion.

He went to see a wholesaler. And this wholesaler was, I’m actually a member of the British aristocracy, a low-level member of the British aristocracy. And the guy was just, I loved him and I got on like, so. So while he was even ill once, and he insisted that I come to his bedside so he could give me my money.

Yeah. That’s how much I got on with him. I didn’t like this pompous guy. He really didn’t. And he worked out of this old, old building. And, this pompous guy was, I know he’s real name and I can’t remember what name I gave him in the book. So I’ve gotta be careful not to spurt out his actual name, but anyway, he was sat in.

You all sat in this little long leather arms. Yeah. In this guy’s office and he’s out at his, his old antique desk. And he was telling me this story. He says, Oh, he said he was going on and on. And he was pontificating about this and that. And I was, I was sat at my desk thinking, I wish this guy would shut up.

Oh God, I wish he’d get to the point. I just, Oh. And he said all of a sudden. The roof right above his head claps only above his head completely and showered him in, in plaster and dust and everything else. And this guy was always immaculately dressed and, My, my, my, my customer just was creasing up with laughter and told the story to everyone.

And the repping question, he, you know, the guy bought him a new suit. He said it was the best money I ever spent. So like, yeah, don’t be pompous. It

Joel: It reminds me of kind of Eor and the cloud, the rain cloud that kind of follows him.

Mike: There are stories like that in there. That really points to certain issues that you gotta be really careful when you’re selling that you’re not boring.

Someone to death. and, and, you know, just being pompous, you know, there’s a certain humility that you need, when you, when you sell. so that was just to me, that was one of the funniest stories. I did name in the book because I know he’d love it. A guy called Tom Elliot who, had a sales manager that was just awful.

And, He accidentally ran him over. So that again, I can’t remember that’s in the management book because it was about poor management as anything else, but yeah, there’s, there’s some funny stories in there.

Joel: I like to wrap up, with this question. it is, what is your favourite book or a book that you like to gift a lot?

Mike: My favourite, I love reading novels, right. Nonfiction all of the time. So, I, when I, when I relax, I like to read books. I think my favourite book of all time is from my favourite author joiner thing. And, some of the circus, I think it’s, it’s it’s probably not one. It is. Is. Best new models or even the one that got the most accolades, but I love them all the lighting.

It’s just fascinating. It’s weird. It’s mystical. It’s crazy in parts. and so I’ve always loved, some of the circus and, and always look forward to reading it again. What’s it about? well, it’s. It’s a sweeping novel about circuses in India, and people and, attitudes and Oh yeah. It’s a very interesting nonfiction.

I’m going to surprise you. and I had to think about this a bit, cause you know, I knew you’d ask and I had to think about it a bit and nonfiction books are ephemeral. you know, what you like, what is your favourite book today may not be your favourite book tomorrow. It, you know, your opinions change and your, your, your, perception changes, your perspective changes.

And so it’s all different. And so when I really came down to what’s, the one book I’d want to take to a desert island and it’s fun. It’s a book, I don’t even know if you can get it. Anyways. Paul Graves, Golden’s treasury. And it’s a book of poems of classic poems. but not all the, not always the obvious ones.

You know, it’s got a lot of different ones in it for over a lot of different periods. And so I, yeah, I, that’s a book I pick up on an extremely regular basis and have done since I got it, given to me at school. And as you can see, you know, I’m long past school, that is, and so this book is, over 50 years old and, I still absolutely love it.

The other reference book I love, Again, typical, just being a writer is the Chicago manual of style, which you’ve got, you probably got stuff on your steel, which is the style guide that publishers, rely on. And, but I do like it. I love, dipping into, into it and, whenever anything comes up that I haven’t, maybe ever all for a long while some are King pieces of grammar or capitalization or, or whatever it may be. I love dipping into the book and it’s very risky for me because once I picked that off my shelf, which is literally just off here, there’s a bookcase just here guys. And it’s there. if I dip into it, an hour can go by and I really, the lights I’m not writing anymore.

I’m just looking at grammar and punctuation and other weird stuff, you know, like. How, how, how associates, how, military, ranks have to be, you know, referred to and things, you know, fascinating, fascinating book, but boring to most people, I would imagine.

Joel: Well, Mike, it’s been a pleasure for people who want to reach out to you and contact you.

Where’s a good place for them to go.

Mike: Just go to my website, www dot M P for Michael beater, MB wix.com. And if you email me, you might get, I get like about two, 300 spam. Messages a day, you know, because, I wrote a, I wrote a column for a business magazine for 10 years and, my email address was always at the bottom.

And, unfortunately they decided, a few years ago to publish 10 years worth of my articles with that literally on the bottom, them. And so it got mined and therefore I had to set up a spam filter. So you may get spam message, but I usually check them or you can answer, it’ll come from a company called spam arrest and you can just click a button and it will still get to be all use the contact form on the website.

Happy to talk to anyone. one of the things I believe is that, Anybody calls me, I’m always happy to give them advice. Even if I, you know, I can’t do the book, it’s not for me or I’m too busy, which I usually am. I’m always happy to give advice and help and also pass on, names of other ghost writers that I know who I think would be suitable for that particular book.

So always, always happy to give advice.

Joel: Well, thank you so much for your time, Mike, and have a good day.