Rob Waite: No Magic Bullets

Transcript

[0:00:28] Charlie Hoehn: You’re listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about books with the authors who wrote them. I’m Charlie Hoehn. Today’s episode is with Rob Waite, author of No Magic Bullets. For the past several decades, Rob has been studying what makes executives and entrepreneurs really effective. He started studying this because he was an international senior executive for Fortune 500 companies. He was also CEO of a large privately held company and a successful private equity backed entity. This episode is for anyone who is running a business because Rob’s going to break down what exactly the most successful executives are doing different from the ones who run their company into the ground. For instance, we talk about Wasabi and how they lost to Mint in the race to become the number one financial software. By the end of the episode, you’re going to know the simple shift that you need to make in order to prevent yourself from derailing your company. And now, here’s our conversation with Rob Waite. Rob, if you had to pick a drink or a cocktail to go along with your book, No Magic Bullets, what would it be?

[0:02:09] Rob Waite: Water.

[0:02:10] Charlie Hoehn: Water?

[0:02:13] Rob Waite: Water. The reason I pick water is because it’s simple, it’s vitally important to life and health, you can offer it to anyone from any culture, religion, age, or background and that kind of fits with the seven capabilities that I distilled down from examining highly successful executives and entrepreneurs.

[0:02:35] Charlie Hoehn: Very nice. Since you’ve distilled those principles down, would you offer distilled water?

[0:02:41] Rob Waite: Well, it depends upon what is contained in the tap water I guess.

[0:02:46] Charlie Hoehn: Right, depends on what part of the world you’re in. I like that answer. If you had to design the perfect meal, the ideal meal to couple with your book, what would that be?

[0:02:57] Rob Waite: That would be steak, potatoes and vegetables and the thinking behind that is real simple. First, I love steak, I never met a dead cow I didn’t like. I had to go with that. Secondly, because No Magic Bullets really gets down to the meat and potatoes of what it takes to sustainably succeed in business.

[0:03:20] Charlie Hoehn: Boom, I like the analogy, very nice. If you had to lay down a sound track for your book, what song or songs would you want to pick?

[0:03:32] Rob Waite: Well, there, I would have to go with the sound track from the original rocky movie.

[0:03:39] Charlie Hoehn: Right, Eye of the Tiger.

[0:03:40] Rob Waite: Nope, that was actually the second rocky movie.

[0:03:42] Charlie Hoehn: You're right.

[0:03:44] Rob Waite: Going back even further than that, I think it was Henry Mancini, actually. But the reason for that is because determination and grit are prerequisites for success and that’s what it conveys and also, because that song particularly and how it was choreographed with a film is a reminder that success doesn’t come from a sudden sprint but it’s really a marathon. In some ways, it’s almost a never ending marathon and you have to exercise a lot of mental toughness in order to persevere.

[0:04:18] Charlie Hoehn: I like that. Do you run marathons or do you do any boxing yourself?

[0:04:23] Rob Waite: Well, I had run three marathons in my life and was a big time runner for at least 20 years. But unfortunately, I was sidelined with pulmonary sarcoidosis, which you probably have never heard of.

[0:04:39] Charlie Hoehn: No, I have not.

[0:04:42] Rob Waite: Yeah, Sarcoidosis is an auto immune disease where your body produces the benign tumors and benign tumors actually put out a nasty little toxin that wreak havoc on your body and fortunately, I went into a experimental treatment program at the Cleveland clinic and I receive infusions every 10 days of a blood product called immunoglobulin that actually strips those toxins out of my body. That’s why I’m still here talking to you.

[0:05:11] Charlie Hoehn: Wow, how long did it take before you recognized that condition was going on?

[0:05:16] Rob Waite: Actually, running had a lot to do with it and then after my youngest daughter was born, I found that I had some time to get back in to running the way I used to and I just was surprised that I couldn’t make any progress and I just kind of ignored that and let it go and a few years later, I ended up having kidney stones, a lot of kidney stones. I let that go by and then I ended up a couple of years later, getting pneumonia a number of times and next thing you know, I’m just starting to feel really poorly and believe it or not, put all those together and it adds up to sarcoidosis, yeah. So it was a long evolution but that’s kind of what led to it being known about it.

[0:06:06] Charlie Hoehn: How long did the treatments take to reach a level where you felt the, I don’t know if it’s called being in remission or if it’s just under control or?

[0:06:17] Rob Waite: Well, under control, the hope was that I would go into remission and they said, we would know within 18 months and 18 months came and went six years ago. So I’ll doubt I’ll go into remission but in terms of that toxin, best way to describe it is makes your muscles feel like your legs felt like they just ran a hundred yard dash, your arms feel like you’re just pumping weights as fast as you can till they gave out, back pain, it was just horrendous. The very first infusion, they take six hours, but the very first infusion, I stood up in the infusion center and it was like a miracle, I couldn’t believe it, I actually could walk, I had trouble walking prior to it. I could stand up straight, it was really pretty amazing and so I get t hem every 10 days and I’ve done so for the last six years.

[0:07:12] Charlie Hoehn: That’s incredible. How long had it been going on leading up to that moment?

[0:07:19] Rob Waite: I would say, it had been going on for about two years at that point and this became the kind of last arrow in the quiver that the Cleveland clinic could come up with and it’s turned out to be a mainstay now in the treatment of what they call intractable sarcoidosis because it’s so effective but incredibly expensive, insurance companies hate me but it is what it is.

[0:07:46] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. Well, I don’t want to linger on that too much. I’m always fascinated by that stuff because I’ve had family members of mine deal with autoimmune disorders. It’s a topic of interest so…

[0:07:59] Rob Waite: That’s my third book.

[0:08:01] Charlie Hoehn: yeah. It’s definitely in need. There are certainly enough people who deal with autoimmune diseases that they kind of feel, I don’t know, isolated on some level.

[0:08:15] Rob Waite: Yes, they’re unique in and of themselves. So yeah, you’re absolutely right.

[0:08:20] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, well, thanks for sharing that, if you had to pick the perfect place to read your book, what would you choose and why?

[0:08:30] Rob Waite: The perfect place would be for me the beach and even though it’s a book about business, the reason I picked the beach is I think if you’re trying to figure out where you’re going to be going in life and how you’re going to reach your objectives, you want to be some place where your mind will be open and relaxed and new ideas usually can be fostered that way as well as creativity so that was why I picked the beach.

[0:08:59] Charlie Hoehn: Great choice. Let’s start to talk about the book’s specifics. Why did you pick the title No Magic Bullets?

[0:09:07] Rob Waite: Well, the title and the sub title basically explain it all. The title obviously, No Magic Bullets and subtitle, Hard things great executive and entrepreneurs know and do. The reality is, I have seen executives all over the world, entrepreneurs at every level chase the next big thing when it comes to management theory, book ideas, et cetera, that deal with one thing. While the authors of those books or those management theories may not have been advocating that their idea or theory is the one thing to follow, people tend to turn them into a form of magic bullet. What ends up happening is their teams get emotional whiplash form every couple of months, it’s the new way they’re going to do things, comes into play as the only way that we’re going to leave ourselves to business nirvana. So that, I see as a temptation that people fall in to too often. The reason I refer to it as “the hard things, great executives and entrepreneurs know and do” is because nothing comes perfectly easy and you have to continuously learn, continuously evolve and continuously progress. That’s hard to do. And the reason I said know and do is not only do you have to know this things, many people know things. Not many people are willing to make the effort or sacrifices needed to do things. If you don’t do it but you know it, it adds up to nothing. That’s what drove me to creating that title and subtitle.

[0:10:59] Charlie Hoehn: Makes perfect sense. I’ve got about 10 questions that popped up in my head as you were explaining that. Just to start, can you give me some specific examples of executives and entrepreneurs who are latching on the next big thing? What are some common ones that you see us, not us but see them doing?

[0:11:22] Rob Waite: one example I’ll give you is, actually, I had researched the top selling business books or career development books of all times over a 50 year period and one book that has been on the top selling list since 1959 is titled The Magic of Thinking Big. Now, that makes a lot of sense, you do need to think big and was written by a gentleman who is a PHD but the cover goes on and states, “Learn the secrets of success, magnify your thinking patterns and achieve everything you’ve always wanted”. Now, if that isn’t a magic bullet statement, I don’t know what is and that’s very typical of often how certain types of books are promoted. A more modern day one would be the book by David Allan, Getting Things Done. I think it’s a great book and I think it’s a book that people should read but I talk about it in a different perspective in No Magic Bullets as getting the right things done. Because I saw a lot of executives read, Getting Things Done, they loved it, they have their teams read it and everything was about the process that the author had derived and they never overlayed on top of it, the things you have to think about such as, “What’s our business strategy? Who is the clients that we want to serve? Are we in the best markets for ourselves?” Et cetera. Boy, they kicked up a cloud of dust of activity but activity doesn’t necessarily equal accomplishment. That would be an example as well.

[0:13:08] Charlie Hoehn: I love what you’re saying especially because I recently revisited The Magic of Thinking Big, which I agree and I’ve done this with my books as well and also I’ve seen many authors do this is having that very over promising language on the cover to get the reader excited because it’s so hard to get people to open a book. But the content, do you find that you, I mean, with getting things done, I totally agree there. With the content of this books, do you find yourself disagreeing with what they’re saying inside the actual book?

[0:13:48] Rob Waite: Often times no, there are a few out there where there’s a couple of authors that just crank out the magic bullet de jour just to sell books but for the majority of them, they weren’t intending for entrepreneurs or executives to follow their glaring call about something such as Jim Collins’ Good to Great for example, that is one component to understand business strategy et cetera. All of the sudden, somebody globs onto it as it’s the one thing that they’re going to focus on to get to that business nirvana. So I think it’s more in the misapplication. Now, the other is I won’t point the figure at a large Ivy League institution that puts out a business review who’s names rhymes with Harvard, but the Harvard Business Review is great and I still subscribe to it but the cover is so engaging when it comes out that I would watch people just go nuts as they would consume the cover story and they would come out of their offices and pronounce to their people that, you know, the Harvard business review just told him how they are going to find success. So, you know, that’s another area where people tend to jump in to magic bullet solutions as through a lot of the business periodicals out there. They’re just marketed a little too much like they’re a magic bullet. The authors themselves aren’t necessarily guilty of that.

[0:15:27] Charlie Hoehn: Right. Yeah, so I’m guessing that you’re not a huge fan of The Secret?

[0:15:34] Rob Waite: That’s right.

[0:15:37] Charlie Hoehn: I love what you’re saying. Let’s get into — I think I understand the main idea of the book but I have to ask this in case it’s not the case, which is, what is the number one take away, the one idea that people need to take away from your book?

[0:15:55] Rob Waite: I would say that the number one idea, the number one take away is that these seven capabilities that I write about all work in conjunction with each other. If you become attracted to one or decide you only need to focus on one or two, you will get out of balance. But if you view how you’re approaching your company, your business, your career through the lens of the seven strung together, you will most likely find better success than you otherwise had envisioned versus just taking one or two.

[0:16:35] Charlie Hoehn: Tell me this seven?

[0:16:37] Rob Waite: Okay, the first is, understanding the purpose of a business which is completely different than what you think that stands for and we can get back to that. Number two is, create a strategic value proposition. The third is get the right things done. The fourth capability is exert leadership and influence. Fifth is, possess mental toughness. The sixth is engage in proactive career management which applies every bit as much, if not more, to entrepreneurs and capability number seven is pivot from a “me mentality” to a “we mentality”.

[0:17:21] Charlie Hoehn: Okay. Let’s make this seven things specific? Give us an example for each one and walk us through it.

[0:17:30] Rob Waite: Okay. Capability number one, understand the purpose of a business, the point that I’m making there is the purpose of a business is to generate a positive cash flow and sustainably grow profits. Now, that may sound cold, calculating, really not thinking about the greater good, et cetera, but it actually is. Because if a business can’t ultimately generate a positive cash flow and sustainably grow profits, all the great things that they do or want to do aren’t going to come true, they’re going to fail. Toms Shoes for example, they give out a pair of shoes to a child in the third world for every shoe that they sell in the United States, which is awesome. At Toms Shoes, they make sure that they generate a positive cash flow and grow profits because that’s the only way that they’re going to achieve their objectives. Making money isn’t who you are but it’s, think about cash flow as oxygen and growing profitability as blood. When you lose sight of those, that’s when trouble occurs. I could give you story after story of businesses that were fantastic but once they took their eye off of breathing and pumping blood, they ended up dying and that’s the reality.

[0:19:00] Charlie Hoehn: Tell me a story about that happening?

[0:19:02] Rob Waite: One story that I write about in the book regarding a company called Wasabi and Wasabi was developing financial software and they were hit with so much investment capital that it really kind of blinded them to not seeing that their business itself was not going to be able to generate a positive cash flow. It was all of the investment dollars coming in. They kept investing in a deeper product, broader product, nothing could be outsourced, everything had to be done internally because they felt that they had all of this cash. Meanwhile, another company comes along and right off the top of my head, I actually can’t remember their name, but I’ll remember it before we get through the end of the story. Another company came along and it developed a leaner, meaner version of that software — Mint! Why I couldn’t remember that? We all deal with Mint, don’t we? Not all of us but most of us but we don’t remember who Wasabi is. Mint had to really pull themselves up more by their bootstrapped and weren’t awash with investment capital. They kept their eye on the cash piece of their business and here they are today and Wasabi’s gone.

[0:20:30] Charlie Hoehn: That’s like every company in Silicon Valley that’s gotten venture backed, huge valuations, right?

[0:20:38] Rob Waite: Yes, unicorns are called unicorns for a reason, they don’t exist. At some point, the piper’s going to be paid and Fitbit is a great example of that as well. Fitbit is a great company, very well run by a good CEO and their problem was, prior to going public, they had been given so much money that was used to, for lack of a better term, this is my term, not Fitbit’s term. It ginned up their price per share. So they go out public and their price per share is so outrageously high, unless they performed perfectly, there was no way they could ever deliver on that share price. So today, after their launch, they went from somewhere around 40 or $50 a share at the time of their IPO and within a year, they were down to $14 a share. So a lot of people took a bath but the people that took the bath were mostly retail investors, which is a shame and Fitbit was a good company and well run but they had this millstone hung around their neck. They would have been better off actually having less investment dollars and talking about a lower share price and they would be a lot more successful today instead of trying to climb out of that hole.

[0:22:04] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. Well, as much as I want to talk more about the seven principles, maybe we can revisit those at the end, I want to get more into a couple of other things like your story and everything but first I want to ask, who is the one person you most want to read your book? Is it executives or is it entrepreneurs?

[0:22:26] Rob Waite: Well, I would have to say that it’s really anyone who has an inkling that perhaps they could go further in their career and their lives than what their current trajectory indicates. It applies both to executives and entrepreneurs and I have spoken with many people that have read the book, whether they were late career, running startups, et cetera. I can tell from the conversation that it equally had an effect on them. So it’s more about that person that is seeing that they could do more, they just have to find that path of how they could achieve more.

[0:23:16] Charlie Hoehn: Author Hour is sponsored by Book in a Box. For anyone who has a great idea for a book but doesn’t have the time or patience to sit down and type it out, Book in a Box has created a new way to help you painlessly publish your book. Instead of sitting at a computer and typing for a year, hoping everything works out, Book in a Box takes you through a structured interview process that gets your ideas out of your head and into a book in just a few months. To learn more, head over to bookinabox.com and fill out the form at the bottom of the page. Don’t let another year go by where you put off writing your book. Tell me, if you had to pick just one person who could get the one existing copy of No Magic Bullets, who would you give that copy to?

[0:24:11] Rob Waite: I would probably give that copy to — boy, that’s a tough one because I would like to pick two. The one person actually would be a CEO of a unicorn.

[0:24:28] Charlie Hoehn: Okay, which unicorn?

[0:24:30] Rob Waite: I can’t say because I would get in trouble.

[0:24:33] Charlie Hoehn: Okay fair enough, I’ll say on your behalf, I’m not speaking for you but I think Uber’s CEO might need to buy your book right now. So tell us about your journey, Rob. Take us to the moment where you realized that this was a problem in your life or a problem in your client’s life. Tell us the story behind what ultimately laid the foundation for you to write No Magic Bullets?

[0:25:02] Rob Waite: Yeah, the foundation for this book, actually, the corner stone of it was laid down in 1983 and I was in my senior year of college, we were just about the end of the semester getting ready for graduation and the college placement officer was addressing the senior class and the school I went to was in Central Pennsylvania near where Armstrong World Industries was headquartered. Armstrong is a fortune 500 company that manufacture flooring and ceilings and various building products and the college placement officer comes out and addresses the senior class and the business school and says, “You know, we have a bad recession going on here and all you kids think you came into school here are going to get a job at Armstrong. Well I’m here to tell you that given the economy, they’re not looking for kids like you anymore. They’re going up market and so you guys need to start thinking about jobs in retail and on and on.” It was extremely defeating. I never thought on myself as much more than just an average person that would probably kind of the be the average Joe but at that moment, I actually got pissed off. I was thinking, “Who does this guy think he is, he doesn’t know me, he’s never spoken with me, he doesn’t know what I can do and can’t do. He probably dropped ball and didn’t do his job and that’s why Armstrong isn’t interviewing on campus.” What I did is the next day, I actually got on my polyester blue suit from SEARS and got my Datson B210 and drove over to Armstrong, actually, over the lunch hour, thinking that the receptionist would be the lunch hour receptionist, not as keen on her gatekeeping duties and asked to give my resume to their college recruiter. It just so happen that their college recruiter was having lunch at his desk and was intrigued by the fact that a college student cold called on this Fortune 500 company and had the receptionist send me in. We chatted for about an hour and a half and I walked out with an offer letter in hand for the first job I had after college.

[0:27:24] Charlie Hoehn: I love it.

[0:27:25] Rob Waite: I stayed there for 15 years, lived around the world and made it to the level of vice president.

[0:27:31] Charlie Hoehn: Wow, that is quite the story. Why do you think you had that line of thinking whereas everybody else kind of took that guy for his word and said, “Okay, we’re defeated.”

[0:27:47] Rob Waite: The reason I took that line of thinking was really that he didn’t know enough about any one of us individually to make that kind of statement he was making particularly about we needed to go into retail and things like that. It was, “Why give up? Why not try to figure out a way to show the companies you wanted to go to work for, why they should hire you?” For some reason , like I said, it made me mad that he said that and somehow that ignited my ambition and I thought, “Really, I don’t have anything to lose by trying to get an interview with Armstrong, so why not?” And actually when I got back to campus, I went right into his office and waved the offer letter in his face.

[0:28:38] Charlie Hoehn: Yes, I love that you had that cinematic moment. How did he respond?

[0:28:44] Rob Waite: He was incredulous. He wanted to see it. He’s like, “Let me see that,” and he read it and he handed it back to me and he said, “Good luck,” and that was it.

[0:28:53] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, showed him right. You proved him wrong.

[0:28:57] Rob Waite: Yeah, well I tell you what, I owe him everything.

[0:28:59] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, you know, my dad tells the story that he had some, I think it was his basketball coach or something tell him that he was not going to amount to anything and he said, “That was the moment that pissed me off so much,” that drove him. He came from a poor blue collar upbringing and got himself into a much higher class and yeah.

[0:29:27] Rob Waite: Yeah, it’s interesting how something can strike you in such a way, but that was mine.

[0:29:31] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, that’s great so tying it together with how this laid the foundation for No Magic Bullets, I’m not sure…

[0:29:39] Rob Waite: Yeah, how that came about was as the college placement director had said that they were going up market at Armstrong and so they had training classes back in those days and the other people in my training class were people from Ivy League schools, from other well-known schools and I did feel a little bit of the pressure and even a little intimidation that, “Boy, am I going to be able to perform at a level that they are? I don’t have maybe the same education, etcetera that they do. I better figure out how I can keep pace.” And so that triggered in me to really start to observe and to look at, “Okay, the people that are just above us that came in like two years ago. Who are the ones that the company talks highly about and who are the other managers that are doing really well and what is it that they do and how are they performing?” And so on, and that started me really always being curious about what somebody did that helped them achieve a certain level of success in business. As I grew in my career that that grew as well and as I lived around the world and travelled around the world, that spread into other cultures, other countries involved in businesses from high tech startups to smaller entrepreneurial enterprises and the more I kept observing and learning and noting on this path, the more I realized that there were really these seven fundamental capabilities that it didn’t matter what business you were in, an entrepreneur, corporate executive, if you could master and continue to learn these seven, that’s what all these great people have in common and so that was the basis and how I developed that over about a 35 year period.

[0:31:42] Charlie Hoehn: Tell us, who was the best you ever saw who followed those seven principles?

[0:31:46] Rob Waite: That’s going to be a tough one, but I would have to say that one that I know personally who I interviewed in the book as one of the 14 executives and entrepreneurs that I interviewed that are quoted in the book is Mike Endres who’s a gentleman that was one of the founding partners of a private equity and mezzanine capital firm by the name of Stone Hedge Partners in Columbus, Ohio. He strikes me as somebody that always was right on top of his game and it was because he kept his eyes and ears open and drew it all in from the environment and learned then how to utilize that to apply to his craft. He seemed to be that way from what I gathered in our interview from the very beginning of his career. Mike is on the board of directors of Worthington Industries as well and I was a senior executive in one of Worthington subsidiary companies. That is where I first got to know him and then when I was in the process of acquiring Drexel Metals as the principle invested partner, Mike gave me a lot of advice along the way. So I got to know him quite well and this is a gentleman who really embodied everyone of this in a big way.

[0:33:09] Charlie Hoehn: Very nice. You said you have studied these types of people for 35 years, right?

[0:33:17] Rob Waite: And counting.

[0:33:20] Charlie Hoehn: Wow, yeah so, at what point did you think to yourself, “I know this is a book,” or, “I need to get this message out”? Take us to that moment.

[0:33:32] Rob Waite: Yeah, you know that evolved a little bit over a period of time but it wasn’t a long period of time. It occurred during the time that I was CEO of Drexel Metals and what had occurred is there is a CEO organization called Vistage and Vistage is an organization where it’s a place for CEO’s to meet with other CEO’s as well as gain some knowledge from monthly seminars, etcetera and it’s a worthwhile organization. But I saw CEO’s that were members of Vistage, when there would be the monthly seminar, just jump on what was presented as that concept at that seminar and decide they were going to ram it into their companies and month in and month out, it was the plan of the month and I know in some cases it drove their people crazy and I actually started using the work term, which I obviously didn’t coin, “No Magic Bullets” when I was chatting with some of these guys about, “Oh you know I took this thing and I applied it in the business,” and blah, blah, blah. Gently, in a very tongue and cheek way use that phrase theology because I just saw it happen so often and also…

[0:34:57] Charlie Hoehn: Theology?

[0:34:58] Rob Waite: I called it theology because they were treating it as a religion, yeah and so from there as I was really wrapping my head around how we were to continue to take Drexel Metals further and wider, etcetera, it started to crystalize the seven capabilities because I’d always been observing and taking notes and thinking through these things but I knew in general I understood these but I wanted to fine tune it and hone it and so it was through that experience. And then after Drexel Metals when I became managing director of Allan Associates, which is a senior level retained executive search firm we worked most often at the C Suite at recruiting executives. I had an opportunity through that to talk with and interview with and have clients that are executives by the dozens over the last six years. It’s the hundreds and so it was this constant learning about people as part of what I was doing as managing director. So I could see these things rise to the surface with great executives as well and so between those two experiences at Drexel Metals and then with Allan Associates, I realized that I had something worthwhile to write about and it had been 14 years since I have written my first book and I had a couple of publishers actually chasing me to write a second book for a while and I had replied that I wasn’t going to write another book until I had something worthwhile to say, and I think they were even encouraging me to just basically make up a magic bullet so you can go market it. But I was at a point where I felt I had something worthwhile writing about.

[0:36:51] Charlie Hoehn: I love it, yeah that answered my next couple of questions. I’m wondering if that hold you back from being an author. So how was this book different from your first one?

[0:37:02] Rob Waite: Well the first book, the title of the book is The Lost Art of General Management. In there, I was writing about more towards corporate middle management and upper middle management that wanted to go higher and saying, hey, most people become so functionally myopic that they can only view a business through the function that they were raised up in and that executives that actually excel at the top of various functions, usually are capable of thinking and acting as a general manager and so how do you do that if you are a sales executive or a finance executive etcetera? And that really works hand in hand with No Magic Bullets for people that are in the corporate suites.

[0:37:52] Charlie Hoehn: Right, they complement each other well. So tell me your favorite success story from a reader of No Magic Bullets or what impact have you seen so far?

[0:38:04] Rob Waite: Well my favorite success story is of a gentleman who is a branch manager of a construction firm and he was promoted into that role because of really his work ethic but he didn’t feel that he had the talent and the capabilities as a business person and he felt he really needed to build that up and he worked through my book and reached out to discuss some things with me, which was interesting and he applied himself to some of the exercises the way the book is laid out and using it really more like a guide book. The net effect of all of that was he said not only does he feel more confident in his ability to succeed in his current role, he is succeeding in his current role and in his personal life, he has found a lot more peace and contentment because it has helped him actually in some ways deal with issues of stress and thinking clearly through some personal issues and applying those lessons in his personal life as well. So feels as though not only did it helped him make sure that he wasn’t going to fail but succeed in his role that he was promoted into but had a much greater impact on his overall life and that meant a lot to me.

[0:39:37] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, that’s great. So would you say that reduction in stress and boost of confidence, those are the main benefits of reading your book?

[0:39:46] Rob Waite: You know what? Yes, I would say that would be very much of the main benefits beyond that being able to comfortably achieve more than you might otherwise perceive and when I say comfortably, it isn’t easy by any stretch but you probably won’t get to that freak out point when something goes wrong when you hit those speed bumps.

[0:40:14] Charlie Hoehn: And that’s important.

[0:40:15] Rob Waite: Yep.

[0:40:16] Charlie Hoehn: So you said that guy reached out to you, tell me about the business model for your book. What was your thinking? Were you wanting to market your services as a consultant or to become a speaker? What were you thinking?

[0:40:30] Rob Waite: Really I was thinking a couple of things. First obviously is speaking. I’ve done a lot of speaking over the years to groups as large as a few thousand to actually as groups as small as five and all points in between and so I’ve always enjoyed that a lot and I have done speaking engagements in South America and Europe, Canada, US, so that’s been a part of my life, selling books.

[0:40:56] Charlie Hoehn: Did you become a speaker more so after the first book? Did you find that gave you more paid speaking gigs?

[0:41:04] Rob Waite: Oh yeah, the first book is the spring board for the speaking.

[0:41:09] Charlie Hoehn: Okay, so how did that work for you? Did people just find your book or were you sending it out?

[0:41:15] Rob Waite: There, I was fortunate enough to have sold well enough on Amazon, one, the other was it was actually just prior to the advent of the iPod so I did a lot of radio shows and I worked hard at getting booked on radio shows around the country. I think it was the radio shows drove that as much as anything else.

[0:41:37] Charlie Hoehn: Interesting. So we have authors who listen to this podcast and some of them might hear that and say, “I’ve just got to go get on the radio.” Would you say to them, “That’s just a Magic Bullet.” Or would you say, “Get on the radio. Go do that.”?

[0:41:53] Rob Waite: Yeah, that’s kind of a magic bullet. The reason the radio worked out well was twofold. The first was the people that were thinking about finding a speaker for either an industry trade association or a large corporation who was putting together events, they could hear me and hear how I sound and how I interact with the radio show host, etcetera. So you get a sense of the personality of the person. And secondly, they got an idea of not just the topics from my book, but where we went with the conversation on a lot of the shows, went down some other avenues and they could see that, “Oh yeah maybe he could talk about A, B or C as well.” So I think that’s where the radio became a value because it was almost like an audition if you will.

[0:42:47] Charlie Hoehn: Right, so were you talking on FM morning shows or AM talk shows?

[0:42:54] Rob Waite: Both, yeah. I mean of all stripes I was very surprised at how many shows I was able to land and I simply reached out via email and mail with a copy of my book and when you think about it, a radio show that is on the air maybe sometimes they’re two times a week, sometimes they’re five but if it’s a five day a week, 52 weeks a year, that’s a lot of time to fill. So they’re always looking for somebody interesting.

[0:43:26] Charlie Hoehn: You know, I’ve heard other authors who focus almost exclusively on the radio. I can’t remember his name but he wrote a Christmas book for his daughters and he wanted to promote it. So he found one radio station where he could read a chapter every day or something like that and that single handedly drove enough interest to get people to request it in bookstores all in his city, which eventually led it to be being carried in bookstores all around the country. This was sort of before Amazon in its hay day than what it is now. I found that really interesting that yeah, you can drive a lot of attention on radio. So what’s your focus now for getting speaking gigs? Is it similar but on podcasts?

[0:44:13] Rob Waite: Well yeah, it’s similar with podcasts as well as reaching out to people on my own professional network that I know enough folks that deal with speakers whether they’re a chief human resources officer or CEO of a company, etcetera. It is helpful when you can speak to the person in charge.

[0:44:33] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, is there one speaking gig that you would just love to have under your belt?

[0:44:42] Rob Waite: That’s a good question. I have not thought about that. I would say that one speaking gig I’d love to have under my belt would be a TED Talk.

[0:44:53] Charlie Hoehn: I think I might be able to help you out there, Rob.

[0:44:55] Rob Waite: Well there you go.

[0:44:56] Charlie Hoehn: I just gave my fourth TED Talk, the last one just came on. So yeah, we can talk about what that entails in terms of pitching it because a lot of people want to give TED Talks, but it’s got to come from a certain place. So I’d be happy to stir you in the right direction there if you’d like.

[0:45:17] Rob Waite: Wonderful. I really appreciate that, yes.

[0:45:19] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, of course. So Rob, let’s get into the speed round at the end and this is just quick succinct answers to some questions. You can give a little bit of an explanation but these are mostly rapid fire. What is your favorite internet resource or app that you would pair with you book?

[0:45:40] Rob Waite: Smartsheet.

[0:45:41] Charlie Hoehn: Smartsheet.

[0:45:42] Rob Waite: Yep, one word, Smartsheet, one word.

[0:45:46] Charlie Hoehn: Okay, I need a bit of an explanation there.

[0:45:48] Rob Waite: Smartsheet is Excel on steroids combined with Slack and then grafted in with Microsoft project management all in one.

[0:46:03] Charlie Hoehn: Very nice, I’m going to check that out. Okay, so let’s play the Amazon recommended reading game, which is if you like this book, you’ll love No Magic Bullets, what is this book?

[0:46:16] Rob Waite: If you like Getting Things Done, you’ll love my book.

[0:46:21] Charlie Hoehn: Awesome.

[0:46:22] Rob Waite: No Magic Bullets, yep.

[0:46:23] Charlie Hoehn: So tell us about a recent embarrassment or a personal failure and how you dealt with it.

[0:46:30] Rob Waite: That’s a tough one, you know I didn’t think through that one much, because I thought something would quickly come to mind. But actually I would say that anytime I’ve ever been embarrassed or felt that there was a personal failure was due to some form of poor communication, whether I didn’t explain myself properly or I didn’t understand what the other person was driving at, etcetera. As a result, this stage of my life I am very mindful of how I communicate because I realized that not just me but so many other people, failures and embarrassments are usually the root cause is a communication issue.

[0:47:21] Charlie Hoehn: A hundred percent agree. Can you give a specific example?

[0:47:24] Rob Waite: Not on the top of my head to be honest with you, if I come up with one I’ll phone it in. I’m trying to think of one off the top of my head and I can’t get to it. How about I’m embarrassed that I can’t give you an answer quickly off the top of my head?

[0:47:40] Charlie Hoehn: I will take your most recent embarrassment being not able to answer what your most recent embarrassment is. That is acceptable.

[0:47:48] Rob Waite: Because it’s arrogant to not have one at tip of your tongue.

[0:47:51] Charlie Hoehn: Fair enough. All right so you actually answered what your follow up book would be about autoimmune disorders or diseases. So what is a parting piece of advice you have for aspiring authors, people who are thinking about writing their own book?

[0:48:09] Rob Waite: It would be two things. First is have your plan for your revenue model pulled together well before your book is completed because it’s going to be challenging to really turn a book into a money making proposition. So if you take your eye off that ball, you can have a great book but it’s not going to generate dollar one, unless purely writing a book is your goal. And the other would be that it’s harder than you think. The second book that I have written, I’ve written numerous articles. I still find it more difficult than I always think going into it.

[0:48:51] Charlie Hoehn: Totally and did you, just to dive into the first point a little bit, did you sit down and calculate here’s the ROI of this book?

[0:49:01] Rob Waite: Yeah, I looked at it and said, “All right, how much am I going to invest in time as well as money?” And I think too many people focus purely on the money part and not enough on the time part and then, “How am I going to make that time? Am I okay if a 100% of that money just goes away if it doesn’t happen to pan out?” But I made a conscious decision along those lines.

[0:49:30] Charlie Hoehn: Good man. So a final question, what is the best place for our listeners to connect with you, to follow you? Let us know.

[0:49:39] Rob Waite: Yeah, the best place is to go to nomagicbullets.xyz. It’s the up and coming hip internet extension dot xyz.

[0:49:54] Charlie Hoehn: And why did you choose xyz?

[0:49:56] Rob Waite: For two reasons, one it is available and the second is when studying internet businesses, there’s a whole new slew of internet extensions that have been introduced. For example, Allan Associates where I am managing director, Associates is one. So we grab that up so our web address is very simple, Allan.associates, which was pretty cool but there’s a number of them that just aren’t that neat. They’re just a little too kitchy and dot com will ultimately convey the same thing as an AOL account that yeah, you may have been early but it’s old. There’s a reason why Google changed their name to abc.xyz and if you think about it, those were the first three letters of the alphabet and the last three letters of the alphabet and they’ll never change. So I saw the growth in dot xyz and wanted to be in that space.

[0:50:53] Charlie Hoehn: I did know that about Google, abc.xyz, oh yeah, alphabet, yeah.

[0:50:53] Rob Waite: Yep, the corporate company, yep.

[0:51:00] Charlie Hoehn: Sure enough.

[0:51:01] Rob Waite: If you go to their websites, it’s abc.xyz.

[0:51:02] Charlie Hoehn: Very cleaver. Rob, this has been so nice to talk with you. I really resonated with your message so thank you so much for being on Author Hour.

[0:51:13] Rob Waite: Thank you. I really appreciate it. It’s been fun.

[0:51:18] Charlie Hoehn: Many thanks to Rob Waite for being on the show. You can buy Rob’s book, No Magic Bullets, on Amazon.com. Be sure to check out our next episode where we’ll be talking with David Basulto, the author of Life Camera Action: How to turn your mobile device into a film-making powerhouse. Thanks again for listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about books with the authors who wrote them. We’ll see you next time.