Azul Terronez: Episode 87

Transcript

[0:00:20] Charlie Hoehn: You’re listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about books with the authors who wrote them. I’m Charlie Hoehn. Today is a special episode with my good friend Azul Terronez. It’s actually from an interview I did on his podcast which is called Born to Write, which is another great show that’s focused on helping authors. Be sure to check out Born to Write in iTunes. Now, in our conversation, we talk about overcoming fear as authors. Like thinking, “I’m not an expert,” or dealing with negative reviews and comments about our books, how do we overcome our fears as authors. By the end of this episode, my hope is that you’ll feel more confident on your journey as an author. Even if you hit tough times or you’re not getting as many sales as you’d hoped, you’ll know how to press forward. Now, here is my conversation with Azul Terronez.

[0:01:33] Azul Terronez: Today’s interview is with Charlie Hoehn, a dear friend. He’s an author, a TedX speaker and probably most notably known for being Tim Ferris’ director of special projects and help edit and launch The Four Hour Body. He’s got so much information to share with you and I can’t wait for you to listen in on our conversation. Welcome to the born to write podcast, dedicated to writers, authors and the art of storytelling. Go behind the scenes where writers reveal their ups and downs and how they finally shared their stories with the world. Now, here is your host, Azul Terronez. All right, we’re here today with Charlie Hoehn, so glad you’re here brother, it’s like having a reunion since we just saw each other a few weeks ago, but glad you’re here.

[0:02:16] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, I’m thrilled to talk to good friend, so thanks for having me Azul.

[0:02:21] Azul Terronez: Yeah, I’m really appreciative of you. I think in part because I feel extremely vulnerable when I talk to you, which I thinks good, I think that means that I’m usually talking about something that matters and writing matters to me because it exposes what’s inside of you if you let it.

[0:02:40] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. I feel the same way and I think it comes from a mutual place of trust and respect and you in particular I think could write a book on being a good listener. I’m sure I don’t know for your listeners if they’re like, “All right, get to the good stuff guys,” but I do want to emphasize that you are a fantastic listener.

[0:03:00] Azul Terronez: Thank you Charlie, that’s awesome. Yeah, I definitely am trying to grow in that because I think for a long time, I don’t think I was, I’d like to think I was but I don’t think I really was paying attention so maybe I was hearing but not listening. That’s really a big complement thanks for that. You know, often times, I think about writing and I wonder if it’s for you, the way it was for me. I think there is something in me that always wanted to be a writer even though I wasn’t a big fan of English class. Mainly because I wasn’t good at it. I always fancied story. For me it was pretty young age, whenever I could get someone’s attention and a lot of times I had to perform it because I couldn’t write as well, but did you always have a sense that you wanted to be a writer or that you had it in you?

[0:03:42] Charlie Hoehn: I never wanted to be a writer, I still don’t necessarily want to be a writer, it’s more of a necessity and so the fastest way to create. I think of myself as an ideas person and the best way to materialize those ideas and give them shape and the fastest, most efficient way to do it is through writing. Whether that’s putting out a thoughtful article or an essay of some sort or a collection of some ideas that I see taking shape in a different industry or even if it’s just writing a comedy sketch that I end up filming with my friends, the best way they do it is through writing, it clarifies your thinking and allows you to communicate the idea with another individual. I think even faster and more efficiently than speaking it, so yeah.

[0:04:38] Azul Terronez: That makes sense. I know for me, I think it was always hard to articulate what I was feeling inside to the depth that I wanted to but it doesn’t mean that speaking was any better. I just felt like – because I had a stifled voice, because I was worried about my dyslexia, I was worried about being judged for how it came across. I think the idea always got pushed to the very back. So I used the simplest idea I could tell without being afraid to get judged. I think for the longest time, I don’t think I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to tell stories. I think that’s why it’s served me well in helping people find the story because I’m listening for that, I’m listening for – “Well I hear you saying the stuff about content and they’re really good at it but what’s the story underneath all of it because that’s the part that interest me the most?”

[0:05:19] Charlie Hoehn: That’s how we’re hardwired, right? You want to tell a story and you want to hear a story, you don’t want to hear somebody’s advice. That’s actually what I tell every single guest who comes on to my podcast is I say, “Start with a story that people can identify with. Don’t give them advice, don’t talk about your book, don’t do any of the things that you’re tempted to do as somebody who is speaking to an audience,” which is, I want to impress them, I want to – like humans are hardwired for stories.

[0:05:52] AZ: Right, I think I realize this the other day Charlie, I was talking to my son just – he’s had a tough year but he’s resilient in the sense that he’s learned a lot from it and we were having a long conversation the other day for like an hour and a half which if anybody has children, under the age of 21, that’s a really long time to converse with your child. I think it’s because he’s becoming his own person and adult, and one of the things that struck me was, he said something that I really found interesting was, “Dad I make meaning of the world through understanding the way other people see it.” Holy smokes, what a great thing that is to discover at such a young age and then also, he realized that that what school wasn’t, it never let you slow down enough to see the world through other people’s eyes. I think that’s a little bit about what writing does, right? You step through the lens of other people.

[0:06:46] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, it’s a fantastic point which is, it allows you to gain empathy and see perspective, see the world from another person’s perspective. I mean, going back to the point of speaking is not as efficient because you have all these obstacles that you’re having to deal with in real time, right? You’re having to deal with your own internal emotional state while you’re ‘doing it, while you’re presenting these ideas to other people, you have to be good at judging your audience and speaking to them making sure that they’re on board with you while you’re communicating these ideas, it’s way harder. But when you’re writing, all you have to do is communicate the idea well or the story well and then whoever reads it is listening to you and they’re actually giving more weight to whatever it is that you’re saying and to your point Azul, building empathy and compassion for people through writing. I got in a heated argument, fairly recently, I think it was a few months back because someone said, fiction books I think are just kind of a waste of time, I got a deal with reality. I was like, how could you possibly say that? Because fiction is not only like exercising the imagination, like every movie basically comes from a fiction book first and all of us love fiction movies and more importantly, you are still gaining compassion, empathy, a new perspective on the world. Even if it’s fiction, it still comes from a human being and it’s grounded in their reality you know? We’re not talking about completely nonfictional aliens that don’t have feelings or we’re not writing fiction about bacteria who have no – they have no idea of the world around them or the human world around them. We’re writing about people and their feelings always. Even if it’s fiction, you’re still learning about another person. I remember feeling my blood boil when he said that. I was like, it was such a poorly formed opinion about fiction and storytelling.

[0:08:58] Azul Terronez: Yeah, I had a young author here in the show and he was talking to me about the thing he looks for the most in fantasy is the depth of relate-ability to the main character. He says, that’s the most important part to me because I’m creating a whole other world and yet some of that is replicating other worlds, obviously we all know that we recognize. But that character has to seem so much like you or so likeable that you follow them through this journey and to know how to make somebody likeable by an audience who you can never see or touch or, you know what I mean? I think that to me, that’s the complexity of understanding the humanity, the qualities within somebody or in others really to make a story resonate.

[0:09:41] Charlie Hoehn: Right, well, I don’t even necessarily think it’s likability, I think it’s what you first said is relatability, identifiability. This is actually the number one rule of screen writing is all about the character and the audience has to identify with the character. A great example of this is Marty McFly, Back to the Future. You know? He starts the movie off with being like the coolest kid ever. He plays in a rock band and he’s good, he’s dating the most beautiful girl in school, he skateboards on the back of cars, that’s awesome. He’s got low self-esteem, he gets picked on by the principal and his dad and his family, his dad’s just kind of a wuss and a push over and he lives in kind of a house where things are a mess and whatever. You just identify with him and it’s the same with Walter White who is not a likeable character, he is an identifiable character, somebody who gets diagnosed with cancer and he realizes, man, I’m in over my head, I don’t want to tell my family about this, we don’t have enough money. When his wife in that first episode is like, “You used the wrong credit card, we only do this on this credit card,” you know? It’s some like minor expense, only like 10 bucks or something and it’s just like gosh, how many people can identify with this. I think you don’t’ necessarily have to even be likeable, you just have to be somebody that you identify with.

[0:11:19] Azul Terronez: Right. That makes a lot of sense, I think the idea that you can find some quality, whether even a villain within the human existence, right? I was wondering, because your book Played Away was a book, actually it was the first book that really opened up my eyes to not to mental illness but to our lack of understanding about the simple things in life that make a huge, profound impact and I always wondered if you had –

[0:11:49] Charlie Hoehn: A lack of the simple things Azul?

[0:11:52] Azul Terronez: Yeah, like play to me is a simple thing, we’ve taken out simple activities that make a big difference, listening is another simple activity. Saying yes or now or just making a simple decision but we’ve created, I feel like, an overcomplicated sense of what’s good for us or not good for us and I think play to me is such a powerful tool and I was trying to think because I have, we have challenges in our own family with mental illness and I feel like the things that I was looking to do to solve it seems so massively overwhelming to me. I think that book helped me understand –

[0:12:26] Charlie Hoehn: Overwhelming?

[0:12:27] Azul Terronez: Yeah.

[0:12:27] Charlie Hoehn: Which things were you considering?

[0:12:30] Azul Terronez: Well, I was overwhelmed by the fact that there’s treatment and then there’s therapy and then there’s what kind of therapy, there’s group therapy, there’s sessions, individual sessions and there’s medication and there’s follow up and then there’s healthy habits, change in perspective. It all became, it was creating its overwhelming problem when I felt like what you were sharing in that book was helping me understand that there’s something to be done about my own life and in regards to play, you know? It’s not far away from me as well to not understand the depth of my ability to let go and just have fun.

[0:13:05] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah.

[0:13:06] Azul Terronez: Do you think you could retell that story Played Away but in fiction, does it work the same nonfiction? Could you share the same learning?

[0:13:15] Charlie Hoehn: You’re asking me to retell it as a fiction right now or you’re asking theoretically?

[0:13:19] Azul Terronez: No, theoretically I think.

[0:13:22] Charlie Hoehn: I think – I mean, it’s close enough to fiction in a way. The lifestyle I was living I think was kind of extreme and at the fringes enough that people are like, “Wow, this is crazy.” In the context of how I got to the point that I got to, you know, the story begins with something that is very identifiable with people who struggle with anxiety and burnout, right? It’s describing how I felt the physical symptoms, what it was like internally day to day. Then, the second chapter is about what was going on on the outside, the conditions that led to that internal state. I think it would actually be pretty easy to do that because all I have to do is make the outside world even louder or make it a different character. But the feelings are the same.

[0:14:21] Azul Terronez: Did you feel like it was hard to relate to other people? I don’t know how many people have read right away who are listening but maybe can set it up a little bit but did you feel like your life was so unreliable that even if you tried to press to them why you were feeling what you’re feeling, they couldn’t relate.

[0:14:36] Charlie Hoehn: That’s a great question because I think everybody who is struggling with that stuff is convinced that no one else is struggling with it because no one else’s external life is the exact same, right? I’ll setup the book a little bit. The book is basically about how I went through a period of roughly two years where I was struggling with debilitating anxiety and burnout. I was locking myself up in my apartment isolating myself from my friends and other people because I didn’t want them to catch my contagious energy which was like constant worrying, sometimes paranoia, there was physical symptoms of rapid heart rate, just, it was constant dread basically. Anybody who has experienced it knows it’s really not fun especially if you’re having panic attacks and this sort of thing and I just couldn’t quietly secretly suffered through this because I was really embarrassed and ashamed to go through it because I didn’t really fully understand why I felt this way, you know, on the outside, I had a dream job, working with Tim Ferris for years and that had gone really well for a long time and then all of a sudden I was dealing with these stuff. On the outside, you know, externally, there were other factors that came into play, you know, on one weekend, a family member died, a close friend attempted suicide and a deadline for a huge project we had, got pushed back several months and I was in this very prestigious position, right? I felt like, man, certainly no one in my peer group fully understands what I’m going through, they couldn’t possibly have felt the way I feel which is horrible. You know, it feels like you’re living in your own internal hell. You know, after I got through that period which is what the book is about is like, I tried everything, nothing worked but the one thing that sort of unlocked my way to my own personal cure was through play. Both the way I thought of the world and perceived things that were happening and being more playful and not so serious and worried all the time. To actually incorporating play into my daily routine. That kind of unlocked everything, got me through it but what I learned from talking with – since that book was published, thousands and thousands of people who have experienced the exact same feelings but just had different external circumstances going on. They hold back for the same reasons I held back, they’re ashamed and they think no one must understand what they’re going through and there’s a stigma you know? They don’t want to end up on addictive pills, they don’t want to be put in a hospital, they don’t want to go through all this intense treatment or expensive treatment in some cases so that’s why I wrote that book. I was desperately searching for that type of solution which was natural, free, common sense, didn’t require any dangerous or expensive therapies, that sort of thing. A friend of mine, she opened up to me because she was the assistant to the CEO of a Fortune 10 company I think. One of the biggest companies in the world and she finally opened up to me because she read my book, she said, “I’m going through the exact same thing.” She thought, I was the only one who could possibly understand and the reality is, anybody who is going through this stuff will understand you, you know, there’s millions of people struggling with the stuff, millions and millions of people struggling. All you have to do is look on YouTube, you have all these confession videos that have come out over the years. It’s super common, it is something I am not afraid of at all happening to me again. If it does, I know the cure, I’ve seen it cure – I’ve had numerous people two women in particular who came out to me after either a speaking gig or wrote me an email and they said, “I’ve been on high dose anxiety meds for 20 years. I incorporated play into my life and it dissolved, it was gone. Nothing else had worked,” and like – no bullshit, they actually were able to overcome it, it works for pretty much everyone. I’m not saying like obviously, I’m not a medical professional, I’m not a doctor, I’m not a licensed therapist or anything. I’m just a guy who was like desperately searching for that information. Find a massive gap both online and in books that no one was talking about this approach which was grounded in how we evolved and what we’ve just gotten away from.

[0:19:31] Azul Terronez: Yeah, that’s an incredible testament to not only did you work through it for yourself and how bothers from the stage and close friends but you put it out there to stake a claim and look, I’m not going to wait for some sort of person to dawn me the expert of play, I’m just going to share my story and what will help me, it could help you too. I think that that’s the thing. A lot of people come to me when I’m helping them with books and they ask –

[0:19:57] Charlie Hoehn: I’m not an expert.

[0:19:59] Azul Terronez: That’s exactly – I’m not an expert and I’m like, thank goodness because experts don’t have a lot to say that they’ve experienced themselves, they’ve just studied other people’s experiments and –

[0:20:10] Charlie Hoehn: Exactly. I was speaking actually at an association for therapy through humor. Everybody in the room was a medical professional license therapist, somebody there to learn about – like the science of humor. I came to this thing and I was like, gosh, I don’t know how much I’m going to be – all I have is my story, right? These guys have all these research and stuff. A, none of t hem had published books or if they had, they were pretty dry, you know? Two, none of them could really present on the topic in a way that was identifiable, it’s exactly what you said, experts are in their field doing studies and looking at patients and talking about their patient’s experiences and not theirs. Just because you don’t have a piece of paper telling the world like this person paid a lot of money to be called an expert does not mean you are not an expert. If you have experienced life in a way that others have not or overcome a problem that a lot of people struggle with, you’re an expert.

[0:21:18] Azul Terronez: Right, that’s the thing I want people to know and this is the thing I think after being a teacher for so many years, people are like, “Well, is this a best practice? I go, “How do you think of best practice starts? It just pops up perfect one day?” Best practice is just, someone’s done it enough that you don’t feel embarrassed to try it or get blamed or fired. It’s not – is it good for kids or is the right thing. That’s the thing the expert syndrome causes is this idea of “We’ll wait and see what happens to you if you say it before I say it or I may not be credible if I say and I’m wrong.” What if I’m wrong? How can your story be wrong, you know? That’s why I always encourage authors to put your story in there, you’re the only part of it that actually matters more than anything else because that lens is going to help more people than if you just share your knowledge in your head. Your knowledge in your head is only as valuable, particularly now with the age of the internet as me taking opportunity to google it. But your unique perspective cannot be found on the internet, it comes from you.

[0:22:16] Charlie Hoehn: Exactly. You offer a unique perspective and in that, there’s value. This is particularly relevant as well because one of the first messages I read this morning was somebody who commented on a recent article that I wrote that I did not expect this to happen, I’ve been writing online for 10 years, written hundreds of things, this article went viral and I didn’t see it coming but one of the first messages I read this morning. By the way, the overwhelming response to this article was positive. I had this one lady who wrote to me this morning and she said, “You don’t even have a degree in psychology or criminology or whatever,” she literally said, “Who the hell do you think you are?” I wanted to just – For any message like that, I try to wait 24 hours because I’m just like – I want to give some thought to this, I don’t want to react to it and say something I might regret but I was just thinking like, I can’t really hear you over all the positive feedback. If I hadn’t been – I don’t know, motivated enough to put out my unique perspective, who knows, you know? I had so many positive messages come out of writing that article and so many people were deeply touched because I put my heart out there on a topic that I cared about. People sense that, you know? You’re always going to get a little bit of riff raff to anything that catches a little bit of fire. I spoke with a police officer yesterday, his name is Chuck Ryland. He just published a book called shots fired. He was like, to be honest, I’ve been really surprised that no one has hated the book, that no one’s hated on the book and I was like, “Yeah.” I mean, the book’s good, of course they haven’t hated on the book, it’s a meaningful thing and you came from a place with really positive intentions. I think as long as you have that positive intent, you shouldn’t worry about being an expert, just do it.

[0:24:32] Azul Terronez: I think yeah, your article was really profound, I shared it and a lot of people that – who don’t know you or didn’t know you but you know, trust when I share something, not that I have much authority to share anything but you know, they found your story really impactful and changed the conversation. I think, because that’s the way you were looking at it, they started to look at that differently too. I think that’s the power, like what you said of writing. It’s something that if you had one conversation with somebody, you couldn’t necessarily have the impact as writing. Because people can talk about it, share it, communicate about it, even debate about it. Like you said, there’s always going to be somebody who has a dissenting opinion. If you’re waiting for something to not have a dissenting opinion, you probably don’t have an opinion.

[0:25:16] Charlie Hoehn: Right, or you’re not saying anything worthwhile really, you’re just – if you’re only writing list articles of 10 reasons that you need to visit Italy and stuff like that. No one’s going to care but if you’re putting yourself out there and really saying what matters to you, you’re going to get some pushback for sure. I mean, I’ve gotten pushback on telling my story about going through anxiety. I’ve had people being like, you just – I’ve literally had this at least five times, people being like – you’re just trying to take advantage of the anxiety market and trying to capitalize on them. I was like, first of all, you could take a look at my bank account if that were true, I would be living very differently than ideal. It’s just nonsense. There are people with their own agendas, their own emotional issues with whatever that they bring to the table, whenever they’re arguing with you. Whenever they’re really pushing back on you, it’s more about them, it’s not as much about you. 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.

[0:27:15] Azul Terronez: To talk about the fears of having someone respond to you negatively, I’ve been working with [inaudible] our friend who is a great editor and she’s helping me with my book about what makes a good teacher great and I told her, I don’t know why I have so much fear and anxiety about this particular book because that was really well received as a message but I think for me, it’s not about – I’m afraid someone will misinterpret what I’ve learned from children and that I wanted them to know that this is just my learning, this is not what they’ve told me, they didn’t say, this is what I mean when I said that. I’m interpreting what I believe and how I’ve learned to interpret what kids say about what makes a good teacher great. Even that has caused me fear and I struggle with that being a writing coach and someone who is helping people with writing feel. Even though I have plenty of experience and plenty of expertise that people wanted to do that. When haters show up and I try not to respond at all unless it’s positive in some way but I remember the first time because I’m not used to being public about my stories but this particular one when the ted talk that we had done together. Someone said something, you know, you just don’t understand, if you were in an inner city school or you knew what these kids were like – I was like, how does listening change depending on where you go or where you work. I just don’t understand.

[0:28:34] Charlie Hoehn: Clearly even hear the first two sentences of your talk because you said straight up, from inner city schools in Los Angeles, right? You can mitigate against that by explicitly stating upfront. Look, you can do it in bolt, like disclaimer, this is not what I’m interpreting or these are open to multiple interpretations. This is just what I learned, it doesn’t have to be what you learned like don’t read it. You might get some of that pushback but I think a lot of the critics and there won’t be many critics by the way.

[0:29:14] Azul Terronez: Especially not, it really isn’t. It’s in my head more than anything else.

[0:29:17] Charlie Hoehn: Right, it will be for every 100 positive things that people say about the book, there will be one critic and usually the person who takes the time to sit down and write out the critic is a little bit of a nut job.

[0:29:31] Azul Terronez: Yeah, you know the other one I should have just been silent because I ended up went back and edited the comment because I didn’t take your role into effect like wait 24 hours to respond. Somebody said, “So I can’t send a teacher who doesn’t know how to speak or can’t even use the words right,” or whatever and I was like, “Oh man you weren’t even listening. I hope you’re not a teacher, you know I can’t imagine how your kids must feel,” you know what I mean? Like you weren’t listening to the message and I wrote that and I went back and fixed it and I just said and I changed it to say something like, “Thank you for your valuable insights. It was helpful to hear that you want me to speak more clearly. That’s thoughtful, why don’t you post your talk here and let us know if we should listen to it or complete it.” but at the same time when somebody who is, I don’t know, I guess you call it, it’s YouTube so I don’t know, a follower had responded to him already. To jump on them to like, “Oh actually I just have been quiet, I don’t have to do this.” That was the last thing I responded to negative. I just don’t do it really anymore but I think that is a really good lesson for me but I say that to be vulnerable with the people who are thinking about writing a book or having fear or wondering about all of these things about being an expert and not knowing enough. I think the biggest mistake that people make is not sharing their truths and they try to share too much. Too big of concepts, too many things because they don’t want to be thought of not knowing more or enough and it gets lost.

[0:30:53] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah that’s totally true. That is such a huge thing. I see so often with authors who are like, “The book is not finished. I have to keep including all of my wisdom.” And it’s like, No just stick to the one thing. You have more than one book in you. Chill out and nail this one. Stop talking” there’s confidence in quiet and when you know to shut up that is a good thing and just to get back to the point of like I think it’s important to talk about tactically what can you do when you do get a negative review. Or a harsh comment or something and I made a point, I know I keep referencing this vaguely but for this Vegas shooting article that I just published, when I started to realize, “Oh damn this thing is going to take off really quickly.” I was glued to my computer moderating the comments, kind of managing them. For the positive ones I was like, “Sweet, cool.” I didn’t really usually replied to those. It was deeper. All of the negative ones that started coming in, I made sure and I learned this from Tim Farris. Tim Farris taught me this and it has served me really well, you always start a response to them with thank you. “Thank you for this comment.” Which you did as well to the person who commented on your TED Talk. Thank you and for all of them, I offered I said, “This is a great perspective,” and I would often agree with them. I thought the article was flawed. To be honest, I cranked it out in about an hour and a half because I have been writing about, that’s not to brag, I was just been writing about this for years. And so I just didn’t expect it to take off and I knew it was flawed. I knew it had some problems so I was taking in those negative comments and being like, “I agree with you. I’m going to make some changes based on thi,s” and then I would invite them, “Do you want to help me fix this up because I value your input?” and then for one person, I can’t remember what they criticized me on but I said, “I just want to be sure that we are not misunderstanding each other and feel free to turn this down. If you would rather not, you can say no but if you want to hop on the phone or email me just to make sure we’re on the same page, I’m more than open to that.” And that set the tone for all other negative comments or for any of them who saw that I was not here to fight. I was here to introduce a new perspective and something that just doesn’t get the way I think it deserves rather than to say, “Let’s argue about guns,” or the common thing that happens in every other form. So I think saying thank you for the insight, hearing them, listening to them to what they have to say and then offering to be a teammate and to collaborate, I had a guy email me. I put together this 10 day email sequence for people struggling with anxiety. So it’s a free sequence and it’s just like, “Hey for the next 10 days if you focus on these areas, you can cut your anxiety in half pretty easily.” So one of the emails talks about diet and talks about the things that you’re eating. And the focus is mostly like, “Look a lot of the times your nutrient deficient in a few different things and if you cut out these certain foods and eat these ones, you can, not overnight but over time, you can start to replenish those nutrients and you will feel better.” And this guy wrote to me and he was appalled that I had such a strong emphasis on protein and meats and he was like, “Look I am not a vegetarian or a vegan but there’s a lot of research on plant based diets that’s coming to the forefront.” And blah-blah-blah and I wrote back to him and his email was harsh like if you read this you would have been like, “Damn” he’s kind of mean, and I wrote back to him and I said, “Thank you so much for doing this. I actually agree with you. You know I wrote that email years ago and I’ve read the books that you are talking about which was true and I just have not gotten around to revising that email to sure it up and have a stronger emphasis on plant based diets.” “Would you want to work with me and collaborate and fix up this email?” And he immediately did a 180 and he was like, “Yes, let’s do this. Thank you so much for the privilege. I would love to participate in this.” He did a fantastic job helping me re-write that email and I incorporated his feedback. He and I still work on stuff together. He is going through all the comments that I got on the Vegas article, he put together a spreadsheet of the most valid critiques and how many times people criticized my article based on that and we are working on a revised article together. So I think if you can think of commenters, people who criticize you like this is what Tim taught me is he said, “The people who are your most vocal critics can become your most vocal fans if you know how to play it right.” And viewing those with some excitement as this is an opportunity to gain a fan rather than digging your heels in and trying to butt heads with them is the way to go.

[0:36:22] Azul Terronez: I totally agree. I wish I would have thought more like that when they – I just wasn’t prepared for negative reviews because I didn’t think anybody listened to be honest.

[0:36:31] Charlie Hoehn: No one is and here’s the irony, right? So when you write something people give it a lot of weight. They don’t know you. They just are reading this thing that’s been printed down and we have this bias that if something has been written, if you hear somebody say something it might be true but it’s probably not. If you hear more than one person say something, “Yeah it’s probably true,” But if you read it, it’s true, right? That’s our bias and so the irony is, is that’s still playing in our heads when we’re reading YouTube comments that are written by 12 year olds who have zero life experience if it is articulated well enough. We’re like, “Gosh geez this person really has a point.” And you don’t even know who is in the other end of that comment. It could be somebody trolling you, it could be somebody who is just pissed off at that moment and you caught him on a bad day. So if you think you’re heels in and want to butt head with him, that maybe their stress relief for the day. They just want to take their stress out on somebody and it happens to be a stranger on the internet.

[0:37:40] Azul Terronez: Right and I think that some of it is because if there’s a little bit of potential truth to it instead of resisting like I have or others probably do just accept as feedback and that’s the thing I realized as, “What is happening here?” These are some really either stressed out teachers or former teachers or people who work in an environment where they just don’t feel supported, they don’t know how they are supposed to do their job. They feel like there is no way to make this work, that’s all they’re saying. They are not saying, “I’m not good or I didn’t do a good job,” or they don’t believe any of this, they just don’t know how to say that about themselves like, “Look I wish I knew what to do. I am stuck. Help.” And I think that is one of the things I learned is, “Oh I need to write this specifically, some sections in the book about inner city but talk about it in a way…” because I think people have this ideal what inner city is. I don’t know why but I think what it really means is that there is a lot more challenges when the people that show up every day have to work really hard just to be there. Like just to have a couple of good meals in a day, just so they can get to school without having to go home with some violence. They have other challenges than just learning but I think that most people think of inner city as something from television. They don’t think of it as just imagine having more challenges to your day than you already have and then carrying 40 more pounds on your head and then things strapped to your legs and then they’re blindfolded. That’s what it feels like to be working or living in an inner city. It’s just different. It’s not what you are used to. I think that is one of the other things that I am learning is like, “That’s a good feedback” and I think the other thing is one of my first books, even though there is 53 five star reviews or whatever and the book I was happy with the simplicity of it, it was a simple book but the thing about it was when the moment someone critiqued my editing which they must have gotten an early copy that was really bad because it wasn’t edited very well in the beginning, I stopped trying to promote it, I stopped trying to get reviews. I just felt totally silenced but I think part of it because there’s some small bits of truth in there and instead of addressing it going, “You know right,” I did, I did, I fixed it, I edited it, I resubmitted it. Instead of responding to him going, “Thank you so much. Your feedback was helpful like you said” and moving forward and reclaim that, I just shrank away and I didn’t know that early enough to understand it.

[0:39:46] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah but now you know.

[0:39:48] Azul Terronez: Now I know and I think you know what’s funny? More people when I asked them to give me feedback before we work on a coaching relationship in their book, I’m asked what is their biggest fear and a lot of them is, “What if it’s not reviewed well?” you know what? I can’t promise you that. There’s nothing I can do about that. All I can do is ensure you find the right story, the best story that you can tell. I can’t help the people not to review it poorly but I can help you be reviewed well because you are getting people that care about you and care about your message but I can’t keep people from reviewing you poorly so.

[0:40:15] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, there is a deep primal fear, especially in men, who tend to write more non-fiction books than women which is not the sexist statement. It is just a fact that men’s deepest fear is being ridiculed and rejected, is being laughed at basically and so I’ve seen this across the board with some of the smartest most accomplished people I have ever met who’ve started billion dollar companies and are academics or whatever. Whatever their background may be, they are still worried that people will laugh at them for putting out a book that is not that good or that they’ll be rejected because no one will want to read their book. So they tend to not only worry about a lack of reviews but a lack of sales, a lack of validation from the market that “Hey, maybe this idea isn’t very good,” or, “Maybe I am not very good at doing this” or whatever and yeah, that’s super going on with everybody. And you are going to find that even if you have some success as an author, you still view some of these titans who just are some of the world’s best authors as somebody you’ll never going to live up to or you can. I help a lot of authors with marketing their books and I hear from a disturbing number of them, “I want to sell a million copies of my book in the first two or three years,” and I tell them, “You’re going to have to buy 995,000 copies of your book,” because that just doesn’t happen. It’s like once, I don’t know how many, there’s a few dozen books that will sell crazy well if that, maybe just a handful every year that sells millions of copies in the non-fiction category and they are anomalies that have caught the zeitgeist, the cultural zeitgeist, for whatever reason. You know back in the day, I’ve got a friend who she was on Oprah, she’s friends with Oprah, her book was a number one New York Times bestseller and was on the bestseller list for six months. And she sold over a million copies of the book and she told me back in those days when Oprah had all the power in the media, she called my publisher and she said, “If you don’t have at least 800,000 copies of this book then you’re wrong,” because that’s how many it’s going to sell at least but now, she was on Oprah recently on Super Soul Sunday and gone on Facebook, that is the new Oprah right? She was like, “I sold about a thousand copies of my book there.” Now a thousand copies of your book is great. It’s not a million. It’s not even close to a million, it’s nowhere close, right? So letting go of this delusions of grandeur and recognizing that not only accomplishing the act of publishing the book is a huge feat in itself but any readers at all who take the time to get through your book is huge and it can be more impactful and have more ripple effects than you think. A million is an arbitrary number that frankly, most authors just are never even going to touch not even over a tenure career. So just let that go.

[0:43:44] Azul Terronez: Right. I think it has a lot to do with our obsession about numbers in general. What does that really mean? Oh you want to be wealthy? Then probably you should do something other than being an author or use the book as a leverage to grow or do something worth talking about.

[0:43:58] Charlie Hoehn: I tell authors and I say this in sort of gest but when they start listing off, “It would be great to sell a million copies to be on the New York Times bestseller list, a Wall Street Journal bestseller list and to be on Oprah’s couch” blah-blah-blah, as soon as they start saying that stuff I’m like, “Look, you know what would actually be easier for you to do is six months of therapy and then publish your book because you have some issues going on because you want something other than all those accolades because you are going to get those accolades and you’re still going to be disappointed”. I know multiple people who have gotten those things and they lost the money or they’re still unhappy, they are still chasing that. There’s deeper emotional issues at play if you want to be a celebrity in the author world. It shouldn’t be the goal. It should be a byproduct of having done a lot of things right for a long time and maybe capturing what the culture is going through at that moment that all of a sudden this book is the only book that tons and tons of people have been searching and waiting for. It says something that is unconventional, it defies conventional wisdom, it makes people feel this really strong feelings, it makes them feel awesome to brag about it, whatever, it’s not something you aim for. It just happens and it only happens to one or two of thousands and thousands and thousands of authors every single year.

[0:45:32] Azul Terronez: Right, you know what? That’s really interesting is that I really worked on this model of helping people with books in a way that I think is important to me and then I’ve consistently remained true to my message which is this book, it’s value mainly comes from if it transforms you the author. If you are not looking for this book to transform you during the process of creating it then don’t expect the transformation to happen for the people that read it on the other end. It’s just information. It’s just a collection of your thoughts and they’re probably mostly thoughts of other people that you’ve just acquired overtime and then you’re going to re-share them. People don’t need that. People need you and if you can show them you, your information, your learning, your way of thinking then you have a shot at changing and transforming yourself through this process. You might see the world differently. You might hopefully see yourself differently. So I mean I don’t necessarily sell courses. I sell the opportunity for them to get something that’s inside of them that’s causing them to struggle or keep them up at night or they always felt like they wanted to share but they just haven’t because I think that helps them feel different. They walk out with a good quality book, they feel like it’s good. If they have an agent, I don’t discourage them or if they have a publisher but I go realize that you are placing them not yourself. So be okay with that but if you are doing this for you, you could have a profound impact not only in the world but on yourself. So I really appreciate that and I think I’ll keep doing that. It might be the slow game. I might not be the person making seven figures selling courses and make or publish a book and hack through Amazon, that’s just not my thing. I really want to see people change and transform and I’ve seen it happens to young people and I used to teach in the classroom. And watch them hold their book in their hand and see their eyes lit up and realize this is something I created and I am sharing it with the world and I don’t have to fear it anymore or worry that.

[0:47:25] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah and that is just a healthier perspective on that framing is what every author should hear right? It’s to live in this time where you can actually do that and do it for yourself. That’s still so novel and new. That’s only happened in the last 10 years that that was even really possible and maybe even more recent to be honest that it was actually feasible for an individual to do that on their own terms and to focus. I like to point to the most successful on the planet right now which is J.K. Rowling. She wrote those books for herself. She openly says, “I did it for my own amusement. I wasn’t worried about what other people are doing” and your best work ultimately comes from that place anyway of focusing on yourself, being selfish in a way of not worrying what other people are going to think but how can I either transform myself. How can I come out of this better? How can I make something that I am really proud of that is really enjoyable for me to go through this process and recognizing that the process doesn’t end here right? A lot of authors have the J.D. Salinger fantasy where they’re going to put out one book and the world is going to recognize their genius and they are going to coast through the rest of their life like that and it’s just not how the world works for pretty much anybody.

[0:48:53] Azul Terronez: Or for anything not just books.

[0:48:56] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, right. It’s the American Idol fantasy. You’re going to turn into Kelly Clarkson.

[0:49:02] Azul Terronez: Yeah.

[0:49:02] Charlie Hoehn: No it’s not going to happen.

[0:49:03] Azul Terronez: And I think that people don’t recognize it for the same reason that people want to win the lottery or win anything where they think it’s going to magically make things better. It’s not. It just doesn’t and I think for me what I’m learning, it’s humbling to be listening to so many authors tell their stories and then help them say, “But I hear something else. Is I’m helping just to reveal to themselves the things they haven’t wanted to talk about or help them think about it differently?” And they stop thinking about the book. No one comes to me that wants to help with their book and go, “Yeah, I want to crush it” and I go, “Oh there’s lots of places that you can go. You don’t need a book to crush it” I’m not going to help you build the billion dollar whatever XYZ but what I am going to help people do is find the truth that is inside of them that they’ve been afraid to tell and I’m going to gently guide them across the finish line. So I really appreciate that, we can probably chat all day and I almost forgot we are doing a podcast. Before we go, what book are you reading right that that is striking you or that you want to read that you’re like, “That’s on my mind”?

[0:50:03] Charlie Hoehn: What book am I reading now? I am reading the Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness and it’s really good. So that’s on my mind and then I can’t remember the title of this other book I’m reading. I heard it recommended by Ray Dalia. He said this brilliant Pulitzer prize winning historian tried to make a comprehensive book of the entire history of civilization and condensed it into a 100 pages which I was like that sounds awesome because I get so bored with history. Especially long history books and I know a lot of people love history, I just always find it dry and painful the way that authors tell it. So I’ve been reading that one and it’s pretty cool.

[0:50:52] Azul Terronez: Cool, I’m going to have to check that one and I am like you even after being a history teacher, it was the most painful part. Oh my god, I have to get smarter at this but I don’t want it to be –

[0:51:00] Charlie Hoehn: I know. It was mostly because of the memorization of dates and like the Boston Tea Party even when I was in high school I was like, “This is bullshit”. We are not hearing the other side, it’s like I realized that oh, the winner writes the history books. So you only hear this one perspective for the most part and that’s what I actually like about this other history book. If I can remember it I will send it to you or if I find it, what am I saying? I’ll send it to you. But this is what I like about this history book is that they acknowledge that upfront. They’re like, “Look this dynamic exists like is there any point to history?” they go through all the arguments against history at the beginning and they kind of irreverently say still we proceed.

[0:51:45] Azul Terronez: Right and on we go. One of the books that really struck me was a book called Indian Givers. It was a professor that I had in college that recommended it and he actually didn’t have a degree. He just happened to be the curator of The Bowers Museum, a really smart guy but the book Indian Givers was about all the plants, food and plants from the Americas how it’s changed and impacted history and so the author talks about like – All I can remember is one off the top of my head is tomato. Tomato is a native to America, this plant it wasn’t grown anywhere else. You didn’t find it growing in India but think about all the foods that you’ve loved and all the foods that you presumed were Italian or XYZ because without that one food, those cultural foods would probably non-existent and then he talked about another one. He said potatoes, you know that is actually another food native to the Americas. Think about the impact that’s had on the world and the famine from Ireland. So it was interesting. It was an interesting perspective on history through foods and crops and so I thought that was interesting. I was like, “Why don’t people write more books like this?”

[0:52:51] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, I mean that is awesome and do you know there’s some author, I cannot remember their name but they write books on just like salt. So they write about one particular type of food so like cod and they will dive super deep on the history of that food and how it’s impacted the world. Another great one on the history of the food that is really told in a really fun way is a book called The Fish that Ate the Whale which is about the history of the banana. And how this one entrepreneur basically made the banana into one of the biggest fruits in the world which is like an incredibly difficult thing because it’s got such a short shelf life and back then they were carrying bananas on trains and stuff and through very difficult conditions and all of these stuff. So history can be made fun. It just so rarely is and especially in school that I think they still have this aversion to it as an adult because it was so conditioned into me that this is a boring painful topic.

[0:53:59] Azul Terronez: It is boring. I feel bad, now that I am a teacher I could be a little more vocal but man, I always thought it was awful. One of the ways that when I was publishing books, I started in 2008 publishing kid’s books on Amazon. I didn’t know what I was doing, I just figure it out and put it on Create Space but one of the books that was created was I didn’t have to but I was avoiding teaching colonization to 8th graders. They’ve already learned it on 5th grade, it was exciting then to talk about the colonist. So I was like, “What’s cool? What’s interesting to me?” and you know those worst case scenario books, have you seen those at all? It’s like a little handbook and it’s basically “how to hotwire a car” “how to jump from a second story window and not get hurt” “how to fight off a bear” I was like, “These are cool” I was like, “Well I can’t teach kids this” mention that I am going to be at work. Should I? Maybe I should but then I was like, “Well what can I do? I like this simple” it’s like eight simple steps, interesting things. I go, “What if we created a worst case scenario book for colonist?” like Rono, you know the lost group of people and so what if we just let them research what could have happened to them and then create a worst case scenario? So they did, they created some amazing things like “how to escape a shark attack”. If the ship didn’t make land fall they have to escape sharks. So they talked about it, they researched that or how to escape quicksand. That was another one, all these different things and it was fascinating maybe more for me than them but we did another one when we studied 12 years of slave which was a hard book for the 8th grader to get through. It’s really old language and it’s so far removed but we did an underground railroad survival handbook. Because what they realized was that even if you have the moral courage and the opportunity, how would you live? How would you survive? What would come in contact with? How would you deal with a wound or how would you boil water or what would you do for warmth, you know? And that quicksand one was an example for the kids. I wanted to talk about quicksand and I was like, “Okay come on, it’s got to be something that they would have encounter” and he’s like: “Mr. Terronez did you know that X percentage of slave actually escaped south and not north? And during that time, they went to the Everglades and actually this was a real problem” and he had brought in sand and he had brought in a bowl of water and he showed me how it works and how you get to escape and why it works and I was like, “Okay, you’ve proved your point” but I was really great. It was real learning. He was learning something he cared enough about to learn but school wasn’t like that. I did that because honestly, I was bored.

[0:56:15] Charlie Hoehn: And those honestly are where the best things comes from. We’re not bored enough, right?

[0:56:20] Azul Terronez: Those books, I don’t know if anybody buys those books. They are still on Amazon but those are the ones that when you can hold in your hand and the teacher who would come and visit and say, “How can we make history more interesting?” like do anything, anything besides teaching it. Do something different and it will be more interesting than what you are doing. Again, I appreciate you giving me your time. If people wanted to learn more about you Charlie, where would they go to find you? How would they connect with you?

[0:56:41] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, just head to my website, charliehoehn.com. I’m also on Amazon so if you want to grab a copy of my book that’s thumbs up for me. So thanks for having me on Azul, this was great.

[0:56:53] Azul Terronez: Thank you so much. Join me again for another interview for great authors who talk about their story, how they got there and why they feel like they’re born to write. Please subscribe to this podcast, leave an honest review and you can always find me at coachazul.com.

[0:57:10] Charlie Hoehn: Many thanks to Azul Terronez for having me on his show. Again, check out Azul’s podcast on iTunes. It’s called Born to Write. Thanks again for listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about book with the authors who wrote them. We’ll see you next time.