Eric Barker: Barking Up the Wrong Tree

Transcript

[0:00:39] 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 Eric Barker, author of Barking Up the Wrong Tree. For years, Eric’s been one of my favorite bloggers because he’s an avid reader who shares all the best stuff that he learns with you. It’s always entertaining and informative and he has a huge fan base even though no one knows what he looks like. In this episode, you’re going to learn how Eric built up an email subscriber list of 300,000 readers and the answer is surprising because even though Eric’s articles are syndicated on these big sites like Business Insider and TIME, those sites are not actually the drivers his popularity. By the end of the episode, you’re going to have a clear game plan for getting your ideas to spread and you’ll also learn how Eric is marketing his book. Now, here’s our conversation with Eric Barker. Why did you pick Barking Up the Wrong Tree as your title?

[0:02:04] Eric Barker: Because the original title in my book proposal was already taken.

[0:02:09] Charlie Hoehn: What was that?

[0:02:11] Eric Barker: The original title was Most Likely to Succeed and that was the proposal went out, that was the title and then I looked on Amazon and there was another book that had that title that had just come out like in the past six months. It was like, “Oh this isn’t strategically a very good idea and also I mean, my blog’s called barking up the wrong tree, my last name is Barker so, you know, from a marketing angel, it made sense to just make it recognizable. Actually, it suits the content as well because the point of a book is that a lot of the principles about success are that we have are myths and the truths are counterintuitive so it actually fits.

[0:02:55] Charlie Hoehn: Barking Up the Wrong Tree, what is the number one take away from your book Eric?

[0:03:02] Eric Barker: I’d say that the number one take away from the book is that the maxims of success we’ve all grown up with like “nice guys finish last” and “it’s not what you know it’s who you know” are pithy and repeatable and catchy but they’re not necessarily true and that you know, it’s a little more subtle and nuanced but the critical thing about success is knowing yourself, knowing your signature strength and putting yourself in a context where you can best exploit those to be successful and happy.

[0:03:35] Charlie Hoehn: Great, so can you make that a bit more concrete with maybe a story from the book about knowing yourself?

[0:03:42] Eric Barker: Let’s see. I would say that in terms of the first chapter of the book talks about the issue of playing by the rules versus going your own way and you see some other research I point out is by go from Gautam Mukunda at Harvard Business School where he talks about leaders and for a long time the research on leaders said that — it was contradictory; half of it said leaders don’t matter, half of it said leaders are critical and what Gautam’s research showed was that there are actually two types of leaders. There are leaders who are filtered and unfiltered. So if you get to be CEO of GE, you’re going to be highly filtered. You’re going to have to move up the ranks, you’re going to have to jump through all this hoops. That kind of proves the point that some of the research showed because anybody who is considered for the position of CEO of GE, those people, by the time they’ve been vetted, they’re going to be pretty similar, they would make similar decisions. So if you pick the one on the left and the one on the right, they’re probably going to be similar because they’ve all been through the same filter. On the flip side, you have unfiltered leaders, you’ve got entrepreneurs who go through no type of vetting, you have when the president have to step down and the vice president takes the role of presidency, that person wasn’t elected, they weren’t chosen by the people. So they’re unfiltered in that way, and unfiltered leaders are much more unpredictable in terms of what they’re going to do because there is no filter mechanism. With filtered leaders, you’ve got these people who are going to play by the rules, do what’s expected. With unfiltered leaders, they’re going to make big changes, sometimes the changes are bad, sometimes the changes are good. For individuals, to sort of understand that, “Hey, you know what? I’m somebody who is very comfortable with working nine to five or nine to seven, I play by the rules, this is how I do things,” they can pick organizations, companies that are very organized, that are like that and they’ll do well. If somebody realizes they fall into the more unfiltered camp, they’re not going to do well at all at a very structured environment, they kind of want to do their own thing. So by getting to know yourself in terms of “am I more the unfiltered or the filtered leader type?” people can find a context where they’re going to thrive rather than trying to climb uphill in an arena where that’s really not suited to their strengths and preferences. That would be one example of how getting to know yourself and looking at a context can really align you for future success as opposed to frustration.

[0:06:14] Charlie Hoehn: Totally. Makes perfect sense. What do you tell the person who is like, “Look, I am a structured person and I’ve been trying to work in this unstructured environment at some job that requires a lot of open ended-ness, maybe a startup that’s just getting going, which is very unstructured or what do you also say to the person who is more unfiltered. They’re more creative, they like unstructured and they’ve been working at a company that focuses on the bureaucratic rituals of turning in TPS reports and everything, what do you tell those two individuals? Quit your job?

[0:06:56] Eric Barker: I mean, that’s certainly one option. But on the other hand, you can find more nuanced solutions to those. Is there a particular division inside of the company you work for that is more or less filtered. Even very creative companies have sections like operations, which are very structured and you know, have to meet strict deadlines and have clear processes and on the flip side, you know, some organizations have arenas that far more creative and you know, allow for a more personal flexibility. Someone could try and move into a separate part of the same company. You know, quitting is an option, realignment, or merely talking to your boss where you try and restructure the role you're in or at least set a game plan for the future where I know right now I’m doing this but you know, in two years and three years, I’d like to be in a position that’s more aligned with my strengths and interests. How can we get from here to there? People can look at an entrepreneurial activity outside of it, that’s something that can grow with time as they’re doing a day job, that takes more advantages of their strengths and interests.

[0:08:13] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, I can really resonate with this on a personal level and I think another thing I’d ad to this point is that you should partner with people based on them being the yin to your yang. If you’re a structured person and they’re in unstructured, both of you can end up working together really well.

[0:08:32] Eric Barker: I think that’s totally huge when I interviewed Bob Sutton who teaches at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He was talking about leaders who have done exactly that where they surround themselves not with other people who are redundant to their skill set but to people who are complimentary to their skill set and, you know, you can look at people like Steve Jobs like Mark Zuckerberg have done just that and if you look to other great management thinkers like Pete Drucker, it’s much, you know doubling down on your strength gives far bigger returns than trying to fix your weaknesses. It’s really powerful like you said to find people with complimentary skill set to fill those gaps as opposed to trying to do everything yourself or, you know, just creating this redundancies where the problems are not being addressed.

[0:09:21] Charlie Hoehn: I’ve got a few questions for you, but the first one that comes to mind is why do you think people struggle with this so much? Why do you think this is always an issue?

[0:09:31] Eric Barker: I think part of it is that, you know, I think a lot of people kind of don’t have a personal definition of success. I think they see something on TV, we hear stuff from our friends, we think about what we should want, what success should be and you know, we don’t actually take the time to sit down and think about, “What would make me happy, what do I really want?” We kind of take, rather than getting a tailored suit, we take the suit of success off the rack and we eventually find it doesn’t fit that well and you know, that’s why people need to try new things. I mean, Peter Sims has a great book, Little Bets, where just trying stuff to figure out what you like, what are you comfortable with is a great way to start getting to know yourself better.

[0:10:19] Charlie Hoehn: I love that. Is that the idea that you’re most excited about in your book, the filtered versus unfiltered leaders and styles?

[0:10:26] Eric Barker: Basically each chapter of the book covers a different maxim of success. So there’s one chapter’s all about the “nice guys finish last” and other is all about, “winners never quit, quitters never win”. It’s like when is persistence and grit great, and when do we actually need to be a quitter? There’s actually a lot of ideas and stories I’m excited about.

[0:10:46] Charlie Hoehn: Awesome. I want to dive into your story, Eric, because I’ve been a big fan of your writing for years and I think Noah Kagan actually originally put us in touch with each other and I can’t remember why but I was really glad that he did because I consider you and I think Tim Urban and maybe a couple of others to be the people who just consistently write epic articles that I never feel like, “Well that was a waste of my time.” Or more importantly, I feel like, “Wow, that was so valuable and I legitimately want to share it.” I just love your style. I want to get into how did you start writing about these topics? What brought you to this as a profession?

[0:11:40] Eric Barker: Basically I’ve had a really unconventional career after I graduated with a degree in philosophy under grad. So I didn’t have a clear career set out for me, then I was actually a screen writer in Hollywood for 10 years, I wrote for Disney, I wrote for FOX but, you know, that’s a lot of fun and I got to do some cool stuff but it’s totally up and down. It’s very unstable. Then I went and I got an MBA but it was like one extreme to the other where I went from something totally creative and freelance to being in business school and realizing, “I don’t really fit here. I’m not like all of these people,” and I came to a crossroads after I graduated business school where there were job opportunities but I didn’t really like them and it wasn’t really me and I was unemployed for like I don’t know? Maybe eight months or so, and that’s actually when I started to blog when, you know, I wanted to find some answers about life because the standard prescription, the standard old maxims didn’t really seem to fit me, I’ve seen plenty of exemptions and I started reading all — I wanted legitimate answers because, you know, there’s tons of answers on the internet; whether they’re true or not is a whole other story. I started kind of going down the rabbit hole looking at scientific research, hopefully that would be more valid and I just started realizing — there’s this great quote I love from Liam Gibson where he says, “The future’s already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” I believe that about a lot of the answers in life where we think things that are mysteries that aren’t solved or might never be solved, a lot of them have been solved it’s just that it’s tied up in dusty journals in ivory towers. I started reading this research and realizing that some of the answers were there and that was when I started to blog back in 2009 and I originally just started positing abstract answers and then I started cobbling those together into pieces. When I started to see trends and ideas that fit or exceptions that needed to be noted and I started cobbling those together and then I started interviewing experts and getting their personal insight and opinions. It just kind of evolved from there.

[0:13:53] Charlie Hoehn: That’s amazing. So you flew through that story, I want to go to go back and rewind a little bit to when you were writing for Disney and FOX. Did you feel like you were in your wheel house then, minus the fact of the nature of the profession, right? Where jobs, it’s not a steady stream of income, it is feast and famine. But did you really feel at home there or did you still not feel that was quite where you wanted to be?

[0:14:23] Eric Barker: I really enjoyed it and it was fun but it just, if you’re doing it right, you’re probably spending a lot more time looking for work than working, you know? That just really wasn’t interesting to me you know? I wanted to spend my time actually doing the work and you know, when we hear stories about Hollywood, we’re only looking at the top 1/100th of 1% and you know, there are a lot of people where they’re working consistently but they’re spending just so much time that by the time you get a job, the smartest thing to be doing is to be thinking about the next job. That’s just not, it’s not fun. Also, writers and Hollywood, you really don ‘t have a lot of control, a lot of leverage and that kind of bugged me too as a person now with the blog, with the book, I write what I want, how I want about what I want and that’s far more interesting to me than, like I said, spending my time thinking about the next thing when I want to be focused on this thing and having 15 people whose opinions I don’t necessarily agree with or respect telling what I should and should not be writing.

[0:15:38] Charlie Hoehn: Right. Yeah. A story I remember from Adam Grant’s give and take which you mentioned is there was some writer who worked with a team of other writers and he became universally known as the most giving writer, right? He wouldn’t ever take credit for his stuff, he would jump in and make other people’s writing better and I forget if it was for Saturday night live or the Simpsons or something but this guy was working with some of the best comedy writers in Hollywood. Did you find that there are some people like that and that’s a reality in Hollywood that you can take that path of being a giver and succeed in that industry? Or did you find that to be kind of a quaint anecdote, an anomaly in that sphere?

[0:16:35] Eric Barker: I remember the story and within that context, I totally believe that that’s true. But for me personally, that person was working in TV, which is all teen based and had, if it’s a successful show, it can go on for years. There is a steady paycheck, it’s not a freelance. Versus I was working in feature films and feature films is all one off projects and it’s all solitary in terms of one writer. So I certainly believe people like that exist and having worked in features instead of TV, I never add into them. TV is more like dogs and wolves that run in packs and features is more like cats who are solitary hunters.

[0:17:23] Charlie Hoehn: Man, wow. Luckily, TV has rained supreme in the past few years and I think it’s going to be that way for a while but I’m curious, at what point in your career, when you were transitioning in becoming your own writer after you’ve gotten your MBA and you realize it’s not for you, what point did you realize that this could actually happen? Because you had a long career and that’s a slow build up, you and I have been writing online for the same amount of time and you and I both know, it takes some time to get to the point that you're at where you have, how many email subscribers do you have now?

[0:18:08] Eric Barker: Almost 300,000.

[0:18:10] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, right. At what point did you realize, “Hey, I can make this work.”?

[0:18:15] Eric Barker: It’s an interesting question because on one hand I got really lucky really fast where I started the blog in like July of 2009 and by literally by October of that same year, Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution started really sharing my stuff a lot and by January of 2010 he was like actively advocating people to, “Go read Eric Barker’s stuff,” and then not too long after that, I started getting syndicated by Business Insiders. I didn’t have the flog that, I think I got very lucky in the sense, I didn’t have the flog that a lot of bloggers might have in terms of getting attention. But that said, I wasn’t making a living off of it and to this day, I don’t have banner ads.

[0:19:04] Charlie Hoehn: It’s still hard.

[0:19:05] Eric Barker: Yeah, in terms of should I keep doing this? Very quickly, I got a reinforcement in terms of business worth doing, people are reading it but in terms of like, making a living, that wasn’t even — I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to monetize, I didn’t spend a lot of energy on that. Perhaps I should have but — so I got a lot of feedback really quick but in terms of actually making a living, I didn’t spend a lot of time. I knew I could but I didn’t really. I guess the answer’s somewhere in between.

[0:19:42] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, we’re going to return to the monetization aspect because that is something that not only you struggle with, it’s every author, right? In figuring that out. I want to talk about that more in a sec. I’m curious, with Tyler Cowen, he promoted your stuff, you started getting syndicated by Business Insider, did they approach you or did you offer to write for them?

[0:20:05] Eric Barker: They approached me and…

[0:20:06] Charlie Hoehn: That’s awesome.

[0:20:08] Eric Barker: Yeah, it was really great and after that, I definitely noticed a big steady uptick in terms of people following me.

[0:20:17] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. You, I’ve noticed your stuff either you contribute directly or it gets syndicated on some of the biggest, most reputable brands in terms of online publications that any business or nonfiction author would want to be on. Things like TIME, what are the others that you con tribute to?

[0:20:38] Eric Barker: Business Insider, TIME, The Week, New York Observer and there are a few others that you know, sites will reach out to me and ask to syndicate a particular piece, but those are probably the most consistent ones.

[0:20:52] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. What would your advice be to somebody, some author who says, you know, “I got to get on to Fast Company or I got to get on to Inc. or Business Insider,” what would you tell them? Would you say, “You need to publish on your own blog, something amazing that gets a bunch of traffic that’s just for that audience first and then ask them to syndicate it?” Or would you tell them to go about it another way?

[0:21:19] Eric Barker: I mean, I don’t want to sound too starry-eyed and poetic here, but I think just focusing on quality content and by that I mean, something that has real value to readers. I still, as much as there’s a glut, and we all know there just beyond a glut of content out there because content has become a strategy, I still think that the percentage of stuff that’s really good has either stayed the same or declined. I think there’s a reason like you mentioned Tim, just a fantastic guy. I mean, if you see a Tim Urban blog post, you would never mistake that for anybody else and you would never say like, “Oh yes, another one of those.” It’s like, that’s the last thing you’d say when you see anything with a lie. To me, that is you know, not only a statement to uniqueness but just the level of depth, that Tim provides and, you know, I think that really critical is just that issue of quality, distinctiveness, value and I think people really get a head of themselves when — because if you’re trying to build like a business and that’s just a marketing engine for you then maybe it’s not going to get the same level of attention. But it’s like, if you really want to be writing then start with the writing you know? Just show people over time that if like, “I am not going to waste your time if you come here.” That’s something I always keep in mind, something I always aspire to is, I write about a lot of different subjects and you know, I’ll post about parenting and I’m sure a lot of my readers don’t have kids or, you know, improving relationships and I’m sure a lot of my readers aren’t in a relationship. But I still want people to look at the post and say, you know, “Hey, this isn’t for me but wow, somebody put a lot of time and effort into this. This isn’t a waste of time, this isn’t just somebody cranking things out.” Just that level of, even if there’s not personal appreciation, there’s just a level of respect and I think focusing on that issue of quality is really the first step and it’s hard and it’s lonely and it’s difficult. So I think most people are quick to skip it.

[0:23:39] Charlie Hoehn: This is such an important point and I completely 100% agree, there are blogs like The Oatmeal that, like you said, you would never confuse them because they put such great work into them and it gets rewarded with the things that everybody says they want, which is attention, shares, conversation. How do people write content as good as yours?

[0:24:11] Eric Barker: I don’t want to come off…

[0:24:15] Charlie Hoehn: Not just as yours. You know what I’m saying though right?

[0:24:17] Eric Barker: Absolutely. I mean, I think that it’s, for me, the goal is always to inform and entertain and I think if you can do a good job of either one of those, you will get noticed, if you could do both of those, you will definitely get on people’s radar but I just think there is, you know, it’s like, what’s your intention? Because that’s what’s interesting about writing is that you can get help, you can talk to people, you can spend a day or you can spend a week, it’s not like a live performance and so because of that, I think you actually get fewer excuses for making crap. It’s like, you could spend a month, like when you talk to Tim, Tim spends an enormous amount of time on this posts and will just go out of his way and that sets a really high bar. But again, you have the opportunity, it’s not a live performance. Time is a big factor of it. Now, granted, if you’re spending the time on the wrong things then it’s not going to move the needle but to really say, I guess another big issue on this lines would just be focusing on the reader and I don’t think a lot of people do that. I think a lot of people, their motivations are different than that and to just say, “What is going to be useful, what would I want here? How can I make this as reader friendly, as valuable, as accessible as possible?” Not self-indulgent or thinly veiled landing page for something that you're selling. Just to give freely and make something that is a really — a resource. A resource that will stand the test of time. I don’t know if I’m making any sense.

[0:26:05] Charlie Hoehn: It’s making total sense. The word you’re talking about is like evergreen basically, it lasts forever or at least another five to 10 years that people can read it and they’ll still value it just as much rather than just being basically a press release. The framework that I love that you’re kind of talking about is — because it’s really hard, right? To kind of separate yourself from your work because something that you think is serving somebody else when they read your writing, they think, “Wow, this person’s being really self-indulgent and only talking about themselves.” But really, you need to frame things right so that the reader actually cares and they realize it’s about them and not you. The best framework I’ve heard for this that immediately clicks with most people is from Story Brand by Donald Miller and he talks about that your customer or your reader is the hero, not you. You are just the guide. Your customer is Luke Skywalker and you are Yoda, you are not Luke Skywalker, stop acting like you’re the hero and start treating yourself as the guide. That framework I found to be immensely valuable in putting things in perspective for the customer or the reader instead of yourself.

[0:27:29] Eric Barker: I totally agree. I think that, you know, you want this to be about that person where I don’t know, I find a lot of stuff will be very kind of self-indulgent and it’s written more for the writer trying, and I mean, hey, there’s room for memoirs. But what I’m doing at least with science based self-improvement type stuff, you know, it’s about creating a resource for somebody else and I mean, I certainly try to make it accessible and I make some jokes but it’s not about me.

[0:28:02] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. You know, you touched on something that is so important that I think I’ve experienced a few times in my life online with my writing but I don’t think people get it until it actually happens to them, which is a lot of people try and basically beg for other people to read and share their stuff or syndicate it, and it’s not that good. So it doesn’t get shared, it doesn’t get read and they get frustrated. But when they finally sit down and create the type of work that you're talking about, those people come to them as if by magic. It’s like, a magnet; you become a magnet for the types of people that you want. This has happened to me numerous times. Once when I created a slide share of Apple’s home page for the last 20 years. People could see that — like, to me, I was just messing around, looking on the way back archive machine and looking at how Apple had changed over the years. I realized, “Oh my gosh, their web design is like the exact same year after year, that’s incredible.” Putting that together, it just blew up and then all of a sudden all this Apple fans were coming to me, Gizmodo came to me and asked like, “Please, can we syndicate this?” And this has happened a handful of times and I think your point is so important, which is why I want to reemphasize it, which is to start from a place where you’re informing and entertaining yourself. Really making something that you’re proud of and being a craftsman. Tim Urban is like the gold standard right now of how intensively you can get in to something like this and really go down that path and go all the way. But, I mean, if you do your absolute best in creating something that you’re super proud of and not just hawking onto people and begging them to read, then you’re going to do well. 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.

[0:30:59] Eric Barker: I totally agree, I think somebody who talks a lot about the craftsman mindset is Cal Newport who is fantastic and I think exactly what you’re talking about is the title of one of his books, which comes from a Steve Martin Quote, which is, “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” You know, I think that, I think there’s really something to that where, “Be so good they can’t ignore you,” where, like I said, even if it’s not for them, somebody looks at this and goes, “Wow, that’s really something special, that’s really something unique.” I think it’s critical and along the same lines, I believe it was Seth Godin who said something to the effect of, “If you need a resume, you’re doing it wrong.” Where, you know, where the point is, you already want to be known and you want to be known for something. It’s like, you're the guy who did the thing. It’s like, a resume means that there’s no association with you, they don’t know what you’ve accomplished, you have to explain it as opposed to creating this thing, this kind of reputation, this brand, whatever you want to call it around you where you’ve done something and it’s impactful. Certainly asking people to share or like or whatever is great, but you’re much better off — I remember it was a story, it was actually the story about Mike Tyson very early on in his career when he was being coached by Castomato and Tyson was tearing through his early opponents and he wanted a title shot. Castomato said, “No. We’re not going to push for you to get a title shot,” he’s like, “You’re going to keep decimating everybody in the heavyweight division until the fans are screaming for you to get a title shot and the promoters are begging you to get a title shot. That was a far, I mean, from a negotiating standpoint, that’s a very good way to go. But beyond that, begging and — why spend the time getting people to share mediocre content versus spending the time to make awesome content, that people realize, “This has value.”

[0:33:12] Charlie Hoehn: And they want to share it.

[0:33:14] Eric Barker: And that’s what makes all the difference in the world is let that come from them rather than having, begging people to do you a favor.

[0:33:23] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, to your point, Seth Godin also was talking recently about why Uber and Airbnb took off. He said, a huge part of the reason is because people turn to their friends and they said, “Watch what I can do,” and show them on the phone, right? They want to share that. They want to show off and it’s so frustrating with a lot of authors, almost every author I talk to, they talk about hitting the New York Times’ bestseller list. I always tell them, “How about you start with a better book? How about you start with an amazing book?” It’s not to take anything away from the book that they’ve created but they see what guys like Tim Ferriss have done and it’s become almost this vanity metric for them that, oh that is the new mark of success is to do is to hit this prestigious list that’s next to impossible to hit. The reality is, you’re never going to hit that for the most part. But why not create something remarkable first? Why not focus there and let the book be propelled because there are so many cases of books being great that don’t take off for a while and then skyrocket in sales later on when they finally hit the cultural critical mass.

[0:34:49] Eric Barker: I think people forget that if you make an awesome product, marketing is easy, if you make a mediocre product, marketing can be difficult to impossible. So making a good product or making a great product is the best marketing, over the long term, is the best marketing that you can do.

[0:35:12] Charlie Hoehn: Yes, we could go on and on about that but I want to transition back to your book, Barking Up the Wrong Tree. I know the book isn’t out just yet, or at least at the time of this recording, but can you share one or two of your favorite success stories of your readers and how they’ve applied some of the lessons that you’ve shared on your blog or on Business Insider or TIME, can you share how your writing has affected other peoples’ lives?

[0:35:45] Eric Barker: I mean this maybe a little over the top but it always stands out in my head of one girl wrote to me and thanked me and basically said that she was thinking about suicide and she had been a reader of my blog and she basically sat down and started explicitly trying to follow some of the happiness research and making it a part of her life and she recovered from her depression and she’s dealing with it and she’s much happier. That alone made it all worth it, that was critical and there was another story where a guy wrote to me and he was in community college and he was struggling and he didn’t know what he wanted to do and he just said, “You know is college even worth it? What does the research say?” and he wrote to me and I wrote back to him and I pointed him to a few pieces that said yes in general most of the time it does pay off, it’s worth working. If you are not sure what else you’re going to do, if you don’t have a clear other path that you want to pursue then stick with it and he didn’t write back and so hey, that happens but literally three years later I got an email and he said that he took my advice. He started working on his studies, he finished community college, he transferred to University of California, Berkley a top university and he was graduating with a bachelor’s degree and that he was thrilled and he was happy. I was just blown away because I thought he had just vanished into the ether and here he actually had taken what I had said very seriously and improved his life.

[0:37:34] Charlie Hoehn: That’s awesome, congratulations. That’s so rewarding when you hear that kind of stuff from readers and that’s great. It made me think of something else, which is a tricky thing that not a lot of people I’ve heard talk about. How do you balance out and maybe you have come across research about this but how do you balance out what starts as a craft that you enjoy, something that you like producing. So you like making these articles and researching and doing them. How do balance out the attention that you get after you become popular and you want, I mean a lot of the advice that marketers give you is, “Pay attention to your audience, what do they want?” Right? How do you balance out staying true to the craft, continuing to make what you want but also dealing with this audience that you have that you didn’t start with?

[0:38:31] Eric Barker: I think it’s a really good question and for me, there’s always been the Venn Diagram overlap. Believe me, there’s plenty of things people are interested in that I don’t care about and I am not going to write about this thing and hey, it’s a big internet. For sure someone else would have that for you and on the flip side there’s stuff I know that I read where I’m like, “This is amazing,” and I realize that that’s not what my blog does. General Motors could probably increase their profits by selling cocaine but that’s not what they do. That’s not the business that they’re in. It’s got to be that Venn diagram overlap where it’s something that I know I’m interested in and that I have a good feeling that would resonate with my audience because I don’t just write about anything. I think that there is some of it that’s clear and there’s some of it that’s fuzzy but I look for that and the other issue I think that’s really critical here is just being willing to have that attitude of “Everybody in the planet does not and should not read my blog and read my book. It’s not for everybody,” and being comfortable saying that, “I don’t have to please everybody. I don’t intend on pleasing everybody,” and saying, “Hey, this is something that I am sure would get a thousand shares on Facebook” that’s great you know what? That’s not what I do, that’s for somebody else and I think for a lot of people especially when you’re struggling to get to that next level, I think there’s a huge temptation to do that. I think that creates maybe short term benefits but in the long term, I think it’s really problematic. So there’s a lot of stuff where I’m comfortable just saying, “That’s not what I do and if you want that, I’m sure there’s 10 other blogs at least that will cover that for you and I look at what I am interested in, what my readers are interested in and it varies because I can look at analytics and I can say did they open it, did they click on it?” bBut I also look at the emails drafts that my weekly emails come from is my own. I encourage people to write to me so there’ll be times where the analytics, the numbers might not be fantastic but I’ll get a ton of responses from readers talking about it and maybe it’s not something that’s super mainstream but you really hit a cord with a particular niche and I think that’s definitely not every week but that’s definitely something that you want to do because the worst thing to be is lukewarm, you know?

[0:41:09] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, did you ever hit a time where you felt that you could rest on your morals a bit because you “made it” like, “Oh I have 50,000 subscribers, or a 100,000 subscribers, I can kind of tapper things back and ride on my past articles”?

[0:41:27] Eric Barker: I think everybody struggles with that but I guess for me it’s not really about it. Hey the numbers are great and I love them and I definitely pay attention to them but I know that it was best stated by my agent when I was talking to him about what I wanted to do for the book. I was like, “Oh I could do this idea. I could do that idea” and he was very clear. He was like, “this is not a sprint, this is a marathon, this is going to take years so you need to ask yourself what is something that interests you enough that you’re going to want to do this for two or more years,” and that is the attitude I take with the blog where yeah, there are some ways to boost the numbers but it’s like, “What am I going to feel comfortable with, what’s going to keep me energized and that’s why I’ve never had a guest post. I’ve never outsourced the writing. It’s all me because that’s important for me and I need to feel that it is authentic. For me it’s like, “Then why am I doing it?”

[0:42:33] Charlie Hoehn: Right, I think that one of the points to the listeners is take a second to thank the people who create great content for you and just leave it at that. Maybe tell them a story of how it affected you and just leave it at that. Don’t ask them for anything because a lot of authors put their heart and soul out there and they never hear from the readers that their work has impacted. So take a second, send them a message and just thank them. Leave it at that I think that’s a good move.

[0:43:03] Eric Barker: I think that’s a good move but just to add to that, I can’t possibly respond to all the email I get but there’s a clear line in my head where if people write to me and it’s like, “Hey you got anything on happiness?” Tit’s like, “There’s a search function.” You are not even trying versus when somebody writes to me and the emails says, “Well I read your piece on gratitude here, I tried this, that didn’t really work for me but then you’ve got your other piece here that had this. That didn’t really make sense to me. So I looked at this other thing over here, that was this but here’s my question, when you can trap the concepts that you had the first one versus the executable principles you mentioned in the next one, I think of that,” — I am definitely responding to this guy. I am absolutely. This person spent time, they spent energy, they’re not just trying to offload the work onto me. I am going to give that person a good chunk of time and attention because that should mean that they are serious.

[0:44:07] Charlie Hoehn: A 100%, totally concur. I’m not even going to give examples of my own because you’re absolutely right. So Eric, I want to talk now about your book marketing. What is your game plan for Barking Up the Wrong Tree and the launch? Let’s start there first.

[0:44:27] Eric Barker: First and foremost for me is I’m lucky enough to have, I mean, I want to in still that I have 300,000 people. So I can tap into that first and foremost but for pre-orders and for release after that. So that’s played out for me. Just so you’re aware, I’m no expert in this arena. This is my first book, I’ve never done this before. I’ve gotten some fantastic help and insight from Ryan Holiday in terms of marketing and getting the word out there. I look at it as a balance where I certainly — I think the common wisdom that you hear in internet marketing is it’s just a relentless pounding and I think that could definitely work. I don’t dispute that but I am in it for the long haul. So I try and strike a balance between letting people know what’s out there because everybody doesn’t open every email. So letting people know what’s out there but on the flip side not doing long term damage to my list or to my readers with a saturation bombing campaign in order to sell the book. So for me, it was initially doing a call to arms, letting them know that it’s coming and asking for help and then after that a formal announcement that the book is coming and that there are pre-order bonuses and then we’re probably a week and a half right now away from publication day and then letting people know that the book is out and available. I’d say those are the three key pillars in terms of leveraging the email list and the actual blog posts.

[0:46:10] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, those sound great. One other email that you may want to send or you’re probably planning on sending is the results of your book launch and taking a screenshot and showing them any remarkable things that happen because they want to feel like they’re a part of your victory as well.

[0:46:31] Eric Barker: That’s a fantastic idea. Normally on podcasts I’m the one talking and I’m not the one learning and I’m more than happy to shut my mouth and have you tell me brilliant things.

[0:46:44] Charlie Hoehn: I think that’s great. I think you have a really solid foundation and the sequencing there is really important, which you’ve got to give people a heads up. You’ve got to let them know that something is coming. You have to let them know in advance why the book personally will matter to them, why it would benefit their life, and why it personally matters to you, what it means to you. They didn’t see you working on this book for the last two, three years. They have no idea what this process was like. Now I want to ask why did you decide to go traditional publishing? Was it the advance? Was it the prestige? Why did you go with a traditional when it seemed like at the beginning of the conversation you kind of went your own path?

[0:47:26] Eric Barker: I think that frankly it’s a combination of all the things you mentioned. Like I said, I haven’t spent a lot of time focused on monetization, so the advance was nice. I think there is a legitimacy to a traditionally published book that adds a lot of value, credibility, and branding, that is certainly the case. I did certainly consider going to self-publishing route and that’s where the advance was a critical component where it’s like, if I knew I could make X amount more by self-publishing that could offset the legitimacy and marketing aspect of it. Also, I think for a first book I think it’s good to promote my branding aspect, from a marketing aspect to go that traditional route and then subsequently we’ll see. It’s something that in the future maybe self-publishing, maybe doing that is so much more lucrative and would support my future endeavors that’s really the way to go. But at least first book out of the gate, I think the legitimacy, the spread, the accessibility, the advance, all those things were considerations in terms of why I went with a traditional publisher.

[0:48:45] Charlie Hoehn: And with the accessibility angle, what are you envisioning in terms of that? Are you thinking I wanted to be in Barnes & Nobles or airports? What was your vision?

[0:48:59] Eric Barker: You know hey, all those things would be great. I mean I think it’s wonderful and I can’t deny that I would like to get the book in as many hands as possible. So those would be great.

[0:49:10] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, so I had a couple more ideas just while you’re thinking. One is are you going to be able to update the bylines of your most popular, highly trafficked articles?

[0:49:23] Eric Barker: That’s something I should definitely look into because I have not spend the time of there, that’s a fantastic idea.

[0:49:31] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, I mean those machines are already running might as well plop them right onto your Amazon page. And then the other idea that I had that I think you ought to consider doing, I’ve never seen you on video. In fact I doubt any of your readers have or heard you, am I wrong?

[0:49:50] Eric Barker: I did do a Facebook Live with Harper Collins about a month ago but broad strokes, you are right. In my earlier rants against self-indulgence perhaps I do take that too literlly. There’s no photo of me on the blog, there is no bio of me on the blog.

[0:50:10] Charlie Hoehn: No one knows who the hell you are.

[0:50:12] Eric Barker: Oh exactly. Like I said, I think there’s great value in that liking self-indulgence but I may take it to an utterly banastic level, which from a marketing perspective is before the book, I just consistently would just turn down 99% of interviews and podcasts. For me that was, just talking about myself was a distraction from working on the next blog post. But obviously, especially when you’re releasing a book, it’s critical.

[0:50:43] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, totally. Well I was thinking a Facebook Live or some sort of live stream for your readers specifically on the day that it launches and just keeping pace with how the launch is going, giving them updates, getting excited on camera, even just doing simple things that show you’re human like checking your text messages, checking your Amazon rank. That’s really fun and exciting for all your readers and it’s fun for you too. As long as it’s not pulling your energy and attention away from critical marketing endeavors, which it shouldn’t, frankly. On that day you should be largely enjoying yourself and having done most of the heavy lifting in the days, months, and years before. So being live with you is a joy because you get to see that person on their special day. The other thing that I would add to that is have a champagne moment later that night where you’re with your friends or your family or whatever and toast to what you’ve accomplished because it’s a big deal man. You’ve had this steady climb up this hill and you got there and now you have to celebrate. You have to do something and a lot of authors are tempted to do a book launch party, which I think is a little over the top usually. It’s no judgment if they want to do it, but it doesn’t fit most author’s personalities for one. It becomes another ordeal, it becomes another launch, basically. If your party goes poorly then you feel bad about the launch. If you’re launch went poorly you’re going to feel even worst at the party. So just have some sort of champagne moment to acknowledge to yourself you did this. Because I found on a personal level and I have seen it numerous times is that with stuff like this, it’s not onto the next but it’s this obsession with how the book is doing ongoing rather than pausing to acknowledge with the people that you care about that you got to where you got to. I would strongly recommend you set that up if you haven’t already.

[0:53:09] Eric Barker: You don’t know how relevant that advice is because it’s funny, when I was interviewing Tim Farris about Tools of Titans, he tells a story of the jar of awesome fully aware where he has an old girlfriend of his that have put a jar together with glitter on it that said “jar of awesome” where he was supposed to put in the accomplishments because she had realized that he was always striving for the next thing and not taking enough time to appreciate all the amazing things that he accomplished. I’ve had numerous friends, my girlfriend all say the same thing where I have a tendency to not really appreciate, to immediately move onto slaying the next dragon rather than standing with foot on dragon’s head and sword held high, I am just onto the next thing. So I think that is really valuable.

[0:54:01] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, totally. I think it’s part of the craziness that makes guys like Tim Ferriss and people who accomplish a lot really successful but it’s also the part that can burn you out, that can make you lose your love for the craft. So I think that’s what life is about. It is about connecting with people that you care about. It’s your relationships and your work so you’ve got to have the relationship aspect built into these work milestones otherwise, what the hell is it for?

[0:54:34] Eric Barker: Oh yeah, the sixth chapter of my book is all about work-life balance and you just did a decent job of summarizing a lot of the research and it’s definitely one of those areas where because I’m sighting researching and experts, it’s not like this is a personal story. So I am not always as good as I should be about taking the advice that I recommend and I have looked at the work-life balance chapter and been like, “Okay now that I’ve written this, I actually need to implement it.”

[0:55:07] Charlie Hoehn: I know. I really relate to that, man. Geez-Louise. So I want to revisit the topic of monetization; What is your book’s purpose? Is it to sell copies, is it to get speaking gigs, is it to be known as a thought leader on the topic of success? What is your ultimate goal in writing this book?

[0:55:33] Eric Barker: My ultimate goal was to write a useful book that has meaning.

[0:55:37] Charlie Hoehn: To do a great book.

[0:55:07] Eric Barker: That to me was first and foremost but certainly hey, I would love for it to turn into more opportunities and I’ve certainly considered different forms of monetization but I haven’t spent a lot of time on that. For the last couple of years I’ve been focused on balancing blog and book, which has been more than enough. But now with the book complete and after marketing, thinking about the next step is a big issue.

[0:56:12] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. So I mean, the best books come from when the number one goal is to write a great book. So that’s a privilege, right? To be able to say — No not a privilege, I’m sorry that’s the wrong word, but that is a huge boon to the future outcome whatever outcomes come from the book being out there is that it started with quality. I’d imagine this book by its nature would be a really interesting mastermind group where it’s broken out into sections throughout the year and you talk with certain people who’ve applied to talk with you once a month on the phone, or through Zoom I guess would be even more convenient and potentially just allowing them to stay connected on Slack and letting them hash that out. Now that might not be something you’re particularly interested in, right? But if you were interested in it that, I am using this example Eric not because I am telling you to go do it but mostly to share one idea with authors who do listen to this podcast of a way that you could use your book. You could break it out into sections on its own into real life either seminars or a day event or a monthly mastermind call. There are other ways of turning it into a real life thing because frankly most people don’t read books. They buy them as art work to put on their shelves, to signal that they are reader rather than actually reading it. So just an idea. Just thought I’d throw it out there.

[0:58:00] Eric Barker: No, it’s interesting. I don’t know enough about mastermind groups. I’ll have to look into it.

[0:58:04] Charlie Hoehn: Okay, yeah. If you want to talk about it at some point more in depth I’m happy to help out. It’s honestly one of the lowest overhead, lowest maintenance things that you can do that is actually shockingly rewarding. I actually just closed my mastermind group down not because I was sick of it, I’ve been doing it for two years. I closed it down because I have my first kid on the way and I just recognize that there are certain things that I can’t afford to have Monday nights once ever few weeks just be totally consumed on the phone. I just need to clear up as much time as I possibly can. So just to wrap up Eric, this has been an awesome conversation and I want to thank you so much for doing this podcast but I want to do a few more speed round type questions where it’s real succinct answers and we’ll get through this quickly. So are you ready?

[0:59:04] Eric Barker: Yep.

[0:59:05] Charlie Hoehn: Cool, what is your favorite internet resource or web app or mobile app?

[0:59:12] Eric Barker: Old school RSS.

[0:59:17] Charlie Hoehn: You’re a big reader.

[0:59:18] Eric Barker: Yeah, I mean, I move through a lot of content and old school RSS. I don’t know if that’s me recommending a horse and buggy to people who have Tesla’s but no, old school RSS does the job.

[0:59:34] Charlie Hoehn: Love it. Tell us about a recent embarrassment or a personal failure?

[0:59:40] Eric Barker: I mean basically, for me, I do everything myself. I don’t have an assistant, I don’t have a team, I don’t have anything and just realizing that between books, between blogs, between thinking about the future, between trying to have some semblance of a personal life that it will — I am getting to the point where it’s like I’m going to have to either have help or do less. It’s getting to a breaking point and that’s been a big shift that I’ve had to seriously think about.

[1:00:19] Charlie Hoehn: Okay, so what is the number one thing that you need help with?

[1:00:22] Eric Barker: There’s a lot of day to day stuff that does not need to be me doing it that I am doing and just little things and like I said, I derive a great amount of value from emailing with readers, responding to readers but with close to 300,000 email subscribers and tens of thousands on the other platforms, there just gets to be a point where you’re in between trying to move forward and trying to maintain. There’s only 24 hours a day, it’s not sustainable.

[1:00:59] Charlie Hoehn: You’ve got to be getting, I would guess, three to 500 emails a day?

[1:01:03] Eric Barker: It depends, especially with all the book marketing its insane. It’s not an even distribution when my weekly email goes out on Sunday mornings. Yes, Sunday is flood and for the preorder campaign, I literally got 2,000 emails in 24 hours. It was ridiculous. So yeah, just scaling, and I don’t mean corporation. I mean scaling my efforts is something that I’ve had to put some thought into.

[1:01:39] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. If you were going to write a follow up book, what would that be?

[1:01:44] Eric Barker: That’s a good question. For me that’s tricky because I want to see, since the book is not out yet, I want to see how this gets received and I cover so many different subjects on my blog that there’s a lot of different ways for me to go. I’ve got a lot of options. So I would have to think about it more but first and foremost I want to see how this book is received.

[1:02:12] Charlie Hoehn: All right, playing that one close to the chest. I’m sure your publisher asked you that question.

[1:02:21] Eric Barker: Yeah, it would have to be something that I feel I have a unique contribution, I have a unique angle and interest in. Like I said, once you have a book out there and you’re seeing how it’s received I think that is going to give me a lot more data.

[1:02:35] Charlie Hoehn: Totally. So what is a parting piece of advice that you have for aspiring authors?

[1:02:41] Eric Barker: I would say to take seriously learning how to write a book. I think that I could have rested on my [inaudible], but I had an intensive background in writing. I’ve been a professional screenwriter for a decade, the blogging was great. But a book is a different beast and I think it’s really valuable to sit down to ask, “What am I writing, what genre is this, what sub-genre is this, what books do I really respect?” And then taking the time to reverse engineer the type of book that you want to write. Not that you are going to follow a blueprint, not that it’s going to be paint by number, but you want to understand — what’s the line from The Matrix? Some rules can be bent, some can be broken? You want to know what the rules are and then if you choose to break them that’s fine but you want to know that you are breaking it. You want to know why you’re breaking that rule and you want to know that, “Hey, this one area of books in this sub-genre are always handled like this and it’s probably for this reason. Here’s another section of the book where it’s much more flexible and here’s an area where it’s all about however you want to handle it.” And you want to have that understanding because the mediums are different. They have different strengths, they have different weaknesses, and I think by understanding the medium I think that actually makes for a much better book and it makes your job easier by front-loading that work and knowing that you’re building a car not a boat, it’s going to result in a far better product.

[1:04:23] Charlie Hoehn: Absolutely. Eric what is the best place for our listeners to connect with you?

[1:04:29] Eric Barker: That would be my blog. My URL, you want to talk about bad marketing decisions, my URL is a difficult to spell, difficult to pronounce Japanese word. So if you Google “Barking Up the Wrong Tree” or “Barking up the Wrong Tree blog” or you Google my name, Eric Barker, it will come up and the best way to connect with me is to sign up for my email list.

[1:04:51] Charlie Hoehn: Awesome, if the blog if I can try and pronounce it is bakadesuyo?

[1:04:58] Eric Barker: Bakadesuyo, yeah it’s Japanese. Basically I studied Japanese in undergrad and I found out the first stage of Japanese class that my last name means moron in Japanese and so what’s great is that if my last name is Barker it becomes Baka, Baka means idiot and the way that this Japanese sentence structure is such is that if you say “Watashiwa Bakades” that means “I am Barker”. If you say, “Watashiwa Bakades” that means “I am an idiot”. They’re the same sentence, so me introducing myself is literary me saying “I am an idiot” and I’ve never had a Japanese person forget my name ever and I have been to Tokyo three times so it’s quite a blast. So basically the URL is me emphatically saying, “I am a moron,” or saying my name.

[1:05:46] Charlie Hoehn: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show, Eric. This was great.

[1:05:51] Eric Barker: Oh thanks a lot man, I appreciate it.

[1:05:55] Charlie Hoehn: Many thanks to Eric Barker for being on the show. You can buy his book, Barking up the Wrong Tree, on Amazon.com. Thanks again for listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about book with the authors who wrote them. We’ll see you next time.