Mckenna Bailey: We're Just Talking

Transcript

[0:00:38] 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 McKenna Bailey, author of We’re Just Talking. Have you ever bombed on a job interview? Well, this episode could prevent that from ever happening again. McKenna’s book is about helping people ace the job interview, through preparation and the right state of mind, you can enjoy the interview and land the gig. We also talk about our experience working together as coauthors on the book Play For A Living. At the end of the episode, she shares the most awesome luck we’ve experienced since publishing the book. Now, here is our conversation with McKenna Bailey.

[0:01:37] Mckenna Bailey: I graduated college, it was 2011 so it wasn’t 2008, it wasn’t the worst period of time but it was still, everybody was hearing that it’s going to be hard to get a job, you’re probably going to have to do internships where you’re not going to get paid, you’ll probably live with your parents until you’re 35 and it was just a very bleak situation. For me, going through school, high school and college, I talk about this in the book, I was always pretty average, I was smart enough to get good grades but I wasn’t having on extracurricular, I didn’t really – I was sort of in college for the experience of college.

[0:02:14] Charlie Hoehn: You were there to have fun?

[0:02:15] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah, definitely. I think that when I graduated and I got hit with this, if the all stars aren’t getting hired, I’m certainly not going to get hired with my English degree from Arizona State. Love the school but what am I going to do? I kept getting, I would have to send out hundreds and hundreds of resumes to companies but when I would get the interview, I noticed that I would get the job and my resume wasn’t stellar because there wasn’t a lot to it but I found that once I got into the room, that I could get people to want to work with me.

[0:02:55] Charlie Hoehn: How many times did that happen?

[0:02:57] Mckenna Bailey: It happened frequently enough that I’ve been lucky enough to always be employed since graduation and it was happening while I watched other friends go on interviews and just not get it and get frustrated and you know, you start to feel that guilt when you feel like you have this thing that other people don’t have and you don’t really get what the difference is because you’re not obviously in interviews with other people. I really started to think about it because I wanted to help other people and I wanted to take whatever I knew and spread it out so that you know, everybody wants their friends to be successful.

[0:03:35] Charlie Hoehn: Just curious McKenna, when you would go into these interviews, would you notice the employer’s demeanor shift by the end? Would they be like yeah, just another applicant, at the end, they’re like totally warmed up to you or how was it on their end?

[0:03:53] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah, there was specifically an interview that I did with a tech company in San Diego and I went in and met with their HR person and we were going through the typical questions and I was giving answers and I think we can all sort of remember the time when we give the blanket answers or the answers that we’re supposed to give and we had sort of – I think it was probably 45 minutes into this conversation where you know, you sort of get worn out just talking about yourself and trying to anticipate what you’re supposed to say. I think feeling a little bit fatigued from this interview, I gave a genuine answer to one of her questions. That spurred us into a conversation about growing up and our mothers and our personality types and it turned away from the – just listing of my skills into giving context about who I am as a person, what motivates me, what I would like to do in the future and for me, that was the moment where I realized that the skills that I had listed on my resume got me in the door. But this idea of becoming a person that they want to be around for eight hours a day was the difference between them hiring me and them hiring somebody else.

[0:05:13] Charlie Hoehn: yeah, you remember what that genuine answer was?

[0:05:17] Mckenna Bailey: I know that it had to do with my mom, I think it had to do with people asking, do you prefer working by yourself or in a group? I said that, my natural sort of instinct because I’m surrounded by such strong personalities is to take a back seat but I really do like to lead, especially if I can see the solution. And I think I must have made some sort of snarky comment about the strong personality being, you know, my mom or my parents or something like that. That sort of got us talking about the relationships and the people around you that’s sort of shift how you act.

[0:05:53] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. I want to double down on what you’re saying which is, this stuff, nailing the interview is really obviously critical but more importantly, it can be taught. I’ve seen it firsthand, we were – Tucker Max and I used to do a podcast where we had this segment called helping Joe. At some point in the podcast, Joe was trying to get a job. For a long stretch actually and he’d gone on I believe 10 interviews and hadn’t gotten an offer on any of them. We finally decided to sit down with him and film him in a practice run of an interview. Within 60 seconds, we knew why he was not getting these job offers, it was because of how his body, his posture was, his voice, his eye contact, all these things that he, he was so nervous and focused on giving the right answers that he totally threw the nonverbal out the door. He wasn’t even aware of it, as soon as we played back the footage, the very next interview he went on, he got the job.

[0:07:09] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah.

[0:07:10] Charlie Hoehn: It’s a huge thing that most people just don’t have the awareness of. If you had to pick the big idea from your book, We’re Just Talking which I mean, maybe the big idea is we’re just talking but what would you say that would be? What do you want listeners to really remember and be able to take action on?

[0:07:28] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah, I definitely gave it all away in the title. I think the thing that really motivated me to finish the book and release it is that we’ve sort of going back to what we’re talking about the recession, gave everybody this anxiety about getting a job and about how there’s such an imbalance of power in these interviews now because there’s so many people who want a job and very few people who are giving them away. I think that it shifted the way that we view it from this interrogation of, “My god, I’m never going to stack up,” and I’m trying to start to shift it back to this is just a conversation about the subject that only you know the most about which is yourself and your experience, right?

[0:08:12] Charlie Hoehn: To that point, I think on one hand, I know you’re right that there is that imbalance, it’s a buyer’s market so to speak, there is way more applicants than they know what to do with. On the other hand, I also know that companies are desperate to find good people, desperate. In that way, it’s a seller’s market or I don’t know. I’m not going to keep using that phrase but I always get them confused. It truly is – if you are good and you know how to come across as sane and professional in these interviews, you can get the job.

[0:08:52] Mckenna Bailey: Right, I spend a lot of time in the first half of the book talking about how there’s a lot of people who apply for the job that they want and not the job that they are qualified for, right? There’s a lot of upfront work about researching the company, researching the role, taking sort of inventory of your skillset and your experience because you know, if you’re punching above your weight class, the idea that you can get into the room and charm them is probably not going to work out. There is a lot of upfront work to do but I think because people have this natural anxiety about the job interview, a lot of good people blow it and I really want to try to give them the confidence and the new perspective to say, look this is just an hour talking about yourself which that’s everybody’s favorite topic. Sort of take stock of what you want to say, what you want to highlight, think about how you can tell your story in an interesting way because really, that’s what’s going to separate you, that’s what’s going to make you memorable. It’s not all of the numbers on your resume, it’s – “Can I tell you a story that makes you engage with me that makes me interesting to you?”

[0:10:05] Charlie Hoehn: Right, let’s make it concrete because these are all things that people know on an intellectual level but they really struggle with implementing. Give me an example of a typical story that somebody might tell that’s actually not a very great story and then flip it and if that’s too abstract, maybe do your own story.

[0:10:27] Mckenna Bailey: Sure, I was tasked, I worked at an advertising agency and I was tasked with sort of educating this company, it was a snack brand and in 2016, the UN declared it the year of the pulse and the pulse is not an interesting thing. It’s like lima beans and legumes, it’s a very weird –

[0:10:52] Charlie Hoehn: Year of the pulse?

[0:10:54] Mckenna Bailey: Yes, it’s so weird and uninteresting, right? The pulse is a different word when you say pulse to most people, they think heartbeat. I was tasked with not only trying to get people to not think about heartbeats but also educate them about a sustainable, like beans are sustainable, they’re economically – they’re good source of protein for people, it’s what most people in the world eat. That’s exciting. –

[0:11:24] Charlie Hoehn: Why didn’t they call it the year of the beans or legumes? It’s so confusing to call it the year of the pulse?

[0:11:30] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah, because they all sort of fit under the pulse umbrella which is not something that people know.

[0:11:34] Charlie Hoehn: I’ve never heard that word ever. I didn’t know that had an alternative meaning.

[0:11:41] Mckenna Bailey: This is where I am, right? This client is telling me, this is very exciting, our snack brand fits under that umbrella, let’s talk about how this is our year and I had no idea what that was like. I talk about this with people in interviews about this challenge that I had to overcome, right? Because my first natural reaction was like, “No way, let’s talk about something else, this is crazy.” It was something that they really wanted so I really had to figure it out. I think the idea of telling this story where I had no idea how to do this, it was an incredible task that eventually, we sort of abandoned because it didn’t work. This idea of presenting it in a way that is humorous because when they ask you about challenges, people automatically sort of clam up and they don’t want to look weak, they don’t want to look like they don’t know what they’re doing. Presenting it in a way that no, I had no idea how to do this but we tried and ultimately, admitting that we abandoned this challenge, sort of shows that you know, I know when to call it, I know when to say that I did this wrong or this wasn’t the right call or we should have thought about it differently. Not being afraid to say that and also, being able to wrap that up in sort of a humorous, interesting story that they will remember is a helpful way. I put it in the book, I give you pages to sort of write out these challenges and then work them through so that you can know what kind of story you’re going to tell about this thing because that’s really all it is in the interview is just presenting the thing that you don’t feel confident about in a way that you think a lot of people will react to.

[0:13:28] Charlie Hoehn: An example of how you could have told that story poorly would be, you would just kind of – I don’t know, blame it on the employer or the client, what I’m trying to get at is, what is the average person do in that scenario who has that story, do they not tell it at all?

[0:13:47] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah, I think the natural inclination is to pick things where – if they ask you, let’s say, if somebody talks to you about your weakness and you say, I stay at work too late, the natural inclination is to say something that’s not totally genuine.

[0:14:03] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, “I work too hard.”

[0:14:04] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah, exactly. You want to present yourself as the best of the best because you have this anxiety about, “Well, I don’t measure up so I’ve got to sort of pad all of my answers,” where I suggest in the book is really, you’re trying to make a genuine connection, you’re trying to have a conversation with this person so that they believe not only in your talents but that you are a good energy for their team.

[0:14:29] Charlie Hoehn: Right, you can be like brutally honest and be like, “Yeah, you know, I go off to my car and I drink while I’m on the job and then I come back a little bit drunk.

[0:14:39] Mckenna Bailey: Right.

[0:14:40] Charlie Hoehn: They’re like, “Great, you’re so honest, we love that about you.”

[0:14:42] Mckenna Bailey: Right, because they’re not looking – when they ask that question, they’re not looking for a perfect candidate, right? The reason they’re asking that question.

[0:14:51] Charlie Hoehn: I’m totally joking, I hope no one ever says that.

[0:14:57] Mckenna Bailey: I think, you know, understanding that they are asking that question because they want to see how you problem solve, they want to see how you act when you’re stressed out and if you’re going to make everybody’s day worse when you have a bad day, right? You’re not trying to give a perfect answer, you’re trying to give them like, my days aren’t – I don’t react as poorly as somebody else, I’m not a volatile person, I’m not a person that gets angry and blames everybody else. It’s not about being perfect, it’s about being like truly a person when you’re giving these answers.

[0:15:30] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. It’s tough, you know? The challenge I know for a lot of people is they might work for a big corporate company and kind of walk out of there with a little bit of PTSD, you know? A company, they nailed the interview, they did what you’re talking about and the company treated them not like a human, treating them like a cog and they walked out of there, they quit or got laid off and they got to go into the next interview, right? How do we muster up that confidence again? How do we get into the state that you’re talking about if we’ve had some bad experiences with companies?

[0:16:09] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah, I talk about that a lot in the first half of the book, in that this, in it being a conversation, its’ a two way street, right? You are trying to figure out if your personality also fits with them. Now, I know the reality of some people just need a job, you know? They don’t have the luxury of saying no to a job offer but I think when you’re initially doing the research to apply for a job, it’s important to really look at how they talk about their culture. You know, companies get reviews on sites like Glass Door, you can research the company just as much as they’re researching you and really take a look at what didn’t work in your past and sort of say okay, I’m no longer going to try to work for a company that has XY and Z but what I really loved about that company are these three things. When I go on my job hunt, these are the things that are my top priority because it isn’t just – you know, if you feel the confidence of I also have to – like this company in order to accept this job, then you sort of feel a little bit more empowered to ask the right questions, to answer in a way and maybe follow up with your own question, you know, really make it a conversation where you're learning just as much as they are learning about you because that will really give you an insight and to try to sort of avoid the things that made you miserable at your previous jobs.

[0:17:38] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. What I’m hearing is, I mean, maintaining the perspective that look, there may have been some bad things but overall, there’s some good things, keep an open mind, do your research and have a conversation and learn as much as you can about them as much as they’re trying to learn about you.

[0:17:54] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah, I really think that some people, even, you know, when you look online and you, all articles about how to nail a job interview, give you the advice of asking questions yourself and I think people ask the top three questions that they find on google and there’s - you really need to feel empowered to ask questions that you care to know the answer to, you know? You really need to figure out what about them that you like?

[0:18:22] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, it’s crazy that interviewees would look up like what are the questions I need to ask the company. I get wanting to be prepared, wanting to nail it and stuff but I mean, you have to have a genuine curiosity, this isn’t like a robotic interaction like you say, we’re just talking.

[0:18:40] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah, I think that comes from this idea that we have all been scared into thinking that we’ll never get the job so we want to do it perfectly where just really trying to iterate the point that this is not a perfect situation, this is not an interrogation and this is just a conversation between two people who might spend eight hours a day together.

[0:19:02] Charlie Hoehn: Right. It’s ironic, right? Because I mean, in the mind of the interviewee, depending on their income bracket, there may be 40 to a hundred plus thousand dollars on the line for them. It could mean the difference between feeding their family and paying the bills and not. It’s hard to – I think for many people to get in the mindset that like, “Hey, this is just a conversation, nothing more. Because it does feel like a lot more. I know in the book, you talk a lot about building up your confidence, kind of getting in to the zone, what do you tell people to get into the right emotional energetic state before they go into the interview?

[0:19:44] Mckenna Bailey: I think – I will preface this by saying, this is the most difficult thing that anybody could do, but this idea of sort of letting go of the result, all you can do is the preparation work beforehand and I talk about this sort of at the end where up until I had written the book, I had always gotten the job offer, if I got to the interview phase. And between starting the book and finishing the book, that wasn’t the case. I had done all the interviews and lost out to somebody who was just better than me. There’s really nothing you can do about that. You can present yourself in the best way you can apply to the job that fits your experience level and your skillset and do all of this preparation work but somebody might be better than you and there’s nothing about that that is in your control. Letting go of this idea, what I try to instill in them is that one, you’re an expert at the topic of you, there’s no way that you can get these answers incorrect because you know you the best. The second thing is doing the preparation beforehand, really getting those stories out on paper, you can practice how you tell those stories so that when you get in front of people, it isn’t the first time you’re saying them. I’m sort of cautioning, it’s too much practice, because then, you sort of step back into the rehearsed – Yeah, but this idea that there is so much preparation that you can do make yourself ready to ace this interview. If you lose out but you did all the work then you have to sort of take that with you and go on to the next one. Because eventually, it’s going to work out if you put, invest the time and the effort into yourself.

[0:21:38] Charlie Hoehn: Author Hour is sponsored by Book in a Box. For anyone who has a great idea for a book but doesn’t have the time or patience to sit down and type it out, Book in a Box has created a new way to help you painlessly publish your book. Instead of sitting at a computer and typing for a year, hoping everything works out, Book in a Box takes you through a structured interview process that gets your ideas out of your head and into a book in just a few months. To learn more, head over to Bookinabox.com and fill out the form at the bottom of the page. Don’t let another year go by where you put off writing your book. This is what I’m curious about. I’m with you on all the prep stuff, on going in prepared, doing practice rounds and all that. Film I think is I think is an invaluable thing to do if you’re doing interviews. Film yourself, practice it, what I’m really asking is you know, a common question that every podcast or in bloggers, asking now is what’s your morning routine, what do you do in the morning? Are you just like, why do we care so much about the morning routine. More so is like, what is the routine that somebody could get in to before an interview to help them get into the right energy state? I’ll give you an example, a friend of mine is a professional speaker, he is very particular about how he gets into the right state of mind before he goes on stage. He never has any caffeine stronger than like green tea, he makes sure that he goes on a run the morning of, that sort of thing. That he meditates for five minutes before going on stage, that sort of thing. What are some things that people can actually do or is it different for everybody? Do you have any suggestions there?

[0:23:32] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah, I really think, I am a big advocate for doing all of the prep work and then giving yourself a day to just let it all go. Between sort of, let’s say your interview was on Friday, do all of the prep work Sunday to Wednesday and then Thursday, just be your regular self. Just sort of – you have put all of the stuff in your brain, you’ve practiced it, you know your own story, it’s all there, just give yourself a day to relax and not build up hype about it, right? Because I think a lot of public speakers might tell you that if you mess up what you’ve practiced something that you have gotten perfect every day and then you mess it up the day before the speech, that’s the last thing that’s on your brain. But if you give yourself the space from it and some people loved to be hyped and excited in that sort of ready to go in there and fight mode. Some people like to be calm and in a meditative state, that’s really up to you but I do think that it is valuable for everyone across the board to give themselves a day of not thinking about it intentionally.

[0:24:38] Charlie Hoehn: Cool, good enough. Now what are some of the transformations that you’ve seen with friends of your’s that you’ve helped, have they implemented the suggestions in this book and been able to do better on interviews and get jobs?

[0:24:53] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah.

[0:24:54] Charlie Hoehn: It would be funny if you’re like, “No this hasn’t worked at all.”

[0:24:59] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah, one of the things that has been interesting is that I put the book out and a lot of people who are in user experience have contacted me about this because there is a trend right now that people that are coming from different areas of life and different industries are sort of migrating to being UX designers and they are struggling a lot with how do I implement what I’ve done in the past and make it applicable to what these people are asking for when I want a UX designer job. And so it’s really been helpful especially with the stereotype of who that person might be, who wants this UX job. Really sort of empowering them to understand that it’s not about facts, it’s not about technical skillset because like I said, that’s listed on your resume. That gets you in the door. What you want to do now is bring your personality out and one of the things that I have been hearing from these people is that they have a hard time coming out of their shell. They have a hard time believing in their portfolio and their experience and making those connections and what I bring to these consulting sessions is that there is a story here and the best way to get it to work is to figure out how to tell that story in a compelling way. Because on paper, black and white, they may not look like they connect but the difference maker is you and your personality and how you think about it and how you make the connections and then how you can tell that to somebody else so that they believe that you are the problem solver that they need on their team.

[0:26:37] Charlie Hoehn: So McKenna tell me a story about somebody who’s implemented this advice, somebody that’s a friend of yours that maybe you offered some coaching on?

[0:26:46] Mckenna Bailey: Sure I was talking to somebody who, he was trying to switch industries and he had the base talent that this company was looking for but he felt insecure about his portfolio. He didn’t think that he had the work to prove that he could be successful in this role and he had already submitted his portfolio. They had already seen it and so I was trying to communicate to him that if you got to the interview then they believed in something that they saw in this portfolio. And it was his job during the interview to sort of tell the story about how these things that he had done in the past can be applied to their particular organization and for him in particular, he is very much I would say like numbers oriented. He doesn’t like all of the fluffy words that I use let’s say. But it is humans connect to stories and you can give people facts but their eyes glaze over and that’s not something that they are interested in. But coaching him into telling these stories and telling the story of how you got to this final product like how did you figure out that this was the design that solved the problem and giving that back story although it was sort of counter to his nature, really helped him understand what people in an interview were looking for and that shift that he made of, “Right I don’t have to prove my skills. I have to prove who I am as a person into my thought process. And all the stuff that sort of goes on internally and tell that story to somebody,” really helps him understand the objective of the interview and how to be more open and more engaging and not just pummel people with numbers and results. You know I could see the shift in him in the way that he was thinking. He embraced storytelling and it really made him a stronger interviewer.

[0:28:42] Charlie Hoehn: Nice and I take it he eventually became employed?

[0:28:46] Mckenna Bailey: Yes and he’s very thankful to me and changed his life.

[0:28:49] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, no I am totally on board with that suggestion, 100%, being able to tell stories it changes the retention of information dramatically. So even if you are a numbers person who has interesting numbers, if you can package it in a story the likelihood of somebody remembering what you said a week later goes from 5% to 80%. So just so on a practical level you need to be able to tell a story.

[0:29:25] Mckenna Bailey: And it is, when you think about if anyone has ever been on the other side of it, when you are doing interview after interview it’s the things that when you are talking about with your team, “Oh no Sarah was the girl who had the dog that jumped the fence every night” you know those little anecdotes are the things that people remember when they are talking about who you were. And so giving them all of that and making yourself memorable by saying all of these stories. That are either humorous or compelling really just makes you memorable and that’s a step up that everyone needs.

[0:29:58] Charlie Hoehn: Agreed. So I want to use a little bit of our time in this conversation to talk about how you and I worked together.

[0:30:07] Mckenna Bailey: Sure.

[0:30:08] Charlie Hoehn: So if you could tell the story about how that started, how it unfolded and we’ll leave the listeners with some exciting news and yeah, tell us the story.

[0:30:23] Mckenna Bailey: Okay, you would send out an email that you had this project. It was based on this slide share that you had and you wanted to create a book around it and I applied. I sent in a “I’m interested,” type of thing and you sent a questionnaire and the thing I remember you saying was that you had picked me because I had made it simple to understand.

[0:30:48] Charlie Hoehn: Do you want to give us some background on what the assignment was? Do you remember it?

[0:30:54] Mckenna Bailey: It had to do with – so the book eventually became Play for a Living which is artists portraits and quotes from famous people and people who love play and the question was, could we use people’s portraits in a book and my task was to research sort of the copyright laws on that and let you know whether or not that was possible.

[0:31:19] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah because at that point in time and this was, I don’t know, years ago because it took two, I think, roughly two and a half years for this project to finally come to fruition from idea to published book which all things considered now in retrospect, I’m like, “That was pretty fast.” You actually pulled that off pretty quickly because some written books take way longer but in any case –

[0:31:46] Mckenna Bailey: I remember you’re original timeline was six months and so every month after six months I was like, “Oh god I am dropping the ball.”

[0:31:55] Charlie Hoehn: No, so yeah I hope you still don’t feel that way. So, I had a wildly ambitious timeline for what it became but the reason it was six months was because I figured, “Hey if we can get a hold of photographs of these people and just buy the rights to those or even use creative commons then we’ll be able to for sure crank out the book in six months.” But that wasn’t how it turned out. There were some weird legal things that were going on.

[0:32:31] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah.

[0:32:31] Charlie Hoehn: And to put this into perspective, it was not just McKenna doing this assignment. I think I had 70 people apply to be a part of this project, to help with it, and to be in the project manager role which you eventually won and I can’t remember how many people did the assignment of explain – I just said, “Figure out if this is possible or not and then explain it to me in a way that I would understand it and be conversational,” and people would send me back pages of legalese. Of these long explanations and yours stood out because it was like two or three paragraphs and I immediately understood everything about the situation.

[0:33:17] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah, I think that was going back to the beginning, I had I think Recession Proof Graduate was at one point some sort of deck and I remembered reading from that that just make yourself valuable in a way that they understand and can sort of consume quickly. Don’t try to give them all of this information. Just give them what they need and so I had taken that and really sort of understood it and I remember it being a gamble for me because I thought, “You know he’s either going to think I didn’t put a lot of effort into this or it is going to be exactly what he wanted.” Luckily it went the second way.

[0:33:55] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, well it was clear that you put in work because it was in accordance with all of the other answers that I was getting, or a lot of them. Some people were just wrong. But you were right and it was clear you have done your homework and you explained it to me in a way that I could understand the entire thing in less than 60 seconds and that’s what I was looking for. So after that, you and I started working together and by the way, I did not piece it together until you just said that. That I’ve done two books now that started as slide shares which is kind of a weird thing, Recession Proof Graduate. I did originally intend that first as a blog post then it expanded to this really long blog post which was 17 pages and so I had some – a friend of mine, Susan Sue, cleaned it up, put it into a slide share and then it eventually became a book. So that’s crazy, anyway so we started working together and then what?

[0:34:58] Mckenna Bailey: So we had a lot of – so we quickly learned that we couldn’t put just the photographs in this book and we had to think of a different way one of the ideas we bounced around was to sort of, if we could take a portrait, a photograph and then change it in some way in sort of like drawing app type of situation, if that was enough of a change to make it something different and we learned that, no, that wasn’t the case, we were going to have to make something original and so then started –

[0:35:29] Charlie Hoehn: Got to do it the hard way.

[0:35:30] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah, the two year journey of trying to find artists around the world at one point, we enlisted the help of Mechanical Turks to just sort of give me artist’s names. I can do the reaching out and the sort of talking about the project and all of that stuff but we needed help just finding people.

[0:35:50] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah because it was a number’s game.

[0:35:52] Mckenna Bailey: Right, yeah. It turned out, I can’t remember but over 2,000 emails just asking people if they wanted to be part of this and we sent them –

[0:36:01] Charlie Hoehn: I thought it was 500.

[0:36:03] Mckenna Bailey: I know it was –

[0:36:04] Charlie Hoehn: It was a lot of emails. It doesn’t matter but –

[0:36:06] Mckenna Bailey: I think it was 500 people who responded and that they were into it and that they wanted to try to be a part of it but with artists who, we couldn’t give them anything monetarily upfront, we had to sort of say, “This would just be if you believed in this project. If you think that this was something that you would enjoy doing.” And then that sort of whittled down to 500 into what became the 45 artists that we have in the book and I am really grateful for that part of the experience. Because we found these 45 people who really truly believed in it and who felt like they got something that they could also be proud of and I think it was fun for them to see themselves stacked up with all of the other artists we had around the world because this was a totally remote project. We haven’t really met any of these people and so when they finally got the physical copy, it was fun to hear from them how cool they thought it was and how awesome the other art in the book was. I think we really created a small community for a little while about people who believed in the vision of this book.

[0:37:13] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, you were great to work with because you just got things done and even though it took a while, it was just like you kept at it. This goes into what we were just talking is how do you behave after the interview is over and with you, I mean not every employer or manager is this way but I am not a good manager and you could probably affirm that better than anybody. I only can work with people who can figure stuff out and will just go do it. I can’t work with people who needs constant supervision and that is a very enticing quality for a lot of employers. So that’s not something that only a small segment of the population has. Like you can choose at any moment to be that type of person. Anyway, so the book came out. We had a goal to raise $10,000 on Kickstarter, we ended up raising $36,000, raised $10,000 in the first 36 hours ironically, two 36’s and project, I am super pleased with it. It’s been challenging to sell through Amazon because it’s not a typical book. It’s an art book and the margins are not great. I am actually thinking about lowering the price significantly just because it is too difficult to sell it at the current price and just saying, “You know what? We’ll just call it even as long as we are not losing money on the project that’s fine.” But super happy with how it turned out. The cool thing is it features a lot of famous people on the book of course. And so I was sending out a number of copies to people who had been featured in the book, I mailed it with a handwritten note and stuff and I knew it was a long shot doing that but I just wanted to see if I can get it to them. I didn’t hear back from anybody that I sent it to, no big deal. I am not connected to most of the people in the book. However, we just had last week one of our artists, probably the most enthusiastic artist that was part of this book, she reached out to us and what does she say?

[0:39:36] Mckenna Bailey: So she had sent this text, her name was Electra and to echo what you were saying, such a good energy to bring to not only the book but the entire process of getting it on Kickstarter and seeing that campaign, she sent the text, it was pretty late in the evening, saying that she had went to this birthday party and she had given the book to the guest of honor, wrapped it up really nice and she just wanted to say that this book is getting in the hands of other people and how exciting that is.

[0:40:04] Charlie Hoehn: You were like, “Cool!”

[0:40:06] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah.

[0:40:06] Charlie Hoehn: You know like, “Thanks Electra.” And not in a dismissive way, I am saying that kind of sarcastically. You were like, “Oh that’s awesome, thank you so much.” You were very sweet which by the way, I would just say I saw that you were both texting. It was a group text late at night and I was so tired that I did not read the text until the next morning and the next morning I was like, “Oh my god,” and I was blown away. Why was I blown away?

[0:40:35] Mckenna Bailey: Yes, so the next text we get after I said thank you to Electra is, “Oh I forgot to attach a picture of the birthday girl,” and it shows up and it’s Electra’s smiling face next to the one and only Oprah and I was blown away. I immediately took screenshots. It was like I am just going to remember that at this moment, Oprah might know my name. And Electra had mentioned that it was only one of five gifts at the event so the odds are with us.

[0:41:11] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, I know. We didn’t know Electra - like I kind of knew that she had connections because she sent a copy to I think Bill Murray’s brother or something. She told me she had a conversation and I was like, “Huh okay,” like not that I am not grateful but I don’t know if that will get to Bill Murray, that’s cool though. I love it. So it was a total shock and amazing that she did this and Electra, we are still indebted to you until the end of time.

[0:41:42] Mckenna Bailey: Right, yeah the step up from Bill Murray to Oprah is infinite. No disrespect to him but Oprah is just on another level. So we were blown away.

[0:41:52] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, it is the craziest text message I think I have ever gotten in the best possible way. Super luck for us, so thank you Electra and this is, McKenna and I were saying at the beginning of this before we started recording, one of the biggest benefits to doing a book is not the accomplishment in itself. It is definitely not book sales, one of the biggest benefits to doing a book is, is the unexpected doors or opportunities or just fun serendipitous moments that happened because you have a piece of you out in the world. And that never would have happened, ever, if we hadn’t done that project, ever. So it’s something that never gets really talked about. I talk to a lot of authors, none of them ever say, “I just want to see what happens when I put this out into the world. I want to see what doors open and what things happen just as a result of having a piece of me out into this world and putting it out there.” And it’s huge. A lot of crazy stuff happens, some of the best people I’ve ever met have been a result of me putting something out there in the world and I hope the same thing happens to you McKenna. It sounds like this is your first book of a number of them right?

[0:43:16] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah, let’s hope so, already thinking about the next one to sort of follow up and I think one of the things that I am grateful for is within Play for a Living and we are just talking, it’s this idea of helping people to just get through the anxieties that they don’t feel like they could overcome and the different ways that you could do that and I think the idea that it is a helpful theme is something that I want to continue no matter if the topics of the book change. Just this idea of trying to help people get through the difficulties with simple solutions.

[0:43:52] Charlie Hoehn: Absolutely. I like to say common sense that isn’t common. So McKenna this has been great. Do you have a final challenge you want to give to listeners?

[0:44:02] Mckenna Bailey: I think I would challenge them to think about if this is something, if the interview process is something that you are about to face or someone that you know is trying to face. Get with a trusted friend or family member or in front of a video like Charlie mentioned and try to understand the interesting stories about your life and your experience and your career and try to find the things that you would be proud to tell. That you would be excited to tell people and figure out the best way to tell them because even if you are not in an interview, going to the next dinner party that you have really identifying the interesting stories that you want to tell people is going to build confidence throughout your life in all aspects and I think that that is something that will then transfer to the next job interview that you have.

[0:44:55] Charlie Hoehn: That’s great advice and it’s crazy if you think about it, we tell these stories just kind of impromptu but how rare is it for a person to really know which stories they want to tell about themselves? Practice them, because it’s going to keep coming up for the rest of their lives so why not? So I think that is a great piece of advice or a great challenge. So how can our listeners connect with you and follow you and contact you?

[0:45:22] Mckenna Bailey: Everything that you need to know about me can be found on mckennabailey.net.

[0:45:26] Charlie Hoehn: Everything, all right.

[0:45:27] Mckenna Bailey: All of it.

[0:45:29] Charlie Hoehn: Cool, so thank you so much McKenna. This has been great.

[0:45:32] Mckenna Bailey: Yeah, thank you very much.

[0:45:35] Charlie Hoehn: Many thanks to McKenna Bailey for being on the show. You can buy her book, We’re Just Talking, 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.