Michael J. Boydell's The Adventure Advantage Went From Scribbled Notes to a Copy in His Father's Hands
“There will be a threshold moment where cognitively, it makes sense. You’ve got all the resources lined up. There’s no excuses, but you haven’t gone through that emotional final threshold of just deciding, you know what, I’m just going to do this.”
Michael J. Boydell, author of The Adventure Advantage
Michael J. Boydell advises CEOs, executive teams, and YPO forums on what he calls threshold moments, the point where change is undeniable and more of the same is not the answer. When the pandemic grounded his practice in 2020, he sat down to write the book he had been carrying around as scribbles of notes. Three weeks of writing alone produced one beautiful paragraph, and nothing else.
The op-ed that started the book
Clip · Mike Boydell on the op-ed that sparked the book · 31s
In April and May of 2020, Boydell watched the same thing everyone else did, a world waiting to go back to normal. He wrote a piece about it called COVID reality show, and a national newspaper picked it up as an op-ed.
“It felt to me like we were in the greatest reality show of all time, that we think we’re watching the show as audience members when we are in fact the show.”
— Michael J. Boydell, author of The Adventure Advantage
The op-ed put a name to the thing he had been working on with clients for a decade. The people who stopped waiting for the world to come back, who stepped into the growing pains and said goodbye to the way things used to be, got through the cycle early and had an advantage. That became the posture the book is named for.
Three weeks alone, one paragraph
Clip · Mike Boydell on three weeks alone, one paragraph · 32s
Boydell had spent roughly ten years running an advisory practice built on conversation, traveling the world to work with leaders and teams in person. He had never really put pen to paper. He also grew up with two academic PhD parents, in a house where writing meant detailed research and source material and you were not allowed to just have an opinion. So he tried to write it himself first.
“I decided to write the book on my own at first, and I would sit down and have all my set up and do all the thing. And after two or three weeks, I would have a really beautiful paragraph. And that’s it.”
— Michael J. Boydell, author of The Adventure Advantage
What he took from that was not that he could not write. It was that this book was not an academic exercise, and that he needed help to get it out.
“This is something that had to come from inside of me and I needed help to do that.”
— Michael J. Boydell, author of The Adventure Advantage
Why he chose Scribe Media
Clip · Mike Boydell on what Scribe did with his scribbled notes · 24s
Boydell researched a number of options before he landed on Scribe Media. What sold him was the promise underneath the marketing.
“[Scribe’s message] landed on me as basically we’re going to help you write the book that’s inside of you. And that’s what I wanted. And that’s what Scribe delivered.”
— Michael J. Boydell, author of The Adventure Advantage
Three years later, it is still the first thing he says about the experience.
“I have to start at the outset by saying that Scribe really helped me in a pivotal moment when I had ideas and possibilities and scribbles of notes everywhere and Scribe helped me turn all of that into an actual book.”
— Michael J. Boydell, author of The Adventure Advantage
Halfway through the book, his father was diagnosed
Clip · Mike Boydell on the race to put a copy in his father’s hands · 21s
The book started out written for the executives Boydell works with, the ones who would never buy a book with a purple cover about untethering your soul. Adventure was the platform that would get them to open it. Then, about halfway through the manuscript, his father was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer of the terminal variety. When it turned into leukemia, he had roughly six months.
“For me, it became a race because I wanted to get the book out into the world. And it felt like a meaningful milestone to have him hold a copy before he passed away.”
— Michael J. Boydell, author of The Adventure Advantage
He did the thing every author is told never to do. He reopened a manuscript that was already locked and signed off, changed a few things to make it more personally connecting, and wrote a poem for his father called Clean Pass that now opens the book. Then he rushed him an advance copy and sent him chapters as PDFs.
His father, always the academic and always the father, could not stop editing. He called from a hospital bed to say he wished he had been asked earlier, that this part would land with readers and that part would be hard for them. In his last few days, holding a book he could no longer read, he reached for the dry, sharp humor that had always been his way.
“Did reading your book give anyone else this big a headache?”
— Michael J. Boydell, author of The Adventure Advantage
Boydell had that exchange because the book existed and because it got finished in time. The launch party his wife orchestrated came very soon after his father passed away.
How the book shows up in his work now
Clip · Mike Boydell on why he never leads with the book · 26s
Boydell does not use the book as a lead magnet, and he is direct about that. He describes his work as playing jazz, listening for what the person in front of him needs and reaching for the right thing at the right dose.
“I don’t come with the book. I don’t lead with the book. I don’t have one way. I don’t have a methodology. I kind of trade in the world of just good conversation and listening, really deep listening.”
— Michael J. Boydell, author of The Adventure Advantage
The book sits in the toolkit instead. It shows up inside corporate engagements with CEOs and leadership teams, in intensive one-to-one client work, and in curated retreats of eight or ten people. And every so often an organization asks for the book itself, in his words, “can you work with 50 of us and take us through the book and the concepts?”
The airport hat, and the accountability he did not expect
Clip · Mike Boydell on the accountability he did not expect · 41s
Boydell says he never had a grandiose notion of being a bestselling author. His reasons for writing were personal. So when he lists the unexpected upside, he starts with a baseball cap. The launch produced swag, hats and t-shirts, and once he could travel again he wore The Adventure Advantage hat through airports, which are full of people in some kind of anxious panic. Strangers would ask him who he was and what this adventure advantage thing was, and he would tell them it was a book that might be of value to them.
The second unexpected outcome is the one he calls annoyingly personal. His name is on a book about moving through change, and the people in his circle know it.
“Having this book out in the world, having my name on it, having people in my circle and sphere know that I wrote this book, I have no defense except to continue to grow and move myself through change. So every time I get frustrated, every time I get annoyed by my perfect plan, not going, it’s like, yeah, I should talk to the person that wrote that book.”
— Michael J. Boydell, author of The Adventure Advantage
Three years after publication, the book is still working on its own author. The opening dedication names both of his sons, and it says how it thrills him to witness them adventure.
What he tells first-time authors
Clip · Mike Boydell on the threshold every author has to cross · 43s
Asked what he would say to someone sitting on a book, Boydell goes back to the language of his own practice. An idea shows up like a horizon, uncertain and distant and calling you forward. Adventure is what happens when the perfect plan gets doused. And then there is the last step, the one that has nothing to do with being ready on paper.
“You don’t know how it’s going to go. You can’t know how it’s going to go. You just know that it’s your future’s on the other side of that.”
— Michael J. Boydell, author of The Adventure Advantage
“That’s where courage lives. That’s where bravery lives. It doesn’t live on this side of the door. It lives on the other side.”
— Michael J. Boydell, author of The Adventure Advantage
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