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- [00:00]
Nathan Barry
What if you could design your life the way a great product gets built? That's the premise behind Designing your Life, the best selling book by Stanford design professors Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. It's helped millions rethink how they approach work, joy and meaning. Bill and Dave didn't plan to become authors. Their framework struck a chord and grew far beyond the classroom, impacting how people think about their career and purpose across generations and industries. In the first half of this episode, we dive into that story. You'll hear how it all started, what surprised them along the way, and some of the most thought provoking insights from decades of helping people design better lives. Then we get tactical their next book, how to live a meaningful life. They want to reach 10 million people. And so in the second half, we break down what actually works for distribution, getting press coverage and the practical mechanics of moving books at scale. Getting to sit down with Bill and Dave was really special for me because my first career was as a designer. And so they were the people who actually got to work on products like the Lisa and the original mouse at Apple and these other companies that really defined generations of design. And so being able to talk to them both about design, but also how they use design thinking to influence every part of their life was just very, very special. For. Before we dive in, just a quick heads up. This episode is audio only. We had some unexpected studio issues that took out the video recording. Now, this is an episode that I absolutely loved. So even though it's just audio, I'd encourage you to stay tuned, enjoy the conversation, because I think you're really going to like it. Bill, Dave, welcome to the show.
- [01:39]
Bill Burnett
Good to be here. Thanks for having us, Nathan.
- [01:41]
Dave Evans
Yeah, thank you.
- [01:41]
Nathan Barry
All right, so we were talking last night at dinner and you said something that really stuck with me. And as I was driving home, I kept thinking about this. And it was that in order to have a meaningful, fulfilled college experience that like, goes on to a meaningful life, there's really two ingredients that are essential. Can you say what those are?
- [02:00]
Bill Burnett
Yes. The Pew Research did a long study, particularly ucla, looking at, gee, I mean, is college really worth it? That's a big question these days.
- [02:07]
Nathan Barry
As a college dropout, I'm curious about that.
- [02:09]
Bill Burnett
Does college correlate to life working? So they looked at flourishing post college life, 5, 10, 15 years out, long term, bunch of different indices. They tracked financial, social, all kinds of things. And they found six items that mattered. And if you really look at that list hard, it's two. Okay. Those two things are number one. I Have a connection with a mentor human being, a faculty member, a staff member, you know, a residential life member who cared about my life and walked along with me. So somebody who walks along. And number two, I have experiences that help me interconnect and integrate what am I learning on the campus with, with what's happening in the real world. So I need a real person and I need the real world. Yeah.
- [02:46]
Nathan Barry
Okay, so that stood out to me because as I was trying to sum up everything that both of you have done over, you know, 40 plus years and, and all of this and your, your work at Stanford and everything else, I just saw like, oh, that's it, that's what you were doing. You were investing in as many, you know, college students and, you know, young adults as possible to create exactly that.
- [03:11]
Dave Evans
Well, and the funny thing about, the sad thing about that survey is less than 5% of college students report having those two things. You know, so you go through, you can go through college, you can have all the classes, you can never go to office hours, you can never meet a professor, you might have your friends in the dorm, but if you don't meet an adult who cares about your journey, it's not going to work. And a lot of places your education is pretty theoretical. You know, we teach in the engineering school. You can learn a lot of engineering, but never build anything. Never go out and, or go out in the world and see how things get made or designed or engineered. So we're really about trying to both connect those two dots. So we do a lot of office hours and a lot of time invested in our students, but also sending them out in the world to prototype stuff, to try stuff to see if what they're studying. You know, as any residents, when they actually see it happening in the world, you, you don't necessarily have to have a job or a full time internship. You can just go talk to people and find out if what you're learning translates to something in the world that's useful and interesting to do.
- [04:14]
Nathan Barry
Yeah, I love that. Okay, so give me the high level summary of what you spend your time at Stanford doing and what the, what the program that you run is and all that.
- [04:23]
Dave Evans
Sure.
- [04:24]
Bill Burnett
Well, I think this is a little different answer than you were looking for. What we're actually doing, what's under the hood, and I'll let Bill say what we formally do. You know, we're designers, so we spend a lot of time reframing your problem. Problem finding precedes problem solving and you're working on the wrong problem it doesn't matter. So we spend a lot of time reframing what you're working on, what your problem is. And the goal of reframing is to give you more freedom. So we're in the, we're in the freedom business. Followed by once you have that more freedom, then we give you permission, both through concepts and particularly doable tools to go enter into that freedom and do something interesting. So what we do is we give people freedom and permission. That's what we do. Now how we do that is in classes and office hours in a variety of ways.
- [05:07]
Dave Evans
Yeah. So I run what's called the Life Design Lab at Stanford. Everybody has to have a lab. So that's our lab. We teach classes for undergraduates, for freshmen, for seniors. We teach a class called Designing the professionals for MBA students and PhD students. And it's all based around this idea of life design, using design techniques, design thinking and human centered design to figure out what you want to be when you grow up. And so students, it's very popular classes because class is really about the students, their transformation. And most of the students don't have any background in design. And I've been teaching design at Stanford since a long time. Since long since dinosaurs Roamed Plaza.
- [05:46]
Nathan Barry
I, I looked at your LinkedIn, I think I saw 40 on there.
- [05:53]
Dave Evans
So the classes are amazing. And we teach the classes. I'm, I'm in the middle, this is week six of, of our ten week quarter. So I'm in the middle of that quarter. I'll teach tomorrow and then, and the lab also runs what we call the transfer studio because we wanted to give the class. Dave and I decided, among other things, write a book and try to have more impact to give the class away to any university who wants it. So We've trained about 610 universities, maybe 5,000 educators on teaching this class at their schools. And it's all over the country and some internationally. So, so we teach, we sponsor research because Stanford's a research university. You want to know that your stuff works and not just because the students like it, but that it actually has some efficacy in a variety of different measurements. And then we get it off campus as much as we can. We run a couple transfer studios a year to teach other schools how to teach it.
- [06:49]
Bill Burnett
And another big program is coach training. So the coaching world came to, when the book got popular, the coaching world came to us and said, we need help with you. We want training, in fact. And so we failed miserably at that. You would be incredibly impressed with what we did the wrong thing. We held a Facebook live event to announce that training was unnecessary. We said, hey coaches, if you're a good coach and you can actually read, you don't need a license to buy your client a book. So all alie oxen free, go forth, do the right thing. You should know what to do. The book is fairly straightforward. You're good to go. We got hate mail. Um, and like, no, no, no, we really want training. So there was, there was a business waiting for us that we tried real hard not to be in. So we said, okay, well I guess we'll try training. So now, you know, about a thousand coaches later worldwide, that apparently is a trend. So we're happy to support, which also
- [07:35]
Dave Evans
turned out to be wonderful. The coaching community in general, life coaching, executive coaching, whatever, is just full of fantastic people. Oh yeah, they want to help people, you know, have their, they're, they're a little entrepreneur, but they're out in the world trying to help people. Everybody's got a slightly different version. And we said, hey, if you're already a coach and you want to add in to designing your life tools, and this was even before the new book, we'll help you. We'll give you the do's and don'ts, we'll show you how to coach with it. You know, our, our whole idea is you take the class or you read a book and it's full of ideas and tools, but it's not like a sort of, hey, three steps to a perfect life. It's not that programmatic or that, that just, you know, prescribed. Prescribed.
- [08:17]
Bill Burnett
The very first Amazon book reviews said finally, a self help book where the writers respect the autonomy of the reader. And we read that, which I would.
- [08:26]
Dave Evans
Oh, thank God.
- [08:27]
Bill Burnett
You know, because one of the reasons we really wondered if we should write the book at all is like, you know, most self help books, first of all, they just lie on your nightstand unread and make you feel guilty. So, but the, the author got the 27 bucks. So we didn't want to be the guilt inducers. Number two, they don't work. And so like what the heck, you know, and, and, and they tell you what to do. So they're proscribing or prescribing, they're shooting on you. We have a strong conviction. We don't want to should on you and we don't recommend you should on yourself. So we were fearful that people would hear shoulds even if we hadn't intended them. And so really respecting the autonomy of the reader, you know you're the expert. You know, you're much better at being Nathan than we are. We got some tools for how that might help you, but we're not here to tell you who you are.
- [09:09]
Nathan Barry
Okay. So I want to go into design and your background and all that in a moment. But since we're talking about the book, Designing your Life has been a, like, fantastically popular book, as it turns out.
- [09:20]
Bill Burnett
Yeah. Who knew?
- [09:21]
Dave Evans
And we didn't know. We did not see that first time we ever wrote anything.
- [09:25]
Nathan Barry
So how many copies has it sold now?
- [09:27]
Dave Evans
It's about a million.
- [09:28]
Bill Burnett
Well, it's well over a million that we know of. And then there's such wonderful piracy and
- [09:34]
Nathan Barry
you're not even mad about it in Asia.
- [09:37]
Bill Burnett
It could well be between one and a half and two. We just don't know.
- [09:39]
Dave Evans
Yeah, yeah.
- [09:40]
Nathan Barry
And so what's like if you were to distill down the essence of the book or the, the, the not very prescriptive process that you take your students through, the questions that you get them to ask, what would that be you want to do?
- [09:52]
Bill Burnett
Post it?
- [09:53]
Dave Evans
Well, I mean, the first, the first part is think like a designer, right? So we have the designers mindsets of curiosity, radical acceptance or curiosity, radical collaboration, bias to action, things like that. So if you start, a lot of people want to plan their lives, but plans don't work because the future is uncertain. So we say, well, let's, let's come up with a design because design's inherently flexible. It's way more adaptive when things change. So we teach the mindsets, we teach a little bit about the process and then we help people figure out how to come up with more than one idea. You know, every, every, every designer knows you never go with your first idea, right? Yeah. Come up with lots of ideas. And we know from our research at the Stanford center for Design Research that having lots of ideas means you're going to choose better. And then there's techniques for choosing. There's techniques for whittling the ideas down to a few prototypes. And we're really big on trying something in the real world. So we talked about this last night when we were on a Good Morning Canada show in Canada and, and we were forced to summarize the whole book and the whole process in the producer
- [11:06]
Bill Burnett
says, look, we're running late. You have to have the book in the sentence. And I go, dude, we're Stanford instructors. We have complicated answers to difficult questions. He goes, well, then you're off the air. I go, give me a minute. I used to Be a marketing guy. I can do this. So the post it note, which not one sentence, it's actually four, but it's only 10 words, is get curious, talk to people, try stuff, and tell your story. So get curious means take the natural energy in your life that moves you out into the world and lean into that. Because this whole thing is kind of hard to do. You might as well start with some juice, then talk to other people. This is not the transactional conversation, it's the narrative conversation. Oh, wow. Not just like, so what would I need in my resume to get hired here at Kidd? And what are the openings? And, you know, what do you make and what's the vacation policy? That's all transactional. Like, oh, so you're Nathan, you know, and you. And you're a dropout. But it's working pretty well. Tell me about that. So that's the narrative story. So go and get the story and then start trying living into those worlds experientially. And then as you're learning your way along that. Because now you're learning your way into your own future, you tell the story of what you're learning, you know, and that generates more interesting conversations. You iterate that until something happens that you want to stick with.
- [12:11]
Nathan Barry
I mean, there's so much in that that I love as a designer myself. Right. I. I spent my early career in web design and UX design. Like, one thing that really stood out to me was what you're talking about of designing lots of options.
- [12:22]
Dave Evans
Yeah.
- [12:22]
Nathan Barry
You know, like in our class, one of my professors, you know, really stressed thumbnailing. Right. Creating.
- [12:30]
Bill Burnett
Yeah, yeah.
- [12:30]
Nathan Barry
You know, she was like, you do not create one composition. Like, we're going to make, you know, two by two squares, and we're going to make 10 of them on the piece of paper and you're going to make 10 different compositions.
- [12:40]
Dave Evans
People go to CAD too soon. They go to figment too soon. They go to all these tools too soon. Have a bunch of ideas first and, you know, and then. And then vet the ideas. Try a lot of different things. But everybody, I mean everyone in any creative profession, whether it's songwriting, writing, like I say, web design, anything, have lots of ideas. And that, that also tends to peak curiosity, that tends to pique the ability to try stuff. Have all these different ideas. Let's probably have three or four of them. The biggest, the big kind of assignment in the class and the big thing in the book is what we call the odysseys. 3, 3 completely different versions for your life.
- [13:16]
Bill Burnett
Okay.
- [13:17]
Dave Evans
There's A lot. There's a lot of data. A lot of times people just have an a B decision. You know, know, money versus meaning, you know, work, life, balance, work. Whenever it's a binary, it's a zero sum game, and you can't solve it. So have at least three ideas for your life. And the Odyssey says, like, what would you do if you keep doing what you're doing? What would you do if, like, AI comes and that blows up and you need a plan B? And what would you do if you didn't care about money and you didn't care about, you know, what your friends thought of you? Right? And the social status that comes along with whatever it is you're doing. And when people actually get into that and they create three completely different lives, they realize, oh, wait a minute, there's more going on here than I thought. What we would say is there's more aliveness in you than one life.
- [13:58]
Bill Burnett
So a big framing for us, a foundational framing is you're talking about, do a bunch of thumbnails. There's not one version of this website. There's not one version of you. And most people actually think there's a right answer to their lives, and that's what they're struggling with. And like, no, there is no right answer. There is no right. There's no one right. You. There are lots of good yous. So everybody contains more aliveness than one lifetime permits you to live out, I. E. There's more than one of you in there, so you want to hear from at least a couple of them before you choose which one you get to be. And then. And then that's all designing your life. And then that also tees up another really challenging issue, which is what the new book is all about, which is that, oh, and we do this exercise called, you know, how many life. How many lives are you like if you could live in? Bill loves this He Lives physics model. So let's say we now know that the multiverse is real and we figured out string theory, so we now know how to run wormholes so you could actually have consciousness access to all of your parallel selves and parallel universes. But it turns out in this Gedalken experiment, German for a thinking experiment, something you can only do in your imagination. It turns out that the universe abhors waste. So you can be as many of you as you want in as many parallel universes and multiverses as you want. Except don't waste any. So the multiverse would like to know how many Nathan's would you like to be in fact. So like If I go 1, 2, 3 and then on 4, so Nathan, 1, 2, 3. How many Nathan's would you like?
- [15:21]
Nathan Barry
Seven.
- [15:22]
Bill Burnett
Seven. Bingo. Turns out seven or eight is almost the answer every time. So. And, and of course I lied. You don't get seven, you get one. Which means if you're going to be seven people, then you're only going to get to be about 15% of yourself. So 85% of Nathan is never going to actually happen. And that's the good news. Okay, that's not. And then you. From FOMO to jumbo from the fear of missing out. Like, oh my God, is that it? Is that it? So FOMO is all about exclusivity. Like there is a right answer. There is a best Tuesday available to us. October 28th, Tuesday. There is a best one. Did I miss it?
- [15:57]
Nathan Barry
Oh, shoot.
- [15:58]
Bill Burnett
You know, no, no, no, no. There's lots of good ones. Be fully present to the one you're in. You're a particularity, you know, you're not a universality. And can you live deep? So you have to pick from among your particularities and then you're going to live into that.
- [16:10]
Nathan Barry
Well, how do you coach someone through that? Right. It's easy to talk about in theory of like, okay, which one do you want to pick? How do you actually coach someone through making that decision?
- [16:21]
Bill Burnett
Well, it's the prototype thing.
- [16:22]
Dave Evans
Yeah. First of all, in, in the class, we do lots and lots of design exercises. The class is really a design studio. It's two hour studio. Or if you look at the book, there's lots and lots of exercises. So first of all, we warm up, we do a bunch of improv comedy stuff. We. We play. Yes. And we play I'm a tree. We do a bunch of stuff just to get, you know, these are smart students and they, and they want to get right.
- [16:43]
Nathan Barry
You go from the, like, I sit down a classroom, like you want me to get out my textbook? Like that mindset.
- [16:48]
Dave Evans
And first thing is, you know, we have a saying at the D school. Space creates behavior. You walk into a lecture hall, you know exactly what to do, sit down, shut up, wait for the person at the front of the room to start talking. Our rooms are studios. They're set up in studios. They're sitting in teams of three or six or something. And we're constantly changing the energy. We're playing music, we're doing lots of stuff to get them to stop acting like the passive student receiving information and start acting like the Designer. So we warm them up, we do a bunch of those kinds of things. And, and we, we're constantly stressing you gotta have lots of ideas. Let's, let's, we'll teach you how to brainstorm better. We'll teach you how to mind map better. We'll teach you how to use a bunch of other tools designers use to think, think more creatively. And one of the, the, a couple of research studies on the class, one from a woman named Lindsay Oishi. She, she was looking at the class and she's like, if you take the class and versus a control group and you know, and the whole research protocol, if you take the class, you leave with what they call career self efficacy. You believe you can design the career you want and even if things change, you believe you can do it. It low. We, we lower dysfunctional beliefs. Things that you think are true that just aren't true. True like, oh, your major decides what you'll do for the rest of your life. No, that's not true. Less than 20% of the people are doing anything that has to do with what they said in college 10 years out. That's the data. But the cool one that I like is if you take the class, you double your ability to have ideas. Literally, what's called novel ideation. You double your ability to have ideas. So now you're choosing from a much broader and like you said, the joy of missing out is like, I got all these ideas, I'm going to pick one or two, prototype my way forward. And by the way, if I get someplace I don't like, I can come up with more ideas, right? So once you've got that set of tools in your toolkit, you feel pretty, you feel pretty good because you know that you can manage change, you can adapt to change, or moreover, you can put your intention out in the world and start building your way towards it. We say in the in design group, we say we build our way, we build to think. It's not like, oh, I built a thing to prove it works. I know I'm trying lots of stuff, I'm building lots of stuff to discover the possible future that I'm going to live into. And the other thing we always tell the students, don't you hope five years from now you're doing something you can't even imagine because it hasn't been invented yet? Wouldn't that be cool? Okay, how do you find that thing that hasn't been invented yet? We have an exercise called unicorn hunting. How do you find the Thing that you're not even sure it exists. And maybe it's just a fantasy, but maybe it's the coolest thing in the world. And so we do lots of those kinds of exercises. And when people leave, they really have adopted the mindset and sort of the stance of being a designer. And our goal is that you're the designer of your life. We're not the guys telling you what to do. We don't should. Yeah, but you know, you reawaken your basic creativity, you reawaken your basic curiosity and you feel pretty confident that you can go out in the world and get what you want.
- [19:45]
Bill Burnett
The essence of prototype iteration. And in design, we prototype to learn something, we don't prototype to prove that we're right. So when you say, well, does this thing really work well enough to ship it? Let's prototype it. Okay, that's an engineering prototype that's doing a test like, I think I'm right. Let me test that I'm right. That's a certain kind of prototype. That's not what we're talking about at all. We're talking about a prototype like, gee, I wonder what it would be like to work for the CIA. Do I really want to work for an organization that kills people without saying anything about that. That was actually a conversation with one of my students and like, well, how would we figure that out? You know, so go off and have a conversation. So there we have conversations, learning what people's stories are like. And because we're story generating animals, it turns out sitting down, having a cup of coffee with somebody who's living the kind of life you're thinking about living is an incredibly good experience. It's actually, there's a research out of Harvard on this about surrogation versus analysis. It turns out surrogation, participating in another life through somebody else's lived experience is a more accurate way to make decisions than research. So reading the 6 inch dossier is not nearly as good as talking to two people who've done it before. And then try the experience. Get a ride along, sit in, go do a little thing, do a small project and keep iterating that until you find something worth committing to. And then hold that for a year or two or three as a prototype. And we're talking a lot about college kids. But this question never goes away. I mean, so in it. So I no longer teach undergrads. I teach in the DCI program at Stanford, the Distinguished Careers Institute. A very fancy name because it's expensive for a gap year for grownups so if you're 45 to 90 years old, you can take a year off and come to Stanford and think deeply about what do I do with the rest of my life. Most of them are 55 to 75, what we used to call retirement age, rethinking themselves, probably won't go back and live the life they left. And they're all asking the exact same questions that the 19 year olds are. They ask it with a different mindset, with a different situation, but it's the same darn question. And then in between, our coaches are mostly working with people in their careers. So 35, 45 people. So, you know, so we're, we're in every generation, you know, we're from Gen Z to boomers. And guess what? Everybody thinks their life is important to them. And everybody's asking the question, now what? And then not only now what, but even after I design that life and does it really work? Is, is that a better life? Is that a better career? Is that a better situation? Oh, and is my lived experience of it actually working for me and is it being fulfilling? And what we overwhelmingly started hearing, particularly after the pandemic, was no.
- [22:12]
Nathan Barry
Right.
- [22:12]
Bill Burnett
So then we got stuck writing another book.
- [22:15]
Nathan Barry
So there's so much that I want to get into the book. And we still need to come back to your background in design. But before we do that, now that I'm tallying up, we designed lots of products before.
- [22:27]
Bill Burnett
Okay, yeah, but something that I'm thinking
- [22:31]
Nathan Barry
about is like the problem of an abundance of opportunity. And so a lot of listeners to the show may have been in a place where early in their career or something else, they're like, do I choose between A or B? You know, I have this range of things. And then somehow they found themselves in this creator world where now they have thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people listening to them on a weekly or monthly basis for their expertise. And then this incredible influx of opportunity because now you have the attention of all these people who are then saying, do you want to speak at this event? Do you want to start this business with me? Do you want to do all of these things? And so you go from this fairly narrow set of opportunities to basically an infinite set of opportunities, and, and, and
- [23:19]
Dave Evans
knowing you could generate more if you
- [23:20]
Nathan Barry
wanted to generate more, because, like, your whole frame for the world is now broken. Because, like, wait, I can connect with basically anyone that I want to and I can start any business that I want.
- [23:29]
Bill Burnett
Right.
- [23:30]
Nathan Barry
And so I talked to all of these creators who Were like, I, I have no idea what to do because
- [23:36]
Dave Evans
how do I choose?
- [23:38]
Nathan Barry
How do I, how do I choose? How do I even begin to frame this problem? And they go talk to their friends, right, that they grew up with, went to college with, whatever, who, who cannot relate in any way.
- [23:49]
Dave Evans
Right.
- [23:49]
Nathan Barry
Be. And you're like, what are you talking about? You have too much money, too much opportunity, too many connections. And so I'm very curious how you would go about, like, helping, you know, coaching someone through a problem like that.
- [24:01]
Bill Burnett
Well, see, interestingly, in most career paths, you can still walk into it. Okay, we talk about design thinking. Yep. You know, easiest way to understand design thinking is understand other ways of thinking that it's not. There's engineering thinking, where we solve our way forward. And there's a right answer that's replicatable every time. There's business thinking, where you optimize your way forward. There is no right answer. But you can get better, preferably quantitatively and over time. There's research thinking, where you analyze your way forward. There's bureaucratic thinking, where you process your way forward. And those are all really powerful tools. They all think they have right answers, but there's a whole class of questions called wicked problems. That's a concept developed by urban planners back at berkeley in the 70s where you don't know what you're looking for, so you find it. The solution is so unique to the circumstances that it's not replicatable, you know, and it changes over time. Oh, deeply human problems and wicked problems. None of those tools work because there's no right answer. And they usually rely on the future where we have no data. So you can't analyze data that doesn't exist. So you're screwed. Except design your way forward so we can actually do this empirical, iterative process of designing your way forward. So when you're facing the wicked problem of too many wonderful choices, you have to start you don't have as the convenience that everybody else does, which, oh, there's probably the right answer about how do I make partner in the law firm. There's the right answer. How do I become vp? How do I get the next big VC round? How do I do the thing everybody says you're supposed to want to do here? You're not that person. You are the dog who caught the car. You're sitting there with a bumper in your mouth. You got a car. What do you do with it? Um, and. And then the question becomes, oh, what do I actually want? Now there might be the tempting right answer is that which will create even more followers. So bigger is better, and I can just fall right into bigger is better and now can optimize and. And call Kit and they can help you solve that problem. Um, so you want them to think that way, but that actually isn't the right answer. That's just one answer. So now when you really have that many choices, it does actually boil down to you have to really think through what you want. We call that coherence and your compass and what your values are. So it actually becomes a value alignment issue.
- [26:09]
Dave Evans
Yeah, we've got a great little snippet of a lecture we use because we have a decision making model. How do you make a decision in the face of abundance? And it's a professor of philosophy, I think, at Rutgers, a woman named Ruth Chang. And she says, look, when faced with two options, equally wonderful and equally, you know, potentially fantastic, money, whatever, you know, prestige, whatever, but different, you have the opportunity to author who you want to be. Who do you put your agency behind? Because the external world is saying these things are equal. Then the question becomes, if I go down this path, I become this kind of a person. If I go down this path, I become that kind of person. So the question gets back to values, coherence of who do you want to become? Right. Because we're all becoming into the next version of ourselves.
- [26:56]
Bill Burnett
Can is, not should.
- [26:58]
Dave Evans
And her thing is like, put your agency behind something and become the person you want to be. And that's actually kind of the peak of human potential is to be be able to author the person you are. A lot of people in, in. In the traditional economy or in, you know, whatever you want to call it, are basically just slogging through a job, hanging on, probably not happening. 70% of American workers are disengaged at work according to the Gallup polls. And that number hasn't changed much in 20 years. So 70% of the people get up on Monday morning and go, I got to go to work. You're talking about people who go, who, who saw the electric fence and realized there was no juice in it. Yeah, they just hopped the fence and now they're doing their own thing. And that's another challenge. Right now I can do anything. And maybe if I get a little bit of success, how do I figure out what's next? But you, you figure it out by putting your agency yourself behind the thing you do. In the dinner we had last night with other. Other folks who are creators, everybody is doing it because it's their mission in life. They didn't do it because they wanted, you know, success and fame on Instagram. That was the tool to get to being able to have the permission to keep doing the thing they were doing. Right. But they would probably do it anyway.
- [28:16]
Nathan Barry
There's a line that I've heard from Seth Godin where he says profit is just permission to do it again tomorrow.
- [28:21]
Bill Burnett
Exactly.
- [28:22]
Nathan Barry
And so, yeah, indicator, you're doing the right thing. Yeah, yeah. So you're talking about design thinking and this approach to it. I want to know in the early stages of your career and all of that where you got exposed to design thinking and the types of products that you got to apply this on, hands on.
- [28:36]
Dave Evans
Sure. You know, I grew up in the East Coast, I grew up right outside of Boston. Wanted to get as far away from my parents as possible. Ended up with Stanford. And Stanford has this really unique design program, had it since the 60s which combines engineering, art, psychology and anthropology. And I thought, oh, I'm a guy who can't stick to one subject. This looks pretty good to me and particularly the art part because I'm also an artist. But so I got into this program and it's basically human centered design. It was the original thinkers from mit, from Stanford, from Berkeley thinking about how do we design stuff that responds to human needs, otherwise we're creating inhuman. In those days, machines now, you know, human centered design to create better interactions, websites, digital stuff, experiences. So I fell into that pretty early. And then I, and then I ended up working in the toy industry. Worked on Star wars toys for about two or three years, came back to Valley and, and then just jumped into high tech. And I've been in the tech business ever since. I did a couple of startups where I was one of the founders, raised the money, sold one successfully, ran the other one straight into the ground. So I had both of those experiences, which is great. I worked at Apple for seven years designing. Right when we were starting to really pioneer the modern laptop was the original PowerBook 100 was the first laptop from Apple that was successful. And so I was in that team for about seven years. Then I did consulting and I designed toilets for the Kohler Corporation, which is a really interesting bunch of people and ticketing systems for stadiums and medical devices and stuff. Consulting was fun because you get this huge variety. And then in 2000 and I had been teaching all along a little bit, you know, 1, 1/4 a year. And in 2006, David Kelly, who runs the. The D School has. Was starting the D School is the founder of ideo, the Big international consulting firm, Ideation innovation firm. He called me up and said, hey, would you want to come in and do this full time? So most of my experience has been in industry. I've only been a full time academic since 2006.
- [30:38]
Nathan Barry
Okay. But I mean like building a lot of the products.
- [30:41]
Dave Evans
Building a. Lots and lots of products. Lots and lots of products and more product.
- [30:45]
Bill Burnett
I mean.
- [30:45]
Nathan Barry
Yeah.
- [30:45]
Bill Burnett
You know, and I got two products
- [30:48]
Dave Evans
in the computer history museum, which is kind of cool.
- [30:51]
Nathan Barry
It's very cool.
- [30:52]
Bill Burnett
Yeah. I was just walking through the technology museum in Pearson. Oh, there's Elisa.
- [30:55]
Nathan Barry
How cool.
- [30:56]
Bill Burnett
No, so my back. I was a mechanical engineer. Actually was on the hard side and not the design side. When I was. I was at Stanford and at Apple early like Bill, but a couple years before him. So I was going through the ME program at Stanford and doing heavy thermal science and this kind of stuff, making engines, you know. But hung out a lot with the design guys. The crazy guys who would lie around in the Imaginarium and, and stare at strange psychedelic images like, this is pretty interesting. Then ended up in high tech and it was on the original Lisa team. The Lisa was the computer that preceded the Macintosh. I often say that Lisa died in childbirth, but birthed Macintosh into the world. The first user friendly computer on the planet. So I was the world's first, you know, computer mouse product manager at Apple
- [31:36]
Nathan Barry
in 1979, which was a transformational product.
- [31:39]
Dave Evans
Yeah.
- [31:39]
Bill Burnett
And one of the first times I got to come to Boise, because where I'm sitting now was in 1980 to fly out here when Hewlett Packard had just opened what became the new printer division.
- [31:48]
Nathan Barry
Yeah.
- [31:48]
Bill Burnett
And started to invent this thing called desktop printing. Desktop laser printing. So I was looking at the very first Canon laser optic bench on a Hewlett Packard lab in 1980. So I started laser printing, desktop publishing and mousing at Apple. And that's. And I worked with what was then called hubby Kelly Design, which was the predecessor what became ideo. So that was the first product that they did. So we created the mother of ideo. So I've been hanging around designers my entire career and facilitating their working product, managing them. And then I went into consulting and mostly I was also on the Apple corporate culture committee. We were, the first year I was at Apple we grew from 800 to 5,000 people.
- [32:27]
Nathan Barry
Wow.
- [32:27]
Bill Burnett
So that was kind of fast. So suddenly there's way more of them than us. You know, in six weeks in, I was one of the old guys. And so I ended up on the culture committee how do we not lose it? And Apple suddenly becomes National Semiconductor, you know, instead of Apple. And that turned into an interesting conversation. So a lot of my consulting work, I was an unemployed marketing guy for 30 years. What we now call gigging. A lot of that was around corporate culture. So designing organizational systems, designing corporate cultures, designing processes that don't just get the work done but care about the worker on the way.
- [32:59]
Dave Evans
There was one other thing he left out. He was one of the founders of Electronic Arts.
- [33:03]
Bill Burnett
Another which was interesting to really understand product design because I ended up being. And I did that because I really love, I want to do a startup one, do a VC thing, want to be with a good team, wanted to be an emissionally minded company and I wanted to do good work. And they had all those things they happened to want to do personal software, which I thought was incredibly boring. I still don't play games, but everything else was there. So five out of six is hard to get. Go for it. So I jumped on that bus and of course ended up in charge of product development. So even though I wouldn't have bought one of our products, I helped create the process that created them. And that was really understand. Do I understand how this process works? Because I'm doing it as a professional facilitator, not necessarily as a user.
- [33:45]
Nathan Barry
What I love about both of you, your stories is this blend of the real world application, the, you know, the very heavy research based, you know, everything you've done at Stanford and all of that and then just the, the deep investment in people all the way through. Right. As you're talking about building company cultures and all. Because so many people end up in this place where they're saying they're designing in a purely academic way.
- [34:10]
Bill Burnett
Yeah.
- [34:10]
Nathan Barry
Or, or it's theoretical. And you're like this is how it works. You're like, no, it's a combination of like it doesn't work anything like you know, you think it does on paper. And so yeah, I, I mean I don't have a question in it, but if there's more on that.
- [34:24]
Bill Burnett
Too many academics are just about the idea and too many business people are just about the money. And frankly, it's like yourself gotten both of those are just tools to get to the people. It's about the people.
- [34:35]
Dave Evans
And it still astonishes me that 95% of engineering programs across all the universities that I know of don't teach psychology. Like if you don't, if you. I know how to build anything because I'm a smart engineer. I'm Going to build things that are inhuman because I, I haven't factored in the fact that, oh, nobody knows what this button does or nobody can figure out this interface and nobody can figure out that. So it's just a little bit of human psychology, goes a long way to enable people to do better designs. And then, you know, I've always cared about the aesthetics of things. I mean, I used to tell my teams, like, it takes nine months to make a baby because it was just early days of being a dad. And it's going to take about nine months to make this computer. So let's. Babies are beautiful, we got plenty of time. Let's make this thing beautiful. And then going to Apple, just reinforce that. Because the studio is all about what we used to call them, creating objects of desire. We never talked about. Industrial design is often misused in a lot of ways. And at Apple, we talked about making objects of desire. And so three levels of why an object works. There's the functional level, there's the aesthetic level, and there's the sort of deeply cultural level. How does this fit with the culture of what humans want to do? And so that's why Apple, it's always been the computer for the rest of us, it's always been the computer that's beautiful. It's gorgeous, a gorgeous object. And it's a gorgeous object because you carry your portable around with you. It's a statement of fashion as much as you're, you know, the brand of your jeans or the brand of your, you know, handbag. Right. So, like, why not make. We're responsible for the built world. Why not, why not make it beautiful? It doesn't take extra time to make. It takes extra time to make things simple. To make a computer easy to use is much harder than just to make one that's just works, Right?
- [36:23]
Nathan Barry
Yeah.
- [36:24]
Dave Evans
To make things beautiful. Seems like that should be in everybody's, you know, the mission of every, every designer, engineer, creator. It's like, make a beautiful experience, make a wonderful product. And by the way, if you make a beautiful experience and a wonderful product, you're going to have more customers.
- [36:40]
Nathan Barry
Right. So how would you equate that, that approach to making it beautiful and the mindset that you bring to products back to life? Because I think there's some, some pretty strong parallels.
- [36:52]
Dave Evans
Absolutely.
- [36:52]
Nathan Barry
Meaning in life.
- [36:53]
Dave Evans
And that's the new book, Life is an aesthetic experience, essentially.
- [36:57]
Nathan Barry
Right.
- [36:57]
Dave Evans
I mean, it's the experience of the wonder of the world and the beauty of the world. And it's an. In what we. What we talk about in the other book, it's an experience in the particular moment of this particularly beautiful world.
- [37:09]
Bill Burnett
What underlies beauty is elegance and recognizability. So, you know, we, I mean, we screw people's lives for a living. I mean, we, we literally, you know, put out there that we have some thoughts about how you might think about redesigning your life. And now we have the most presumptuous title of all time, how to Live a Meaningful Life. I mean, I mean, people say, oh, what's the title of your book? And I'm embarrassed. Like, well, it's, it's actually how to Live a Meaningful Life. Oh my God. You think you have something to say about that?
- [37:33]
Nathan Barry
Yeah.
- [37:33]
Bill Burnett
So you're going to put that out there. Then what we have to do, what beauty looks like in, in that conversation, I think is, it's recognizable. So is as people are reading stuff, it's not like, oh my God, I never thought of that. It's like, oh, that really is true. So we're trying to mostly awaken truths that are already there. And then we're going to give, we want to leave you hopeful that that is not just a never ending elusive thing. And there's a doable step you can take right away. So for us, it's recognizability, the elegance of simplicity and doability. So if we are simple, recognizable and doable, you put those all three together and you see people's shoulders drop, like, oh, maybe I can actually do this. That moment is what beauty looks like when you're trying to free people up to become more alive.
- [38:23]
Nathan Barry
Simple, recognizable, doable.
- [38:25]
Bill Burnett
Yep.
- [38:26]
Nathan Barry
Okay.
- [38:27]
Bill Burnett
And so recognizable. It really is true. So it's, it's authentically true. It's simple and doable.
- [38:34]
Nathan Barry
Yeah. So you're not feeling like you read this thing and you're like, I, I don't know. You got to convince me.
- [38:40]
Bill Burnett
Yeah.
- [38:40]
Nathan Barry
It's just that, oh, you've just peeled back a layer to uncover this thing that I already. Yeah.
- [38:45]
Dave Evans
Knew to be true. Yeah. And I knew it intuitively. But you've named it. You put it in a, you named it and framed it. And now I can do something about it. But it, but still, at the end of the day, I kind of knew this was true. Now people are flooded with self help stuff and all sorts of stuff and, and, and, and in the attention economy, it's often hard to hear your own voice.
- [39:09]
Nathan Barry
Yeah. There's a lot of noise out there.
- [39:11]
Dave Evans
A lot of noise out there. So we're, we're basically Trying to get people back to, hey, wait a minute, there's a way to do this. It's simpler than everybody. I mean, all the mindfulness gurus and everybody else are trying to make it really complicated, I guess to sell more mindfulness glasses or something. And our thing is like, well, actually it's pretty simple because it's right here in the particular moment. The scandal of particularity is one of the big themes in the book. It's simple, you have availability to it. You just have to kind of pay attention a different way. Again, mindsets are so powerful. Like if you have a mindset of curiosity as a designer, you're gonna, you're gonna discover things other people didn't see. They, you're just, you're curious. They were there. You just found them in, in the new book. It's like curiosity plus mystery. Because there's lots of things in the world we don't understand. Curiosity plus mystery equals wonder. So when you take curiosity up a step, it becomes wonder. Like, look, not just, oh, how curious. This is interesting. Look at the world. It's like, oh, wait a minute, look at the world. Isn't it amazing? We were just talking about this this morning, like as the sun came up, you know, through the windows at the, at the hotel restaurant. It's like, wow, if you stop and pay attention, that's pretty cool. It's pretty, pretty wondrous. So we're trying to one, make it, make it simpler because we think it is simple, and two, make it available. So it's just right here. You just need to look at things differently. And if you have these new mindsets, if you're looking at the world this way, because the mindset is how you frame things and whatever you're paying attention to is what you get. So if you pay attention to all the crap in the world or you're distracted by all the attention grabbing apps, that will be your reality. You have a choice to have a different kind of reality. And it's not that hard.
- [40:54]
Nathan Barry
Is there a time for, for you either where someone helps you uncover a truth like that that was, you know, readily apparent and help you find that meaning or that you were able to do it for us, you know, for a student or someone you were working with?
- [41:07]
Bill Burnett
You know, there's the old adage that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I don't think that's about, you know, oh, my studential reality will manifest a teacher and suck them out of the cosmos and make them materialize in front of me like A Star wars transporter or Star Trek transport. What it means is there are invitations all over the place and the ones you learn are the ones you're ready for. So the moments when this happens, I think for us individually and certainly for the people we work with, is when the teachable moment arrives. We tell our coaches, by the way, that we do what we call, you know, facilitative coaching or in situational coaching. Start with what's going on, here's what you need to know. But like what is actually happening in your life? So when there's a need, when there's a teachable moment in your life, whether it's the beginning of your career, whether it's, you know, you're 10 years into your marriage and it's fine, but it's boring. Like, oh, who were you growing into next? I mean, there's a longing in you. So the longing of the heart and the soul, you know, are reaching out and then in that longings moment, do you have something to offer it that it can respond to in a meaningful way? You know, so, and we ran into a deep longing with we. I learned all this stuff in college, but how the heck do I decide what to do with it? So we, we've, you know, we responded about longing and, and lately we've been hearing the longing like, and I did all that stuff and it's still not very fulfilling. What's up with that? So that longing. So there's a moment in individuals lives and Frank, now we think there's a moment in the culture's life around this meaning question that's really struggling because people, and our thesis about that is that the primary problem is most people's definition of what's meaningful right now or what's fulfilling to them is making an impact, which is a wonderful thing. A lot of impacts deserve to get made. Except you don't have control over the other 9 billion people who may not stay on script for the plan you had for the world. And even if you make an impact five minutes later, what have you done for us lately? So impact is important and it's a worthwhile thing, but it's a temporary thing and it's just a thing thing. And you're a person, not a thing. So if impact is the only form of meaning making that you validate technically, you're screwed, you know, because it's not going to last and it probably won't work. But most things don't at the end of the day. And there are, we think, significant other parts of the Human experience, which really boils down to the way you're living and what we call the transactional world versus the flow. The transactional world is the consciousness of your mind thinking about getting stuff done, which is where Modern people spend 99.7% of their time, which is why impact is what they care about. Because when I'm getting stuff done, what's meaningful is the outcome of what I did. And that's called an impact. And that's great, but that's all you are. It's not very satisfying. Even when it works, it's not very satisfying. And then the rest of this has to. We think there are a number of categories. We specifically wonder when that experience. For wonder. Bill is just talking about flow. Can I be fully involved in the present moment? How do I learn how to be in flow? Coherence? When am I actually acting like what I care about is true? I'm living, values aligned. And then lastly, we call formative community in relationships with other people that are meaningful. So we take these four categories and say these are rich with opportunity. And each one of those ones we picked are around a longing. I long for this transcendent experience, for wonder. I long to be fully alive in the moment that I'm in. I want to be in flow. I long for feeling like I matter and I am a significant person. That's coherence. And I long to be with other people and part of something bigger than myself. That's what community is about. So those four longings create teachable moments. And we're just trying to handle a little tool to each of those moments where people can make progress.
- [44:40]
Dave Evans
And, you know, you talk to lots of Gen Zs, and we talk to lots of students and also people in their 30s and 40s. It's a. It's a thing. Now everybody's looking for more meaning, right?
- [44:51]
Bill Burnett
52 million people walked off the job after the pandemic looking for more meaning, and most of them didn't find it right.
- [44:57]
Dave Evans
So it's a good thing. Actually, I'm very excited about this generation of students. The last 10 years or so, 10, 12 years, they're coming to class, they really want to. They want to work hard, they want to know more, they want to figure out how to get a job that's meaningful. They talked a lot about impact. We try to sort of reframe the impact thing to make sure that they're looking for the right thing. But I'm super encouraged. This is a generation of people who are not going to settle for you know, a 9 to 5 crappy job mostly and, or put the job in a category that's fine, that's just for money making. But I have, I have this other thing I'm doing for meaning making. I saw a statistic, I think in the US like 75% of Gen Zers have a side hustle.
- [45:40]
Nathan Barry
Yeah.
- [45:41]
Dave Evans
You know, because the job isn't going to get you everything you want, maybe even in terms of money and impact and things. But, but. And the side hustle isn't ready to be monetized yet. But I think that that speaks to this longing of but wait a minute. I can't spend all day doing something that's meaningless, just making PowerPoints for the boss. Right. I've got to have something in my life where I can say, at least in the, the big picture for me, I think I'm doing something that matters. I'm doing something that matters to. If nothing else, it matters to me. So, you know, you talked about what, what did we. We have some moments where we realize this thing. My very first job, working in the toy company in Suzanne, Ohio. I had the best and probably the only good manager I ever had. Because tech companies, by the way, are poorly managed by people who are adept but are terrible at managing, but they end up managing. And he taught me the most important role of management is people will never remember what you said. They'll only remember how you made them feel. And then that's transferable to teaching and everything else I do, I'm not managing the content. I'm trying to manage that the connection is valid, it's legitimate, that it's real. So we made a deal. When we started this class, we were out at Zapier Garden, out behind the, behind the university. I said, you know, if we teach this stuff, we have to do all the exercises. We, we, this, we're. We're talking about designing a life and living into the design that you have. It can't be theoretical. We have to do it. We do odysseys. I do work, life balance stuff. I do all sorts of stuff. And I do it also as examples to the students. Because if you're standing up in front of class, right, it's just like we talked about this in terms of parenting last night. Students figure out pretty quickly if you're inauthentic or you're hypocritical or you're just talking, but you don't really live it. And so it's a very different. I mean, it's a design class, it's a Studio. It's not a lecture. It's a lot of activities. We actually plan the energy in the class. When are we going to play music? When are we going to all to create an experience that the student can have to design into that. But if the two guys in front of the class are just phoning it in, it's not going to work.
- [48:02]
Nathan Barry
Y.
- [48:03]
Dave Evans
So you want to, you want to. If you tell people authenticity and coherence is important, you have to live it, have it some of that. Not that we're totally coherent or I'm not totally authentic, but I'm working at it.
- [48:17]
Nathan Barry
Something that I notice in so much of what you all are doing. You're very intentional at the same time from talking last night and from this conversation today. You're also at times very reluctant of being pulled into so many of these opportunities that you create. And so if you're up for it, I'd love to shift gears a little bit and talk about. I know we don't want to over index on impact, but you've made something that's very impactful.
- [48:44]
Dave Evans
No, no, no, it's true.
- [48:45]
Bill Burnett
Keep going.
- [48:46]
Dave Evans
And we're hoping, and we're hoping that the book has an impact on people and that it's a positive thing.
- [48:51]
Nathan Barry
So you've sold well over a million copies and then had probably another million copies pirated of the first book. You know, with the new book, what's the, the reach or the impact that you hope that it has? You know, if we're talking about numbers and all that.
- [49:09]
Dave Evans
Well, I mean, you know, we, we've, we've hired some phenomenal resources to help us with launching the book. And Simon and Schuster, who's hanging out
- [49:19]
Bill Burnett
just off camera, the guy that brought
- [49:20]
Dave Evans
us into this room and Simon Schuster, you know, so the January to March time frame in the publishing industry is called the new year new you season. Okay. New year new you. You're going to buy your diet book, your self help book, your meditation book, whatever, because that's, you know, people make their New Year's resolutions. So we're the new year new you book for Simon Schuster. They've decided this is their book for the launch for this season. So they're putting a lot of time in.
- [49:48]
Nathan Barry
What's the launch date?
- [49:49]
Dave Evans
February.
- [49:50]
Bill Burnett
February 3rd.
- [49:50]
Dave Evans
Yeah, February 3rd. They're putting a lot of time in February 3rd.
- [49:53]
Bill Burnett
Available at all retail outlets and online. Wherever books are sold.
- [49:56]
Dave Evans
Wherever books are sold.
- [49:57]
Bill Burnett
How to live a meaningful life.
- [49:59]
Dave Evans
Yeah. How to live a meaningful life using design thinking to unlock more joy, purpose, joy and flow every day. And so we're putting a lot of resources behind this because, you know, my thought, I think we shared is like, let's give this book the best chance of finding the readers who need it. Right? So let's give the book the best chance to find the readers who need it. And nowadays that means, you know, on social media, on a newsletter, on all the ways in which you're trying to communicate to people, people using KIT as our platform to get it out. So that if you are thinking about the meaning of life or if you're thinking about how to have more flow, more joy, or if you're, or if you're, you know, if you're thinking about the transcendent questions of what's really going on here. We think we have something you might enjoy reading. Right. And it might be helpful and it's very, it's very doable. It's, it's, you know, we take the research down to something you can understand and so we really want to get it out there. And frankly, we are very good at. We're kind of older than most of your other creators. I know I've had an Instagram account. Okay. I've got a little, I've got about.
- [51:11]
Bill Burnett
But you asked the question people asking ourselves.
- [51:14]
Dave Evans
We don't know, we don't know how, we don't really know how to do this. So we've surrounded ourselves with experts including, including, you know, working with the KIT team. But yeah, yeah, you know what? James Cleary sold 30 million books. Yeah.
- [51:26]
Bill Burnett
Is that good?
- [51:27]
Nathan Barry
Right, Right about that. Okay, 30 million.
- [51:28]
Dave Evans
It's a good, that's a good target.
- [51:30]
Nathan Barry
The only, the best selling book of the last.
- [51:33]
Dave Evans
I take 10. 10 million.
- [51:34]
Nathan Barry
10. 10 million.
- [51:35]
Dave Evans
I mean I've got, I've got a little summer cottage I'm trying to build. 10 million could really impact the, the architecture and, and, and forgetting whatever that turns out to be in terms of money. It's like this is probably the last book we write. Right?
- [51:51]
Bill Burnett
Please.
- [51:53]
Dave Evans
I like writing him. He doesn't like writing them. But if this is the last one, I'd really like to get it out there. So a lot of people, so whatever advice you've got on how you do that.
- [52:02]
Nathan Barry
Well, I'd love to talk through that. You know, I'm in a fairly privileged position of having a front row seat to a lot of these book launches. Like James, Claire and I have been friends for I guess 13 years now. And so we were at a cabin a couple hours from here, like brainstorming book Titles, you know, and working on that for Atomic Habits. And the first ingredient that I've seen in all of these book launches is just writing a really great book. Right. Because these books that sell for a long time.
- [52:30]
Bill Burnett
Yeah.
- [52:31]
Nathan Barry
It's, you know, it's how good is the product? And as product guys, you understand that very, very clearly.
- [52:37]
Dave Evans
There's nothing.
- [52:38]
Bill Burnett
Books are all about referral, and it's all about. My friend said, you got to read this book. Yeah.
- [52:43]
Nathan Barry
So, you know, Atomic Habits is the perfect example because there are some books that launch to a huge level and just stay there. Like the Let. Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins is an example like that. But Atomic Habits launched, hit the New York Times list and then didn't reappear on the New York Times list, I think, for three years. And then. But it, like, had built this groundswell and just the referrals and the attention and. And then it, like, you know, year four or five, somewhere in there, it was back on the New York Times list, and then it has never left.
- [53:15]
Bill Burnett
Right.
- [53:15]
Nathan Barry
And I think at least two years, it's been the number one book on Amazon. You know, we're talking like six years after it came out and seven years after it came out. I think he slipped at number two on Amazon. Poor guy. But so the quality of the book initially is very, very important. I think the next thing is.
- [53:33]
Bill Burnett
And the quality of the problem it speaks to.
- [53:35]
Nathan Barry
Yes. Yeah. And the universality of the problem. Right. If someone's writing it, you know, a niche business book is not going to have. Have the same reach. But the next thing is the relentless and steady marketing that happens behind it. Because some people have this approach, like, oh, I made a good product, and then people will come to it. Right? And it's like, no, if you made a good product, people will stay once they find it. Right. But to have that, you know, that. That machine behind it. Someone that I really admire is Ryan Holiday, who is just. He puts in a relentless amount of work to build this, you know, not only his writing, but also his. His promotion and all that of every book that he puts out. James is the same way with Atomic Habits, where he has steadily promoted that book for the last seven years. You know, he actually hasn't come out with another one. You know, it's just like on this one book. And so one thing I'm curious about for you guys is, like, what level of time and energy you're able, you know, over the next, let's say, three years. Right. Are you able or willing to put into promoting this book.
- [54:42]
Bill Burnett
Well, it's the big dog, you know, it's the big dog in the room. So I think, you know, whatever we're going to give, we're going to give to this.
- [54:49]
Nathan Barry
I think within that framing of like, okay, you know, that's super helpful. So then my next question is, is there someone that you look to who has done what you're trying to do and you're like, oh, I want to have that level of impact or I want to grow and market it in the way that they did. Any inspirations there?
- [55:10]
Dave Evans
Well, Tom McCabbitz is certainly one because it's interesting. Tom McCabbitz came out roughly the same time one of our colleagues, guy named Vijay Fogg wrote a book which is essentially the same book, and he called his book Tiny Habits. Yes, it's a good book. He's a, you know, he's a well known researcher in the space of, you know, habits and, and, and behavior and, and motivation, but nowhere near, you know, this the same thing. So again, it's a, it's. Let's even assume they're of equal quality. What, what Claire was able to do to get the message across, to give his book the best chance of finding readers who needed it, I think is phenomenal. I had read Matthew McConaughey's Green Lights book, actually. It's one of the few books I listen to on tape. Oh, it's because he's so, he's so fun to listen to him say his own story.
- [56:01]
Nathan Barry
People give away the physical copy and I'm like, you should have that on your shelf.
- [56:04]
Dave Evans
But go on audible. Yeah, go on audible. It's, it's a, it's a, it's a great, it's a great listen. And, you know, I think, you know, certainly McConaughey has his fame as a movie star, but that doesn't mean his book's going to be any good. It doesn't mean his story is going to be any good. And I thought he captured his story really, really well. And he's using the asset of himself and his voice and everything else for his new book on poetry and things like that. So I just, I really admire the fact that he, and then everything I've heard from insiders is he's actually the guy he says he is. He's not made up a story to play Matthew McConaughey, you know, blah, blah, blah. He's a real guy. And so that's, I think I like his authenticity and I like the way he's brought his message out to people. So those are two that. That are looking at that good. The book that we sort of supplanted that's been around for a billion years was what colors your parachute by Dick Boltz. And then he published that book 70, 71, 70s. And then, you know, what color is your parachute? 2001. What colors your parachute 2002 when he passed away. His son is not taking it forward. It was a good book on sort of how to figure out what you want to be when you grow up. And what was your. What was your. What's your strategy for doing that? But it was pretty idiosyncratic and it wasn't based on any research or anything. But we're now the book ahead of that book in terms of people thinking about stuff. But you know, what he did in the early days of publishing in the 70s, the Self Help category wasn't even really a category yet was created a whole category of books about how to live a meaningful life. So I look at that as. And he sold a billion of them. I mean I don't Over a very long period of time. So those I would say green lights, atomic habits and what cause your parachute are three through pieces of content I admire. And in the last. The latter two, I admire the way they got it out to the people who would be potential readers. What was the. What's someone I read about was the guy who's the megachurch guy.
- [58:15]
Bill Burnett
How to purpose driven life.
- [58:16]
Dave Evans
A purpose driven life.
- [58:17]
Nathan Barry
Yeah.
- [58:17]
Bill Burnett
Recording.
- [58:18]
Dave Evans
Yeah, that's another one that spread like crazy.
- [58:21]
Bill Burnett
Yeah, yeah.
- [58:22]
Dave Evans
You know, and, and, and that, that certainly has a very strong point of view. Not when I connect to, but a strong point of view. Well written and really clear. Like who's this for? And why would it be useful? Why would it be helpful? People come up to me all the time and Dave all the time and say, hey, read. Your book changed my life. And my one question is that's fantastic. Thank you so much for letting me know. And what did you find useful? Like what in the book, you know, was.
- [58:50]
Nathan Barry
What did you apply?
- [58:51]
Dave Evans
Yeah, what did you apply? And there's two kinds of readers. You know, there's like, there's the one who comes up and the book has got a. Posted on every page and a tab on every page and everything's underlined. And that's probably 20 of the readers. And the other ones. The book changed my life. And I go really? What did, what exercise did you do? I didn't do any exercises. I just liked the book. And what I'VE figured out from that because we were thinking about it a lot when we were in this book is like it was one thing, like the idea that you could reframe a problem, the idea that you could prototype something. So typically there's one thing in there that was useful and that's what I'm looking for. What was useful?
- [59:27]
Nathan Barry
What is that one thing? Yeah. So I guess running with those examples, the one that I'm closest to is Atomic Habits. And there's three things that really stand out to me about how James executed on that book. The first one is the book is full of poor quotable stories, these one liners that describe a thing. I think there's. I won't get them all off top of my head but like identity based habits.
- [59:54]
Dave Evans
Right.
- [59:54]
Nathan Barry
Every action you take is a vote for who you want to become 1% better. Every day is another one. He's got a few of these that when someone wants to recommend the book. Oh, what are you reading right now? Oh, I read this book called Something Happens.
- [60:08]
Bill Burnett
It's great.
- [60:08]
Nathan Barry
What was great about it. And they have that one thing that they can, that they can say so that it's memeable.
- [60:15]
Bill Burnett
And that's a good thing.
- [60:16]
Nathan Barry
Yes, exactly. And he spent an absurd amount of time getting to that point and, and getting to those. The second thing is the relentless promotion like is time horizon for the book. So many authors are looking at this like you know, 90 day window for launch and you know, you should be looking at like a nine year window. You, you spend, you spent a lifetime of experience to build up to be able to write this book. And now it's like, okay, let's have very long time horizon. Not to say that.
- [60:44]
Bill Burnett
So make it sticky and stick with it.
- [60:46]
Nathan Barry
Yes, yep, exactly. The third thing is that I don't think many authors get right is the flywheel of reviews and the feedback loop to be able to get readers in a way that you can contact them. So this is something that I've never seen someone do better than what James did in Atomic Habits. So throughout the book he has various resources. You know, the things he cut from the book or the atomic habits for parenting. Or like you find these little things that go to the website, you know, jamesclayer.com, whatever and put in your email address and download it. Everybody does that or they should. That is if you don't have that. You know, I try to get at least four or five of those throughout the book. You know, if it had. The book hasn't gone to print yet like obsessive for that. The cool thing about that is that when someone signs up for that, so long as you don't promote that link anywhere else, you know that they're a reader. Oh, and that is the hardest thing to get is readers that you can push information to.
- [61:47]
Dave Evans
Okay, right.
- [61:48]
Nathan Barry
Because the book was bought at Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Like they're not your customer. Yeah, they bought a product that you made, but they're not your customer. And so there's all these things that you want them to take action on that that you can't ask them to do. And you have your email list, but
- [62:02]
Bill Burnett
you don't know who read who, you
- [62:04]
Nathan Barry
don't know who bought and you don't know who read. And those are two different things. And so if halfway through the book they go to the link and they opt in, you know that's in chapter seven. Right. You know, they at least read through to chapter seven. And so what James does really well is he has an email sequence in kit. So when someone subscribes to these, he tags them as a reader. He specifically and then he sends an email or a series of emails, both more engaging content. He wants them to finish the book because the likelihood of them recommending the book if they finish it is way higher. And you know there's. Every book is going to have a retention curve.
- [62:41]
Dave Evans
Right.
- [62:42]
Nathan Barry
And so some of the emails are get to get you to be like, oh yeah, no, I was meaning to turn that back on in audible or get back to it. But then the thing is, he sends him an email a few weeks later and says, hey, how'd you like the book? And one to five stars. And this is what I think is really clever. Everyone says like, oh, you finished the book, Will you write a review? No, he doesn't do that. He asks how'd you like the book? And depending on which of the five stars you click, he sends you to a different place. One to four stars. He says, thank you so much for the feedback, I really appreciate it. Or he doesn't need more feedback. You know what, what you might do early on is say, oh, like thank you so much for telling us that. Would you mind filling out this short survey or tell us what you didn't like about the book, how we can make it better. And the five star people, only those do you then send to Amazon or wherever else and say, wow, thanks so much. I'm glad you love the book. Will you please write your review in this place? And so what happens is all the people who Hated the book.
- [63:41]
Bill Burnett
You're like, great, go over here.
- [63:44]
Nathan Barry
Oh, but you love the book.
- [63:45]
Bill Burnett
Come to my people.
- [63:46]
Nathan Barry
And so what happens is you end up in this flywheel where the more books you sell, the more readers you tag, the more that you're able to segment as a five star reader, ask them to write a review on Amazon, which helps your rankings, which helps you sell more books. And so you just. Everyone in my life, I'm looking for flywheels or virtuous cycles. And then you also have this group. You not only have readers tagged instead of kit, you have five star readers. And so then when someone writes the nasty review on Goodreads, where they're like, I hate these guys in particular, you know what, whatever happens, and you're like, ooh, our ranking is going down. You can set, you can email the 7,000 five star region, say, hey, will you do this for us? Right? And you can mobilize them and you know who your biggest fans are. And that is wildly valuable.
- [64:32]
Dave Evans
Yeah.
- [64:32]
Nathan Barry
Any reactions, thoughts?
- [64:35]
Dave Evans
It's a fantastic idea.
- [64:36]
Bill Burnett
It's creating an infrastructure that allows the people who want to help you to do so.
- [64:41]
Nathan Barry
Right? Yes.
- [64:43]
Bill Burnett
You're enabling. You've got more help available than you think. Give them a chance to let you succeed.
- [64:48]
Nathan Barry
And then the other thing is, because you have location for every email address, right? Then when you show up and you're like, hey, I'm doing this event, right? I'm going to be in la, in New York, or you know, I'm doing this locally, right? You can say, oh, who are my five star readers within a hundred miles of the Bay Area? Right. And that could be very interesting and very useful. The other direction that I want to go is unfair advantages. Okay, What I'm curious about is what unfair advantages do you think you all have in writing and promoting this book that some other author would look at and be like, man, I wish I had this thing that they have.
- [65:29]
Dave Evans
Well, it was pretty clear to me that we wouldn't have gotten even the first book deal if we weren't two guys from Stanford.
- [65:34]
Bill Burnett
Credibility.
- [65:35]
Dave Evans
It gave us credibility. And we've been teaching the class for seven years. We had phenomenal student feedback on that sort of stuff. And we had done some things in, in the professional world. We did a couple of gigs at Google.
- [65:47]
Bill Burnett
Yeah.
- [65:47]
Dave Evans
And a few other things. So we, we, we had, you know, a whole bunch of brand names that people would go, wow, you, you know, you've done this thing at Google, you've done this thing at Stanford. So I think that's that, that's another
- [66:01]
Bill Burnett
key thing is we have a relationship with almost a thousand coaches and about 6,000 educators.
- [66:05]
Nathan Barry
Yeah, yeah, that's. That's a huge one. So, I mean, let's.
- [66:09]
Dave Evans
And they're, and they're real evangelists for I, they really, those are all. They really care.
- [66:13]
Bill Burnett
Pretty dedicated people.
- [66:14]
Nathan Barry
So what have you put together, like in this launch strategy and then the ongoing strategy for the nine years to follow. Right, what, what, what have you put together for those coaches?
- [66:28]
Bill Burnett
Well, we just launched an affiliate. We just announced an affiliation program for the coaches for them to participate in pushing the word out, because they've all got client lists and they've all got referral bases. So we created a motivation for them where they can earn their. There's an annual fee to stay on the certified list and appear on the website and they can earn their way into that. So there's a way for them to actually do good work and get paid for it. We haven't come up with the educator one yet, but we're thinking about it.
- [66:54]
Nathan Barry
So I'm thinking about teachable there. If there's, you know, in a typical affiliate launch, if you were going to the online marketing world, there would be a leaderboard of some kind. I don't know if that matches that profile, the, the profile of what you're doing here. But, but you want to think about like, hey, what's the version of that, right? Something that I would do in my design career a lot is I would blatantly steal from a different industry.
- [67:17]
Dave Evans
Okay?
- [67:18]
Nathan Barry
So like if I was designing websites, everyone copied from other websites, right? And I was like, no, no, no, forget that. Let me go to a clothing store and look at what color palettes and textures and fonts and all of that are they using. And I did the same thing, really, merging like the direct response marketing world and the software design world.
- [67:36]
Bill Burnett
Okay.
- [67:36]
Nathan Barry
And so I would write like long form sales pages, which were very common in the direct response marketing world, but I would design them beautifully. And people were like, what is this new thing? This is incredible. I've never seen. And you're like, well, it's just the merging of two industries. So I would look at, you know, what are the best direct response marketers do, right? And then what's the version of that that is a fit for us in our industry? So is there a way that you could get friendly competition going right? Within the coaches, within. You could say, hey, if you're selling, if you help us sell 100 books, right, that achieves this, right? And we're hosting a, a full day event at Stanford just for the 25 coaches who help us sell the most books. Right. And those kinds of things where people want to help you anyway, but you give them that extra little incentive motivation to push that forward. Another unfair advantage I think that you have is probably corporate relationships. Right?
- [68:36]
Bill Burnett
Yeah, we've, we've done a couple of hundred corporate speaking gigs.
- [68:39]
Nathan Barry
Yeah. And so I would make sure that there is, you know, someone on your team or, you know, making sure the DOMA is on top of this of like, okay, what does the, the corporate side of that look like? And being able to line up all that because you have an advantage right there. There's many books that can never be sold into corporations. You know, the, the entrepreneurship, like how to quit your job and pursue your dream.
- [69:02]
Bill Burnett
Probably not, you know, like, they're not
- [69:03]
Nathan Barry
going to be like, Let me buy 5,000 copies of that now. The sales book, you know, of like, then it's like, okay, Keller Williams is going to go buy that for every single one of their real estate agents. You know, in your case, you know, this is a book that's like, oh, here's it demonstrates care.
- [69:20]
Bill Burnett
Right.
- [69:20]
Nathan Barry
And so I think there's an opportunity for corporate purchases.
- [69:25]
Dave Evans
Yeah. You know, that just demonstrates care. It's interesting because we were, we had been talking on the plane coming out from San Francisco. It was like, well, the last couple books have a, you know, corporate application and if you've, we get calls from a learning and development team from some company and they're like, hey, we're trying to employ you, improve employee engagement, improve retention. We want to, you know, activate the sort of more entrepreneurial spirit in our employees. And like, yeah, we can do all that from those books. This book, because it's so much about your own personal journey to meaning and purpose. I was going, I don't know if there's a corporate thing for this, but you just mentioned if I want to show care, you know, and, and there's nothing in this book that would inherently cause me to quit my job.
- [70:09]
Bill Burnett
Right.
- [70:09]
Dave Evans
So a lot in this book that might result in a pretty interesting conversation with my boss.
- [70:14]
Nathan Barry
Yeah. But I think a lot of, a lot of leaders would be thrilled to have that conversation.
- [70:19]
Dave Evans
Yeah. So that, that's actually, that's a really, that's a really interesting.
- [70:22]
Nathan Barry
And there's a version of like, you know, okay, I buy 20 copies, I buy 250 copies.
- [70:29]
Dave Evans
Right. Yeah.
- [70:30]
Nathan Barry
Right. And then like, that, that can be really, really meaningful.
- [70:33]
Dave Evans
I think that the, the only Other unfair advantage is probably around 5,000 students that we've taught. And then if you look at the community we've built, of all the other schools, there's, you know, the total available markets, a couple million students who've been potentially exposed to this thing. So I'm wondering, how would you, how would you act? I mean, and we don't, again, we don't, we don't know who they are. And no one's going to give me their class lists because that's actually illegal. But how would, how would I get to all the students who fake on the class and maybe had one, they had one epiphany, one moment where they're like, this is really good.
- [71:11]
Nathan Barry
Well, so I like to make lists. So we were talking last night about what made a difference for Kit taking off. Right. Two years, 2,000amonth in revenue. And then the third year, you know, we grew by 50x.
- [71:24]
Bill Burnett
Right.
- [71:25]
Nathan Barry
And it came down to direct sales.
- [71:27]
Bill Burnett
Right.
- [71:28]
Nathan Barry
And so I think the direct sales, even in the case of a, you know, a $27 right. Purchase from Amazon, which you're going to make $3 from.
- [71:36]
Bill Burnett
Right.
- [71:37]
Nathan Barry
Is still worthwhile because of the potential like longevity and virality. So. So first I would look to your students because you could actually have presumably the names of all of the students that you have directly taught.
- [71:51]
Dave Evans
Right? Yeah.
- [71:53]
Nathan Barry
Barrett Brooks, who's a good friend of mine, former coworker, and he's an executive coach. When he was launching his coaching practice, he downloaded his entire LinkedIn and he went through and he rated everybody. He had two columns and it was their likelihood or desire to help him on a one to three scale, how much relationship do we have, how much they like me, all of that, and then their likelihood for that, that individual to know his ideal client.
- [72:22]
Bill Burnett
Okay.
- [72:23]
Nathan Barry
One to three scale, right. So he just ran through all, you know, 1700 or 3000 or whatever and just rated everybody and then sorted that and multiplied the two columns and so all of the nines.
- [72:33]
Bill Burnett
Right.
- [72:33]
Nathan Barry
Really like me and probably know my ideal client. He's like, I am getting on a call with you.
- [72:38]
Bill Burnett
My referral.
- [72:39]
Dave Evans
Yeah.
- [72:39]
Nathan Barry
You know, I'm, I'm targeting that group specifically. And then as you work your way down through the list, you know, the Sixes might get a semi personalized email or that sort of thing. And then everybody else should, in your network should at least know, hey, I'm doing this thing.
- [72:54]
Dave Evans
Right.
- [72:55]
Nathan Barry
And so I would do that with your students. Right, right. Because you're going to have people who are highly influential. Right, right. Who are like, oh, I would love to buy 5,000 copies for my 5,000 employees.
- [73:08]
Bill Burnett
Right.
- [73:09]
Nathan Barry
Because I've built one of the most famous tech companies, you know, or that sort of thing. And then you're going to have people who say, like, oh, I. I'd love to recommend that and go from there, but I think it's very worthwhile to do that list and basically to go through and say, here's everybody, you know, and some of them, you might just send a text or an email and say, hey, I was thinking about you. Here's what's going on. I. I launched this book. I'd love to send you a copy. Right. You're up for it. And so I would do that. And then I would also do it with a list of any educators that you can get.
- [73:42]
Dave Evans
Right.
- [73:43]
Nathan Barry
So you may not be able to. If someone taught your class at another university, you don't have their list of students. No, no. But presumably you have them.
- [73:50]
Bill Burnett
Yeah.
- [73:51]
Nathan Barry
Right. And so if there's a thousand people.
- [73:53]
Bill Burnett
Six.
- [73:54]
Nathan Barry
About six thousand people. Right. So I would do that.
- [73:57]
Bill Burnett
Right.
- [73:58]
Nathan Barry
How much do they like you? You know, figure out what your criteria is.
- [74:00]
Dave Evans
Right, exactly.
- [74:02]
Nathan Barry
And I would go through that and say, hey, is there a way that I could get this new book to every one of your students, you know, in your current class, in your previous classes, or that sort of thing? And they might say, yeah, and actually, in fact, we have budget in all of this to pay for.
- [74:19]
Dave Evans
Right.
- [74:19]
Nathan Barry
Or you might say, hey, I'll. I can get you the books at cost. Right. Because we're just trying to get the book in as many people's hands as possible because we're going to trust that it has impact.
- [74:28]
Dave Evans
The other one we're going after is there's always a freshman book, but what
- [74:31]
Bill Burnett
do you freshman read?
- [74:32]
Dave Evans
A freshman everybody gets in the summer, you read it and there's a little seminar or something, and this is a perfect freshman book.
- [74:38]
Bill Burnett
Yeah.
- [74:38]
Dave Evans
So that's another one we're pushing to try.
- [74:40]
Nathan Barry
And you have all the credibility within academics.
- [74:43]
Bill Burnett
Yeah.
- [74:44]
Dave Evans
That's a lot of books.
- [74:46]
Nathan Barry
Yeah.
- [74:46]
Dave Evans
I mean, all the incoming freshmen in America, that's a lot of books.
- [74:50]
Nathan Barry
So. So then I'm like, okay, from a. You know, we're talking about warm relationships before.
- [74:54]
Bill Burnett
Right.
- [74:55]
Nathan Barry
People who know you and.
- [74:56]
Bill Burnett
Right.
- [74:56]
Nathan Barry
And you potentially know them. But now we're getting into, like, potentially cold outreach. I would make it someone's job to find out who at every university is the decision maker on what the freshman book is. Right. And I don't know, timing wise, Right now you think the freshman book is decided for next fall.
- [75:18]
Bill Burnett
It's a, it's like almost a year long process.
- [75:20]
Nathan Barry
Okay.
- [75:20]
Bill Burnett
In fact, there's a big enough market that that's, there's usually a specialty salesperson who does somebody that's having a shoes or whose full time job is that figuring that out. So the first sale is to sell that person the Salmon Shoe Store. Like, okay, the freshman book for next year in the entire catalog of the Sound of Shoes there is how to Live a Meaningful Life, which I think we're going to get that. And then working with those people because they actually have all those names, right?
- [75:41]
Dave Evans
Yeah.
- [75:42]
Nathan Barry
And that would be something where often, often in business there's a specialist who's like, oh, this is their job.
- [75:48]
Bill Burnett
There's a thing.
- [75:48]
Nathan Barry
And I think as leaders we often say cool, you've got it. And that's on one hand, you should do that.
- [75:57]
Bill Burnett
On the other hand, let's go.
- [75:58]
Nathan Barry
You should be like, great, let's come alongside you. And I will like, let's make this as easy as possible because if they're like, hey, I have this book. It's like, yeah, you had a book last year and the year before that. You were trying to get us through this way.
- [76:09]
Dave Evans
How many of them did you get on this?
- [76:10]
Nathan Barry
And if you're like, hey, I would love to get, you know, I have this book. I would love to get you a sit down meeting with the authors of the book. They're willing to do this other thing. They're, you know, it's so much more meaningful.
- [76:22]
Bill Burnett
Yeah.
- [76:22]
Dave Evans
And we just a shout out to. Because the first book was with Penguin Random House and this book's with Simon and a lot of people told us, ah, the publishing industry's dead. They're not going to support you. Our, our experience at least our experience and it's only in a couple of books has been great support. Great support. Mass media really matters. You, you know and we, we did a couple things that didn't work in, in mass media but NPR and the way our publisher positioned us with other, you know, other events. It really works like get on, get on. You know the, the time it was Diane Ream in, in on the east coast and then Michael Kresley on the West Coast. Get on their show and I can watch the, I can watch the book on Amazon go from, you know, 22nd to, to actually be got into Dan Ream show. We got off that show. We were number one at Amazon for about a day, but we were ahead of Bruce Springsteen's biography and the new Harry Potter. So I mean it's like mass media really does work if you can get access. And the first book we got, we got a lovely cover page in the opinion section or the lifestyle section in the New York Times about us with a picture of us in the D school and everything. And that was fundamental to getting the book on the New York Times list. So.
- [77:40]
Nathan Barry
And the version of that like that is all absolutely still true and the version of that that's even more true now is the creator aspect of it.
- [77:49]
Bill Burnett
Right.
- [77:49]
Nathan Barry
All of these people who have incredibly popular newsletters and podcasts.
- [77:54]
Bill Burnett
Right.
- [77:54]
Nathan Barry
And so that's where putting together the strategy and I'll help you list out like, hey, these are the for sure the people who really move books and all of that.
- [78:04]
Bill Burnett
We're thrilled to be seeing Mel in January.
- [78:06]
Nathan Barry
Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, yeah, she absolutely moves books. And for her to do that. Yes. And, and so really deliberately lining those up makes a big difference. I'll just say to all creators who are listening to this, like, reach out, have these guys on your show talk about, you know, the newsletter and really line those things up well in advance because a lot of people are happy to do the shout out in the newsletter or something else. They'll just forget. Right. And so that follow campaign and then just the little updates. Right. Other creators are going to want to follow the behind the scenes story.
- [78:45]
Dave Evans
Right.
- [78:45]
Nathan Barry
You all doing this launch which will serve two purposes. One, it will have them be more invested in you and your success. Right. And then two, over we'll remind them to actually help out. Right, right. Because the number of times it's like, yeah, when your book comes out, I'll totally help promote you.
- [79:00]
Bill Burnett
Right.
- [79:00]
Nathan Barry
You know?
- [79:01]
Dave Evans
Yeah.
- [79:01]
Nathan Barry
And it's like, am I going to remember three months from now?
- [79:04]
Dave Evans
Yeah, you know, yeah, exactly. Well, but you know, the, the James Cleary story is so interesting, right. I mean books are kind of like records. Like you lunch, your album, it's a bestseller for a while and then you're gone and then, you know, you're off the charts. The fact that he could build that momentum two, three, four years after the book came out, where the traditional industry, you know, wisdom logic is, hey, you're going to sell almost all of your books in the first year and a half and then you're going to buy year three or your four year and the know back catalog and we don't care about you anymore. And he proved that's wrong, essentially. That's wrong that, that this new digital form of communication. Distribution doesn't have that curve, you know, isn't just when the record company releases the record. It's. It's, you know, this singer, Betty Levette.
- [79:51]
Nathan Barry
I don't.
- [79:52]
Dave Evans
She's amazing. She was, she was a soul singer back in the 60s and 70s, backup singer. And I think she 70 something and a couple years ago released a all Dylan cover album. And she's 75 years old and she's touring and she's incredibly hot. So like, okay, well, that's interesting. You had a career 30 years ago. You can have another career. And playing off of that same idea of like, well, it's a completely different way of getting your music out to people and a completely different way of getting a book out to people. So we're still learning, you know, how do you do that?
- [80:25]
Nathan Barry
I'm very excited to like watch both. Everything that you, you all have done up until this point, but also as you embark in this next book launch and, and I'm excited to see how it goes. I'm excited to help you promote this and, and launch it. I know a lot of people watching are probably like, yeah, this sounds really cool. I not only want to buy the book, so first title the book and when it comes out again, that's okay.
- [80:47]
Bill Burnett
So how to live a meaningful life using design thinking to unlock more purpose, joy and flow every day. I love it. And again, to all your listeners, all those creators out there, you know what we're trying to do is hand very doable tools to everybody to get more aliveness, more fulfillment, more joy out of the life you're already in today. You don't have to make any big changes. There's literally the whole tagline is get more out of life, not cram more into it. This is another thing I have to do is how to take what's right in front of you and enjoy it more fulfilling willingly. So if that's something that matters to your listeners and to your participants, we would love for you to help us help you help them.
- [81:29]
Nathan Barry
Yeah.
- [81:29]
Bill Burnett
And if you want to reach out to us, shoot us a note at. DaveAndBillesigningyour life. So that's Dave D, A V E and A N D, Bill B I L L, all small case at Designingyour Life.
- [81:44]
Nathan Barry
Sounds good. You guys have done some remarkable work. You've got your newsletter now on kit. Everyone should go and subscribe to that. So Designingyour Life.
- [81:52]
Bill Burnett
Yep.
- [81:53]
Nathan Barry
Check out everything you're doing. And thanks so much for making the trip out to Boise. It means a lot to me.
- [81:56]
Bill Burnett
Hey, thanks for helping us.
- [81:57]
Dave Evans
Yeah, it's been fantastic. Thanks for the conversation, for sure.
- [82:00]
Nathan Barry
If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search the Nathan Barry Show. Then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also just who else you think we should have on the show. Thank you so much for listening.