Leveraging Thought Leadership With Peter Winick – Episode 110 – A. J. Jacobs

---

Thought leaders are full of great ideas! How do you choose which ones to follow through? What ideas would make a good book chapter, and which are better served as a talk or an essay?

Our guest is A.J. Jacobs, New York Times best-selling author of “Thanks a Thousand,” and “The Year of Living Biblically,” as well as a journalist and TED talk speaker.

A.J. shares tips for generating tons of creative ideas, and offers suggestions for weeding down to the ones with potential to become something bigger. He shares his unique process for editing, and talks about how he ensures that every essay, talk, and chapter resonates with its audience. A.J. also talks about how authors cross over into the speakership world, and the skills he needed to learn to make that transition.

This episode is full of great advice for thought leaders, speakers, authors, and content creators of all kinds! Be sure to tune in!

---

If you need a strategy to bring your thought leadership to market, Thought Leadership Leverage can assist you! Contact us for more information. In addition, we can help you implement marketing, research, and sales. Let us help you so you can devote yourself to what you do best.

---

Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And you’re joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is a really interesting guy, A.J. Jacobs. I’m sure you’ve heard of him. He’s an author, a journalist, a lecturer, and ultimately a human guinea pig. He’s written for New York Times bestsellers. He’s given multiple Ted Talks, and he subjects himself to these really amazing experiments, if you will. That becomes the basis of the book and the content and all that. He’s obviously been on Oprah The Today Show, and luckily The Colbert Report, Dr. Oz. And he has obviously lowered the threshold to agree to join us today. So welcome.

A.J. Jacobs A.J.. Well, thank you, Peter, and honor to be here.

Peter Winick I should say it’s a requisite that you’ve been on at least Oprah and Dr. Oz before. I would even consider having someone on. So anyway, I think.

A.J. Jacobs For the part of the farm team, forget exactly.

Peter Winick The opening act, if you will. So anyway, I’m really, really glad I was looking forward to this one today because this is really interesting. You are quite different, right? The typical sort of model for authorship and thought leadership in the nonfiction space is stick to one thing and be that guy and continue to do it, do it, do it, and just expand on it. You. That’s not you, right? You know, so tell me about sort of what your process or methodology is to decide to go do something and then how do you do it and then develop content, monetize it, live it and all that stuff.

A.J. Jacobs Yeah, sure. Well, I’m trying to find a topic that I’m passionate about and fascinated with, and I dive in headfirst and try to become an expert and, you know, sort of a 0 to 60 and in a year. So I knew nothing about religion, but I decided to live by all the rules of the Bible for a year and see what happened. I knew I was in terrible shape. So I decided to follow every piece of health advice I could and try all the diet and exercise and become the healthiest person alive. So the method is the same, but the topics are different.

Peter Winick So I got to ask one question Are you now both biblical and healthy or then it goes away after a year?

A.J. Jacobs Well, I always keep certain things from the Bible book. You know, part of the Bible says that you have to grow a huge beard. So I did save the beard. My wife made me. But there were things I kept from that, the sense of gratitude that was a big thing in the Bible. And that actually was the topic of my most recent book. And from the health book. Yeah. I mean, I no longer I’m training for a triathlon, but I do like to I have a treadmill desk and I like to walk. All right. So there are always things to take away.

Peter Winick So I love that it’s driven by curiosity and passion. And then this is clearly the antithesis of theoretical. You’re the ultimate sort of applied guy, right? Which is great because oftentimes we are exposed to things that are, you know, wonderful at the academic or conceptual level, but you wonder if any of these people have actually done any of the things that they attest to be experts in. So let’s sort of segway a little bit to sort of the business side of AG. So you come up with an idea, let’s call it sort of a startup. How do you sort of decide which ones are worth investing in because you don’t want to take a you’re doing something bad or silly or non-effective. So how do you let’s first decide on discuss sort of the idea selection process that you use.

A.J. Jacobs To are sure. And I think that’s a good thing to discuss because I always tell people that I am pretty. I do come up with a lot of ideas. Right, Right. But 99% of them are terrible. And I think maybe that’s a little worse than most people. But I think that that is not an unreasonable ratio. I think the key to creativity is quantity, just generating tons of ideas. And some are going to stick and some are going to fall by the wayside. Most by far, most are going to fall. So I, I definitely will carve out 15 minutes of my day just to brainstorm ideas. Okay. All computers, all iPhones and. Sure. And generate ideas and then go back and see which ones are worth pursuing.

Peter Winick But how do you do that, though? Because like you said, if 99 out of 100 are just no good, it sounds like what you’re saying is, well, you still need to generate those 99 because you’ll get to the hundredth. But how do you know when that 100th one is the one?

A.J. Jacobs Yeah, no, it’s a great question and it is. It’s the $64,000 question. I have a few methods that I use. One is just if the idea is still in your mind a couple of weeks later, then you know it’s got potential. I do a lot of testing on friends and even on Facebook. I’ll put an idea out there and see if it gets traction.

Peter Winick Well, let’s talk about that. You know, oftentimes and this I think this is an amazing point because oftentimes people make the mistake or I believe it’s a mistake, at least to create in isolation. They’ve got this great idea. And, man, I’m going to go get the cabin up at the lake and I’m going to just dive in for four months and do this. And then they put the book out there and it’s a flop. But you’re doing beta testing in real time saying, hey, let me put it out there in the world will tell me before I’ve invested a lot of time. Right? So what? Tell me about that.

A.J. Jacobs I can give you a feeling. Sure. I mean, I try to test as much as I can. I test titles. Okay. My last book was about gratitude, and the original title was Thank You All. But I thought that wasn’t catchy enough. So I actually spent $100 of my own money to do a test on. I guess it was Mechanical Turk. Okay.

Peter Winick Yeah, on Amazon.

A.J. Jacobs And I put out I have the idea of Thanks a thousand as here’s the book as I thank a thousand people who helped make my cup of coffee. So the logo designer the right person. So and I did that and tested it against thank you all and sort of an a B test and thanks 1001. And I was able to use that to go back to the publisher, write actual hard data and say, look, sure, this is what people prefer. And then they were more willing to switch because otherwise they might say, well, we we’re experts here and we’ve done this for dozens of years. So that was one example.

Peter Winick Being able to actually quantify what often comes into a, you know, in an opinion or, you know, choose your battles with your publisher or whatever. But if you can show them the data, it’s kind of hard to argue with that.

A.J. Jacobs yeah, I think I find it various and I have lots of friends who do it too, with cover, with, you know, titles. But I also do it with the book itself. So say I have 15 chapters. I will send it out to a group of 20 friends with the instruction. Can you please tell me which five chapters, chapters you like the most and which chapters you find the most boring? And then I’ll do a sort of spreadsheet of what the reactions are. And if, you know, there aren’t ten people who say this chapter is boring, then I am probably going to cut that chapter.

Peter Winick Well, and I like the way you frame that question because you could give the same stuff out to 20 people and say, Give me your feedback. And that may imply just tell me good things. But you’re sort of setting the table saying, Listen, tell me what’s good and tell me what’s boring. Because I, I suspect some things I do may be boring.

A.J. Jacobs Right. And yeah, exactly what I say. I say I known this too long and. Yeah. And if you just say can you give me your feedback then the people I feel often get overwhelmed and they don’t give you anything or they just give you pat answers. Yeah. It’s an interesting.

Peter Winick It’s awesome. Right? Right.

A.J. Jacobs I make it specific. And this doesn’t have to be for books. This could be for anything. A presentation of are willing to you Sure speak. And so I do that as much as I can. And I find it incredibly helpful. And the important thing to me is the group we have because you could give it to one person, but they could be an outlier. They should be someone very specific tastes. And so I don’t like to rely on just one person.

Peter Winick One would imagine by 20. There’s some diversity in there. There’s different perspectives. There’s different whatever levels of education or different fields that they represent. So you have a nice little microcosm there. So this process is obviously work is you have is it four New York Times bestsellers now? Yes, exactly. Okay. So I want everybody to just pause and sort of reflect on anything that that agent has said that you go, no, no, no, I’ll do it my way. I mean, there’s something to be said for this process and methodology. And I would also add and push back, A.J., if you don’t agree, there’s a sense of open mindedness and humility and willing to be able to sort of pivot and go, oops, okay, Well, just because it was my idea, it stinks. Right. Tell me about sort of what it what it takes to sort of do that, because I think that that takes a lot of courage and a lot of people get caught up in their own ego or.

A.J. Jacobs I love that you say that. And I do think, yeah, humility is important. Just because you came up with it doesn’t mean it’s brilliant. And certainly in my case it isn’t. I actually my first book was reading the Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z, and I wrote a piece for LinkedIn on five Business Lessons from the Encyclopedia. And one of them was just what you said, Be adaptable. Don’t be willing to pivot.

Peter Winick Yeah.

A.J. Jacobs They didn’t use that word back in the 1800s. But that. Thing is so crucial and there are so many historical examples. I mean, just one quickly was the Welch family that came up with right before Prohibition and they came up with this nonalcoholic wine for churches, for nonalcoholic sacramental wine made of grape juice. And it was kind of a flop. But then one of them pivoted and said, hey, what if we try to sell it to kids as sort of this juice, this sweet juice incentive, apple juice? And that’s when it took off. So again, there were these lessons in pivoting.

Peter Winick So that’s good. So now I want to talk a little bit or have you share with us your journey and your experience, the underlying business model. So for you, there’s authorship there, speaking. Talk to us about how you’ve figured that world out because you’ve got a really interesting, quirky, very different way of putting content out. But now let’s talk about how do you make a living? Well.

A.J. Jacobs Yeah, I make most of my living from my from two sources, which are my book contract and speaking.

Peter Winick And let me just call a time out there. So for most of you listening, I’m going to just state the obvious that AJ is an anomaly. Most people are not making their living from their book contracts. In many instances, people are funding their book contracts. Be that self-published or even traditional today. So you you’re able to do that because you have a track record of incredible success. So I just want to make sure that everybody realizes, you know, don’t go out there with expectations of six figure advances.

A.J. Jacobs And I don’t expect that to continue because the business is changing. So I’m sure it is quite possible my advances will drop steeply in the future and I’m prepared for that.

Peter Winick But do you have advances in speaking still talk about sort of the relationship there and the speaking world and the publishing world? Yeah. Share with us anything you can that would be helpful.

A.J. Jacobs Sure. I mean, speaking I love I hated speaking in the beginning. I actually went into writing partly because I thought, well, now I don’t have to be in public. And it was quite the opposite. You have to get out there and sell. So I forced myself to do it for so many years that I started to love it.

Peter Winick And let me let me ask on that. So I remember years and years ago, 15 plus years ago, the first time I saw Malcolm Gladwell speak, he was awful. And then I was like, I was really disappointed because I was just so in love with the first book. And then I’m like, Well, of course he would be. Let’s think about what his life was like before introspective, maybe a little introverted, maybe not so social, whatever. And then I you know, luckily I saw him a year or two later and he’s one of the best speakers I’ve seen. So there’s a different skill set of sort of living in your head and putting words on paper. Then sort of the antithesis of that is being. And ladies and gentlemen, you know, here’s AJ So talk about that transition for you because that’s not everybody can make that that leap.

A.J. Jacobs Well, that is so true. And I didn’t know he was a bad speaker, but that goes to figure, I think I think almost everyone is a bad speaker in the beginning, but forcing self to do it and getting out there and trying to be as conversational, I find what resonates with audiences is being as conversational as possible. I also try to give them takeaways because you got to think about your audience. The audiences that I’ve spoken, I do some corporate work and I also, since I wrote a book about religion, I’ve spoken at many churches and synagogues and grazers. So there’s that and also colleges. And I always try a mix of humor and practical takeaway. So, you know, sort of the fun, but also the useful and and that so far has served me well, knock on wood. But another thing I had to teach myself was and I still have to remind myself, in fact, I’m doing it right now to remind myself to vary everything I’m doing as much as possible. So vary my pitch. Okay. Vary the speed when I’m talking. So talk quickly and then pause. And then medium and pause and vary. My tone of voice vary my volume. So laugh. And that I think, is so crucial to keeping people awake. Because if you just let our brains latch on to what is new, so you’ve always got to sort of be surprising them.

Peter Winick Well, you also want to sort of vacillate from more cerebral to more narrative to, you know, funny and to sort of mix up that you don’t have to be stuck in one lane because that sort of, yeah, that will put folks to sleep. So talk about the business side of speaking. So how have you mastered that? Because a lot of folks that I work with. And a lot of folks want to speak. When I say speak, you know, professionally. Right. Right. Share with us sort of what your journey has been like in terms of whether you’re working with the bureaux or booking direct and the type of speaking gigs you like. And what’s that like? Because it’s a very odd waters to navigate, if you will.

A.J. Jacobs Yeah. No, and I feel lucky that I that I’ve gotten opportunities. In the beginning I didn’t. My first book was about reading the encyclopedia and I did not get many speaking at all. So it was only with.

Peter Winick This was the pitch that we would we would watch it. You would get up on the stage and pick up, you know, the letter V and just read from it, or no.

A.J. Jacobs One might have. Maybe that would have better. All the things I would save you the the year and a half of reading by telling you the ten best things. Right. Lessons? Yeah. And it wasn’t hugely successful. In fact, I think the more practical the book is, the more that it can have takeaways that corporations or fundraisers.

Peter Winick But the drill down on that so what might you know. So let’s say I’ve got content out there. Doesn’t really matter what the domain is, What are the and this is, I think, the interesting bridge here. So I’ve got my content. The market that has their needs. How do I bridge it? What do companies want? What do they want to take away from a keynote that last maybe an hour or so?

A.J. Jacobs Well, in my experience, it’s that combination of entertaining. Sure, they got to be entertained, but also they want that those 3 or 4 takeaways that will make them their workers more productive or happier or healthier. So I’ve done health talks on Goldman Sachs. I did one on like how to stay Healthy. And I guess from a purely cost benefit analysis, you want to be alive and making money. And I spoke I’m doing a talk to a bunch of CEOs about gratitude. And I’m going to try to frame it about sort of the benefits of gratitude, not just to your mental health, but again, to the workplace. You know, a happier and more grateful workplace is going to be more productive.

Peter Winick So you have to extrapolate actually from there. There’s a plethora of information why gratitude is beneficial to me as an individual. But you have to sort of expand the conversation to and here’s what a team that practices gratitude looks like, and here’s what an organization that’s more embracing of a grateful mindset and what that looks like in terms of outcomes or how they serve their clients. Right? Is that is that what you’re saying?

A.J. Jacobs Exactly. My book was about going around the world thanking a thousand people so I can tell some tales of math and some funny stories. But also I’ve looked and found data on how gratitude helps in business and found some case studies of companies where they wrote handwritten thank you notes to their customers and saw like double the retention rate. So tell.

Peter Winick Me. So I think that’s key because oftentimes I’ve seen early stage keynotes where it’s only one or the other, right? So if they’re an academic, it might be data point, data point, data point, data point. If they are more, let’s say, motivational, for lack of a better word, it’s story, story, story. So how do you it sounds like you’ve got a nice blend of either a data point and a story that illustrates it or the other way around, and why that’s really way more powerful than sticking to sort of one of those.

A.J. Jacobs Yeah, I think you need both. I think you’ve got to keep people interested with the personal story and the traditional things. People like inspirational struggle and vulnerability and humor and things of that nature. But then you want to drive it home with a little science. So. So, yeah, a combination of both is key. And of course starting, I think with the clients and where we’re going to start. You don’t want to start with the data.

Peter Winick Well, how do you how do you get to relatable because you know, if nothing else you’re extreme. Right? So and I mean that in a good way. Right? So most people might say, you know, I’m feeling like a chunky monkey. I got to lose 20 pounds. So here’s the things I’m going to do, not spend a year of their lives, you know, becoming best in class or religion or whatever. So how do you because I think most people look at what you do and go, well, that’s really interesting. But I’m not doing that for a year. How do you how do you sort of connect the extreme to the relatable?

A.J. Jacobs Well, my at least for me, it’s that I am just a regular sort of I’m the stand in for the regular American and think I was not in good shape to begin with. So I’m they can follow my journey as I kind of become in really good shape. And of course they’re never going to do all the things I did because, you know, it’s my full time job, right? But I can at the end of the books, I’m able to have, you know, here are ten things that you can do to make your life better. So the takeaway is, you know, you go.

Peter Winick Because I’ve tried 100 or 1000 things, I can give you the ten. So it’s a sort of a time saver or a best practices.

A.J. Jacobs Or something that.

Peter Winick Cool. Any anything else for folks. You’re sort of embarking on the speaking side that you would advise or recommend?

A.J. Jacobs Well, I would say when you are writing a book, if you write a book and definitely think of the audience that you are, you know, think ahead to what would a corporation or a college or an organization find useful in this book and maybe tailor your book a little towards that?

Peter Winick Yeah, that’s a great point because and even those markets, when you think about the speaking market, you know, the college market is very different than the traditional corporate market is very different than the association market. So you don’t have to necessarily design exclusively for one. But if you understand the buy side and I think, you know, underneath the buy side, I think people earlier in their speaking careers get confused from the button, the seat, the audience member making them really, really happy and not really considering. Wait a minute. There’s the. Audience, but there’s a whole nother constituent of the buyer, the purchaser, right? The person that owns that meeting and what their expectations are. And it’s not that they’re 1,000% different from the audience member in the seat, but they’re not identical. Could you could you just touch on that for a moment?

A.J. Jacobs Yeah. I think that’s a great point. I mean, I think that he and the people who are going to be booking you, you are not the audience. It’s going to be the H.R. Person or the events person at the corporation. So yeah, think of think of them when you’re, when you’re writing or not. Even when you’re writing role in your crafting your message after you write. So when you’re, when you’re writing LinkedIn articles, maybe write a LinkedIn article that could just be turned into a speech, you know, something like the ten Best business. I have given a couple of talks on that ten best business lessons from the Encyclopedia Britannica. And so my LinkedIn article.

Peter Winick Well, this this has been awesome. I could talk for hours, but given that we’re running short on time here, I really appreciate all that you’ve shared with us in terms of the ideation piece and how you refine your ideas and how you put them out there. As we sort of wrap up at any nugget or two that you’d throw out at an aspiring thought leader or author that’s ready to dive in deeper in terms of what to do or not to do.

A.J. Jacobs Well, just to repeat that, you know, some people are good at coming up with ideas in the shower or while they’re walking. And occasionally that happens to me. But often for me, I have to really sort of make an appointment with my creative side and just really block off time to come up with ideas and give myself license to know that most of them are not going to be great, right? So really being very disciplined, it’s a little bit of paradoxical of being very disciplined in your creativity.

Peter Winick Got it. Well, thank you so much for joining us. And this is been chock full of really valuable information. Thank you so much, A.J..

A.J. Jacobs Thank you, Peter.

Peter Winick To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our Web site at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com to reach me directly. Feel free to email me at Peter at ThoughtLeadershipLeverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.