Light Hustler: Making Your Mess Into Your Message

Joel Stein wrote a weekly column for Time magazine for 20 years, was a columnist for Entertainment Weekly and the Los Angeles Times and is the author of the books Man Made: A Stupid Quest for Masculinity and In Defense of Elitism: Why I’m Better Than You and You’re Better Than Someone Who Didn’t Buy This Book. He's also such a funny person that he manages to come across as incredibly likable both while penning a book defending elitism and while dis-inviting me to his book launch party (true story; listen to his defense in this episode and let me know if you think it means you think I should forgive him).In this episode, we talk about how to ask friends to recommend you to a show as a guest, why to never rely on a publicist and ways to make an audiobook much better, among many other topics.FOR MORE ABOUT THE PODCAST AND OTHER STUFF, GO TO WWW.ONGOODAUTHORITYPOD.COM.

Jess Lahey can talk about so many things so brilliantly that interviewing her felt a bit like walking through an outlet mall: so many choices and they all look so good!But really, here's what you need to know: She's a former New York Times columnist and current Atlantic contributor, podcaster and New York Times bestselling author of The Gift of Failure whose new book, The Addiction Inoculation, is the one that the world has been clamoring for. It addresses the question on pretty much every parent's mind at one time or another: how do I prevent my kid from becoming an addict?Lahey addresses this issue from her own perspective (as a sober woman from an alcoholic family who's taught high schoolers in recovery) but with a reporter's brilliance (coupled with scientific and medical knowledge, with some help, she acknowledges, from her in-house researcher, her husband Dr. Tim Lahey). In short, she's the perfect person to have penned this book and she couldn't have penned it at a more perfect time.She's also, it turn

Jennifer Keishin Armstrong is the New York Times bestselling author of Seinfeldia: How the Show About Nothing Changed Everything; a history of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted; and Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love. She spent a decade on staff at Entertainment Weekly and has since written for many publications, including BBC Culture, The New York Times Book Review, Vice, New York magazine, and Billboard.She's also an old pal from my NYC days; in fact, we used to host Readings & Rubdowns events where people would listen to writers read from their latest books while getting massaged.In the ensuing years, Jennifer has become a huge author and in this episode she breaks down, step-by-step, what makes for a successful launch.FOR MORE INFO, GO TO WWW.ONGOODAUTHORITYPOD.COM

Jay Abraham is the world's highest-paid marketing consultant, a proven business leader and top executive coach in the United States.As Founder and CEO of The Abraham Group, Inc., Jay has spent his entire career solving complex problems and fixing underperforming businesses. He has significantly increased the bottom lines of over 10,000 clients in more than 1,000 industries and over 7,200 sub-industries worldwide. This is a man who is paid $30,000 for a day of business consulting. And I was lucky enough to not only get him to agree to come on this podcast to talk about applying lessons from other industries to a book launch but I was also able to get invaluable advice from him a few years ago that radically transformed my business (we talk about that at the very end of the episode; you definitely want to hear it).In this episode, he doles out some of his top gems—including what to write at the beginning of every business book, how to involve influencers in your writing process, why to read the Amazon reviews o

Jane Friedman is an icon in the publishing space. With over two decades of experience in the business, she is truly considered the world's leading expert on traditional publishing, self publishing and where the twain shall meet. She's the curator of The Hot Sheet, a biweekly paid newsletter, oversees a wildly popular blog and is also the author of The Business of Being a Writer.In this episode, we discussed how important it is to know what you want your book to do for you, how to get bookstores interested in hosting you, the biggest changes in the publishing industry over the past year and so much more. FOR MORE ABOUT THE PODCAST AND OTHER STUFF, GO TO WWW.ONGOODAUTHORITYPOD.COM.

Do you really need me to tell you who Jeff Garlin is? Well, the simple way to handle that is to tell you that he stars on arguably the most adored show of all time (Curb Your Enthusiasm).But he does so much more than just come to you via your SmartTV. He's also a standup (um, obv), photographer and author. In this episode, he explains what happens when you sell a book to a big publisher but then it doesn't sell the number of copies anyone had hoped (and also has an odd name change somewhere between the hardcover and paperback).This episode also has LOTS of digressions into random topics both because Jeff Garlin could be renamed Digression Garlin and also because we're pals who digress a lot. Listen and digress with us... WANT MORE INFO ABOUT THE PODCAST AND OTHER STUFF? GO TO WWW.ONGOODAUTHORITYPOD.COM.

Ed Kressy is not your average human.He's much sweeter than your average human and his sweetness emanates from him.He also has a much crazier story than your average addict with a crazy story...and this is coming from someone who's heard every crazy addiction story over the past two decades.The short version: he went into a meth-induced psychosis for 14 years that left him convinced he was involved in 9/11. The longer version is in his memoir, My Addiction & Recovery: Just Because You're Done With Drugs Doesn't Mean Drugs Are Done With You, which you can get here.He is one of the most exquisitely talented writers I've come across in a long time—something I found, and tell him in this episode, surprising. I've read almost every book out there about addiction and recovery and few are as brilliantly crafted as this. Please get this book. Not only will you be exposed to some of the best writing around but all proceeds are being donated to prisons.And that relationship with prisons, for those here for the marke

Derek Murphy is a USA Today bestselling author with a PhD in Literature, who’s been featured in CNN, writes fantasy and sometimes lives in castles. When not trolling obscure bookshops, he prefers to be sipping espresso, surrounded by kittens and pursuing research on what it means to be a successful creative.Now the word unique is overused but this is one unique guy. Looking at the amazing array of material he puts out there is to enter into a tireless brain of myriad interests—including educating aspiring writers, designing covers, penning paranormal fiction and hosting writing retreats in castles.In this episode, we talked about creative ways to get Amazon to recommend your book (write a blog post that recommends other books like yours and then include a link to that blog in your email auto-responder), the importance of obeying Amazon's ever-changing rules and how to actually make money from book sales.WANT MORE INFO ABOUT THE POD AND OTHER STUFF? GO TO WWW.ONGOODAUTHORITYPOD.COM.

Originally from Dublin Ireland, David Nihill is the founder of FunnyBizz Conference, bestselling author of Do You Talk Funny?, winner of San Francisco International Comedy Competition, runner up in the Moth’s largest US Grandslam storytelling competition and the first-ever Irishman to have a special on Dry Bar Comedy. His work has been featured in Inc, The Huffington Post, Forbes, Fast Company, Lifehacker, The Irish Times, TED, The Irish Independent, Today FM, and on TV3.He and I met through friends a few years ago and I was immediately impressed not only with his barely indecipherable accent but also with how much knowledge he possessed about marketing, books and how to make them successful. This impression was only solidified when, a few days later, he sent me an email packed with all the strategies he'd used to make his book so successful that he was able to then sell it to a major publisher.In this episode, we go through all those ideas and more. If you listened to the episode, you know that I promised I

Estelle Erasmus is an award-winning journalist, writing coach, teacher for Writer's Digest and adjunct instructor at New York University. The former editor-in-chief of five national consumer women's magazines, her work has appeared in dozens of media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, WIRED, Huffington Post Personal, Marie Claire and more.Now she's written a book that can show you how to do the same! Writing That Gets Noticed: How to Find Your Voice, Become a Better Storyteller, and Get Published will show you all the techniques for getting editors to pay attention to you so that you can spread your writing beyond your book.In this episode, we dove into some of those techniques (including using your potential article name as the subject line of your pitch email and including your first paragraph of the article in your pitch) and also how to get an agent if you want to pursue the traditional publishing path.WANT MORE INFO ABOUT THE POD AND OTHER THINGS? GO TO WWW.ONGOODAUTHORITYPOD.COM

This special episode is a solo chat about the implosion of Scribe Media. While it doesn't contain tips about how to launch a book that transforms your career, it's a deep dive into what NOT to do when building a business from your book. Everything in here is, like all episodes, just my opinion but I've been in a unique position where I've been receiving constant updates and information from people who have the inside scoop on the Scribe sh*tshow.

Regular listeners know that I'm obsessed with PickFu, a software that, in technical terms, provides actionable pre-launch feedback on creative options. (How obsessed? I never had ads on the podcast because I wanted to wait until there was something I loved so much that I could recommend it without reservations. And, well, PickFu is it!)That's why I was delighted to welcome PickFu's co-creator John Li onto the show. And it's also why I'm delighted to use PickFu to get feedback on my covers, titles, book descriptions and Amazon book pages, among many other things. Yes, you can go onto PickFu set up a poll and ask between 50 and 500 people—hand-selected based on interests, income and thousands of other options—for feedback. This isn't "Yeah, that's good" feedback either; it's feedback that people who want to participate in polling are being compensated to do—millions and millions of people, as it turns out.In this episode, John walks us through how PickFu started, the craziest things it's used for and why someon

It was a meta on top of a meta on top of a meta experience to record this episode, which is all about what worked and didn't work for the launch of my most recent book (which happened to be based on podcast interviews I've done on this show).This means that for the launch, I tried out a lot of the things experts have recommended on this very show...some were very effective, some not so much. While it's impossible to say what the end result of all my launch efforts will be because our books have long lives and what we do at launch could end up paying off 100-fold down the line, I give you here the bird's eye view from six weeks post-launch.WANT TO SEE THE BOOK I'M TALKING ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE? GO TO WWW.ONGOODAUTHORITYBOOK.COM

Cameron Herold is the Founder of the COO Alliance & Second In Command Podcast as well as the author of five books and an international public speaker. By the age of 35, he’d help build his first TWO $100 MILLION DOLLAR companies and by 42, he engineered 1-800-GOT-JUNK?’s spectacular growth from $2 million to $106 million in revenue.So you get it. The guy's a machine. And he's a machine well worth talking to about what a book (let alone five) can do for a career, seeing as his have added millions of dollars to his bottom line. He also knows how to engineer a fantastic book launch, since he's an expert on generating PR (exhibit A: his 2019 book, Free PR). Exhibit B: his tactics have landed him everywhere from The New York Times to Oprah.In this episode, we talked about how to get the media to care about you (hint: it involves picking up the phone), why to put an 800 number on your book cover and how paying for 1000 copies of your own book to give away may be the smartest business decision you can make.FOR M

When someone says they're in a writing group, that can mean many things. They may be doing a "write your book in a weekend" class or sitting down with fellow writers once a month.For Tim Gager, it means showing up five days a week, online, for the past three years.That's because Tim runs the writing group I started when the pandemic hit. In those three years, at least 10 of its members have launched books and numerous movie projects, in-person readings and lifelong friendships have come to be.Yet, in all that time, I've somehow never talked about the writing group on the podcast. Well, that all changed with this episode, where we dove into how a writing group transformed Tim's life and career. I should mention that when he joined the group, he was already a critically acclaimed author of 16 books!For more information about the writing group, click here. For more information about Tim Gager, click here.

Nicolas Cole is an author and the #1 personal development writer on the internet with more than 75,000,000 views on his work.Cole rose to internet stardom in 2015 when he became the #1 most-read writer on Quora, accumulating tens of millions of views on his viral articles, and his work being republished in Time, Forbes, Fortune, Business Insider, CNBC, The Chicago Tribune, and more. In 2016, Cole became one of Inc Magazine's Top 10 contributing writers, accumulating millions of views on his business & creativity column, and in 2017 he founded a ghostwriting and thought leadership agency called Digital Press, for Fortune 500 executives, Silicon Valley founders, venture capitalists, Grammy-winning musicians, Olympians, NYT best-selling authors, international public speakers, and more.Cole has written two books, Confessions of a Teenage Gamer, a memoir about his high school years as one of the highest-ranked World of Warcraft players in North America (while simultaneously undiagnosed with Celiac Disease), an

Carlyn Montes De Oca is a passionate animal advocate, international speaker and multi-award winning author of Dog as My Doctor, Cat as my Nurse who has also been featured on ABC and CBS and in Woman's Day magazine.But it was what she did for her most recent book, Junkyard Girl: A Memoir of Ancestry, Family Secrets, and Second Chances, that we focused on. Rather than trying to tackle the whole wide world, she focused on her local area: Santa Fe, New Mexico. As a result, she got in with the local bookstores, pitched the local TV shows and set up local events. Now she's become a bit of a local celebrity.Steal her techniques and dominate your hometown! From there, take on the world.Want my authority-building secrets every week? Grab 'em at www.authoritysecrets.club.

Ian Altman is one of the world's top expert on sales, with his Same Side Academy rated as one of the top 5 Sales Development programs globally.But instead of focusing on sales, we talked about how he has used the book he co-authored, Same Side Selling, to attract clients to his business.We also touched on having a podcast and everything else with the same name as the book, producing an accompanying book workbook, updating a book five years after its release and so much more.Only listen to this if you want to make money from your book!Want my authority-building secrets every week? Grab 'em at www.authoritysecrets.club.

Joel Weldon is not just a Hall of Fame speaker who's been speaking for over four decades but he is also a true legend in the speaking industry—having been paid to speak at over 3,000 events and personally coached over 10,000 speakers. In this episode, we talked about how to nail your pitch letter if you want to get into corporate speaking (he actually recites, off the top of his head, a letter that you'd be crazy not to type up and send). He also gave us the 22 words that will get you speaking gigs, why you need to replace every "I" in your speech with "you," how to make your audience want to read your book and so much more.This one is gem after gem after gem! I highly recommend getting out the pen and taking some notes. And if you already know you want to work with Joel, you can go ahead and book a free slot here.

This week, I usher a new baby into the world...My book, On Good Authority: 7 Steps to Prepare, Promote and Profit From a How-to Book That Makes You the Go-to Expert, is now out and this week's episode is an excerpt from the audiobook.It's the book's introduction, which is all about how we're in the Golden Age of authority building from a book and how you can take advantage of that.Only listen if you want to build authority with your book. GRAB THE BOOK BY GOING TO WWW.ONGOODAMAZON.COM!