One of the most valuable things you will ever learn is how to embrace doing things differently. Sam Wilson’s guest today is John David Mann, an award-winning author who finds his passion and purpose in changing lives through storytelling. Join in the conversation as John shares with Sam simple strategies on how you can start where you are and work your way up from there. You can’t set out to write a great book because you’ll jinx yourself. Just set out to do a good job. Then start improving on it the next day, and the day after that! Tune in and have faith for a better outcome!
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Listen to the podcast here:
Changing Lives Through Storytelling With John David Mann
John David Mann started out as a concert cellist and composer. At seventeen, he started his own high school where he also went on to teach. He pinballed through careers in holistic health, publishing and sales leadership before becoming a full-time writer. He has co-authored 30 books including the best-selling classic, The Go-Giver with Bob Burg and a handful of New York Times and national bestsellers. His first novel Steel Fear coauthored with former Navy SEAL, Brandon Webb, was released in July 2021. Author Lee Child of Jack Reacher called it an instant classic, maybe an instant legend.
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John, welcome to the show.
It’s great to be here. Thank you, Sam.
I appreciate you coming on the show. This is going to be an exciting episode. It’s not every day that I get a famous author to come on. There are many things we want to talk about. You’ve written across a variety of spectrums. You finished Steel Fear. Talk to us about that book. I want to hear a little bit about The Go-Giver, the differences between those two writing styles and why you chose them.
To be honest, I finished the sequel to Steel Fear. I just sent that to my editor. You read the intro. I pinballed through this and that career through the first two decades of my adult life. I never had this moment where I sat down and said, “I am going to do this.” Things happened. I pursued my interests. I followed leads. My nose led me in new directions. I got in trouble. I keep redefining and reinventing myself. I’ve also continued pinballing in the lane of a writer as you’re pointing out. It’s a variety of genres. It’s a little dizzying and confusing unless you have a scorecard keeping track.
The Go-Giver was my entree into the life of a professional author. You know what they say about plans, “Man plans, God laughs.” My plan at the time was to become a screenwriter. I had been in direct sales. I had a huge sales organization. That was winding down. The sun was setting. I knew on that career for me. I wanted to write. I was going to become a screenwriter. I went out to Hollywood and took screenwriting courses. I had a mentor. A-list Hollywood screener, that was my goal. Bob Burg came along and ruined my career.
Bob pulled the lever on that pinball machine. I knew Bob. He’s a dear friend. I edited some of his stuff. He approached me and said, “I got this idea for a book but it’s not the kind of book I know how to write. It’s not what I do. I’m a how-to guy.” Bob has been a sales trainer for a century. He’s phenomenal at what he does. He said, “This is like a story. It’s called The Go-Giver. It’s a play on the go-getter. I said, “I get the concept.” He said, “I don’t know how to write this. I need you to write it with me.” I was like, “I’m busy.”
I was having an opportunity, although I didn’t know at the time to learn one of the great lessons of my life, which is that all of the greatest things that have ever happened to me have not been as a result of my plan. They’ve all been accidental, out of left field or even interruptions in what I thought I was doing. Maybe 2, 3 months later, I had a little free space. I sat down and played with the chapter. I emailed it off to Bob and said, “What do you think about this?” He said, “What do think? It’s fantastic. Keep going.”
I would pen a chapter and shoot it to Bob. He would shoot back ideas. In six weeks, we had a book. It sounds like everything was made in the shade. It was not. I got an agent who submitted the book to New York and it was rejected sixteen times. They were right to reject it. I talk about this in the book, how to write good. If one of them had published the book, you would never have heard of it because it wasn’t very good. It wasn’t ready.
We took it back and spent a year rewriting it. That was when I began to learn how to write good or how to take writing that has the germ of something in it but it’s not in great shape. How to rewrite it, revise it, pull its best out of it and put its best foot forward. Then we took it back to New York. It has sold over one million copies. Clearly, it has worked. That’s where I got into the authorship world.
All of my writing at first was in the sphere that I knew, which was sales, leadership, business leadership and personal development. It was all nonfiction. I then had some opportunities to write some memoirs, memoirs of a Fortune 500 CEO, a political operative and a sales field leader. These are all great learning experiences. It was like being an actor and playing different roles. It was like Meryl Streep getting to do Sophie’s Choice, lieutenant’s woman, whatever. These were plenty of different roles.
The subtitle of The Go-Giver is a little story about a powerful business idea. It’s kind of a Trojan horse. It’s a business idea but it’s also a life idea. We put the book out in the business lane. Our publisher portfolio is a business imprint. They put out a ton of Seth Godin’s books. They’re a phenomenal business publisher. That was our lane. Quickly, we started getting feedback from people, church leaders, marriage counselors and people in all walks of life saying, “We’re using this book.”
There was a guy who said, “I used the book with my senior class in high school.” It was in 2009. He’s done it with every senior class since. He has his class go through The Go-Giver. We had teachers from graduate school to middle school using it. It seeped out into not just the business world but the world. We have a couple of sequels. The Go-Giver Leader, The Go-Giver Influencer and then my wife and I just wrote The Go-Giver Marriage. It’s on Amazon. You can see and pre-order it. That was a blast to write for the two of us.
My wife has watched every book I’ve written. She’s my first reader. She’s one of my best critics. She loves the stuff I do. She loves me but she’s also a good critical reader. She gives me great feedback. I call her my first reader and she is. We’ve never written together before. To be honest, we didn’t know how it was going to be. I didn’t know what’s going to be like.
Is there a little comedy there? It’s The Go-Giver Marriage book. I wonder how this is going to work out writing with your wife.
We have never done it before. We have a wonderful friendship. We had an expectation that it’ll be cool but we didn’t know how much writing she would do, how much writing I would do and how that would work together. It works beautifully. We’re happy with the book. I don’t know if we’ll do more together but it was a blast. We were excited about that.
Keep redefining and reinventing yourself.
I love the journey there. You said something to the effect of, “Every good thing that has happened in your life wasn’t a direct result of something you planned and say, ‘I’m going to go do this.’” Were there things that positioned you to take advantage of those opportunities when it came?
Luck is preparedness meeting opportunity. Part of what I’ve been learning in my career is when to say, “I don’t think so but maybe I’m wrong. I don’t think that’s for me but I need to listen.” That’s what I did with Bob. Honestly, I told my wife, “Go-Giver, I don’t get it. I get the concept but I didn’t see it. It’s Bob so I got to give it a listen.” We went and visited him.
A year after The Go-Giver came out, my agent came to me and said, “I got this guy in my office. It’s not the kind of book you do. He’s a Navy SEAL sniper. He wants to write a memoir. Are you interested?” I was like, “There’s no way. I’m not doing that book.” It was so far out of my sphere and my experience set. I’ve not been in the military. I am not a gun enthusiast. It’s a totally foreign world to me.
I said, “This sounds fascinating. I got to be a part of this.” Brandon and I started collaborating and communicating. We clicked like that. We’ve done seven books together. Steel Fear, the novel, is our seventh book together. Cold Fear, the sequel will be our eighth. That was out of the left field. I never saw that coming. I am having a blast doing it. It’s just a ball.
For those of you who are wondering if this is your genre, I just finished Steel Fear. I read that for 2 or 3 days. I told John that I go to bed pretty early, [7:30] PM or [8:00] PM is my usual bedtime. Two of those nights I found myself up at [11:00] at night still reading going, “This is an amazing book.”
I deeply apologize. I am so sorry. You’re not the first person whose nights I’ve ruined. I appreciate that.
It was a gripping book. You’re on the edge of your seat the whole time reading it. Well done switching from personal life coaching. That’s a real skillset. What are some of the things that have helped you along that path to go, “I can write this way and now, I’m going to completely change my frame of reference. I’m going to write about this?”
First of all, I do follow my passions. The Go-Giver was in the sphere that I had been part of and plunged into the deep end of the pool. That whole business idea of, what are the principles that make somebody a truly outstanding business leader? What are the central modes of behavior, the core personal rules that make somebody a person of extraordinary influence? It fascinated me. The Go-Giver wasn’t a foreign thing. The military thing was totally foreign to me but I developed a profound love of crime novels, detective novels and mysteries.
For years, I was writing nonfiction and I was reading all this fiction. It became a passion of mine. It’s the first thing that I have an interest. I’m in love with the idea of it. The second thing of it is I love to be a part and figure out what works and what doesn’t. I try to read the best I can in whatever sphere I’m in. With mysteries, crime novels, I read the best from Raymond Chandler, Lee Child, everything in between, Dennis Lehane and Kate Atkinson, low-brow, high-brow but always the best.
I come away from that and I’m going, “What makes it work so well? What keeps the reader gripped? What makes that character so interesting? What makes me feel for that character so strongly? What makes that book feel like when I close the cover and put it down, something in my life has changed? It wasn’t entertainment. I’m a different person because I read that book.” I love figuring these things out, taking them apart and learning what works and what doesn’t work. The biggest influence in my writing career has been listening carefully to the critique I get.
That’s got to be a skill. That’s translatable across every walk of life.
It’s a critical skill for success in the adult world. It’s something that a three-year-old does not possess. It’s something that an eight-year-old begins to confront. It’s something that a fourteen-year-old vehemently rejects but possibly on some level is beginning to embrace. When I was twenty, I rejected vehemently as much as any fourteen-year-old. I look back at myself as a 21-year-old, I was completely not open to anyone suggesting that I do anything differently than the way I was doing. I can say that pretty honestly.
One of the hardest lessons of my life path and also probably the most valuable had been to learn how to embrace it, when either people whose opinions I have reason to value or sometimes circumstances. Slap in the face and say, “This is good. This over here, not so good. You could do that a lot better. You would need to do it differently. You’re open to hearing what I have to suggest?” “I’m open to hearing it.”
I’ll tell you what, Sam. It still happens to me. Every book I write, I’ve written it to the point where I’m ready to hand a draft over and I feel like it’s the best it could possibly be. Then my editor will come back and say, “These things right here don’t work.” I’m like, “You’re wrong.” Emotionally, I feel that in me. Intellectually, I know that she’s right and I have to listen. I can’t see it myself but if I listen, I will reach the point where I see what she’s saying.
Not only that but I agree and I’m glad about what she’s saying because she’s shown me how to make it better. That applies to life. She showed me how to make myself and my life better. My wife shows me how to become a better person every day. It’s one of the reasons I am so frantically and crazily in love with her. She has made me into such a better person than I was when she found me.
There’s so much power in that. One, having humility. There are two parts going on there. There’s the emotional response of, “You’re dead wrong. You didn’t spend 1,000 hours writing this.” The intellectual side of that says, “I should probably pay attention because this could be better.” Marrying those two and going, “How do I get these two to work, having the willpower and courage?” It’s the courage to listen.
The most valuable lesson is to learn how to embrace doing things differently.
There’s humility and courage to it. I’ll add a third element. There’s faith to it. It’s faith in the higher and better outcome. When I was 21, I don’t know how much of that I had. I had what felt like a ton of confidence. A lot of that was bluster and fake it until you make it confidence. Maybe it was real confidence but foolishly based. Having published over 30 books, one of the things that give me is it gives me a higher level of faith that this book will probably turn out okay because I’ve done it before and it’s worked out.
First off, I’ve had some books that did well and some that went over like a lead balloon. I’m proud of all my kids. Some of those books in terms of the marketplace, the marketplace didn’t agree. Nobody bought them. A few people bought them and loved them but then nobody else did. There’s a reason. I have faith in the outcome but it’s always accompanied by the emotional side. “I don’t know if I know what I’m doing.”
I don’t know there’s ever a way to get rid of that.
I hope not. If you don’t have some level of self-doubt then you’re either in the wrong business or you’re in the wrong universe.
I want to switch gears here. You’ve given us some awesome insight into the writing process, the styles of things that you write, things that writers go through and a lot of what you’ve talked about that I’ve never considered. In real estate, a lot of us want to write a book and don’t even know where to start. That sounds like the most daunting task in the world to me. You have an eBook on your website. It’s called How to Write Good (Or At Least, Gooder), which I think is a hilarious title. Talk to us about the writing process. What are some practical things that someone can do to begin their writing process?
One reason the book is called How to Write Good and not how to write great is that part of my position is I want to start where we are. That’s where I have to, every day, start where I am. You can’t set out to write a great book because you’re jinxing yourself. You set out to do a good job. That’s what you do. I don’t have any potential aspiration to make it great. Who knows what great is? They’ll judge that 100 from now. I can improve it by 10% and then I can improve it again tomorrow, making it better. The implicit in that title is start where you are.
There are two aspects to writing a book. There’s just writing and you’re not yet writing a book. I did a lot of things before I wrote books that were writing but in small form, small editorials like little columns in a number of different business journals. I had a blog and I would do posts that would be little mini-essays. Some of them better than others, some of them worse than others.
Newsletters, I wrote newsletters to my sales group. I had at one point 100,000 people in my sales group but I had about 1,000 who were in leadership. If I would write a newsletter, it’s just for them. It was me writing about business and how-to stuff. It was practice. I always encourage people who want to improve their writing, refine their writing and develop their writing to find good short-form writing.
Here are the key ingredients of that. One, posts are great. Twitter is a short form. Something a little bit bigger than that would be ideal. 300 words, 400 words, 800 words, 1 page or 2, short-form, where you’re taking and completing the idea. Maybe there’s a story or two or a single story that illustrates it. There’s a principle and technique you want to get across. You’re taking one idea and giving it a treatment.
One of the requirements here is that you finish it. First off, you start it but then you finish it. Bring it to a point of completion and then you share it. It has to be published. You have to write something, complete it and publish it. Publish it could be it goes to your group of six people. You put it on your blog and nobody reads your blog but your mom. That’s okay. It’s the act of sharing it.
I had something happened with an old friend who is writing a first book memoir. She was looking for an agent. She said, “I got a proposal already.” I said, “Send me your proposal.” I knew exactly what she would say. This is what people are going to say. She’s like, “Show it to you?” “You want to publish it for the world. Suddenly, you’re going to show it to me.” It’s like that for everyone. “You mean people are going read this?” “Yeah, they are.”
If you write a 300-word piece and publish it so that five people read it, you’re an author. Do it again. Do another one. Will it be your best writing? No, it will not. It can’t be by definition. It’s like a baby’s first steps. You’re going to fall down. That’s okay. I recommend getting lots of practice and see what it feels like. By the way, when you do that 300-word piece or 500-word piece, I recommend that you write it. Before you publish it, put it aside for whatever period of time it takes to gain some emotional distance.
That could be a few hours. You might write it in the morning and come back to it at the end of the afternoon. It could be 24 hours. That’s some distance. For me, sometimes I have to put it down for a week, come back to a blog post a week later. You want to come back to it when you have some emotional distance because there are two different mindsets in writing.
The first is the mindset of creating it. That’s when you take your idea and go. In this mindset, you can’t have any clear idea whether this is any good or not. You’ll try to. As you’re ready, you’ll say, “This is terrible.” Turn that voice off. Put the mute button on that. This is not the self-evaluating voice. This is the creating voice.
There’s another mindset, another mental faculty, which is objectively evaluating. I have two different places in my room where I do this. I have a desk where I’m sitting and over there in the corner, I have a comfy overstuffed chair where I sit and write stuff in the mornings on the pad of paper. No computer, just a pad of paper and a pen. I write over there. I evaluate it over here. Two different people, writer, editor.
If you write your 300 words, write it, put it away, get some emotional distance and then come back to it. Be honest and say, “Know that there’s something good in here and know that there’ll be some crap in here.” Be willing to sift away the crap, improve the sentences, shorten the paragraphs, clarify what you mean and make it. It’s like you got a radio station. You got to turn the dial to make the signal clearer. Once you’ve done that to the best you can for now then you publish. All of this is previous to writing a book.
Have faith in a better outcome.
In the book part, one of the most important first steps in writing a book is to be clear on your purpose in writing the book. We’re talking about people who are in real estate who want to write a book. A lot of people want to write a book and their purpose is to create a business card that will bring more business. You see a lot of consultants and speakers who put a book out and give the book away. What they want the book to do is want it to be an interesting read to bring new clients into their business. This is a completely legitimate reason to write a book. It’s not the reason I write a book. It’s a different reason. That’s fine.
Your purpose isn’t to flood the marketplace and create a bestseller and be on New York Times bestselling list. It’s to appeal to potential clients. It’s to describe your business and what you do. Describe your life and who you are in such a way people would say, “This is so fascinating. I like what this guy says. Maybe we can do business together.” That’s your purpose and that’s awesome.
Some people want to write a book because they’ve had interesting experiences in their lives and they want to share them with their family and friends. They want to leave a legacy. A childhood friend of my wife wanted to write a book about his running career. He approached her and said, “Can you help me with this?” We helped him with it. He wrote this book.
He’ll probably never sell one million copies of it. He wanted to write it for the people that know him and his family. He sold a couple of thousand copies, which is amazing and awesome. Good for him. It’s fantastic. You want to know for certain what your purpose is in writing the book and what your expectations are.
Those are very practical steps. I love the two different minds you talked about there, the creative voice and the objective voice. That will set the framework for how to get in that groove and then go forward. I’m not the most creative soul in the world especia
