Bookworm Transcripts

00:00:00

Welcome back to Bookworm. We've got another little bit different type of episode for you today.

00:00:05

We will be discussing the book Step by Chris Capehart and we actually have Chris on the podcast.

00:00:11

So welcome to Bookworm, Chris. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me.

00:00:15

Absolutely. I actually met Chris at the Christian Men's Network Conference. I think that was last

00:00:21

November down in Dallas. And Chris spoke about the process of writing his book and some of the

00:00:27

key takeaways from his book. And it really resonated with me because I feel like my story is very

00:00:32

similar where Chris, I'll let you kind of tell your story, but you were doing something and then

00:00:37

you had this vision and rather than just say, Oh, I wish I had time to do this, you kind of made

00:00:41

the time to do it, which is really what your book is all about. So I picked this book originally

00:00:47

before we knew we were going to have you on because I really liked the idea of it. I've read

00:00:52

through the whole thing after I brought it home from Dallas. Really liked it. And I think that

00:00:57

it's very appropriate for the Bookworm audience. But why don't you tell us a little bit just very

00:01:02

high level. We'll get into some of the details later. But the overview process of how you actually

00:01:09

wrote the book, how the book came to be. Sure. Well, Mike, I'll tell you I, it's been something I've

00:01:15

been wanting to do for a long time. And I finally, I knew I was going to write and I've been talking

00:01:20

about and thinking about the topics I was going to write on. And always knew one of the things I

00:01:24

was going to write on is how to help other people go after and start doing the things that they've

00:01:29

always wanted to do and accomplish the things they've always wanted to accomplish. And I've been

00:01:34

not doing it myself. And one day as I said, man, I know what I want to write about and it's helping

00:01:41

people get started and go and do the things they need to be doing. And I am not even doing it myself.

00:01:45

So I really should get going on this. And so for me at the time, I was running a tech company

00:01:54

called Evan Bits, do a lot of development for large companies across the world. And so I worked

00:02:00

quite a bit and I traveled quite a bit. And the whole concept of the book step is about taking steps.

00:02:05

I know we'll get more into that. But what I did is I found my step and I said, look, I don't know

00:02:10

how long it's going to take. It's not the perfect situation. The circumstances aren't all perfect,

00:02:16

but I can find two hours a week. And for me, it was 7 to 8 a.m. at a coffee shop outside of my office

00:02:25

or typically in a hotel room across the world somewhere, sometimes 6 a.m. And it was that Tuesday

00:02:31

and Thursday. And I did that for more or less two years. And so I wrote the book while I was also

00:02:38

doing all these other things. And that's kind of the tagline of the book is how to pursue your dreams

00:02:42

in the midst of everyday life. And I was basically doing everyday life from my job, my company,

00:02:48

my family, I have a young daughter, my wife. And so I was doing everyday life. But at the same time,

00:02:53

I was pursuing this dream that frankly, most people would think I didn't have time for.

00:02:58

And my big thing and my big encouragement to people and one of the reasons I wrote the book is that

00:03:02

I believe that we all have time to do the things we dream, the things we want to do and start taking

00:03:07

steps towards those things. Sometimes we just don't realize it. Sometimes we don't realize how

00:03:11

powerful that step can truly be. And so that was kind of the process for me of jumping into this.

00:03:16

It's finally getting to the point where I realized, man, I've been talking about the fact that I want

00:03:20

to really help people do this thing. And I've not been doing it because I've been using the same

00:03:24

excuses I'm trying to challenge other people to get over. And so I started doing that. And that

00:03:29

journey started, I guess it's almost three, maybe three and a half years ago now, when I first took

00:03:35

that first step and got to the coffee shop in Dallas, Texas at 7am the first morning and opened up

00:03:41

my computer and said, okay, what am I going to write? So that's a little bit of my story. There's a

00:03:46

lot more to it, which I'm looking forward to getting into. But Mike, that's the high level on why I

00:03:52

wrote it, how I wrote it, and how we got to where we are today. That is awesome. And I mean, it's very

00:03:58

much in line with my story and what I really liked when I heard you tell me that story

00:04:04

in Dallas was the fact that I'm not weird, basically, that other people are doing the same thing.

00:04:09

Because I was getting up early and writing at a coffee shop before going to work also. I guess a

00:04:14

lot of books get written in coffee shops in the early morning. I love that your story is about

00:04:20

you wanted to write a book and you had the difficulty of coming up with a motivation and

00:04:28

everything to do it. And yet your book is about writing a book, in a sense, it's very meta in that

00:04:34

I'm reading a book about writing a book. It's very cool. And I like that. And because I really

00:04:39

like it because there's a lot of folks out there who have these aspirations of writing books. It

00:04:44

seems like everybody I talk to feels like they have a book in them. They feel like they have

00:04:49

some story or something that they want to share with the world. And they don't ever take that first

00:04:56

step to get it done. And it's fun to read a book about writing a book and how to make that happen.

00:05:03

So thank you for that. You're very welcome. I think you're right. Everybody does have a story.

00:05:10

It's something I talk about a lot. We all have a story and that story will impact someone.

00:05:15

Some of our stories, maybe it's 10 people or five people or a million people. You don't really

00:05:19

don't know. But at the end of the day, we all do have that story. And I'm just trying to encourage

00:05:24

people to write that story, whether it be a book, whether it be a different type of a dream or a

00:05:30

company they want to start or something with their family. I want people to write that story

00:05:33

and realize that they can do it. And I think that's been my big goal. So yeah, thanks for saying

00:05:38

that because that's really a lot of the reason behind why I did it. There's actually some statistics

00:05:44

that I found when I was putting together a deep work webinar for Asian efficiency. And there was a

00:05:50

study that said that 81% of Americans feel they have a book in them and that they should write it.

00:05:57

At the time, a survey was done that comes out to around 200 million books. But there are 80,000

00:06:04

that get published every year, which means that 0.4% actually do it. The rest just talk about it and

00:06:10

never find their step, like you said, Chris. So I'm kind of curious. You made it get sound

00:06:16

when you that phrase, you know, you found your step. It's like this thing that you have to discover

00:06:21

and like the light bulb goes on and aha, this is the thing. But I know for me personally,

00:06:25

the process wasn't quite that simple. So maybe you can kind of talk us through how you found your step.

00:06:31

Yeah. Well, and let me say that's the reason when I talk about step as a general concept,

00:06:38

everybody goes, oh, yeah, that makes sense. And then they ask, well, why do you have 200 plus pages

00:06:44

about it in a book? I said, well, because it's not always as straightforward as you think. It is

00:06:50

very simple, but at the same time, it's very difficult and very challenging. And I think one of the

00:06:54

things that happens to a lot of us is we look at in the book, I talk about something called

00:06:59

the proverbial mile. And the proverbial mile is just the what I label as the infinite distance

00:07:05

between you and the person you want to be or the thing you want to achieve. And in this context,

00:07:09

you know, the books that people want to write. And you have this big mile. And I remember sitting

00:07:13

at the beginning of it and thinking, okay, I've got to somehow get a couple hundred pages,

00:07:17

written, not only written, they've got to be good. They've got to be edited. They've got to,

00:07:23

you know, go through this thing. And it just looks crazy. Like it's so far away. I didn't

00:07:28

per se see myself as a writer at that point. And so I looked at all these things and I'm going,

00:07:33

you know, where did I start? Where did I start? You want to have a full agenda? You want to have,

00:07:37

you know, your full list of this is that chapter, this is that chapter, this is that chapter,

00:07:41

how you're going to do everything. So I didn't have any of that. And I couldn't figure it out,

00:07:45

frankly, and this is what I think I'd love to talk to people about. I didn't know what chapters

00:07:49

I was going to write. All I knew when I sat down to start writing was this. I knew that if I was

00:07:55

going to write a book that had any amount of pages, the first thing I had to do was write a page.

00:08:00

And as I know with all books, and this is with everything we do in life, pretty much anything of

00:08:08

any significance that's ever done has edits and rewrites as a part of it. So if I took out the

00:08:13

pressure of being perfect the first time, if you will, in my first step and just said, well,

00:08:18

you know, if I got to write two or three hundred pages, I got to re-

00:08:20

I got to re-

00:08:21

at least write one page. So I might as well just start with that. And for me, I have a whole

00:08:27

concept to talk about breaking down the mile into the steps. And I talk about how every

00:08:31

single mile is made up of feet, inches, yards, the things we know. And our challenge is getting

00:08:38

our eye off of the mile and finding those steps inside of the mile. And there's a lot of different

00:08:44

strategies and techniques to doing that. But a lot of it is just realizing that

00:08:48

you've got to take every single one of the steps that are a part of that mile to go the whole mile.

00:08:51

And so you shouldn't overlook the small steps and not take them because you think you've got to do

00:08:56

something much more big or impactful if you think it is. Like, write a whole chapter at a time. You

00:09:02

know, writing a chapter at a time can be actually pretty difficult. But writing a page, that's pretty

00:09:07

doable. You could sit down and write a page. I mean, if you look at a page of a book once it's

00:09:11

done, I mean, it's only a couple of paragraphs. And so for me, you know, Mike, when we talk about

00:09:16

this, talk about how do you find that step? A lot of it was just that. It's really basic in the

00:09:20

beginning. It's those small things that you can break down inside of your mile that, you know,

00:09:24

you've got to get done. And you may not even know how to correctly form, in this case, like a chapter

00:09:30

using this example of writing a book. You may not know how to even write a whole chapter, but

00:09:34

you can start with that page. And then you can even break it down smaller, start with that first

00:09:37

sentence and go from there. Because as you take one step, you can build on that step. And I've

00:09:41

always been a big believer that as we take a step, or as we take an action towards anything,

00:09:47

we start to see other actions we can take. And then there's other things when we get into this. I

00:09:52

don't want to spill all the beans right here right now. But we can talk about ways when we

00:09:57

find it hard to find that first step to do it either through a tool that I have in the book or

00:10:02

through other people, other perspectives and things like that. But really for me, that's what it's

00:10:07

about. It's about finding the things that you actually already probably know to do. But you're

00:10:11

not doing them because you don't think they'll be impactful enough in doing those things.

00:10:15

That's so good. Yeah, most people I think just realize that this is such a simple thing. How can

00:10:20

this possibly add up to me having a book written? One of the quotes from the book, I didn't write

00:10:26

down the page number, but you said if you can't quite believe you can achieve the thing you desire,

00:10:29

find the thing you do believe you can do and start there. Which, like you said, for writing the book

00:10:34

was not writing a chapter but breaking that down even further and writing a page. For me,

00:10:38

I didn't even put a quantity on there. I just created the time and space and it was a time

00:10:46

period. I'm going to show up at 5 a.m. every day and I'm going to write for an hour and whether I get

00:10:51

1,000 words or 100 words doesn't matter. I just need to do this consistently. And that's the key

00:10:58

is like showing up once and writing a page. That's no big deal. But if you crease that

00:11:02

into your schedule and you create regular time, like you said, two hours a week, even, that's

00:11:06

not a lot of time. Pretty much anyone can find two hours a week to pursue their dream or their

00:11:11

vision. And then you just got to do it consistently. Just show up every day like Sean Blanc has said

00:11:16

and the results take care of themselves at that point. Yeah, one thing I'll add to that is this,

00:11:22

even you're right, two hours a week is not difficult to find. You can find that time,

00:11:27

you can sacrifice a little bit of sleep, a little bit of fun, whatever it is to find that time.

00:11:32

And here's where people get tripped up because you said it's right. It's consistency over time.

00:11:37

But here's what happens. People start, they do the two hours, they do it one week, they do it

00:11:43

the next week, they do it the next week, and then they miss it. And they miss it and they feel like

00:11:47

they've like they crash their entire dream. When just like you said, two hours isn't a lot to find,

00:11:54

when you mess up, getting right back up and doing the two hours the next week is not hard to do and

00:11:58

you can get right back on track. And one of the things I really like to encourage people and I want

00:12:02

to say it straight off is you're not going to be consistent all the time. I'm a very disciplined,

00:12:08

consistent person, probably to the extreme. And there were weeks and times where I didn't

00:12:14

write as a part of this because things happen and life comes up. And so even finding those two

00:12:19

hours was difficult for me at times. But I got back up and I started doing it again. And so that

00:12:24

consistency over a period of time, even if I messed up on one step, if you will, or one week or two

00:12:29

weeks, didn't stop me from getting back up. And I think that's a really important message for people

00:12:33

to hear. Because some people hear that message, you do it, do it over and over and over again.

00:12:38

And I, that's my message. But I also want to tell people, if you mess up, that's okay. Just as two

00:12:44

hours is not going to, you're not going to accomplish your whole goal in two hours. You got to do it

00:12:49

over time. If you missed two hours, you're not going to lose your momentum either.

00:12:53

Chris, something that you had said was that this is a really simple concept. And people are like,

00:13:00

why is there 200 pages here? And I almost hesitate to say this with the author of the book on the

00:13:06

show. But okay, this book really frustrated me because of that. It's like, okay, this is crazy

00:13:11

simple. Yeah, I get it. Okay, figure out what the next step is and go do it. Great. Now what?

00:13:16

Like that was kind of my first instinct on it. And yet I found that after like two or three days of

00:13:21

reading into it, I found myself like, wait a second. I've got these other two big goals here

00:13:28

that I don't even know what the first step is. It's like, okay, all right, you win. I needed this.

00:13:36

It's like, okay, so it was frustrating in one sense that this is incredibly simple. And yet,

00:13:41

we don't take the time to stop and think about it in this way. And I think you're dead on that if

00:13:47

we stop long enough to quantify it and say, okay, here's what I'm planning to do. And it's going to

00:13:53

take me two years to pull this off. Great. What does that mean for the next 24 hours or even the

00:13:58

next 20 minutes? Yeah, break it down that far. That was a big takeaway for me. Like, okay, I've got

00:14:03

these big goals. What does that mean right now? And it made me think, are you familiar with getting

00:14:09

things done with David Allen? Yeah, I am. Yeah. Okay, I immediately started thinking of his,

00:14:15

what's the next action? Like, I immediately thought of that. So I think it plays in really well with

00:14:20

that whole framework. Yeah, you know, and I've heard the statement said, you know, it's funny,

00:14:25

you know, there's the statement that there's nothing new under the sun, right? But what I've

00:14:30

also heard in self development in this world is that we need to hear the same thing over and over

00:14:37

again, just like we need consistency to accomplish anything. We need to hear the same thing over and

00:14:41

over again and typically need to hear it from different perspectives. And a lot of the principles

00:14:46

that I have in here, I think do really align very well with books that have been written,

00:14:51

you know, over the ages that really help people and have hallmarks of these principles inside of

00:14:55

them. But it's just taking those same principles and rephrasing them in a new light in a new way,

00:15:00

where hopefully people are encouraged to see things from a different perspective and that

00:15:04

different perspective can give them the motivation and the encouragement to realize they can do it.

00:15:09

That's awesome. I'm glad you brought that up because that was a huge roadblock for me when it

00:15:15

came to really creating anything for a very long time. I'm also a musician. I play guitar

00:15:20

and I sing on the worship tune of my church. And I've always had a passion for writing songs.

00:15:25

And for a while, I would write songs and then be proud of what I produced. And then at the end,

00:15:31

I would realize that I took the chord progression or the melody from this other song and I didn't

00:15:37

even realize it. And I get frustrated and be like, Oh man, I can't come up with anything.

00:15:41

And then I had a revelation when I read this book, "Steal Like An Artist" by Austin Cleon.

00:15:46

And he basically said that you are the sum total of all of your different inputs, all your different

00:15:52

experiences. And when you create something new, all you are doing is you are connecting the dots

00:15:58

in a way that hasn't been done before. But the dots are not completely original. You're not getting

00:16:03

these completely out of right field. These are things that other people have said, other different

00:16:08

ways like you were saying. And then when you put your own spin on it, you are creating something

00:16:12

original that can resonate with somebody who, like getting things done, for example, Joe, you brought

00:16:17

that up. There's a lot of people who read that book and they just, they don't get it. Some people

00:16:21

just completely love it. Personally, it was pretty transformational. My productivity journey,

00:16:27

it illuminated a lot of light bulbs for me. But I know people who read it and they're just like,

00:16:31

this is dry, this is boring. I completely don't get it. They'll read something like step and

00:16:36

be like, Yeah, I can totally do this. You just never know. You just never know.

00:16:41

Yeah. So, you know, for everybody who's listening who maybe has encountered that same situation,

00:16:48

don't be discouraged by the fact that somebody else has said something a little bit differently

00:16:52

than how you would say it. That doesn't mean that you have nothing of value to add to the conversation.

00:16:57

It's true. And if you look at, so the world I live in is development and writing code. And

00:17:04

it's very common to have an idea for say a new website, a new web app of some sort.

00:17:10

And you want to go figure out what the marketplace looks like. And inevitably, you find four or five

00:17:16

that already exists. It happens all the time. Development is a very hot and fast moving industry.

00:17:23

So it's very easy to find things that already exist. The trick is finding one that isn't doing

00:17:28

real well and try to become a competitor. So, it's my take on it anyway. And Joe, I mean,

00:17:35

one really great example, if you're in the tech world, you know, obviously I am as well,

00:17:38

there was a product called Hip Chat by Atlassian, which is still out there and does really well for

00:17:45

chat communication. And then something came around called Slack. And Slack is really,

00:17:51

frankly, the same thing, but just done, you know, what a lot of people would say a little bit better.

00:17:58

And they just exploded and they took off. And so, listen, at the end of the day, yeah,

00:18:02

I think things have always been done and they've been done a certain way. Our job is to go find

00:18:08

those things, make them better, make them easier for people. And I think this is done in software,

00:18:14

like you said, all the time, because you got so many guys out there doing it. I think it's done

00:18:17

in books all the time too. And it's good. We need it, you know, we need to hear the same message

00:18:24

over and over again, just like we need to do the same things over and over again to get results

00:18:28

that we want. And, you know, using other people and other people's creatives motivation to help

00:18:34

spur our ideas is I think one of the best things we can do. Yeah, absolutely. I want to go back to

00:18:40

something that you said regarding the consistency, because you mentioned that just like two hours

00:18:46

a week isn't going to instantly get you to your goal when you fail. That's not instantly going to

00:18:53

break all of the momentum that you had built towards accomplishing that goal. And I think on page 54,

00:19:00

there's a key here. You wrote that we will only accomplish our goals if we create our feelings

00:19:05

instead of letting them create us. And I'm hypothesis here, you know, from my own personal experience,

00:19:11

I'd love to get your view on this as well, is that when you fail instantly, you get those emotions

00:19:18

in those feelings that say, see, you connect, you'll never be able to do this. And the key is to not

00:19:25

let that voice be the loudest. And like you said on page 54, you have to create your feelings rather

00:19:30

than letting them create you. You have to say, no, look at what I've done. And then allow that to

00:19:35

create the feeling of, yes, I can accomplish this. Look at I'm doing this rather than, oh, look,

00:19:41

you failed. You're right. I guess because I feel this way, I am a failure. Yeah. And you know, I'm a

00:19:47

really big believer that our actions dictate our results and our actions also dictate our feelings.

00:19:53

So a lot of times we think of feelings and we think of them as just this, I don't know, mystical

00:19:58

thing that happened to us and we have no control over. But if you really start to evaluate your

00:20:02

feelings, there's always some kind of preceding event or action that caused those feelings.

00:20:08

And so in order to change your feelings, you need another event or action to change those feelings.

00:20:13

And what a lot of people don't realize is that we have control to do that. I think I share this in

00:20:18

the book, but it's one of the examples. I actually heard this said a little bit differently. Originally

00:20:24

at a marriage conference with my wife. And one of the things that the gentleman was talking about,

00:20:28

is he was just saying that, hey, look, you know, when you don't feel in love, because you won't

00:20:33

always feel in love with your wife, act like you're in love, act like you would when you feel in love.

00:20:38

So maybe you had a fight and you're coming home from work. And the last thing you want to do is

00:20:42

stop and get flowers or do something nice for your wife. Do that and see how you feel once you do it.

00:20:48

And you'll see that your feelings will start to change if you act the way you want to feel.

00:20:53

And I'm a big believer. I've seen this happen over and over again. I have another example.

00:20:57

My grandfather used to always tell me growing up the best time to make another cell is right

00:21:01

after you've made the first cell, because after you, if you're in cells and you shape or form,

00:21:05

you make a cell and you're like, ah, take a deep breath. I can relax. And he goes, no, you need

00:21:09

that momentum, that feeling that you have to go and have confidence to make your next one.

00:21:13

And I'm a big believer that we have to create our own feelings. We're going to have feelings

00:21:19

are going to hit us. And there's going to be circumstances and things that we can't control.

00:21:22

But what we can control is our actions. And if we determine to control our actions,

00:21:26

our actions will ultimately result in the feelings you want. And I have this. So I get up,

00:21:30

I say every day, but it doesn't happen every day. Life gets in the way. Last night, I think we had

00:21:37

tornado warnings coming through. So we're up at 2.30 in the morning and my 5 a.m. wake up call.

00:21:42

I just wasn't doing it this morning. So 5 a.m. became 6.30. But on a typical weekday basis,

00:21:48

my goal is to get up around 5 and I ride at 6. And every time I wake up at 5, I would say this,

00:21:54

20% of the time I wake up at 5, I feel great. And I'm just like, wow, why to wake. And I've

00:21:59

been doing this for a long time. And the other 80% of the time, I need 5 to 10 minutes to, you know,

00:22:05

get a little bit awake and I'm to get past my questioning of why am I waking up this early in

00:22:10

the morning, all these types of things. And as soon as I do it, I get up and I go and I write and

00:22:16

I finish, you know, writing, I write different things, whether it's a script or a blog or a part of a

00:22:21

book. I write that typically for about an hour or six to seven. When I get done with that,

00:22:26

I feel phenomenal. The fact that I woke up early that morning and was tired is all gone.

00:22:32

I'm ready to conquer the world. And I've done something that puts me on the track to the person

00:22:36

I want to be in, the things that I want to achieve. And it completely changes my outlook on the day

00:22:41

and my feelings on the day as well. And those feelings will propel me through the rest of the day with

00:22:47

a positive attitude, a positive outlook and a positive mindset versus the days when like today,

00:22:52

I didn't get up and do that. I didn't write this morning and I still feel great. But I'm kind of

00:22:57

like, man, what if I would have just gotten up a little bit earlier and done this? I feel good still,

00:23:03

but man, I would have felt even better. And so I think a lot of times we allow our feelings to

00:23:09

dictate our actions. And that's the exact opposite thing of what we should be doing when those feelings

00:23:16

are bad. The feelings are good. Go with it. That's what I say. But if the feelings are bad, which

00:23:21

typically when we're talking about feelings, it's not great feelings. It's the ones that are

00:23:24

telling you you shouldn't do it or you don't want to do it or you can't do it or you're going to fail

00:23:27

if you do it. Those are the ones you got to change and you change them through action.

00:23:31

Yeah, that actually leads into the next thing on the outline here, which I think is a really

00:23:35

powerful concept because a lot of people, they think that if they do nothing, that's kind of just like

00:23:42

staying in the middle. But you have in the book, you say that a step not taken is a step in the wrong

00:23:48

direction. So a lot of people have these dreams and these visions of where they want to get to.

00:23:52

But I don't think people view it as if I do nothing, I'm actually walking the opposite direction.

00:23:57

Yeah. And I like to use a, if you will, borrow a concept from the financial world.

00:24:05

When you're young or junior high school college, you get taught about this concept called time

00:24:10

value of money, which we all know that if we start putting money in a 401k or an IRA or one of

00:24:16

these types of tools when we're young, over time, there's compound interest. And as the more and more

00:24:21

time goes by, that money becomes worth more and more, even if we only are putting a small amount

00:24:26

inconsistently over time. And they say, the problem is if you start that when you're 35 or 40,

00:24:31

you don't have as much time. And so you got to figure out how to put a lot more money in to make up

00:24:37

all of the time that you didn't do it. And the same thing kind of rings true here, which is,

00:24:44

if you've got a big dream and a big goal, something you want to achieve, time is what's on your side

00:24:49

with the concept of step, because the concept of step is that in the middle of

00:24:53

everyday life, you can still take these steps. Let me be honest, I could have written step in

00:24:57

three months if I was doing it full time, but I didn't have full time availability to be able to do it.

00:25:03

So since I didn't have that, I had to start and that took me two years to get the book launched.

00:25:08

So two years is a lot longer than three months. And if I wouldn't have taken any of those steps,

00:25:15

I would have every day that I had not taken a step. I would have been two years farther away.

00:25:20

And maybe even longer because of the more responsibilities, the more habits that I'd created.

00:25:25

And so I'd like to encourage people, like, you think if you're not taking a step forward,

00:25:29

then you're just staying still, but you're not. If you're not taking a step forward,

00:25:33

you're moving in the opposite direction because there's more time that is going between you and

00:25:38

the thing you want to achieve. And your ability to achieve it, your energy, your time, your focus is

00:25:44

continuing to be pushed further and further out, which means the hope inside of you is continually

00:25:49

being deferred, which means you're going to feel worse about it. Like there's all these

00:25:52

compounding effects, kind of like when you don't eat right, which I don't always eat right,

00:26:00

when you don't eat right, there's a lot of potential compounding effects that can come from that

00:26:03

one thing other than things you can see. And it's the same thing when you don't take steps.

00:26:08

It's not just taking a step in the wrong direction. It's also your emotions, your feelings, your

00:26:13

outlook on life, like all of these things are affected. And so I really do believe that when

00:26:19

you're not taking a step in the direction of the goals, of the dreams that you have, you are definitely

00:26:24

taking a step back and maybe just maybe even a bigger step back than if you would have taken a

00:26:29

small step forward. So I really encourage people, don't worry about the size of the step, but always

00:26:35

be taking a step forward so that you're taking a step in the direction of your dream. You're not

00:26:39

taking a step away from it, which makes a lot of sense whenever you tie that into the feelings

00:26:44

bit. Because if you take your actions based on how you feel, most cases, I'm not going to take any

00:26:52

action because I really don't feel like it. It's like, how many times do I, I would rather just sit

00:26:59

and watch Netflix at night or I don't want to get up at 5 a.m. because I'm a 5 a.m. guy as well.

00:27:05

I could get a lot done. I can write a lot of code in the morning. I could write for my blog. I could

00:27:10

do a lot of things in that time, but I usually just don't want to. I do it anyway, but I don't want to.

00:27:16

So if I go off of my feelings, you're absolutely right. I'm going to end up in a spot where most

00:27:22

of the stuff that I feel is important is never going to get done. I'm going to be heading backwards

00:27:27

if I don't do anything about it. But that's all independent of, or dependent on how I feel

00:27:34

if I were to follow through on that, which I'm not going to do. Yeah, in page 146, you say,

00:27:40

courses can be corrected, but there is not a silver bullet for inaction. So like you said,

00:27:45

even if you just take the same step, I haven't heard that in a while. I need to go back and read

00:27:50

that. I don't know who wrote that, but I like that. Wise man, what's that?

00:27:55

So yeah, even if you're just taking a small step, it doesn't matter if you mess up and if you

00:28:02

have to course correct, that's kind of how I've ended up where I'm at. Like, I never really

00:28:08

considered myself a writer. I decided to try it. Oh, hey, I'm actually okay at writing. And that led to

00:28:13

creating videos and public speaking and a lot of other things that actually are 100% in line with

00:28:23

my skillset, which I never even realized. This was a really important thing that you called out here.

00:28:27

Yeah, on page 174, you said that the thing we fear the most may one day be the thing that we do

00:28:31

the best for me. That was public speaking. I was, I was the stereotypical person who their number one

00:28:37

fear was public speaking, number two was death. But I joined a Toastmasters group and it wasn't just

00:28:43

me doing that. It was all these little things, these one steps at a time that led me to this

00:28:47

space where now like I've been in the group and I've kind of found my niche and I get people who

00:28:54

comment all the time like, Oh, you've obviously done this for a long time. No, actually, I just

00:28:58

started in January, but it's the thing that I never really saw myself doing. And I kind of

00:29:04

discovered that through this whole process of trial and error, which again, comes down to just

00:29:10

taking that step. And I want to ask you specifically, Chris, because you mentioned one story already

00:29:16

just from today where you had the tornado warning last night, you'd feel like getting up at five.

00:29:22

But that's a fairly minor thing. And you have a lot of stories in the book, which kind of illustrate

00:29:29

some of the bigger stuff that people deal with. And you share a lot of your own story in the book as

00:29:34

well. You mentioned your grandfather, there's a lot in the book about your grandfather, who sounds

00:29:38

like an awesome guy. And I wish I wish I could have met him. But I'm curious from your own

00:29:43

experience, has there ever been a time where there was like a major life crisis in the middle of

00:29:46

this two years where you just thought, you know, maybe this isn't worth it. And you were tempted

00:29:51

to quit. And then maybe specifically how you overcame that. Yeah, you know, there's there's a

00:29:58

story and I actually do write about the story in the book. During during the two year period,

00:30:04

it's probably about there's actually a couple. But one is about a year in maybe a year and a half

00:30:11

and something like that. I can't remember the exact amount of time. And my work travel had

00:30:17

exponentially increased. I was traveling almost every week. And in my travel, it wasn't like I

00:30:26

would go and have this free time at a hotel. And I would leave my hotel room at, I don't know,

00:30:32

seven in the morning. And I would be out with people and clients until 11 or 12 at night.

00:30:38

I get back and have to get up and go do it all over again the next day and do that for several

00:30:42

days in a row. And then the days you're not doing that, you're hopping on a flight and a plane and

00:30:46

things like this. And I got to a point where I just I was having a really difficult time,

00:30:51

like finding any time to do this because I was so tired. That was really one of the big issues.

00:30:57

I was just so tired. And I had a mentor who had written several books and we were talking about

00:31:05

this and he goes, Chris, you know, maybe you just need to take the pressure off yourself to write

00:31:09

and finish the book. And maybe you just journal, just journal some at night. And then once you get

00:31:14

past the season, you can pick back up your step and your step's just going to adjust. It's just

00:31:19

going to change for a time period. And I really didn't want to hear that because I wanted to

00:31:24

continue on the same step that I was taking. So it goes, isn't it? Yeah, I didn't want to hear

00:31:29

exactly. And so, you know, I didn't want to take what I thought to be a step back. But

00:31:34

because of this seasonal life to do what I needed to do, I realized like even my two hours a week

00:31:40

wasn't going to be possible consistently. And so I needed to give myself a reprieve and say,

00:31:47

okay, for the next couple of months, if I get to it and can write it, like I'm going to still try to,

00:31:53

but I'm going to take the pressure off of having to finish the book by x-date. I didn't have that

00:31:57

pressure on me. And I'm just going to journal when I get a chance about what happened during the day.

00:32:03

And I know that at some point that might turn into stories that I can use. And so, you know,

00:32:08

that was a really good thing just mentally for me to take the pressure off of, you know,

00:32:12

I've been putting this pressure on myself. I've got to do this, got to do this, got to do this,

00:32:16

and has someone come in and say, you're life's crazy right now. Look at this thing in a complete

00:32:21

picture. It's going to be okay if you don't go as fast for the next three months. And there's a

00:32:28

lot of times where that type of thing happens. And what we tend to do in that situation is we

00:32:32

tend to just not step at all. And it gets really hard to pick it back up instead of finding what

00:32:38

I call a modified step. And being okay with the fact that sometimes your step actually shrinks.

00:32:44

When we typically think that as we go, our steps should grow and increase. And it does in a lot of

00:32:49

ways. There's times where we actually are step past a shrink, but we can still keep taking a step.

00:32:55

And that's something that happened to me when I was writing the book.

00:32:57

Yeah, just don't stop.

00:33:00

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's, you know, you may only be going five miles an hour instead of 15 or 20 or

00:33:05

wherever you were. But don't stop. I'm curious, when you found your step, like you said, and you

00:33:14

started creating the time and space to write for the two hours per week, what was your vision,

00:33:22

like what was your ideal future? Like, I guess, when you started that process, did you just have

00:33:27

the book in mind? If you go to your website, you obviously do like public speaking and stuff like

00:33:31

that now as well. Was that part of the dreamer vision or how did that evolve to where you are

00:33:38

today? Yeah, actually, you know, so going back to when I was very young, I actually, for me,

00:33:46

public speaking, I was kind of the opposite. I love public speaking and writing was something I

00:33:52

didn't like to do. And so I finally got to a point, I always had a plan, if you will, or a goal,

00:34:00

that this would be something I would do as part of my main competency. And I'd done a lot of it

00:34:06

throughout the years. But when I got to the point of, okay, I want to get serious about my public

00:34:12

speaking. And I've also been wanting to do the writing as well, so I realized that was an important

00:34:16

piece. As I took a step back and evaluated, I felt and realized that I actually needed to write the

00:34:24

book first. And writing the book would help give me the platform that I needed from a speaking

00:34:30

standpoint. And so really, for me, the book was not necessarily my primary thing. The speaking was

00:34:37

the primary thing that I wanted to do. And so yeah, I did have bigger plans from the beginning.

00:34:43

But those plans have been developing and unfolding over years now. And I think that's one of the

00:34:48

things that I get three years or three and a half years, whatever I am, from when I really

00:34:53

started aggressively going after this, and I look back and I realize, but it does take time.

00:34:59

Almost everything is great. Anything that we want to do and accomplish, it takes time.

00:35:02

But when I look back over the three years, it's not been bad time. And it's not been anxious time.

00:35:08

It's been great time because I've been pursuing something I wanted to pursue the whole time.

00:35:12

And I think that's one of the things that we forget really quickly. And so for me, I definitely

00:35:18

always had a bigger goal. This is something I wanted to do as my life. There's other books,

00:35:22

there's other messages, if you will, inside of me that I want to share from a book, from stage,

00:35:28

from video courses, and a lot of different things that I do. And that's always been a part of me.

00:35:32

I really just want to help people do, frankly, what I talk about, which is figure out how to pursue

00:35:37

their dreams in the midst of everyday life. And it's going to go beyond the book as is.

00:35:41

It goes into a lot of other things. But yeah, there was definitely a bigger dream from the beginning.

00:35:46

Chris, most times whenever people talk about writing books or they start asking about big

00:35:54

projects that people have completed, big achievements, they always want to know what was the most

00:35:58

difficult thing you encountered. Well, what if you flip that? What was the easiest part of writing

00:36:04

the book? Because it took two years. And I know there's a lot of difficulties that come with that.

00:36:08

But what were the easy parts? That's a great question. I really think it plays right into my whole

00:36:16

philosophy. The easy part was just taking a step and doing that hour of writing, like that,

00:36:24

and putting that on my calendar, and just saying, this is going to be a part of my life and my routine.

00:36:29

Frankly, that was the easiest part. And that's really the thing that kind of set me up for

00:36:36

everything else that I was doing. But the easiest part was the step. And that's the whole thing.

00:36:42

There are days when the step is hard. But the step typically is not a hard thing in and of itself

00:36:48

to do. And that's been one of my mantras that I talk to people about, people that don't believe

00:36:53

they can do things. They'll say, well, let's break down your big goal into steps. And I'm

00:36:57

pretty confident that I can always get you to agree that you believe you can take the step that we

00:37:01

break it down into, because the step is typically easy. And it's just combining those steps together

00:37:07

and adding consistency and time and all these things on top of them that gets a little more,

00:37:12

we have to put a little more commitment into that. So for me, honestly, the step was the easiest part.

00:37:16

That was the easiest thing to do in scheduling that step.

00:37:20

Just dead water and time.

00:37:24

Yeah. I mean, you know, like I said, there's obviously there's the other pieces to it and,

00:37:29

you know, to make sure we're taking the right step and have an accountability and

00:37:33

continuing to do it and continuing to keep our perspective on why we're doing it when we feel

00:37:37

like it's monotonous and we're a little bit stuck in the mud, if you will. But at the end of the day,

00:37:43

the whole principle is that that step is easy. And even in taking that step, you sometimes feel

00:37:49

like that step's hard when it typically isn't. It's just everything else that's going on in your

00:37:53

life. And so that's a big piece of this. But the step is easy. It really is.

00:37:58

I like what you said that I think it's worth going back and teasing this out. You mentioned that you

00:38:06

put it on your calendar. And I think that your calendar for a lot of people is kind of sacred space.

00:38:13

And when something goes on your calendar, it indicates, at least to me, that this thing is a

00:38:19

priority. And I think where a lot of people get stuck is they say, "Oh, yeah, this thing is a

00:38:24

priority." But how you're spending your time isn't confirming that, then you're not going to get

00:38:31

any progress made on that goal or that vision that you say is a priority.

00:38:35

Yeah. And, you know, I am, we have a rule with my friends, family, and the rule is simply this.

00:38:46

We always want to hang out with our friends and our family, right? But life's busy. So every time

00:38:51

we do hang out with them, we have a rule that we will schedule our next time to hang out on the

00:38:55

calendar before we leave. And that allows us to have consistency. There is something powerful about

00:39:00

putting something down on a calendar or however you schedule your life. We all have different ways

00:39:05

of scheduling it. I think probably 70% of us now use G-Cal. But for those 30% that don't, or maybe

00:39:13

it's only 10% that don't, you have a way of doing it. Write it on your calendar. Write it somewhere

00:39:17

wherever it is. But there's something about being intentional about scheduling. Because when we

00:39:22

schedule, we start to eliminate the excuses we would typically have to not do the step or do the

00:39:30

task or the action that we're wanting to take. And our goal with scheduling is really just to

00:39:34

eliminate more barriers that we won't do it. So if you have in the book four ways to accelerate

00:39:39

your time, four ways to accelerate your step. Number one is time. Number two is team. Number

00:39:44

three is learning. Number four is kickstart. You want to kind of walk us through those real quick?

00:39:48

Yeah. So just using my example on an hour, I guess it was two hours a week, an hour a day,

00:39:57

twice a week. An easy way to accelerate my step would have been simply to bump that up to two hours

00:40:04

a day or four hours a week. If we add time to our step, typically, that gives us the ability to take

00:40:15

a larger and longer step. And so time is one of the easiest ways. But it's also one of the more

00:40:20

difficult things that we can do because time is precious, right? But I always say and I always

00:40:25

like to mention the fact that time is a really easy way. Even if you add just a small amount of

00:40:30

time, we always typically start with this hour. And maybe we jump it up to an hour 15, an hour 10,

00:40:36

you know, start to inch the time up a little bit. And that's a great way to be able to take a

00:40:42

bigger step because we still got to take the same amount of steps no matter what. But when you have

00:40:46

time, you can take a more, you can take more steps or a bigger step, however you want to

00:40:51

talk about it in that time, because you have more time.

00:40:55

There's a concept from another book that we read. Joe, maybe you're thinking the same thing

00:40:59

from Decisive by Chippendan Heath, where they have this term called "Uching," where you're kind of just

00:41:03

stepping a little bit further out into the unknown. And that's what I thought of when you're talking

00:41:10

about extending your time. Just another five, 10, 15 minutes is "Uching your time."

00:41:16

Oh yeah, I do this. I do it in software all the time. So we're building something and,

00:41:20

well, I shouldn't say we. I'm building something. And then I know that the first round, it's gonna

00:41:26

have a lot of bugs, it's gonna have a lot of problems, it's gonna take longer to build than I

00:41:31

always budget to begin with, even if I double at the time. I think it's gonna take, always happens.

00:41:36

And it seems like if I continue to add more time to it slowly, or I continue to grow the scope of

00:41:43

it slowly, start with something very basic, and then build on to it over time once I've got some

00:41:48

people into a given software, it always goes way better. You know, if I slowly build it up as

00:41:55

opposed to trying to bite off a whole bunch all at once. Yeah, definitely. So the second one here is

00:42:02

team. You want to kind of talk us through that one? Sure. Yeah, team, you know, a lot of these kind

00:42:08

of build off the same principle, but with team, it's just simply this. So for instance, with me

00:42:14

right now, I think I kind of mentioned you guys have somewhere between eight and 10 people on my

00:42:19

team right now. I use some freelancers and contractors to help me do a lot of the work that I do

00:42:25

and this is on my kriskapart.co writing, speaking courses. And then I have another company, a tech

00:42:31

company that I work in as well full time. So we have a team over there. And what I realized is that

00:42:36

as I was wanting to grow this part of my life, this business, if you will, I didn't have the time

00:42:42

because of my other responsibilities to add. So since I couldn't at the time, I had to find

00:42:48

someone else that could do the task. And so it's pretty simple. You know, if you want to accelerate

00:42:53

what you're doing, you can find a team. And you know, there's a lot of different ways to go about

00:42:56

doing a team. There's volunteer based teams, there's paid teams. And there's things somewhere in the

00:43:00

middle. But at the end of the day, at some point, if you're doing something, you're going to need

00:43:07

more time. Anything that's growing and that you're doing well, you're going to need more time than

00:43:11

you can physically put into it. Even if you have all the time available to you in a day, because

00:43:16

there's still a limited number of time. And while there is a limited number of people in the world,

00:43:21

there's a lot more people than there is time you have in a single day. And when you start building

00:43:26

a team, you can start to accelerate your efforts and multiply your efforts by having other people

00:43:31

take tasks off your plate. I'm a big fan of it. I'm a big fan of a book called Essentialism.

00:43:37

And I think a lot of the principles, we share a lot of the principles in my book. And the point is

00:43:42

this, like in this company of mine, and what I do with Chris Cape Art.co, writing is something that

00:43:50

really I can be the only one that can really create the content. I have people that help me

00:43:55

edit it and do things like that and make it even better. But I'm the only one that can create it.

00:43:59

Like it's in my head. So I've got to somehow get that down. Going back and forth on emails and

00:44:06

managing calendars and things like this, those are things that other people can do that don't

00:44:10

require me. And so I have to make conscious decisions to find the things that my team can do

00:44:17

that will allow me to do the things that actually really matter to what I'm trying to pull off and

00:44:21

accomplish. And so team is valuable. So that's what I would talk about with team.

00:44:24

That can be really scary because for me personally anyways, the tendency is to think that I'm the

00:44:33

only one who really knows 100% how this thing works. And when you start adding additional people who

00:44:38

don't have all the benefit of your experience and your knowledge and obviously standard operating

00:44:43

procedures and documentation can help with this is the way you do things. But there's always

00:44:47

those edge cases and there's always bumps in the road. But I guess what you're saying here and I

00:44:53

agree from an intellectual standpoint, I just have trouble doing this practically I guess,

00:44:59

is that those bumps in the road and those difficulties and problems that may arise once you figure those

00:45:06

out, it's worth it in the long run. Yeah and I think a lot of times, frankly, there's always

00:45:11

somebody that's better than us at what we're trying to do. It's one of the reasons why when I was

00:45:16

writing step, you know, I wrote step, I wrote the entire first draft myself, and then I had what's

00:45:24

called a developmental editor that helped me take my draft and develop it. And then I had a copy

00:45:29

editor that comes in and actually make sure that everything is, you know, the way it needs to be

00:45:33

from a copy standpoint, from a grammar standpoint. And you know, I went through three developmental

00:45:39

editors, one of the reasons it took so long to do the book, it didn't actually take me the whole

00:45:43

two years to write the original content for the book. But what I ran into was I needed help

00:45:52

developing some of my concepts and figuring out the right ways to develop them in ways that people

00:45:56

would want to read or want to engage with. And it took me going through three or four different

00:46:01

tests with editors to find a person and the person I ended up working with, her name is Maria,

00:46:08

she's phenomenal, she did a book for a guy named John Acup, she did another book for a

00:46:11

lady named Sophie on Maruso. Both of those books at the time were in my category in

00:46:15

New York Times bestsellers. And so for me, she is a much better writer, she actually did one

00:46:22

recently for Simon Sinek as well called I think Eaters, Eaters, Eaters, not Eaters, leaders last.

00:46:29

And so what I did is I actually found people that were better than me, in some cases, to do even

00:46:37

the things that I wanted to do which made me better at doing the thing that I wanted to do,

00:46:40

which was writing. And so a lot of times, you know, we, and I'm very guilty of this, we

00:46:46

think more highly of ourselves than we ought, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

00:46:52

When a lot of times there's people out there that can do the things that we feel like is

00:46:58

intimidating with just a little bit of training, a little bit of work, or frankly, in the case of

00:47:02

Maria and just better than me. And I started learning from her, and that's one of the things

00:47:07

I think that made the book good. I think there's a lot of value in knowing where your limits are,

00:47:14

and being willing to seek out people who are better at you in some areas. Like it's scary to

00:47:18

delegate because I know the whole system and I know what needs done and I know how to do it.

00:47:23

And it's going to take me twice as long to train and teach someone else to do it.

00:47:27

And I hate that, but at the same time, I feel like you have to do it once and have a good

00:47:35

experience with it to realize that you can trust and find other people who are better at certain

00:47:41

areas. Like I can come up with a design for a logo, but it will take me three or four months

00:47:47

to do it. I'm going to learn Illustrator more than I care to know, and it's probably going to be

00:47:53

okay. But if I'd foot the bill to pay somebody to do it and just get it off my shoulders,

00:48:00

I'm going to feel a lot better about it in the long run.

00:48:02

But I'm just going to say, just being willing to get it out there,

00:48:06

and being willing to trust somebody who's better than me, typically results in something way better

00:48:12

in the end. Yeah, and I think the other thing is this, listen, I can write a whole book on

00:48:18

team and on management. There's been volumes of books written about how to do it. So it's not

00:48:22

necessarily an easy thing to do, but obviously any company, if you will, or organization that's

00:48:29

successful has to figure it out because they need multiple people. And so it is able to be done,

00:48:34

and it can be done and can be done well. And I think it's actually easier to do on a smaller level

00:48:40

because you don't have as many wildcards if you will. But yeah, I mean, it's definitely,

00:48:45

it can be a scary thing jumping into that, but being willing to trust other people. And then

00:48:50

I think this is what happens is people go, "Okay, I'm going to trust them to do this." And then they

00:48:54

come back and they don't do it exactly the way you want to, and you get frustrated instead of

00:48:57

realizing you need to work with them, challenge them, encourage them, and know that just like

00:49:03

maybe in a situation where you were asked to do something and didn't do it perfectly the first time,

00:49:08

because you needed a little bit of extra coaching, tweaking on the process and things like that.

00:49:13

And somebody helps you and gave you that time. If you do the same with the other person,

00:49:17

there's a good chance you can get them to a place where they can actually accomplish it and take

00:49:21

that load off of you. But sometimes we think, "Oh, I can just hand it to somebody and then walk away

00:49:25

and it's done." And that rarely happens. That rarely happens. Having kids is great practice for

00:49:32

this, I feel, because you have to say that over and over again. Yeah, sure.

00:49:35

Third one, you kind of touched on it a little bit. You mentioned it at least a couple of times

00:49:41

you were talking about the team, but that is learning. You want to talk us through that one?

00:49:45

Sure. I think one of the things that Joe was talking a little bit about this,

00:49:50

if you know Illustrator and you know Design, it might be quicker for you to do your logo design

00:49:56

than to have someone else do it. If you don't, you don't. And sometimes you're in situations where

00:50:01

you don't have the funds or the people that are willing to do it for you for free, so you've got

00:50:07

to do it. And so one of the things that we can always do is we can always educate ourselves.

00:50:12

There are so many resources available to do this free these days, and I'm paid as well,

00:50:17

but there's so many things to do. I've been integrating this into a lot of the talks that I've

00:50:22

done recently and just talking about, "Hey, what's the difference between you and a doctor?" And

00:50:26

people start talking about a lot of different things. And I say, "Well, the only difference

00:50:28

between you and a doctor is the time you spent learning." And I like to demystify the fact that

00:50:35

sometimes when we learn how to do something and we learn how to do it right, we eliminate a lot

00:50:40

of the time we spent doing it wrong. And so sometimes just taking the time to learn, and I'm not good

00:50:47

at this one, I jump into things before I learn typically and I learn on the fly, it takes some

00:50:53

time to learn, takes some time to get educated and go take some courses on Illustrator before you

00:50:58

just jump right into it and you'll probably save yourself five or six hours or maybe 20.

00:51:02

I don't know how many you might save. And so I think a big thing is this is you can narrow the gap

00:51:07

between you and a step that you might not be today capable of taking because of education with just

00:51:13

a little bit of education or learning. And we should always feel free to do that and feel free to make

00:51:18

learning a part of our step and not feel like that is a non-worth while exercise. It's actually a very

00:51:26

worthwhile exercise because when we learn something, even if we're going to delegate it later,

00:51:31

knowing the ins and outs of how something works actually helps us be a better manager and a better

00:51:34

delegator of making that happen. Nice. Yeah, I think that from the how to do a specific task

00:51:43

perspective, there's a lot of value in this. But I also think that it's got broader application just

00:51:48

in the whole idea of personal growth. I mean, that's really the whole idea behind this podcast is

00:51:53

Joe and I decided that we were going to read these books because I found an article that said that

00:51:58

the top CEOs, the difference that separated the top from everybody else was the fact that they

00:52:03

read 24 books a year. So we're like, we're going to read a book every couple weeks and we're going

00:52:08

to hold each other accountable to stuff and we're going to continue to grow. And the things that we

00:52:12

learn are going to affect the choices that we make and how we approach problems is essentially

00:52:17

going to increase the size of the toolbox that we've got to work with. Jim Marone said that your

00:52:22

level of success will rarely exceed your level of personal development because success is something

00:52:25

you attract by the person that you become. And you have to be intentional about becoming a better

00:52:30

person. You have to consistently keep learning. But that's kind of a tangent. We'll go back to

00:52:37

specifically how to accelerate your step. You the fourth one here and this one, I think,

00:52:42

is not quite as clear as the other three. So maybe you can explain what you mean by kickstart.

00:52:47

Yeah. So a kickstart and I'll give it an example from when I was writing the book.

00:52:53

So I did my two hours a week and then every once in a while I would start to get a little more

00:52:59

time by taking a weekend afternoon or a week yesterday morning and going and writing. But sometimes

00:53:05

we need to and I couldn't think of a better way to describe this than calling it a kickstart.

00:53:11

But I'll give you an example. One of the kickstarts that I did was I took an entire week off and

00:53:16

instead of taking a vacation, which would have been a nice thing to do, I took a week and all I did

00:53:22

is I worked my, if you will, eight hours a day and I wrote. And so I was able to do,

00:53:28

let's see, so roughly 40 hours, what it would have taken me, what 10 weeks to do in one week.

00:53:35

And that was a little bit of a kickstart. It did a couple things for me. It gave me some momentum

00:53:42

again. It gave me that time and that place to focus. And when I talk about a kickstart, the reason

00:53:49

I call it out as something different is I define it in the book as something that is not sustainable

00:53:55

over the long term. It wasn't at that time in my life, sustainable to do 40 hours a week on writing

00:54:01

for any significant period of time. I could do it for a week or two, but beyond that I had to get

00:54:07

back to my other realities to pay the bills and do the things that I needed to do. And so typically

00:54:11

a kickstart revolves around you're in a position where you need to do something to really push yourself

00:54:18

over some kind of hump, over some kind of hill, some edge, something you haven't been able to get

00:54:23

past because you haven't had enough time to focus on that thing or to learn that thing or whatever it

00:54:27

is, build that team maybe. And so you take and you work hard and maybe you're still working and

00:54:33

you're just working, you know, you get home at, let's say it's five and you work from five to

00:54:38

midnight every day for a week or two weeks and you're not going to be able to continue that pace

00:54:44

forever. Maybe some people can, typical people can't continue that pace forever. So you find

00:54:49

something that you can do for a short period of time that's going to move you a lot faster down

00:54:52

the road. It's going to give you momentum, it's going to give you excitement, and it's going to help

00:54:56

you start to see a new milestone or a finish line, if you will, in your book or task or goal or dream

00:55:04

or whatever it is. But in my example, I was talking about one of when I did it with the book.

00:55:10

That's awesome. I like that a lot. And I think that that is more sustainable than what we had,

00:55:16

the previous book we did was the 10x rule. And that was one of the things that I had issues

00:55:21

with in that book. I like the book a lot. But he mentions in their Grant Cardona as the author

00:55:27

that you have an unlimited supply of energy and creativity to throw out your problems. I'm like,

00:55:32

well, I don't know that that's necessarily sustainable. And I get the point that he was trying to make,

00:55:37

but really the fact is you need that margin. And I think that's really important to recognize that

00:55:44

sometimes it's okay to slow your step for a season, like you said, and then there's also going to be

00:55:48

other seasons where for this particular week, for example, you're going to apply 10x effort to move

00:55:55

this thing forward. And I think that really leads into the other thing here I wanted to really get

00:56:00

your perspective on is on page 176, you said everything we want to accomplish will require

00:56:04

more effort than we first thought. So my question to you is how much more effort did the book take

00:56:10

than you initially first thought? Yeah, that's that's a great question. Well, I may answer that

00:56:15

indirectly and just say, you know, there's always a statement, I've been in the startup world,

00:56:20

software startup world for a long time, and then quite a few startups there. And

00:56:24

there's always this saying when you go to raise money, that it's always going to take double the

00:56:29

money and double the time to do anything. And a lot of times I found that to be even somewhat

00:56:34

generous, it's sometimes even more than that. And typically with time, it's usually more than that.

00:56:40

And you know, so when I set out to write the book, I'll be honest in the beginning, I really didn't

00:56:45

know. I really didn't know how long it's going to take. And so for me, the tough thing about that

00:56:51

was, I was sitting there going, I have no clue. And then after about four, I suppose about four to

00:56:57

six weeks in, I started realizing how much I could write. So I started doing the math. And I started

00:57:02

really, man, I think I can get this book done in six to eight months, because I realized how many

00:57:08

pages I was able to write every day once I got into a groove. And then I'd written a couple chapters,

00:57:13

and then I went back and I had done an outline. And so then I was kind of able to track this thing

00:57:18

and go, Oh, I think I can have this sucker finish this year. And it took me an extra year. So, so

00:57:27

I was spot on on the double the time and double the money. We won't talk about the money because

00:57:33

it was probably more than that. But it was a little bit different because I was doing it on my own.

00:57:40

So I, I, yeah, I mean, that it's so true. Everything takes time and effort. And especially,

00:57:47

it's funny, you get around old guys that have been in business or done something before. And

00:57:52

when you're young, you start talking about an idea, something you want to do, and they're like,

00:57:56

well, it's going to take you this long as you do this and this long as you do this. And you're just

00:57:59

going, you're like, you don't really know what you're talking about. You just, you're doing

00:58:03

things the old way. You don't really understand. And then once you've done a few of them, you've

00:58:07

started a few businesses and you've written a book or two, you realize there are so many things

00:58:12

that even when you know everything it takes to do it, you don't really know, because there's a lot

00:58:17

of unforeseen events, there's a lot of just challenges and loopholes. I mean, I, I said so I also run a

00:58:23

software company and we work with a lot of really large brands and build apps and web apps and

00:58:29

native apps for them. We did one for Vogue this last year. We did a lot for L'Oreal and Hilton,

00:58:35

a few others. And I've been working on a project with a client for, I've been working to get a

00:58:44

project with a client. We've been talking about it. They've been wanting to do it for almost three

00:58:48

years. And like, if you would have told me it would have taken three years and I can't count how many,

00:58:55

literally thousands of emails, flights, trips to get this project, I would have thought you're crazy.

00:59:00

But one of the things I've realized, and you hear people say, ah, big companies move slow,

00:59:04

etc, etc, etc. And I realized how true that is and realized all the inner workings and all the

00:59:09

different people that have to have sign-offs and approvals and budget cycles. And if you miss a

00:59:13

budget cycle year, you're off now. And so there's all these things that with everything we do,

00:59:18

it's hard to know. And it's hard to know. I mean, you could plan it perfectly. Like I said,

00:59:22

when it comes to closing a big software deal, you plan it perfectly and somebody goes on vacation

00:59:27

and you don't get your deal signed and it moves into a next budget cycle and you're a year out,

00:59:33

like, how do you control that? And that's the thing I think when people start companies and when they

00:59:37

go after dreams, there's things like that that they don't realize exist. And it's those things

00:59:43

that throw them off track. And so when you aren't realistic about that in the beginning,

00:59:49

you can really easily get discouraged. And you can get discouraged because you put this time frame,

00:59:56

which I am a big believer in putting a time frame on the goals we want to achieve. I think you should

01:00:00

do that. But when we aren't realistic about it, we really can do a disservice to ourselves.

01:00:06

You know, I'd rather kind of be that under promise over deliver when it comes to my personal goals

01:00:12

than the other, you know, and let people that we're staying accountable with or that are on our team

01:00:17

challenge us to move faster than what we expect versus what you don't want is that person that's

01:00:23

a mentor that's done it before saying your expectations are too big. You want that person

01:00:28

saying, no, they need to be bigger. And this is a think a delicate balance that is it's hard to

01:00:35

quantify the exact right and wrong way to do it. But at the end of the day, anyone that's accomplished

01:00:41

anything of significance, I almost put 10 bucks on it every time. So if I lose money, I'll maybe

01:00:46

only lose it once, but they're going to say it took more time than they thought. It took more effort

01:00:50

than they thought. It was harder than they thought. So Mike, are you listening to this? Because you and

01:00:55

I have had some stuff back and forth with some clients and it's taking way longer than Mike thought

01:00:59

it would. That's life. It's just five. And I'll tell you what, you know, I'll speak to that one

01:01:07

situation, that one client right now. So that one client, the deals that we have done with that

01:01:13

client now are exponentially larger than any other deals we've done. And so you look at it, you go,

01:01:22

when you have more time, you have more effort into something, a lot of times the payoff can be bigger too.

01:01:26

So it works. I don't know how many times I've had conversations with clients and I get all the way

01:01:35

to the end. And everybody's a go. I send over the contract and then it sits for six months.

01:01:40

Yeah. All right. I just plan on it. I don't do anything until everything is signed.

01:01:46

I'm not going to touch it. Yeah. So true. So true.

01:01:51

So in that particular situation, how do you keep stepping when your dream maybe is that big business

01:02:01

deal and it's kind of out of your control? How do you maintain momentum? Any tips for maintaining

01:02:06

momentum when it doesn't look like the balls in your court? Yeah. I mean, here's what I'd say.

01:02:13

We could dig into that for a long time and every situation is a little bit different.

01:02:17

In the case of a business deal, if you will, or in a company, one of the things there is just

01:02:24

consistency. You want to consistently stay on the radar and be the top of mind person for whoever

01:02:30

that client is or that relationship is. So you find things creative and unique to do

01:02:35

along the path to still let them know you're there, you care, and you're waiting for them

01:02:39

whenever they're ready without being rude in that case. And it can be things like sending nice

01:02:45

little notes and little gifts, being respectful. And when the time comes, those people will remember

01:02:51

and they'll think of you as a percentage. Obviously, there's always going to be situations where it

01:02:55

doesn't happen. So do that. And then the other thing is this. If we're talking business for a second,

01:03:00

it's don't bet your whole, don't bet your whole load on one client or two clients.

01:03:06

Have backups. That's why there's something in sales and business called a pipeline, right?

01:03:12

You have a pipeline of other clients because you don't know what's going to come through when.

01:03:15

And so you've got to use the law of averages, if you will, in law of numbers and those kind of

01:03:21

situations where if you're counting on one thing, so for instance, if you're wanting to get a book

01:03:25

deal and you're talking to one guy and it's your first book deal, probably not the right thing to do.

01:03:30

You should be talking to every single person you can about the book deal. Because there's power

01:03:36

in that and there's power in numbers. And everybody in a friend negotiation standpoint always says,

01:03:41

"Man, if you can ever get two people negotiating for you or against you, that's the cream of the crop."

01:03:46

Well, the way you do that is you have like 20 people you're talking to. And sometimes you get

01:03:50

lucky and get two people at the same time that want the same thing from you. And you're able to

01:03:54

negotiate them, but you don't typically get that from just talking to two people.

01:03:58

Right. Now, this isn't exactly in line with the book, but one of the other things that stood out

01:04:05

to me was... What, really? One of the other things that stood out to me was the... And you mentioned

01:04:10

it in that last section there, you mentioned giving gifts. And you kind of talk in the book about...

01:04:15

Sounds like you are a pretty extravagant gift giver. I try. I try. We try. I mean, do it. We can.

01:04:23

Do you mind explaining just a little bit the philosophy behind that? Because I think it's

01:04:27

it's really important. And I think that a lot of people don't realize the importance of the

01:04:34

thoughtfulness of the gifts. And you kind of use it in the book to talk about the

01:04:39

intentionality and showing people that you care real simple ways. And you mentioned, you know,

01:04:45

like different clients and things like that. But maybe just kind of walk through the thought

01:04:50

process there a little bit. Yeah, sure. Well, I mean, at the end of the day, and I'm actually doing a

01:04:56

in the process of writing about this specifically for another project, but at the end of the day,

01:05:01

pretty much everything you do in life has some form of relationship as a part of it.

01:05:07

Whether it's a customer relationship, a friend relationship, a family relationship,

01:05:11

or whatever. And people just want to be valued. They want to feel respected. They want to feel like

01:05:17

they're thought about, they're on the top of your mind. And so when you take those

01:05:23

things that we typically apply into a family situation, and a lot of us don't do them well

01:05:27

in a family situation. So that's an issue in and of itself. But we take those kind of same

01:05:31

principles and we apply them to everything we do in business or wherever we are. We find that

01:05:36

people really respond well to it. People respond well when they feel like you really care.

01:05:40

And you show you really care by the things you do for people, whether it be a gift, a way you

01:05:46

communicate, the way you talk to them, the way you prepare. All of these things make up a bigger

01:05:51

picture of whether or not a person feels valued by you. And when people feel valued,

01:05:54

they want to work with you, they want to do business with you, they want to find ways to help you be

01:05:58

successful because you found ways to help them be successful. And so yeah, what we've done from a

01:06:02

business standpoint, what I've always done is we try to go out of our way to surprise and delight

01:06:07

people with things. I mean, we would send cakes to people, we send cookies to people, we send books

01:06:14

to people, we send framed pictures to people. We do all kinds of things just to show people that

01:06:20

we really care. And it's not just about their business, it's more than that. And people have

01:06:25

always been really receptive to that. And I think when it comes to building your team, when it comes

01:06:29

to everything we do, if we treat people that way, it will come back on us in great measure

01:06:34

when we least expect it. Totally agree. And I think that's a really overlooked point, especially

01:06:42

when you're approaching your dream of your vision through the lens of what can I do to make sure that

01:06:50

this thing gets done and accelerate it. Like you said, whatever you give tends to come back to you

01:06:56

in the greater multitudes in my experience. So I think that it's really important to call that

01:07:06

out that you're not on this journey alone. We talked about in the Productivity Project, Chris

01:07:11

Bailey, like people are the reason for productivity. And everything that you do is going to impact

01:07:17

other people, which is really the reason for the step. And maybe we'll kind of end here and then

01:07:22

you can add any additional closing thoughts that you want. But on page 210, you say that we are

01:07:26

the answers to the world's problems, all we have to do is start stepping. So I guess I want to just

01:07:30

leave it as my final thought here. Everybody who's listening to the podcast, I believe that there's

01:07:35

a lot of people who fall into that 81% of Americans who want to write that book and just start doing it

01:07:41

because you have something for other people. The world needs what is inside of you.

01:07:46

Yeah. And I ended the book on a chapter called The Most Powerful Step. And I went through a

01:07:54

couple different iterations in the name of that. One of the iterations was a step for someone else.

01:07:58

And I really believe that our step has an impact beyond what it does for us. I believe that our

01:08:04

step has an impact in the way that it opens up other people's minds to what's possible for them

01:08:10

in the way that it empowers other people. And so we are our own person, but our step is,

01:08:16

our step or our non-step is going to affect people positively or negatively. And when we think about

01:08:20

it in that perspective, when we do our best to do things for other people and take a step because

01:08:24

there's other people watching us, whether it's family, friends, co-workers or people we don't even

01:08:28

know yet. And we do that. We're going to make the world a better place. And I've been working on

01:08:32

kind of my personal vision and mission recently and kind of realigning it. And one of the things I

01:08:37

realized is this, it's if we do our best to make ourselves the best version of ourselves, we will

01:08:43

make the world the best version of the world. And it's our responsibility and it's only our

01:08:49

responsibility to make ourselves the best version of ourselves. And we can do that one step at a time.

01:08:54

And I want to encourage everybody out there, no matter what your dream, no matter what your

01:08:58

goal, no matter what it is you've wanted to do, you haven't done, you fell that and didn't want

01:09:02

us try it again. Start taking steps again today towards that dream and towards that goal. It's

01:09:08

going to make a difference in your life and you can do it. You can accomplish those things that

01:09:12

you've always dreamed and always wanted to. I believe in you. We're here for you. And if there's

01:09:17

anything that we can do to help, please let us know. Awesome. So maybe jump into actions items, Joe?

01:09:24

Sure. All right. So the actually the very last thing you have in the book is once you've read it,

01:09:30

give it to somebody else. So that was my first action item. And that one I am proud to say is done.

01:09:35

Second action item I had when you were talking about the season where you were just you got the

01:09:42

advice to just journal the things that you were getting rather than creating the time to write

01:09:46

really reminded me of the importance of journaling, which I completely get from an intellectual

01:09:52

perspective. I know how important it is. And I still find myself falling off the wagon from time to

01:09:59

time. So that's where I'm at right now. I need to get back into the habit of journaling every single

01:10:04

night, not missing those those days because whenever I miss a day that really I'm what I

01:10:11

recognize from reading this book is that I have robbed myself of the opportunity to learn and to

01:10:16

glean into even repurpose the things that I discovered and learned throughout that day. That's

01:10:21

completely gone because I'm not going to just remember that down the road. And a lot of that

01:10:26

stuff has a lot of value in the things that I would write and create. So having a record of that is

01:10:33

very important. Yeah, one of the things that I have on my list, and I just have one here that

01:10:41

doesn't speak to Chris in any way, simply one big glaring thing I need to do. I have two decent

01:10:51

size projects that I've been picking and choosing what needs to come next on them, but not

01:10:58

far enough, I guess would be the way to say it. So I've been defining not necessarily a proverbial

01:11:06

mile, but like a proverbial quarter mile that I've been trying to work towards. But I haven't broken

01:11:12

them down far enough to where I can say, okay, today, this hour, this is what I need to do. I

01:11:19

haven't gone that far with it, which is weird because I feel like that's something I do. But

01:11:23

it's weird how I have something I think I do, but I don't do it because somebody like Chris is able

01:11:29

to help me see that I don't do what I think I do. Follow that train of thought at all. That

01:11:34

was a weird way to say that. Sorry about that. So I have two big projects that I need to break

01:11:39

down a little bit further so that I can actually make progress on them. I don't think I can share

01:11:45

what those are. I wish I could. That would be easier, but I can't do that. Sorry.

01:11:49

That's what I got, Mike. All right. So upcoming books.

01:11:54

All right, right. Because what is it? Next time around, it's my choice.

01:12:00

And I selected Grit by Angela Duckworth, which is one that I have seen recommended in a number

01:12:08

of places, New York Times bestseller. It has accolades from Daniel Gilbert, Susan Kane, Malcolm Gladwell,

01:12:16

Dan Heath, who we read decisive here. So lots of great feedback I've heard on that one.

01:12:23

Kind of following some of the same thread we've been jumping into lately with success and taking

01:12:30

the next step as we've seen here today. And then how do I have the power of the passion and perseverance

01:12:39

to continue working those next steps into my life? So that's what the book's about. That's the

01:12:43

goal. And I'm going to drag Mike along with me. I started this one and I really like it so far.

01:12:48

My next book then is The Sleep Revolution by Ariana Huffington, which was the one that

01:12:54

you were with me when I bought in Woodstock. Right. And I saw it on my shelf. I was going to

01:13:00

make Joe read this with me. So it's time to do it. That was like three, four months ago,

01:13:05

you told me you're going to make me do that. Or it's a longer than that. Exactly. So

01:13:10

decided to follow through in that. It's about time. Considering I have a three month old and

01:13:15

adult sleep. Thanks for that. Yeah. So maybe you can get some tips. There you go. There you go.

01:13:21

Uh, gap books. So I haven't picked up grit yet. I'm planning to read a book before I get to that

01:13:28

one. And I picked up this morning, uh, The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell. This is actually a

01:13:34

transcript of a conversation that was held between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell about

01:13:40

symbolism and mythology and its impact and prevalence in our culture today. So it was a conversation in

01:13:49

when was it late eighties, mid eighties, eighty five, eighty six, somewhere in that range.

01:13:55

Um, yeah, anyway, should be interesting. I'm curious symbolism and mythology in our world.

01:14:01

Where is it? Uh, my gap book is unsubscribed by Jocelyn. Not sure how to say last name,

01:14:09

Lee. Lee? Yeah. Uh, it's a book about email, which is one of my favorite topics. You're obsessed.

01:14:16

I am. But I actually saw this recommended on tools and toys, I believe. Uh, it looks very

01:14:24

interesting. It's got a lot of, there's a lot of illustrations and it's got a very, uh, very, uh,

01:14:31

peculiar art style that I think is going to provide a little bit more entertaining and

01:14:36

interesting take on the whole topic of email. So I'm interested to see what they have to say,

01:14:41

but I've heard a lot of good things about this book. It looks like an easy read. Cool. Cool.

01:14:46

Chris, what are you, what are you reading? I'm sure, you know, authors always read a lot. So,

01:14:51

yeah, yeah, you know, it's kind of a mix between reading and creating. I'm actually grits when

01:14:56

that's on my reading list. I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I've seen a bit of sleep revolution

01:15:01

by Ariana Huffington. One that I recently read that I really love is the, I always get this wrong,

01:15:09

the War of Art. Uh, is it because there's the art of war, which I've read as well, but it's

01:15:14

the War of Art, which is a phenomenal book. But grit is actually one of my next up books that I

01:15:19

need to read. Nice. You read it with us? I might. Yeah, I might. I just might do that.

01:15:25

Well, we did the War of Art, didn't we, Mike? That was like the second one that we did.

01:15:31

Number two, I think. That was a really, really good book. Yeah. I really like that one. You'll like it.

01:15:37

So Chris, where can people go to find you online? Yeah, Chris Capeart.co. That's pretty simple.

01:15:46

You can find me there. I'm on every other channel, Instagram, Facebook, and pretty much all of them.

01:15:50

It's just forward slash Chris Capeart. I've been around the tech world long enough that I was

01:15:55

fortunately able to get my name on almost everything. So you can find me there, but yeah,

01:16:00

chriskapart.co, not.com. I've been going back and forth. There was a, there's a man, if you

01:16:06

search Chris Capeart, that's a, he's a magician and he's had Chris Capeart.com. He's a lot older than

01:16:12

I am for a long time. And I even called him back in the day to get it and never could get him to

01:16:18

give it to me. And then all of a sudden, probably about two years ago, it switched. And now it's a

01:16:22

dentist blog. And I've been trying to, you know, with not a lot of updates, I've been trying to get

01:16:28

the .com from him for a long time too, but can't seem to make the connection. So I'm having no luck

01:16:33

with the .com. So I'm going hardcore on .co these days. Nice. Just got to take the next step.

01:16:40

Yeah, take the next step. So find me there. We're actually, I'm really excited about it. We,

01:16:44

we are in the middle of a complete redesign and redeveloped the website. I've been seeing some of

01:16:51

the initial comps. I'm really excited about it. Got a lot of new features and functionality.

01:16:56

We're also launching in the process of launching a year long program, which I think we just landed

01:17:04

on the name of today. So I'm not going to say anything yet. But we're really excited about that.

01:17:10

You know, to really take people through, you know, the kind of process of implementing step in their

01:17:14

life. And it's a lot of fun things going on. So be watching over the next couple of months.

01:17:18

You'll see new branding, new logos, new website design, a lot of new things you can sign up and

01:17:24

get. So it's going to be fun. Cool. Cool. So we've mentioned a lot of books here. And we always try to

01:17:33

get some listener feedback on what you'd like to hear us go through. So if you have a suggestion,

01:17:40

that you want us to go through, you can do that over on our website bookworm.fm/recommend.

01:17:47

And you can find a full list of the books we've been through, the ones we've got planned for

01:17:51

the future, as well as any that have been recommended so far. Nice. And if you want to help people

01:17:58

find the show, help us out a lot. If you would go to iTunes and leave us a quick review,

01:18:02

it really, really bugs me that when you go search for Bookworm, there's a radio station that has

01:18:06

a Bookworm podcast that shows up in front of ours, even though it's a really long title.

01:18:10

So help us skip Bookworm at the top of the search results by going and leaving a review,

01:18:15

helps other people find the show. And we take all of your feedback really seriously. We want to

01:18:20

implement the things that people have recommended. So the iTunes reviews are a great place to do that.

01:18:26

So a great big thank you to you, Chris, for joining us today. It's been a pleasure to have you

01:18:33

on the show. Thanks guys. Thanks so much for having me today. It was a pleasure.

01:18:37

If you guys want, just go take a look at Chris's stuff online. He's got a lot of great stuff out

01:18:43

there. We really appreciate you joining us today, Chris. And if you are reading along with us,

01:18:48

the next book up on the list is Grit. So you can pick that up and we will go on a journey with

01:18:54

Angela Duckworth.