Al McBride 0:00
Music. Welcome to the dealing with Goliath podcast. The mission of dealing with Goliath is to sharpen the psychological edge and negotiation ethical influencing, high impact conversation for business leaders who want to be more effective under pressure and cover hidden value and build greater connection and business relationships, all while increasing profitability. This is the short form espresso shot of insight podcast interview to boost business performance using our five questions in around about 15 to 20 minutes format. My guest today is Ben Joya. Ben teaches consultants, coaches, leaders, speakers and small business owners how to make six or seven figures without selling a single book. He’s a four time international best selling podcaster and radio host as a book coach, business strategist and publishing advisor. His teachings are used by more than 100,000 people. Ben has trained hundreds of millionaires at Stanford University, helped to Fortune 100 create a mindfulness and empathy video game for over 20,000 employees, and launched the world’s largest magazine, AARP, on top of facing death four times in India in 72 hours and hospice volunteering, He reads fiction voraciously, has sat more than 150 days of silent meditation a lot, and gives 10% to companies making an impact. Ben, welcome to the show.

Ben Gioia 1:31
Thank you so much. Al, it’s an honor and a pleasure to be here with you today.

Al McBride 1:35
Well, it’s great having you here, so let’s get straight into it. So who’s your ideal client and what’s the biggest challenge they tend to face? Yeah,

Ben Gioia 1:44
thanks. So my folks are speakers, coaches, consultants, small business owners, solopreneurs, folks who want and need and recognize the value of a book for their business. My people are purpose driven, mission driven. Make a difference. Kind of people, even if they don’t specifically describe themselves as such, and in and around, wanting to bring the book in the world, their biggest hesitation or or thing that keeps them stuck is the concern around time, right, that there isn’t enough time to get the book done because they have a business. Maybe they have kids, maybe they have aging parents. There’s so many things in there, and I like to say a couple of things, there’s plenty of time to write your book if you do a couple things. First of all, have conversations with your ideal clients to understand the lens and the focus of the book at the beginning of the process. Number two is, use a blueprint for the book. I give all my clients a blueprint. I say, I don’t want you thinking about the logistics of the book. I want you to just focus on the content right. And number three is to make ample use of dictation, because in the space of four minutes, you can speak 600 words. And 600 words is two and a half percent of a 25,000 word book. In other words, about 150 pages.

Al McBride 2:59
Okay, very good, very good. There’s a lot of stuff to unpack there, but we’ll just double down into people recognizing themselves, because I’ve imagined there’s an awful lot of coaches and business owners, as you say, who kind of feel. Some of them feel, Oh, I should have a book. And then other people will feel, Oh, I’d love to write a book. I know, what I know, I just even won, and I just pour myself into it. You know, here’s my my my vision for how I see my niche, or how I see the value I bring to to my clients, or whatever. So what are some of the common mistakes people make when they’re trying to solve that problem? So let’s say that they, they have an idea, they want to write a book for either reason. What are some of those? What are some of those traps they fall into?

Ben Gioia 3:48
Yeah, thank you. There’s a few, a few of them that I see again and again and again. One of them is not having conversations with their ideal clients, because they take their wonderful expertise and guidance, which is legit and they’re helping people, but they put it in a book, but they neglect to connect the dots from what they’re offering specifically to what their audience needs. So the book ends up not working, even though there’s some really good information in there. So that’s a big one. Another one is for most people who I’ve mentioned in those categories, most people like us, using a traditional publisher is not a good idea for your book, right? You want to use either a professional self publisher or what’s called an author controlled publisher, which is a certain kind of hybrid publisher. But the big, big, big thing is you want to work with a publisher who will not take your intellectual property right, a traditional publisher. As soon as you sign the contract, you sign away the rights to your book. So you give up your book, you give up your intellectual property, you give up creative, editorial and timeline control with a signature. Sure, and then, I don’t know about you, but I never, ever want to do that with my book.

Al McBride 5:04
Absolutely not. It’s a great point Ben, because I don’t think, I think a lot of people would think, Oh, there’s so much credibility that if a mage you know, a known publisher picks up your book. But as you said, you’re actually signing a huge amount of those rights away.

Ben Gioia 5:21
Yeah, just about all of them, and there is a certain amount of credibility to have. You know that imprint of that publisher, but you know, most people who are going to be reading your book, they’re not so concerned about the credibility that’s coming from the publisher. They’re concerned about the credibility that comes from your experience, your expertise, your wisdom, the ability to break your framework or methodology down into something that they can understand and recognize that it will indeed help them. All of that will trump a publisher’s imprint any day.

Al McBride 5:55
Fantastic, fantastic. And what’s I mean, you mentioned a few changes in what would you say, how to think about the whole process, like talking to people’s clients beforehand, like getting a you know how they’re perceived and the exact problems that they that they’re actually solving. But what other valuable free action would you recommend to an audience that they can implement that will help with these issues.

Ben Gioia 6:21
Yeah, thank you. I’m going to extend what you just said a little bit further. Al, because I can’t stress it enough, right? Having conversations with your ideal clients about the book not only gives you the lens for the book, it gives you the right language for the book. Right? Sometimes we as experts, we’ve been helping people for years, if not decades at this point, and we integrate all of this expertise and wisdom and all the people we’ve helped, and we talk about their challenges in our language, but we’re not always using the specific words that they’re using when they’re describing their challenge, their pain, Their goal. So talking to your ideal clients, make sure that you’re getting that language from the proverbial horse’s mouth to include in your book. Because remember, when you’re using somebody’s language to talk about their challenge, their solution, their goal, right? They’re going to assume that you have the solution or can help them get there, because you’re literally using the words that are bouncing around in their head, right? So that’s part one. Part two is that if you do those conversations effectively, the way I do it with my clients is a 12 question interview, about 25 minutes. The last two questions that I teach lay the groundwork for the person that the author or the author to be, they lay the groundwork for the person that they’re speaking with to become a client or a strategic partner, right? Because this conversation about the book opens up this amazing relationship with somebody, or deepens this relationship, and then there’s a logical opportunity to continue that conversation into work or partnership or a talk or a consulting gig, or all these kinds of things. And I’ve had some amazing results with my clients. One of my clients, before her book was done, got a five figure speaking gig, right? Somebody else got a six figure consulting gig, right? And I say to everyone, I can’t guarantee when those outcomes are going to happen, but if you keep talking to your ideal clients about your book, right, I recommend at least once a week after you do your initial batch, right? Sooner or later, one, if not several, of those people will become clients or strategic partners. And basically, not only do you get this amazing clarity for your book, but you fund the book writing and publishing process. I

Al McBride 8:47
love it. So on the one hand, you’re verifying that there’s a, what you might call a product market fit, if you want to use that term, that there’s an actual need for people for what it is you’re selling, or what it is you’re saying, ie writing in this capacity, so that’s a good one. So that’s making it relevant. But then on top of that, you’re actually opening the door for business, as you said, before you’ve even written the thing. Because that’s usually the concern for a lot of people, isn’t it? Oh, I can spend, you know, hundreds of hours as a sun cost before I get this possibly zero return on it, whereas you’re saying no, you can actually get returned immediately before you’ve even finished a thing. Do I have to ask them in my curious brain, do some people just continually research the book forever, never publish?

Ben Gioia 9:40
That’s a very perceptive question. One of my clients several couple years ago has had, at that point, and I think still has, you know, very successful, pardon me, coaching business already established, so we started this process, and in the first week of doing phone calls, she got two new. Clients. And the next time we spoke, she was like, Ben, I think I’m not going to rush to write my book. And I don’t think she’s written her book yet.

Al McBride 10:09
It’s the method is working, you know, and it works in all sorts of directions. But I love the way that you have I love the way that you have a particular format for doing discovery conversations, because I think that’s something that a lot of people might overlook, even if they’re like, Oh yeah, I gotta talk to the clients. Makes sense. And also the people just wing it. They just go in and go. So what do you like about or what’s your business need? And go from there, whereas discovery conversations absolutely crucial, absolutely crucial and hugely overlooked. Yeah,

Ben Gioia 10:41
I appreciate you saying that. I like to remind people that it’s very much a scientific endeavor, right? You want to have a set of activities that you’re repeating over and over again. In my case, my 12 questions. So you can look at 10 calls and see what are the answers among these different people for each of those questions. And then you can look at trends. You can look at repetition of keywords. You can look at where people are emphasizing their challenges or goals. So you’re actually looking at statistically significant data rather than just getting a bunch of opinions.

Al McBride 11:16
Absolutely, it’s excellent, so that there’s, there’s there’s something repeatable there makes it more on the scientific side. Excellent. Yeah. So what would be one valuable, free resource that you could direct people to that will help with this

Ben Gioia 11:34
goodness? Um, so I have a an assessment that I suggest people take at my website, influence with a heart.com/book success guaranteed, right? And the whole idea, yeah, thank you. The whole idea of the assessment, it’s 25 questions could take maybe two minutes, but you’ll see from self scoring the answers how well your book will actually work, right? I come from the place, not only getting clients before the book is done, as we’ve spoken about already, but how do you guarantee the book is going to work before you bring it into the world, right? So this assessment gives a very clear indication of where your book stands, and you know, if it it might give you the blessing to, you know, sally forth and publish it, and it might say, hey, you need some help, you know. And if I can help you with that, it would be my pleasure.

Al McBride 12:29
That’s excellent. I mean, from that point of view, can you also talk to them and see how to re engineer it so it’ll be far more likely to be successful.

Ben Gioia 12:39
I certainly can Yeah, about about two thirds of the people I work with come with their idea for for the book, and about 1/3 come with the book almost finished or just finished.

Al McBride 12:52
And is that far more difficult situation?

Ben Gioia 12:56
Um, it, it might or might not be very often. Well, a couple of factors in the mix, if somebody is, you know, very kind of grasping on the work, onto the work that they’ve done, right? There can be that, that difficulty of just, you know, getting inviting somebody to change for the better, right? And that’s there’s some human psychology that we get to navigate in that context. What it turns out is that a lot of times, what I’ll do with folks, even when their book is done or almost done, is I’ll have them go through the process of conversations about the book, right? From the standpoint of I’m writing this book, and then from what they understand, then we can re engineer the book based on their discoveries from the conversations and what it usually ends up. What usually ends up happening is that most, most of the heavy lifting comes in the first third of the book, where we’re basically building the case, helping the reader understand that they’re in the right place, helping to position the author as the expert, and most importantly, helping the author, you know, by dint of what they’re teaching in the book, to debunk the biggest myths and misunderstandings and misperceptions that the reader has right? And this is something really, really important that most people don’t get about books, about business books, right? Is that more important than a bunch of information? More important than tons and tons of value? And we want to give value, no doubt. But if you overload people right, they can abandon the book because they’re overloaded, or they can get a sense of false closure and think they can do it all on their own, which usually they can’t, right? They need your help. So the answer in all of this is that you put 80% of the focus, if you will. On helping the reader move from disempowering beliefs to empowering beliefs about the topic, right? Show them that they can do it, they or their company or their team or whatever it is, because if they don’t believe that they can do it, then it doesn’t matter what information you give them because they don’t believe they can do it.

Al McBride 15:23
Excellent, excellent. That’s fascinating stuff. Fascinating stuff. It’s it must be a problem. Then, yeah, when people arrive and they have a whole thing done, and they think it’s great, because people don’t want to kill their darlings, which sometimes is necessary. And as you said, the focus could be has to be shifted on, on a whole two thirds of a book. Yeah, indeed, problem. So what was the one question I should have asked you? Oh,

Ben Gioia 15:56
my goodness. Well, I mean, how many hours do we have? No

Al McBride 16:04
Well, let me, let me just double back a second, because I have to ask you something, because I didn’t know before. We’ve had a number of conversations before, but this only came up in breath for this interview, which was that you faced death four times in India in 72 hours. And you mentioned, just before we went live there, that that was life changing, that it changed your whole perspective, even to this day. So I’m kind of fascinated. I have to ask you, what a what happened and what changed, and what did you take with you from that?

Ben Gioia 16:36
Yeah, thank you, and I appreciate you. The the rider that you just put on the question, because it actually connects to the question that I was going to say you should have asked me. So you’re very perceptive and intuitive here. Al, thank you very much. So, yeah. So first time I went to India, I was on a hike and or on the way to a hike, and then on a hike, and in that period of time on the way up the mountain, the bus almost went off the cliff, literally, and then got onto the hike and ended up running from a wildfire, which was completely nuts, and then encountering A poisonous snake, and then encountering a mountain lion.

Al McBride 17:22
Okay, yeah,

Ben Gioia 17:24
so, so, you know, a couple of things that happened. One was I had no adrenaline left by the end of that weekend, so by time we saw the mountain lion, I was just like, Nah, okay, there’s a mountain lion. But when I got my wits back and had a few days of sleep, I just really realized, you know, what a gratitude I had have for life like what a gift this lifetime is, even with the difficulties, and I was always a person of service and always wanting to help, But my galvanization towards service and impact just went through the roof. So that was absolutely tremendous. And then where it kind of dovetails into what question should you have asked leading up to that first time in India? And then after that first time in India, for a good 15 years, I used to do lots and lots and lots of drugs, right? Lots of white pills, white powders, like all the things that you know, aren’t so good. Never thought it was a problem, because I always had good jobs and, you know, I launched the world’s biggest magazine, right? No problem, no problem. But of course, that stuff catches up, and after that first India trip, I found my way to rock bottom Finally, after the big drug run, and I said, What do I do? How, you know? How do I get back on track? And I was like, I know, I’ll go back to India. So I went back. Went back to India, right? The adventure continues, and did a couple of interesting things, like I did a volunteer program. And then when we left the volunteer program up and living in the Himalayas, I did a nine day trek through the Himalayas with a with a group. And because I did not show up to India with new hiking boots, because I used to be on drugs, I had to get my boots fixed in India before the hike in getting the boots fixed, I ended up with two little lumps of glue and cloth where the boots touch my Achilles tendons. So by lunchtime of day one of a nine day hike, right where we’re gonna hike, I calculated about 144,000 steps, right, six to eight hours a day of hiking from 12,000 feet to 16,000 feet every other day, four high passes. I have the two biggest blisters on my Achilles tendons that you can imagine. And the only thing I can do. Is walk for their eight and a half subsequent days. Yeah, not good at all. So, where the, where the the insight, wisdom, all the things come in, day 123456, every single step is, ow, ow, ow, ow. And this is, you know, this is real legit pain, and all of the suffering that I’m adding on because I’m mad at myself. And what are you an idiot? And how could you do this? Why didn’t you come with new boots? And all these, all this mind chatter, mind chatter, mind chatter. And then day six, I’m hiking, and I’m looking up at the these amazing peaks around me, right? 28,000 feet high. That’s the Himalayas. Wow. Everything is so beautiful. Why is everything so beautiful? I’m not on drugs. Why is everything so beautiful? And I went, Oh, I figured out that from the last five to six days of Al, every single painful step was actually keeping me in the present moment for the first time in my life. So I sent spent unexpectedly about six days basically in the present moment because of this anchoring pain. And I realized that that was the magic of the present moment, was that even with the pain that I was experiencing, there was this beautiful connection to all these other things around me. And then about 12 years later, I really dialed into that notion of the difference between pain and suffering, right? Pain is an experience. It’s something that’s going to happen to us, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, because we are human beings, right? But the suffering, that’s the add on, that’s the optional bit, that’s the stuff that we can choose not to participate in or choose to release, and we might have to choose to release it, you know, 100 times, you know, in 30 minutes, right? But, but having that ability to keep pain and suffering separate, or stay away from suffering and not even take the pain personally. And this is all practice. You know, this is not, not like I’m a whiz at this, but practicing this, I realized when I started coaching people in books, book writing, that the book writing process does not have to be one of suffering, right? The book writing process is going to stir the pot. It’s going to bring up emotions and doubt and concern and imposter syndrome, depending who you are, right? And then I just, I teach people how to navigate that, which is basically with a smile, right? Relax your head, relax your face, smile, let your body relax and don’t get involved with that bit that keeps coming up because you didn’t ask for it to come up. It’s impersonal, right? So don’t get involved. Don’t let it stop you. Keep letting it go. Because, as I like to say, a light mind is the right mind to write. That’s the big wisdom, which, aside from my my hiking, is essentially what the Buddha taught, right? You just, you relax, you relax with the stuff that comes up, and not get hooked and, you know, let your mind on, you know, unclog from all the things that are in the way of us, you know, being happy, Luminous beings, you know, and what we actually are at the core, absolutely,

Al McBride 23:24
it’s a great intersection between those two areas. I think some of the pain in writing the book is as much what I found when I was writing mine, that the biggest pain was the the linearity of it. So one thing must go to the next to the next to the next. And so you have these decision tree moments of, do I go further in this way? But then I lose the thread on that. And so you’re constantly making decisions, and you don’t know if they’re the right ones, and you don’t want to have to go back. I think that was the that was the most pain, the what if, and the was that the right decision? And, oh, god, does this make sense? And, and all of those things. But, yeah, I totally get it. You can. You can then just other days, let go and just flow through it, you know, just blast out some stuff and think, read it back a day or a week later and go, that’s actually really good stuff. When you and you can get clear just long enough, yeah, as you said, get out of your own way. That’s often the key, isn’t it? That’s very much what you help people do. Get out of their own way and super focus. And as you said, even get the rewards. That’s a key, fabulous thing you get through people the rewards from their creative endeavors, even before they’re finished. So remarkable stuff. So where can people reach out through, reach out to you and learn more about you? You’re on LinkedIn. A lot I see, yep,

Ben Gioia 24:55
yep. I am on LinkedIn. My last name is spelled G, i, o, i. A so Ben Joya, and you can also visit my website, influence with a heart.com Once again, influence with a heart.com and that assessment, that book, success, guaranteed self assessment, that I mentioned earlier in our conversation, you can find that on my website as well,

Al McBride 25:18
absolutely. And there’s other there’s other goodies on the website, as I’ve seen, but all the links will be below the video and below the recording. So Ben, thank you so much. It’s

Ben Gioia 25:29
my pleasure. Al, love the work that you’re doing. I love the the intention and the value and service that you provide through these conversations. So good on you for doing them.

Al McBride 25:39
Thanks. Ben, cheers. Take care. Bye.