Masterful practices of successful content marketers
Jordan Raynor sits down with Chad Cannon, Chief Sales Officer at Michael Hyatt & Company, to talk about what the most successful content marketers will be doing 5 years from now, what Bob Goff’s book (Love Does) was almost horribly titled, and how Chad sees his work at Michael Hyatt & Company as bringing great glory to God.
Links Mentioned
[0:00:05.3] JR: Hey there, welcome to the Call to Mastery. I’m Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work, not primarily for their own fame and fortune, but for the glory of God and for the good of others. Each and every week, I’m hosting a conversation with a Christian who is pursuing world class mastery of their jobs, of their vocation. We talk about each guest’s path to mastery, their daily habits and routines and how their faith influences their work.
Today, I’m sharing a conversation I recently had with somebody I respected from afar for a very, very, very long time. His name is Chad Cannon and you might not know that name, but you probably know the name of the guy he works for, Michael Hyatt. So, Chad is the Chief Sales Officer and a former Chief Marketing Officer from Michael Hyatt and & Company. I know a lot of you are fans of Michael Hyatt, this leadership expert, author, former CEO of Thomas Nelson, one of the world’s largest publishers and certainly one of the largest Christian publishers. Michel’s got a serious team around him, they’re up to about 40 full time people.
And while Michael was running Thomas Nelson, Chad was actually his VP of marketing, where Chad led marketing on more than 200 books. I think Chad’s one of the smartest people when it comes to marketing period. But especially book marketing. Chad and I recently sat down and we talked about what the most successful content marketers are doing today and what they’re doing, what the most successful content marketers five years from now are thinking about today.
We talked about what Bob Goff’s book Love Does was almost horribly titled while Chad was at Thomas Nelson and we talk about how Chard and Michael Hyatt see their work at Michael Hyatt and company as bringing great glory to God and accomplishing his will in the world. This is a terrific conversation; I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed having it.
Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Chard Cannon.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:02:14.4] JR: So, Chad, I want to talk about you, I want to talk about your work but in order to understand your work, I think we need to first introduce your boss?
[0:02:19.8] CC: Absolutely, yeah.
[0:02:22.1] JR: So, a lot of our listeners know and love Michael Hyatt, but for those who don’t know who Michael Hyatt is, who is Michael Hyatt?
[0:02:28.5] CC: Yeah, Michael Hyatt is a very successful business owner and entrepreneur over the years We currently are running a leadership development company, been around eight years. He’s the CEO and founder of a company called Michael Hyatt & Company here in Franklin Tennessee. Prior to that, most people would probably know of his time in the book publishing space, we spent a lot of his career starting out at the bottom of the totem pole, all the way to CEO at Thomas Nelson which is at the time, the seventh largest book publisher in the world and served as a CO role.
Like, helped them grow through the recession where publishing got hit hard. So, the work that he did and saw the book publishing space through some of their hardest times of retail, the rise of the Kindle and digital when everyone said that print book’s going to be gone. And looking back at the blogs he shared during that time is what he was he was writing about was pretty impressive.
I think it goes to show the type of leader that he is and the futuristic component to him. He was pretty dead on with how that would all kind of settle out and what the book publishing has experienced today which is really renaissance, it’s pretty impressive.
[0:03:33.5] JR: Yeah, it’s pretty exciting for writers and book marketers like yourself. So, I think most people, when they hear Michael Hyatt, they think author, they understand that Michael sells books. But you’re the chief sales officer for Michael Hyatt and company. Obviously, you guys are selling way more than books.
Talk about that product portfolio that you guys are currently selling?
[0:03:51.6] CC: Yeah, that’s a great question Jordan. Sorry, I didn’t even mention that it’s a multi-time New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today bestseller and part of that is because it’s I guess that’s just my world and it just kind of comes with the territory. But yeah, we’ve got a team of almost 40 of us here in the Nashville area, we work virtually, remote, we do have a space not too far from here. But you know, we’re releasing a book every 12 to 18 months so the book is a way to kind of get our broad message out.
But then we have - We have Michael Hyatt and company kind of our mission statement is we help overwhelmed successful leaders get the focus they need so they can win at work and s succeed at life. And so, we’re intentional about every word there because we are from the publishing background. Our chief content officer has written numerous books himself and edited countless others is that, overwhelmed, successful leaders and business owners is because of their success is what is why they’re overwhelmed.
[0:04:49.2] JR: Yeah.
[0:04:50.4] CC: We really try to provide the focus they need to kind of eradicate that overwhelm in their lives so that they can be present at the things that matter the most in their work and their life because we kind of talk with this idea that double win, which is when at work and succeed in life.
There’s not an “or” in there. There’s a very bold and we’re always talking about that. We’re not going to create products unless we help people do that. The books are kind of a way for you to capture information. And then we have products around application so I’m looking here, my full focus planner which is a 90-day physical planner that helps you achieve big things on daily basis.
Then we have online courses that teach around goal setting productivity, helping you become a better focused leader, product’s called Focus Leader. And then we’ve got a high end coaching program for business owners and CEO’s which you and I have talked about previously and then live events and things of that nature.
But it’s all about this when it work and succeed at life and you know, when I joined the team four and half years ago, there were four of us, had just broken the seven figure mark and we’re now multiple eight figure business and the books really serve as kind of the foundation and like you know, marketing world, it’s the top of the funnel opportunity for people to get in at the 15 to $25 mark. And then there’s a whole path upwards of that.
[0:06:14.0] JR: How do you guys think about- I'm already veering off script. This is so job like fascinating. I’m such a big fan of the business you guys are building. How do you think about books in the relation to this other products? I mean, are you guys using the other higher tiered products to inform what’s being created in the books or is it vice versa.
What’s the relationship to the books and everything else you guys are producing?
[0:06:35.7] CC: Yeah, that’s a really good question as well. We’re a little different in that we have the books that have come out the last two years have actually been based on our bestselling courses. So,
we’ve actually used our courses as a way to workshop the content and then when the book has hit the market, we’ve actually sunsetted the courses because now, the book is kind of the stamp, we’ve kind of worked through the content because we’ve had tens of thousands, people go through it.
Whereas, a lot of authors, the first time they’ve actually created that content is the book and then two years later, they want to make it better or change the book. For us, once it’s in the book, it’s there.
[0:07:14.0] JR: That’s it, that’s the best wisdom we can provide on that topic, yeah.
[0:07:16.3] CC: It really is, we’ve spent years doing it, not just 18 months writing the book because that’s a normal process, but it’s actually tried and true, it’s typically filled with that tons of research, real case studies, things of that nature.
[0:07:30.9] JR: So, 12 to 18 months, that’s a pretty rapid cadence for releasing books. Much more rapid than you would have seen even five years ago, right? Where people are at least every other year schedule. Do you think the rate is going to get more rapid or less for – I mean, at some point, there’s a limit to how many books you can churn out, right? But do you think we’re going to see more authors moving to that 12 to 18-month timeframe or is it going to get further spread out to two, three years?
[0:07:55.1] CC: Yeah, when I say the 12 to 18 months, that’s our traditionally published books. And so, that’s when we’re going through a big publisher, kind of big idea book that we really want to kind of disrupt the marketplace with. And I don’t think that’s going to change, I think 12 months is as fast as publishers can move. And most don’t want to move faster than that, that.
12 months is for their A level authors, you know, like Thomas Nelson, Max Lacado, they’re pushing to have a book every year. They’ve got a whole business model built around Max putting out a book every 12 months. You know, for some publishers we’re that to them. You know, we’ve got to keep that in mind and it’s got a work with both us in the publisher, but we publish one to three smaller books a year around one idea.
This last year, we rolled out a book called No Fail Meetings, which is really about this idea that we know our business owners and leaders that we’re coaching, this is a pain point for them. And we would never write a big traditionally trade book around meetings. Yeah, so, we self-published it and really, as a resource to when people ask the questions is like, here you go, this is like how we do it and this is a great resource and the people buy it for their team and just the feedback we got from that is incredible.
And we just finished a pre-order campaign for a book called Your World-Class Assistant. People that are interested in buying or having an EA, an executive assistant, whether that’s virtually or on staff, because we’re big, Michael’s big on that. So, if you’ve got someone you don’t feel like you're maximizing them, this is a great book for you and things like that. We’re rolling that out in the next couple of weeks, but we did a preorder for – honestly, we thought it would be smaller than the meetings book and it’s actually been bigger.
[0:09:30.5] JR: Yeah, I’m not surprised by that. I was really impressed with the position of that book. I think that’s really smart topic, this is something a lot of people get hung up on. And that assistant helps you guys, I mean, assistant my assistant in particular, I can attest to helps me be excellent both at work and at home, it’s very much on brand, and fitting within the mission.
Chief Sales Officer, it’s a new role for you, congratulations.
[0:09:53.0] CC: Thank you.
[0:09:53.7] JR: You spent the past four plus years of the Chief Marketing Officer, why the change?
[0:10:00.2] CC: Well, our company is growing and expanding and I’ve had the luxury of working really closely with our director of marketing over the last year, year and a half and honestly, she kind of precipitated the need for it. I mean, two things. One, she had come in and just in such a phenomenal job and I really felt like first and foremost, I was holding her back from being able to grow inside of the company and she was taking on more and more responsibility and every time I gave her more and more responsibility, she was doing it better than myself and I would be foolish to not see that opportunity to promote her.
And, at the same time, I’d been taking on a lot of sales initiatives and kind of building a sales team on the side or on our coaching program and things of that nature and I was really dreaming about kind of the next three to five years of the business, that’s really where we need to go and really, the last two years, I’ve been saying, every year when we’re kind of teacher planning and it’s like, “hey, we need a sales team,” because we kind of hit a ceiling of just what we can do through our email list and people buying without that one on one contact.
It’s gotten more complex sales, more higher priced sales and so we want to be – what gets me energized is building an industry leading sales team that doesn’t feel like a sales team. Our brand of Michael Hyatt & Company flows all the way through from them being interested in our product, us selling them. And we have no problem in marketing and selling but we do feel like it’s a calling of ours because we know if people aren’t pushed to make a decision, human nature delays.
[0:11:33.1] JR: Absolutely. So, correct me if I’m wrong, I’m putting words in your mouth, but I would also imagine that you spent more than a decade getting masterful at marketing, right? I would imagine there’s this excitement of mastering this other similar, but also very different discipline, right?
[0:11:50.3] CC: Yeah, I think one of the things about modern day marketing, whether you want to call it direct response marketing, online marketing, things like that, is that the best people to do it understands sales and marketing. Because if you have a great marketer, whether that’s a brand marketer, whatever. But you can’t move people to purchase, you don’t understand the sale process.
And so, I actually built the beginning part of my career was all sales. I’ve built sales teams before and then kind of got bored with that and so jumped in to kind of online marketing and loved that and have just now kind of the pendulum swinging back to like new opportunity, I love new things, I like starting things, I don’t like maintaining them.
And one of the great things about our company and our leadership and Michael and Megan is that they know that about me and want to put me on a place to do that. Not just me, but really our whole team.
[0:12:42.4] JR: Yeah, I love it. You and Michael worked together for a long time, going back to your days at Thomas Nelson, you guys were there at the same time. What drew you to the publishing industry?
[0:12:52.0] CC: Well, so, publishing. We have a lot of people in our team with publishing backgrounds because we love words, we love ideas, we love bringing that to market. A lot of my – I managed and built a speaker’s bureau. One of the things that we did was we presented in the faith space, churches, we represent people like Josh McDowell, Kirk Cameron, Lee Strobel, a lot of the Apologists that are around today and Evangelists and so we are booking them in churches and a lot of them had books that came out.
So, it was really powerful, we combine the content of the book with the speaking engagement. so I had to work with publishers about when books came out like with Lee Strobel and it came out, I would be on “hey, how can we leverage the stage around the book for a period of time and you know, what churches do we have access to?” that type of thing.
That was really fun to be that and then I was working for a company called Outreach which is a big church marketing communications company. They were transitioning from California to Colorado Springs, my wife and I decided Colorado Springs wasn’t for us and we had met in Nashville and so I had found out about this job at Thomas Nelson, actually was replacing a friend who had vacated that role, stake on another position and so I kind of had the inside track at least as to his supervisor and probably wasn’t qualified for that role.
Just because I had never been in book publishing at all and it was straight away to VP level position in the book publishing world. So, I had my work cut out, it’s a funny story, the hiring manager was the only person that wanted to hire me and everyone else didn’t. Because I was young, green and stupid, you know? And so, I’m eternally grateful for that decision because it really propelled my career and the work and the relationships, I was able to foster through the publishing industry.
[0:14:30.8] JR: Were you and Michael both at Thomas Nelson when Harper Collins did the acquisition?
[0:14:37.3] CC: So, when I joined, the acquisition had been announced, but they were doing the due diligence. And so, Michael was chairman of the board, he was not there involved in the day to day ops. But the first book I worked on, there’s two books I worked on were Platform, Michael’s book on helping you get noticed the noisy world and Love Does by Bob Goff.
You know, I had no idea what I was doing literally at 10 AM, I was leading a conference call with Michael and his two VA’s and his road manager. I’d found out about eight AM that day, it’s a Friday, we’re 45 days out from launch date that they blew up the marketing plan, we have this call at 10 AM. Chairman of the board, former CEO, how do we launch this book and basically, reallocate all of our marketing funds?
[0:15:18.3] JR: Jeez.
[0:15:19.5] CC: And I never marketed a book before.
[0:15:21.3] JR: Yeah, that’s fun.
[0:15:22.2] CC: Yeah, it was really fun.
[0:15:23.2] JR: What did you do?
[0:15:24.8] CC: We ideated – like basically like we don’t – for me, I had always seen what marketers were doing and just did general space and so I had a lot of fresh ideas and Michael was always thinking new and so I presented a lot of ideas differently that most marketers knew work was happening in the world but in publishing, 10 or 15 years.
[0:15:46.4] JR: So, what year is this?
[0:15:48.0] CC: That is probably 2010. This will be fun. So, what were really great innovative ideas for marketing platform in 2010? What did you guys do?
[0:15:59.2] JR: Were you investing social? Was that – I mean, I guess that was an option. Yeah.
[0:16:01.7] CC: We had a multiple seven figure marketing budget at Nelson. 95% of it was spent on traditional advertising so print, radio, I was just like, “wow, that’s crazy.” I would say, 95% was spent on digital and social for Michael. So, we had built a launch team which at that time, was like only certain people did launch teams and now it’s like everywhere.
Our whole preorder campaign around, I was in a meeting, this is kind of getting shop talk-ish, but I was in a meeting with our sales reps and they were telling me kind of the whole New York Times formula at the time which has changed now since then.
[0:16:35.9] JR: Which is insane.
[0:16:37.0] CC: Yeah, right. Every book that is sold before the launch date counts during launch week. And then they started sharing he numbers of what the preorder numbers were for the books for the last two years. And in Nelson, no one spent any resources on the pre order.
I think the most was Max Lucado, he had 300 preorders for his book launch. At that time, you had to hit 15,000 sales in the first week that the New York Times list. I’m like strategically just made zero sense. Why are we spending allocating some funds during the preorder phase?
And so, we had a big push towards preorder and we launched the New York Times bestseller list and we unfortunately ran out of copies and you know, Michael’s team brought a lot of ideas who brought a lot of ideas and the great thing was is like, because II didn’t have any experience, I didn’t say no to anything.
I was like, “that could work, that could work” and then we just kind of organized and made it happen.
[0:17:28.7] JR: So, Love Does. I didn’t know you worked on this book. Yeah, I’ve always been curious about this book in particular about what the public – because nobody knew about Goff, right?
[0:17:39.7] JR: Yeah, the only people that knew Bob would have read Donald Miller’s book because he’s like this mythical figure.
[0:17:45.7] CC: Yeah, sure, yes. There was that but –
[0:17:47.8] JR: That’s about it. But nobody really knew Bob Goff. Did you guys know that book was going to win as big as it did? When did you guys know this is going to be just phenomenal?
[0:17:57.7] CC: When I was in the interview process, I asked one of the questions I asked everyone that I was interviewing with is, “what book are you most excited about in the next 12 months?”
[0:18:05.0] JR: That’s a great question, yeah.
[0:18:05.9] CC: Everyone said, this book by Bob Goff called Love Does and actually, I think when I was interviewing the book title was called Palms Up. It was this book by Bob called Palms Up. Luckily, the title changed. Ended up being Love Does. And what’s funny about publishing is I’ll say this for my publishing people, especially on the marketing side is everyone on the sales team which they have a lot of opinions on titles, hated that title.
But then three months later, after the book comes out and it does so well, “we really need the magic of like a Love Does, you know?” They’re like taking the credit for it and everything and it’s just funny.
[0:18:40.9] JR: For those who don’t know. Because we’re talking, I love this because I love publishing. Explain in 60 seconds the difference between marketing and who is sales at Thomas Nelson selling to?
[0:18:50.9] CC: There’s publishing so under publishing is really the content and the editorial of the book, they’re the ones that are actually producing the book, the words, and they’re the ones choosing what books actually will get published in tandem with the sales team and marketing. But he sales team are basically teams that are representing out to Barns & Noble, Amazon, they’re selling on behalf of the publisher.
But, we’re always kind of – when we say, “hey, we want to publish this book,” sales team will say, “hey, the market’s telling us we think we could sell 50,000 units in the first year. Because of that, here’s what we should be able to pay us in advance.” And then there’s negotiations with the agent and all that.
That process is called pub board. Publishing board in Thomas Nelson. Once a month we would meet, we look at proposals and determine kind of really, every book is a venture capitalist project.
[0:19:36.9] JR: Totally, that’s exactly – we think we’re going to make this much money, we may not and the reality is publishers make money on about 12% on books.
[0:19:45.7] CC: Yeah. They make good money on them.
[0:19:47.6] JR: Is the rule of thumb still a publisher’s expecting a book to sell on average, 5,000 copies, year one? Is that number going up? I mean, I’ve heard most books don’t sell that?
[0:19:58.5] CC: Yeah, most books don’t. I mean, Thomas Nelson’s in a different game, we’re a big Christian publisher and so our – we are no longer there. But we would never publish a book hoping that it would sell 5,000 copies. That’s not the project we –
[0:20:13.0] JR: You never want to take that bet. You got to believe it’s going to sell 50.
[0:20:16.8] CC: Yeah, there are some publishers that build a business model and every book they publish will sell 8,000 copies and they can win. That’s what’s great about publishing is you can setup the business model to work that way.
[0:20:26.6] JR: I’m going to ask some selfish questions. I ask a lot of selfish questions. This is my show, I can ask whatever – you’ve worked on more than 200 book marketing campaigns which like blows my mind, the churn of publishing. I get this question a lot from aspiring authors. Jordan, you’ve called a great deal of wealth, hit a national bestseller list, what are all the things I have to do, everybody’s telling me I have to do 50 things to market my book?
I always try to simplify it be like, “no, actually pretty much nothing matters except for this one thing.” I’m curious if we share that one thing. If you were to boil it down to guys, aspiring author, do this one thing to market a book, what would it be?
[0:21:04.5] CC: I think you’re leading me to something –
[0:21:06.3] JR: I am totally leading you.
[0:21:07.9] CC: First you have to write a good book. I would say write a good book. There’s two funny stories to this, I’ll share real quick, Michael shares is, “content is king.” The other thing which means that – and this is a quote I think I heard before I actually came to work at Thomas Nelson is that great marketing makes a bad book fail faster.
And so, the great thing about book publishing and books are that it’s probably the most shared and referred product on the planet. So, if you have a book that’s impacted your life, you’re going to talk about it till the cows come home. First and foremost, that’s becoming harder and harder. I would say a decade ago, that was tried and true, but there’s a lot of not good book swath really slick marketing and good marketing and good platforms that will help you launch a book.
The reality though, what that means nowadays is if you have a platform and an audience that want your message because they have to buy the message before they can read the message, so it doesn’t necessarily mean that its’ a good book. The long-term success now is really about content, but the short-term success is really about having an audience platform to really sell the book to.
[0:22:18.8] JR: Within the platform bucket. My advice to authors is, an email list.
[0:22:21.6] CC: Email is the only thing that matters, 100%
[0:22:23.6] JR: The only thing, right? Don’t waste your time doing anything else.
[0:22:27.2] CC: 100%.
[0:22:28.7] JR: No –
[0:22:28.8] CC: Funny story about this. So, we launched Platform and Love Does, probably within a week apart.
[0:22:35.8] JR: It’s a good quarter at Thomas nelson.
[0:22:37.9] CC: Platform launched, New York Times bestseller list. Bob and Michael had gotten to know each other when we launched Love Does, we were doing a summit and so Michael did an interview with bob and they were throwing each other on social media and Bob got off the phone and was asking Michael. I haven’t even shared this story with Michael. So, if he listens to this, it will be the first time he hears it.
You know, Michael starts sharing with Bob all the stuff that we’re doing to market Platform. I get an angry call from Bob. He’s like, “you guys are doing this for Michael, how come you're not doing this for me?” This is a big lesson. I go, “Bob, your book is totally different.” One, Michael has an email list, Michael has all this other stuff, we could do all that, but it’s not going to move the needle because you don’t have anything. This is a long-term play. I believe in that.
I said, I told him, I said, “Michael’s book is a niche book. Your book is super broad, six months from now, you’re going to be outselling Michael. No question.” Platform roughly has sold maybe 100,00, 110,000 complies. I could be – I’m somewhat dissociated with it now. Love Does is approaching a million copies. Just to kind of see the scale of it.
[0:23:44.3] JR: It’s a very different book.
[0:23:45.8] CC: You can’t one size fits all marketing campaigns don’t work. And at that point in the game, Bob had just had a lot of people that wanted to see that book succeed and word of mouth for that book was the most important thing.
[0:23:56.9] JR: What are the most successful authors five years from now going to be doing that they’re less masterful counterparts aren’t? By the way, I ask myself this question all the time and I’m not sure I have a great answer.
[0:24:07.7] CC: My mind went first to; it’s going to be something that’s not Facebook. I think this is nerdy talk, but I believe that next to an email list, social media is still big. You know, it’s especially if you can leverage your circle of influence to help you promote on social and really borrow their platforms for a period of time because they really believe in the message and believe in you. And so, Facebook and Instagram are the leaders in that space right now.
But I believe that I think there’s going to be something that happen that shifts that – I mean, it’s already happening. I think there’s just this public dissonance about Facebook and the distraction piece but also the privacy piece. You know, I think we’re just one travesty away of like – as soon as I say this though, I’m also like questioning the human race because we all know it.
It’s like a joke around the table around the table about it, but yeah, we’re like addicted to a degree too.
[0:25:01.6] JR: We’re talking a lot about publishing, let’s try to broaden this a little bit. We got a lot of people, I’m sure, listening who are just marketing professionals, they’re not marketing books, they’re marketing lawn care services. Whatever it might be. What do masterful marketers do that less masterful marketers don’t do?
What is the real differentiator between somebody who is a really world class at this discipline and somebody who is not?
[0:25:26.5] CC: Well, for me, I think not just marketing, but I think in life in general is being a constant learner. Marketing probably more than anything else when it comes to business changes more rapidly than anything. Leadership and management principles are pretty much true over time.
[0:25:44.8] JR: Trucker and Michael Hyatt are saying the same things. Yeah.
[0:25:47.7] CC: Yeah, very similar. I mean, granted they’re managing a millennial generation and a boomer generation, there’s different elements to it. But there’s layers of that that’s always going to be the same and – But marketing, you know, when I first started, I taught myself Google Pay Per Clock, that is how I became a masterful marketer is that I reduced our ad expense by 80% and increased the leads by 400% in the speaker’s bureau side. All through Pay Per Click owning four or five keywords. That can’t be your only marketing strategy now and it couldn’t have been seven years ago. You know when I started it was and similar when we jumped into Facebook five or six years ago, Facebook was like stealing candy from babies.
And now it is more competitive, it is just like I think Gary V. says this but three words, marketers ruin everything. And so, when something works, you know when email first came out, open rates were 85, 90% but open rates now are 10 to 25%. It is a hot, hot list because marketers have ruined that. People hate their email now and spam and all of that because it worked. There was a season where marketers were just – so I would just stay constant learning.
Being ahead of the curve, that question you just ask that I didn’t have a great answer for about what is five years from now. They are going to be doing what they are not doing right now? Like TikTok is a social media platform that probably most people are like, “I have no idea what that is,” but it is far surpassing in the teenage market more than Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat.
[0:27:10.2] JR: Yeah, the growth rate is out of control, it is crazy.
[0:27:11.8] CC: Yeah, it is Michael Hyatt &Company grow rate, crazy.
[0:27:14.6] JR: Yeah, I have a friend who has a daughter who is 17 and she has a million followers.
[0:27:18.4] CC: Yeah, it’s crazy. I love it. It’s awesome.
[0:27:20.4] JR: We talked about your home life a little bit. Talk to me through your daily routine. I am fascinated by the daily habits of people. So, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed what does your day look like?
[0:27:30.5] CC: Yeah, so this used to be different before I had a child but actually, I became more routined and I should say we as a couple because it is now with a child it is a tandem effort to make sure we are on the same page. Our daughter sleeps from, no hate mail about this, she sleeps from 7 PM to 7:30 AM,
[0:27:52.5] JR: You could hear that fist bump. 7 PM is the official bedtime of Ellison Joy and Kate Everly Raynor. So, there you go.
[0:27:58.2] CC: And then she also still naps, she’s almost three, from noon to three.
[0:28:01.9] JR: Noon to three? You are a blessed man.
[0:28:05.2] CC: I sure am and so part of that is I believe in one, her temperament but my wife stays home and it has been super intentional with her and it’s been really good and it’s been harder seasons for sure. But since we had her, we became way more militant about when we wake up, when we go to bed because we need our time and so we are up between 5:15 and 5:45 every morning, a cup of coffee, a little time on the couch, a little time in the Word.
And then she’ll go run and then I will typically run on the treadmill in the house a few days a week. So, get the workout, it swings when she is out of the house running. And then she gets up at 7:30. So at certain days I help her get up, on certain days Julie does depending on what is there but I am in the office between eight and nine. So, I’ve got my morning routine. It’s exercising, seeing the crew in the morning, connection time with my wife, with God, all of that is part of that morning.
And then typically nine to five and typically eight to five I guess you should say, but we got the flexibility where if I have to leave early, we can leave early and home for dinner, do my best to put the phone down and not touch the phone or the computer. In this season of life, I am in a place where I don’t really touch work until the following morning and we are in bed, the crew goes down at seven and then I am the one who puts her down. It is that fun time daddy wrestle time first before she goes to bed.
And then we are in bed between 8:30 and nine and you know, so we’re – I had a friend text me. He’s like, “hey, are you free for a work question?” And it was 8:15 and I’m like, “hey, I got 15 minutes” because I am going to bed at 8:30.” Normally I don’t take calls but he was a close enough friend and he was just so jealous.
[0:29:46.9] JR: Flabbergasted.
[0:29:47.8] CC: Yeah, he was like, “how do you do that?” I’m like, “I just do.”
[0:29:49.9] JR: Yeah when I was – the previous company that I ran Threshold 360, when I was running it I was getting up at 4:30 and people are like, “how do you do that?” And I’m like, “I go to bed at nine or 8:30” that is the only way you can do it, right? If you really value sleep, which I do and I think the most productive people in the world do.
[0:30:04.6] CC: One of the things we say is that your productivity for tomorrow starts tonight.
[0:30:08.7] JR: Do you ever ask people in interviews how much they sleep and judge them based on that?
[0:30:13.1] CC: You know I probably should, but I don’t because I was that and it depends on seasons of life like. I am always been a highly productive person, but in my 20’s when I was climbing the ladder, whatever you want to say, I mean I would constantly go on five or six hours of sleep.
[0:30:28.1] JR: I can never do it. I ask all the time. If somebody says I get five hours of sleep I am not going to hire them. Well, maybe from a hiring perspective 100%. Yeah what I look for though is whether or not they were proud of it, like whether or not they think that this is a culture that celebrates not sleeping that is not a fit that is not cool.
[0:30:45.7] CC: Yeah, 100% because we are fighting for culture and the reality is that if one person comes in and goes against that and that is like a proud thing for them. Because one, you shouldn’t be proud about it. There is no data that supports you. If you are proud like I can get more done because, “I am working five hours.” That’s like Elon Musk saying how many hours he work, it’s like well, let us play out how Elon Musk, his life has played out for him not many people want that, but that’s what happens.
[0:31:11.0] JR: Right. I was having coffee with another member of your staff last time I was up here in Nashville and he mentioned something about the fact that internally he’s heard Michael talk about the mission of Michael Hyatt & Company being at least partially about the glory of God and I was surprised he used the term like that. Is that a part of some official statement somewhere?
[0:31:29.9] CC: It is.
[0:31:30.3] JR: What is that statement, your purpose statement or?
[0:31:32.8] CC: Yeah, I should know this exactly, but it is really part of our vision statement and why we exist. And the reality that we believe, this double win, win at work and succeed at life and helping overwhelm successful leaders get the focus they need is going to help them be a better human being and ultimately a better husband, a better friend. And those are all things that we believe glorify God.
And the reality is to be as passionate as we are about our work, just the sake of having someone work a lot like on average our clients after a year of our coaching program work anywhere from 11 to 20 hours less a week. If that is not attached to something like what is the purpose of that? This isn’t to get you to be able to do more work, but it is how do you spend more time with your family and your kids and loving on them? And you know because most of the time I think this is probably getting into a soap box and this is how I have found is that when I get busy the thing that retracts on my schedule more than anything and it shouldn’t, is the word of God.
And the more time people have that it is just an excuse that you can no longer use and that has been a big part of my story in the last year or two is that is like one of my – we talked about creating a routine or ritual that is a non-negotiable because you need it.
[0:32:50.0] JR: You need it like it’s the pro to life.
[0:32:51.5] CC: I mean yeah, there is at First Peter that talks about it. It’s like nourishment like an infant needs milk. And he was talking to believers not unbelievers with that, which means we need to be craving it like an infant craves milk and as we got young kids, you know what that looks and they need it. Without it they don’t grow, without it they don’t mature, all of that and so yeah, it is not something that you have to be a believer to work for us.
But you have to be okay with that mission because that is the values that we have decided and it is something that it is near and dear to Michael’s heart. Otherwise, we can get off kilter and start creating things to make money, but if it doesn’t glorify God or we are not helping our clients glorify God in a way then what’s the point?
[0:33:40.5] JR: I love that and I love that this is a great example of Common Grace and seeing the Lord’s will accomplish even the lives of people who are not following him.
[0:33:48.5] CC: Totally.
[0:33:48.9] JR: The Lord is using you all to create more margin in the lives of these business leaders so that they can spend more time with their kids, more time with their family and that whether or not they realize it or not is revealing the character of God.
[0:34:03.1] CC: Totally. Well we have this real life stories. I mean I am getting bone chills just thinking about the story I am about to share because I know how impactful it is and it is a perfect example of why we do what we do. We were at a live event and we shared about our coaching program from stage and we had a woman come back and Michael and I were just talking and just came up, “I got a question, I know I need this but I’ve got a question. Do I have to be a Christian to be a part of this coaching program?”
One, we appreciated the candor and just the boldness to ask that question and we said, “absolutely not. We are not going to shy away from our faith.” We believe that Michael when he talks about his morning routine just like I said like scripture and the word of God is important. You know I won’t share too many details, but she came in about two quarters in to be a part of our coaching program that had come out that her and her husband are going through a really hard time.
They were business partners, very, very successful and I mean they are on the brink of divorce after 30 something years. And three years later, both of them are in the coaching program. They renewed their vows. They’re happier than they have ever been and because of what they have been able to do through being part of their coaching program and gating those hours back and things like that they have been able to fall back in love with each other.
This isn’t a story of they have come to the Lord quite yet, but that is not our job. And even as a pastor in a church, if they came to church it is not our job. We can pray for them and the Holy Spirit can move, but we have laid so many seeds and have – I mean they have said it, we’ve saved their marriage and we have countless stories like that.
[0:35:32.5] JR: That is ministry, you are revealing the character of God in helping these people love each other and model what Biblical marriage looks like. You are loving your neighbor as yourself, these people who are in crisis in a marriage. I think some people would look at that and say, “well, yeah but they didn’t pray the prayer,” that’s not the point. It is a point and I am sure that you are praying for your customers that they would come to saving faith in Jesus Christ, but that is not your job.
That is the Holy Spirit’s job. Your job is to be salt and light in the world and just to serve your customer well, right?
[0:36:06.0] CC: 100 percent.
[0:36:07.3] JR: So, I am curious, what would be different about Michael Hyatt and company if Michael, senior leaders like yourself, if you weren’t following Jesus Christ? Can you envision the company what would be different about the company if that were the case?
[0:36:20.5] CC: I can’t. You know I think that the culture would be totally different. I think that we might be more financially successful because in our space there are a lot of things we can do to make money and it has to serve the purpose of helping you win at work and succeed at life and at the end of the day glorify God. And so that being our compass, we say no to a lot that most businesses would think we’re absolutely crazy to say no to.
[0:36:51.4] JR: What is an example?
[0:36:52.7] CC: If my team was sitting here, they would be laughing, like, “what do you say no to Chad?” Because I am like a hard charging figure. I am an optimist, but we say no all the time. I mean speaking engagements, we are very particular about that because Michael has five kids and nine grandkids all within a 10 miles of each other. But we could probably generate three times the amount of speaking fees we do, which we know that when he goes out and speaks there is this kind of revenue halo.
That impacts the company and we’ve got a pretty hard constraint of how many times Michael is on the road and that has changed over the years. It used to be zero and next year it will be probably between 15 and 18 times, but a lot of people in our space they are on the road 50 to 60 times and for us that is a constraint that we say no to and so it’s got to be super high leverage and it is going to be the right things.
And that is one that on the sales side trying to figure out what are those things. And it is hard because great opportunities come in every day and you know we’ve got some big growth goals and so it is hard to say no and I know that this could lead to potentially half a million to a million dollars in sales in the next six months just because I know the type of audience we’re going to be in front of, so.
[0:38:03.1] JR: Yeah, well I mean people who are following after Jesus Christ, have to say no to maintain balance in the series of life. But you also have to say no to things in order to become masterful at your craft and to stay focus on what’s essential, what matters most. What aspect, this is a tough question I think but whatever I am going to throw another hard one at you. When you think about the work you guys are doing day in and day out at Michael Hyatt & Company, what aspect of God’s character do you think you most regularly reveal through the work?
Either the products themselves or how you treat people like I know you are not explicitly saying it but what aspect of our Lord’s character do you think you are revealing the most through your work?
[0:38:43.2] CC: Yeah, you know I think this aspect and I don’t know the Scripture right off hand, but don’t worry about tomorrow because today has enough worries of its own basically. Honestly that’s what we’re trying to sell people. There is an article I think in The Atlantic a few years ago and this world, it was talking about this world of noise and distraction and things like that that in this world, you can sell peace, calm and quiet back to people at a profit and honestly, that’s what we’re doing.
We are creating tools and resources to allow you to be less anxious, which in my small group last week, there is a young life leader who is in Franklin High School, his 16 top leaders he found out 14 out of 16 are in antidepressant and anxiety meds. And that is an epidemic hitting our country and we believe that our tools and resources help people be less anxious when it comes to work and home and that if you get into this cadence that we will walk you through and you know Jesus didn’t do anything in a hurry.
He was very intentional and, in our culture, today, we are more hurried than ever, we are more anxious than ever and we are trying to provide calm and we want to make a profit on the back end of that. You know that is obviously insider baseball with that article as an executive team we’re like, “that is really what we are doing,” we are trying to fight against this culture of hurry. You know the hustle fallacy to really provide that calm and the structure.
Donald Miller called Michael the Marie Kondo of productivity on a podcast one time and it is really about that. It is like how do you slay the distractions? How do you get clear about what we say in our year of working 80 as a business owner or a leader that has autonomy over your time, you should be spending 80 to 90% in what we call your desire zone.
So, things that you are passionate about and proficient in not or, passionate and proficient, which means you are excited about it. It fills you up in the proficient is that it makes money. And whereas when we do these exercises, most people are spending less than 20% of time in their desire zone. They don’t know how to get out of it and so we coach them how to get out of it.
[0:40:46.8] JR: I love it. You talk about hurry. Have you gotten your hands on a copy of John Mark Comer’s new book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry? Have you read John Mark?
[0:40:55.9] CC: I have seen it. I have, I love him. I love Bridgetown Church. I love what he is doing.
[0:40:59.9] JR: So, John Mark really should be sending me royalties as much as I am talking about him on the show and we are really excited that he is going to be on here at some point in the near future. That book, I mean all of John Mark’s stuff is great, Ruthless Elimination of Hurry is exceptional. It is next level; I am really excited.
[0:41:16.4] CC: It is funny how – so Jefferson Bethke is a good friend of mine and Jeff has a book coming out called To the Hell with the Hustle by Thomas Nelson and so Jeff has a very strong believer and a lot of people are going to be probably upset with hell being in the title, but he feels that strongly about it. You know John Mark and Jeff went to a similar seminary over the last and it is funny how neither one of them knew they were writing about this book.
And God’s put it on their heart and it is a similar message and you know both have similar audience, which just goes to show I think we’re all struggling with it.
[0:41:47.9] JR: Yeah, well I am reading Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and I am like, “man, there’s a lot of Digital Minimalism in here by Cal Newport.” I am not sure you read that, great book, but I don’t think the book wasn’t out. If I am understanding the pub timeline, publishing timeline, I don’t think the book was out when John Mark was writing it and I am going to ask him about that when we have him on the podcast but no, it is just the Lord is working.
[0:42:06.8] CC: Digital Minimalism came out in February.
[0:42:08.6] JR: Of this year, right? 2019.
[0:42:09.5] CC: Yeah because we include it in our leader books and so we have 4,000 leaders reading that book all across the country at the same time and it is a great title.
[0:42:18.2] JR: Yeah, it’s a great title. Yes, so I am all about this hustle less, but I think we are all saying the same things. The scripture does commands us to work hard, right? Colossians 3:23, we talk a lot about on the show, “Work heartily as unto the Lord,” but we also have to recognize the truth of the scripture that we do not produce results.
The Lord produces results through our work and that should allow us to rest from our work. And that should allow us to approach our work with great ambition with great hustle if you want to use that word. Also in this intension of trusting that the Lord will be the one who will provide, right? So, talking about John Mark Comer, so a couple of questions I love to ask every guest, other than the Bible, what book or books do you find yourself recommending the most or buying or gifting other people?
[0:43:05.9] CC: Yeah, so I saw this question and I get this question a lot because being the book publishing space is the book that I read every year without fail is “In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day.” So, Mark Batterson. It’s been out probably a decade now, but it was one of the first books that I read that just burst something in me that I didn’t know existed and so there is probably some nostalgia that I want to read it. It brings me back to that moment.
But it is also a really powerful story that I feel like Mark did such a good job of it was like two verses in the Bible about this character called Benaiah and the whole premise is he went into a pit with the lion in a snowy day. So, he was literally in the lion’s territory and had the faith to basically kill the lion. This guy killed the lion in the lion’s territory. It was like, on an equal match in your territory, the lion is going to wi. But not only – and so for me, I like to get underdogs and against all odds stories I love.
And so part of that is just a remembrance of my own journey and what the next three to five years – there is some things in there that just gets me excited about dreaming about what are the next three to five years of? That question of what is going to happen in the next five years that no one is thinking about it does that for me. It just puts me back at check. You know from a business standpoint, I read too many books. There is not one that I will say you have to read this book.
I mean one, Good to Great, is a big one for me when it comes to maximizing and thinking through like what is your business need to be to be great? And you know the data and the research and you know Jim Collins is a legend. Yeah, I think In a Pit with the Lion on a Snowy Day is one that I would recommend anyone. It is a great book.
[0:44:52.4] JR: Those are two great ones. One person would you most like to hear talk about how their faith influences their work, maybe on this podcast?
[0:45:01.6] CC: Let us mention him Jefferson Bethke. So, Jeff is a close friend of mine. I get the luxury of having these conversations with him and I think that similar to John Mark Comer, they are thinking about life differently. So, Jeff, for those of you who don’t know, Jeff’s story you know at 22, 23 he created this viral video before viral videos were viral, before Facebook video even existed. It was YouTube called Why I Love Jesus but I Hate Religion and the spoken word.
There’s a lot of people who have probably seen that. I think when I – three days in it had 15 million views and I met him through a friend and the moment I talk to him I just knew that God had something big in his life, like there was just something wise beyond his years and it's been a really fun. You know at that time he wasn’t married. He is now married with two or three kids. I am so bad at this, I think three now actually, yeah three kids.
And he had the opportunity to just do whatever he wanted. And which meant he started a young adult ministry that could have turned into a church and been huge, he could have been this big travel speaker and made a ton of money and instead he and Alyssa moved to Hawaii to be in community with the people that they knew they needed to be in community with and said no to everything that people were telling them that you could just make cash.
And is living one of the most intentional lives as a parent, as an author. And he is probably way more successful in his career than any of those people said that he could be doing those other things, through digital products and things like that and just brilliant. And he’s got a great partnership with a guy by the name of Craig Gross and they are doing really great things and he is one of those authors that 50 years from now, people appreciate his work now, but I think 50 years from now, they are going to appreciate his work even more.
[0:46:55.1] JR: That is a good answer. What is one piece of advice would you give to somebody who like you is pursuing mastery of the art of marketing and or sales?
[0:47:05.8] CC: Yeah, I said earlier be a constant learner. Ask more questions than share opinions. There is something about being – it is hard because I liked more ask questions, but you are the one asking questions here. Because one, asking questions allows you to learn and it is the number one way that will make you more curious in the other person’s mind, but actually asking them questions. I think that is a life lesson about your craft like you need to continue to learn and listen.
And consume as much content. I think one of the things that marketers don’t do and even sales people is they don’t look outside of their own industry and so like book publishing, if you are looking inside your industry, you are looking at 15 years behind. What are people doing, how is people with billion-dollar marketing budgets how are they doing storytelling? Obviously, there is a limiting belief like, “well I can never do that because I don’t have money,” which is totally not true. They are just wasting it, you know?
And so, there is videos that I have seen like there is a video of Extra Gum that was done years ago and it is this silver wrapper. The title of the video is called Origami and it was the thing that the dad and the daughter would do is when they would open the gum they would create this little origami thing, there is no words. It is really powerful music and over the years, the daughter grows up and the daughter is moving out, I mean dad is helping her move and pack up the room.
And the shoebox falls and she has saved all of these origami things that she and her dad had been doing over the years. Thinking about it now brings me to tears because I have a three year old daughter and I was working on a book at that time I was like, “man,” that emotion is what I want people to feel about this book and how do we do that and so we start a storyboarding it and I don’t want to be one of the most successful and it was like so most – it is the Happy Wives Club.
And so just inspiration coming from other places that was all about storytelling, but I think it is don’t be afraid to learn, don’t be afraid to ask questions and continuously learn.
[0:49:09.1] JR: That is great advice. I love the advice of looking outside your industry. I don’t pay attention to competitors very much right? I pay attention to who really impresses me in other spaces so I love that. Hey Chad, thank you.
I just want to commend you and Michael for the work that you are doing. I have always been a big fan of both of yours. You probably don’t know that I’ve admired you from a far for a long time. Followed you on Twitter.
Obviously, a big fan of Michael, thank you for the ministry of excellence. Thank you for helping business owners and leaders when at work and at home and thank you for revealing the character of God to the process of doing that. Y’all’s work matters a great deal and I am just grateful for it. So hey, if you want to follow Chad, probably the best place to do is Twitter. I mean you are pretty active on Twitter these days, right?
[0:49:54.0] CC: Yeah, if you want to see sports rants, Twitter is the place.
[0:49:57.5] JR: Twitter is the place.
[0:49:58.2] CC: I am a big Chicago sports fan, but Instagram is probably the best.
[0:50:01.5] JR: Where are you on Instagram?
[0:50:02.9] CC: It’s @ccannon21.
[0:50:06.4] JR: And then on Twitter you’re just @ccannon and obviously you can follow Michael’s work at michealhyatt.com. Chad thanks for hanging out with me.
[0:50:13.4] CC: Thanks Jordan, such a pleasure.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:50:14.8] JR: I didn’t think this is possible, but I am an even bigger fan of Chad Cannon and Michael Hyatt after that conversation. Thanks again to Chad for joining us. Hey, if you enjoyed that episode, be sure to subscribe to The Call to Mastery. So, we are going to start releasing these episodes on weekly basis. You want to make sure that you will never miss an episode that we release so go ahead and subscribe.
If you are already subscribed, do me a favor. Take 30 seconds and go review the podcast. This is the number one thing that you can do to help ensure that we get this content into the hands of more people. So, go leave a review of the podcast on your favorite podcast app. If you have no idea how to subscribe to or view a podcast, no worries, I had no idea how to do this before we started producing the show, head over to jordanraynor.com/podcast. We’ve made it really easy for you to go subscribe to and review the Call to Mastery with me, Jordan Raynor.
Thanks so much for listening to this episode. I will see you next time.
[END]