Using a book as a Personal Brand lead engine, with Scott Turman

Speaker 2 (00:03) Welcome to Amplify the Personal Brand Entrepreneur Show. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with Scott Turner. Speaker 1 (00:13) It's a sniper rifle, not a shotgun. And if you write a book for everybody, you've written a book for nobody. You really should try to write a book for less than 5000 people in the entire world because when they read it, they should think, this book is written for me. Everything this person saying sings to me because I have these problems. How did I reach these conclusions? What is the problem? How do I solve it? It's a very similar kind of recipe for writing a book. And in my opinion, you've really got to write it for that exact target market if you're going to succeed. Speaker 2 (00:43) Hi there and welcome to the Personal Brand Entrepreneurship. My name is Bob Gentles, and every week I'm joined by amazing people who share what makes their business work. And if you're new to the show, take a second while you have the app open and just hit play. Also hit the subscribe button. And if you're on an iPhone, that's the plus or the follow icon. That way you won't miss another episode. Before I jump into introducing this week's guest, just a quick reminder. Once again, after nearly 200 of these interviews, I've learned a thing or two about what makes the personal brand business work online. And it turns out that success does leave clues. And I want to offer you a math. So if you head over to my website, you can grab your copy of the Personal Brand Business Roadmap, everything you need to start scale or just fix your personal brand business. And it's yours for free as a gift for me. Now, as everybody is probably aware, personal brand business is all about building your authority. This is really what's at the foundation of it. Once you have your authority, you can focus on building your visibility and then you can work on your profitability and through monetization. Speaker 2 (01:45) But at the very heart of this is your authority. And the root of the word authority is author. Or have I got it the other way around? I'm not sure. But what I know for sure is that when I hear somebody as an author, I pay attention, I listen to them, I take them a bit more seriously, and I take it face value that they are probably an expert in whatever it is they've been writing about. So books, authorship, and demonstrating your leadership is something that I pay attention to this week. I am thrilled to welcome Scott Determined to the show. Scott's business is really focused on authors and authorships, and this is something that's on my mind a lot. It's something that always impresses me. So, Scott, welcome to the show. We have a lot to talk about. Speaker 1 (02:32) Thank you for having me. Speaker 2 (02:33) So for the listener who doesn't know you, why don't you start just by telling us a little bit about who you are, where you are and what it is you do in this particular space. Speaker 1 (02:42) Well, my name is Scott Turmen. I reside in Maitland, Florida, which is just North Orlando, and for 25 years I've been just building software and technology and teams and I started at NASA 25 years ago and then kind of work my way through the Fortune 500s and 50s and ten s in and around Florida. And then about two and a half years ago, I realised I was sick to death of technology and I've been trying to write a book for a bazillion years. And I had contacted someone who had been written a lot of books and it was kind of a height of Cobb and we had kind of worked out this process of basically her interviewing me. She's an actual writer where I am simply an entrepreneur and I kind of see the angles and I know how to hire people and do payroll and pay taxes and all those kind of things. Zoo Rose, my business partner, is kind of the brains behind the actual process of this push and pull process of writing a book. And we worked out this process where through weekly interviews, we just kind of pull the book out of the subject's head. Speaker 1 (03:48) Three to four months later you have the manuscript, we have Editors and writers and all the things that come along goes along with it, scan it down, make a cover, and then publish it. Long story short, two and a half years ago, I had a midlife crisis, decided I want to do something different and here we are. Speaker 2 (04:05) I think there's an awful lot to unpack there, and I'm going to start at the beginning. One of the things that struck me doing my research was you're a died in the Wool Nerd, which I love. That's a fact, and that caught my attention for a few reasons, because within the personal brand business world, I think there's a lot of people come from arts backgrounds, they come from the creative industries or they come from business, but the people with a deep tech background, they tend to stay in the shadows a lot of the time. They don't normally like the limelight. So I am interested to pick into that a little bit with you. I'm also quite interested to find out specifically how that was for you as a person, because there's also quite a shift in terms of a change of identity there, which I think is important for a lot of people to understand because pivots can be painful for lots of different reasons practically, but also emotionally. And that change of identity, especially for somebody that has always been a developer, to suddenly have an identity, that's something slightly different from that. That's a bit of a jolt, I imagine. Speaker 2 (05:14) But let's start with the books side of things. You said you were trying to write a book for a bazillion years so for the listener who maybe isn't quite in the place where they've decided a book is a good idea, what was it that triggered the desire to write the book? Never mind the actual process of it. Why a book for you? Speaker 1 (05:34) So at the time, I had 18 employees, technology employees, and been doing that for ten years. It's kind of a consulting company. And at that time, to this day, it's very difficult to find engineers, developers to hire them. A, they're very expensive and B, the trust needs to be kind of gained and built before they'll just jump on a contract with you, so to speak. So I decided the best way to earn their trust was I was going to write a book on salary negotiation for nerds. It's the one area that we do terribly because we're fairly trusting folks and the technical recruiters of the world and Hrs of the world, they're there to try to drive you down, basically get you for the lowest they can, which is diametrically opposed to what you're trying to do, which is try to make the most money. So I wrote a book and I don't know how much, I don't know how family friendly. Speaker 2 (06:30) It's fine. You can do it. It's fine. I know what you're talking about. You go for it. Speaker 1 (06:34) Okay. So the name of the book was Stopped Getting Fucked by Technical Recruiters Nerds Guide to Salary Negotiating and Benefits. It basically was kind of a way of trying to get the technologies of the world and the nerds of the world to kind of trust me that I had their best interest in mind. And I sold a couple thousand of those books in about four or five month period of time on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and such. And it definitely allowed me to expand my business at the time that I really had that need. And that was my impetus for writing. Now, what I didn't realise was that it did way more than what I originally thought it would. For instance, if you do a search for my name, Scott Termin on Google, you'll see that Google places me my own knowledge panel. It's almost like how Google is a shortcut for people's information. There's my pictures, my name. I think it says author, entrepreneur. It's very similar to an actual famous person, which I am not. And I started kind of digging into it and branding and kind of understanding what the heck just happened. Speaker 1 (07:42) I started getting these interviews and I could never get before I started getting quoted in newspapers and magazines such I could never get that done before. And it turns out when people were looking me up or these reporters looked me up, Google would show them, oh, look, it's Scott Terminal basically owning my own brand. And then I kind of backed into this kind of larger world of personal branding. And here we are, a couple of years later, it's where I want to be. I mean, all I do is interview astronauts and senators and entrepreneurs and really amazing people for this. It's really my full time job now. Speaker 2 (08:21) Nice. I had to look at these knowledge panels earlier today. I was reading what you'd written about those. And I'll be honest, I didn't quite get to the bottom of it yet, but I get the impression they have to pull data from significant sources. It's not something you can just rock up and create yourself. Speaker 1 (08:40) So no, you could trigger them. There is a man by the name of Jason Bernard, who's an Englishman. We helped develop his book six months ago, and he is basically the world authority on this subject. Even Google leadership looks at him as the kind of world authority in this area, and he does not work for Google. So you're basically teaching think of Google as a child and you're teaching them about your name, Bob Jesus. We're basically trying to teach this little baby who you are, what you do, and as you train it, the Google wants to present you once they have those facts about you. So if you basically serve them up correctly and you have enough corroborating evidence, it will trigger that knowledge panel. And that goes with all of your kind of a circular firing squad, your social media is all pointing to each other. You're using the same profile picture and all that kind of stuff. By the way, being an author is the easiest way of doing it. But if you want to do it the hard way, there are other ways of doing it. Speaker 2 (09:42) I'm not a fan of the hard way. However, writing a book is kind of the hard way. Right. So I don't think writing a book is anybody's idea the easy way. But let's talk about writing a book the easy way, because as somebody who's maybe a quarter of the way through a book, it's not easy. So I'm curious to hear a little bit more about the alternatives to just doing everything yourself. Obviously, everything costs money, but the end result is what's important. So what does your process look like, and how would it differ as an experience from simply grinding it out yourself? And I guess an important element of this is I do wonder where if you're not going through the seven fires of hell to get to the end with your book, does the end result suffer? And I don't have an answer to that question, but I'm interested in your perspective. Speaker 1 (10:38) So the way that bright, Ray? Well, the way that we operate is we're thinking of it as a writing team. Everybody on the team has written multiple books. Everybody on the team has a degree in the relevant topics. And everybody there is trained on how to kind of coax the best out of you. If you were to write a book on your own, it's going to take a while A and B, it's not going to be your full time job, right. Unless you're in the business of being an author and with the team, they can kind of poke and prod the facts that you may or may not have saw as being relevant. We can figure out that thesis that you may have not even thought was the right thesis, because ultimately these books are not what they appear to be. Most people from the outside look at them as this achievement, and it is. But I look at it a different way. I look at it as a foundation to a brand. I look at these books as simply the starting point to building a personal brand for the writer. With that said, you've got to write that book through the lens of the reader, and we were able to figure all that out and define that where the average person spread their first book would never even go that we would never think of that. Speaker 1 (11:56) They would never even understand where to begin unless they had kind of really invested time in learning how the process works of writing a book. But we're all novices on our first book, right? How would we know? We've never done it before, whereas our team has done it a tonne of times. But me, as my first time author, I had no idea what I was doing. It took Zoe Rose, who had written a tonne of books, to kind of coax the best out of it and The Seven Fires of Hell, as you describe it, that is a pretty good way of doing it. But I think a writing team with the experience is going to get the best out of you. Speaker 2 (12:30) I think it also depends on who you are, why you're writing the book, and what your goal is. If you're a business owner and you take efficiency seriously and you delegate, then working with a team to produce your book makes perfect sense. If you're a starving business owner or somebody that's at the very beginning of their journey and you look at a book as a route to growing your authority, then maybe you are going to have to sort of tough it out. But if you have a modestly successful business, it does make sense to bring people in to help you get to the result rather than giving up the thing that really is your zone of genius, potentially for three to six months in order to get the same result. How much opportunity cost are you wasting? I guess, right. Speaker 1 (13:17) And also, what are the odds of it being any good? What are the odds of you keeping on focus? What are the odds of you telling a story correctly and endowing in such a way that's entertaining? The odds are very low. I'd say eclipse. They're very close to zero of that book being amazing the first time. Now the second time. If you were doing this on your own. You probably have an editor, you probably have someone you do the project with. You'll get it right. It'll just going to take a little bit longer to get it right the first time. And that's kind of what we do is we get it right the first time. Speaker 2 (13:48) If you maybe just explain to me what the process would look like if Bob Gentle comes along and says, I have this idea for a book, what does the conversation that follows look like? Speaker 1 (14:01) Typically the very first that very we've already gotten past we've all agreed that Bright Red is going to help you write your book. And it's like that day one, the first three to four meetings is going to be working out a thesis. What is the thesis? What is it you're trying to teach people and why does it have value? But more importantly, what are the goals of the book? Is it to get more business for your company? Is it simply some kind of way of kind of living a marketable world and maybe kind of living a legacy? What exactly is the book for? And most of the time, 80, 90% of the time, it's to close more business and or to open more doors. Right. So that thesis takes a while to get just right. And then that lens of who the actual reader is going to be takes a while to get correct, too. Oh, well, I'm in the HR business. Okay. Well, you're looking for HR professionals is kind of the person you're trying to reach or I'm an accounting professional and I'm looking for people founders of companies that use. Right. Well, the founders are probably the customer you're trying to you will be reading this. Speaker 1 (15:08) That is your target audience. Well, it needs to be written for that target audience. And that back and forth takes a while to get just right. Speaker 2 (15:15) I don't often ask questions about money on the show, but I think my listener wouldn't really forgive me for not asking what for them is probably a really obvious question. Obviously, we're talking about a lot of work here. This isn't something you can just do on a weekend. And if you're doing it yourself, like I said, it's a three to six month job. So if you are delegating something that for you would be a three to six month job. You got to expect it to cost some money and the end result is a very valuable thing if you've done it right. So what kind of budget should people be thinking of? What sort of budget range? If they're looking to bring in someone like you to work on a book with them, what is a sensible ballpark for them? Speaker 1 (15:57) So the sensible ballpark. If they basically show up with a broad understanding of thesis and basically in hand, they kind of understand the general outline of what they're doing, meaning that, well, I'm writing this book to get more business for X or Y, kind of starting from scratch because remember, we're building a product together. We charge $25,000 over a four to five month period of time. And if it's four months, it's $6,250 a month for four months. It's just kind of a range. Our next closest competitor, I believe, is 60,000, and then next closest competitor beyond that is 120,000. So our kind of range is between 20 and 35, depending on the length and breadth of the book. Speaker 2 (16:45) It isn't actually all that expensive when you know what the market looks like. I know other people in your space who do similar things. It won't be the same thing. And your pricing is where I would have expected it to be. The reason I ask is purely for the listener to break any assumptions that they might have that it's either way more or any sort of fantasy that it might be five grand, because that's just unrealistic. I know what it costs just to hire an editor to go through your work afterwards, and that's going to cost you five grand. Speaker 1 (17:20) The vast majority of the people doing this, they're called ghostwriters. We're not ghost writers. We do this through an interview process. Right. A ghost writer is going to come to you with a list of questions. They're going to try to form this very vague kind of thesis, and they're going to pump out 30, 40,000 words with a little bit of back and forth. They're going to have you read it, you're going to approve it, and you're going to move on. We do weekly interviews. We're really pulling out every single thought and thesis and chapter outline out of your head. And that is not the same as a ghostwriter. We are not ghost riders. We are kind of writing partners. Speaker 2 (17:52) Yeah. I think it's important to maybe look at what this can do for you. So you've gone through the work, you've produced a book. We've done this because we want to establish that authority and the personal brand. We want people to connect with us differently. We want people to understand us differently. Do you have any sort of anecdotes of this was somebody's life before. This was somebody's life afterwards. I mean, you obviously have your own story, but how has that been for some other people, you know? Speaker 1 (18:24) So it all depends, right? There are some people come to us who are already who are just recently retired from a Fortune 550 or ten, and typically they're just trying to go to their next life. And this book is kind of that vector that bridge into their next consulting career or whatever it is they're doing. And a lot of those types already have a following. They already have tens of thousands of people they can kind of go to. And this book is just kind of that social proof right there's. The small business entrepreneur who has a business and simply wants to be known for I don't know. Pick a subject, technology security, as an example. And this book is a vector onto speaking circuit. It's a way to get that knowledge panel triggered. So when people look you up, what is a fallacy of appeal to authority, right? Google's the authority. They look you up on that authority and they find your own knowledge panel. You've won the branding game, as far as I can tell. So my definition of personal branding probably not the same as everybody else's. My definition of personal branding is a verb. Speaker 1 (19:34) It's the act of creating a brand, a personal brand. It's not what you find. It's the every day, all the hours it takes, and the actual act of creating that brand. And if you trigger that knowledge panel and you control that top 50 of Google, and every time someone drills into any of those links, they find you quoted on Forbes or Wall Street Journal, you've won the personal branding game because they would want to do business with you. You've shaped what they find and the actual act of shaping it. And the outcome is they want to do business with you because all the correct signalling has been done. Speaker 2 (20:13) I have a really useful story here. I used to have an office which was next door to a Car Valley or Carvalyn. I don't know how you say it, in the US, it's a company that cleans, very expensive cars. And there was a guy came in with a really nice Ferrari and I was in having my car, which was not expensive, clean. I just happened to be next door and I got a good deal. But I got speaking to the guy with a Ferrari and I said, what is it you do? He said, I wrote a book and he gave me this book. It was maybe half an inch thick, tiny little book about customer service. He said, I wrote this book and I haven't had to do a single piece of marketing since then. I just go around the world talking about customer service inquiries that come out of nowhere. I send people this book and it just turns into money. It's amazing. The best thing I ever did, and I've never forgotten that. And I now know an awful lot of authors, the authors that have been in this show, they're very smart people, but I know lots of authors who are not that smart, but they still have incredible businesses driven by books that are okay. Speaker 2 (21:18) And I think this is, for me, the really powerful thing about writing a book is it does stamp your credibility in a way that nothing else can. I just thought it was an important thing to reinforce. And yes, you're absolutely right, it does craft a personal brand like nothing else can. Really, if you were to say a personal brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. This book is out there talking about you. A lot loudly and not much else can really be the silent ambassador for you in the same way that book can. Speaker 1 (21:54) Yeah. It's interesting. So when someone would apply to my technology company, the very first thing I would do is I would FedEx them and I wanted them. Right. I'd fetch them a copy of my negotiating book. Right. So that would kind of gain that instant credibility and trust, but become work from it now. And when we have these inbound calls and we have these kind of Zoom calls with these prospective authors for the first time, the very first thing I do is I fetch them a copy of our book. Right. How to build a Brand with a book is the name of it. It helps close business. That's the primary value, in my opinion, is obviously, like you said, it's constantly singing your praises'from, the highest mountain tops. But it's also a good closer. Right. No one's expecting that to come. No one's expecting a FedEx copy of the book of the guy that you're talking to or doing business with in the mail three days after you talk to them. It's kind of a powerful way of keeping the door open for whatever it is that you're trying to sell or whatever expertise you're trying to claim or whatever brand you're trying to portray. Speaker 2 (22:56) Yeah. They're going to have to work very hard to climb past you to somebody else in order to make that effort, because you really have put yourself in a category of well, maybe not in your space, a category of one, because I imagine that's a tactic that's quite commonly employed. But the fact is you're the one that sent the book. And that's a very intimate play. Really. Speaker 1 (23:18) Yeah. We have a few people that we've written books for that I have NDA's with, and I guess I'll try to be as big as I can. They wrote the book as simple as for maybe 20 or 30 people on the entire planet because they were trying to become their family office. I don't know if you've ever heard or know what a family office is, but it is where a seedlingly, wealthy person or family has full time staff doing nothing but managing their wealth. And all you need to do is gain one is grab is to land one of those clients. So this person wrote this book for 20 people in the entire world because he only had to land one of them to become a multimillionaire. It's a sniper rifle, not a shotgun. And if you write a book for everybody, you've written a book for nobody. You really should try to write a book for less than 5000 people in the entire world, because when they read it, they should think this book is written for me and only me. Everything this person is saying sings to me because I have these problems. Speaker 1 (24:25) Here is journey. How do I reach these conclusions? What is the problem? How do I solve it? It's a very similar kind of recipe for writing a book. And in my opinion, you've really got to write it for that exact target market if you're going to succeed. And then on top of all that, you get the recognition. The things you need is kind of quality signalling to the rest of the world as being an office. Speaker 2 (24:48) Yeah. And I think to put the money in context, I've been in coaching programmes that cost a little bit less than that, not much. And the end result most people would get to after a year of talking about building their personal brand was, you know what? I think I maybe need to write a book and you spend all that money to get to that conclusion. So why not start spending the money and just do it? Speaker 1 (25:13) Yeah, it's a scary process, right. It's because you're also kind of bearing your soul to the team. That's also kind of scary as well. It's kind of this kind of trust relationship has got to be built up, but by the end of it, the team knows you almost as well as anybody in the world knows you, and it's kind of a scary process. Now, unrecognizing that book has that much value that you've got. You've really got to jump on it. It's a lot quicker way of getting there. That brand recognition. Writing that book is the quickest way to get that brand recognition where sometimes it takes a while to kind of learn that. Speaker 2 (25:50) So one of the things that I see a lot and hear a lot at the moment is AI writing tools. And there's one very big AI writing tool. Probably the market leader is regularly talking about how their clients are using it to write books. And I look at that and I've tried these AI writing tools. When it produces a piece of content from me, I think, yeah, it looks very clever. The text reads well, it's punchy and poppy and, yeah, it's logical, it kind of makes sense, but it's not me. I didn't write that. If the AI tool hadn't come up with it, I would never have said it. I would never even have gone there. So why would I put this out into the world now? I know working with a team like yours is quite different. There's no AI, but how do you ensure that you still capture the essence and the spirit and the voice of that person that you are working with? How does the spirit still come through? Speaker 1 (26:48) We spend an inert amount of time learning that person's voice. There's a couple of ways of doing that. When we do the Zoom calls, every single word is obviously recorded. We have a bot that goes back in and separates out the interviewer in the interviewee. So it'll just say, Bob Scott, Bob Scott, everything you said, everything I said, it'll actually turn it to text. You can run that through a histogram or a bar chart. And I could see the phrases and words that you use the most. And I can kind of get an understanding of these cyclical kind of phrases and phrasing that you use to the point that first chapter is exceedingly important to get just right. Because once we get the tone right, the whole book will be correctly toned. Right. It'll sound like the person that we're writing a book with. And also remember, we're not ghost writing this. We are coming up with the ideas with the person, and then we're simply pulling out the phrasing and the stories and all the things that go into that chapter from the person. We're simply sending it down towards where it's more interesting. Speaker 1 (27:52) It's phrased correctly, grammatically perfect, and meets the chapter's goals. And AI. A bot can never do that. Just an AI. An AI may be able to kind of come up with some phrasing, but that thesis, they will understand the thesis. They will really understand how the rise and fall of how stories are written, what humans find interesting. And it may happen one day, but we're not there yet. Speaker 2 (28:14) I'm still thinking about this histogram of my phrasing. I think I would be paralysed if I saw that. That would tip me over the edge. I would never be able to speak again, never show me that. Speaker 1 (28:25) Yeah. And that's the thing. It's not as weighted as you would think. In cryptography, when we're trying to hide things in an encryption, we try to flatten out the histogram where everything that's encrypted looks exactly the same as far as patterns are concerned. And you would be surprised that there's a skew of the only histogram, that there's maybe five or six phrases and words that constantly come back. It's not as thick as you would think it would be. Speaker 2 (28:55) I'm really glad, because that was starting to really hurt. So, speaking about histograms and Nerdology and NASA and cryptology, are you the guy that hit all the UFOs? Speaker 1 (29:07) No, definitely not. Speaker 2 (29:09) Okay. Speaker 1 (29:09) Blessed me anything weird here. Speaker 2 (29:13) But looking at, as I said right at the beginning, coming from a technical background, a lot of technical people, they like to stay in the background they don't really like. I'll tell you, here's a joke. What's the difference between an introverted developer and an extroverted developer? Speaker 1 (29:30) I don't think an extrovert developer exists, but what? Speaker 2 (29:33) Well, the extroverted developer looks at your shoes when you're speaking to him. Anyway, sorry. Let's move on. Speaker 1 (29:40) Okay. When I was very young, I'm almost 50 years old. And when I was in my, say, at ten or eleven, autism hadn't really been classified in the same way as classified today by every measure. When I was a child, I think that you would call that at least a slight type of autism, right? Maybe the Asperger's side of autism. When I was 14, literally, I was petrified to talk to anybody. I could never make eye contact when I was 14. My sadistic mother. I'm kidding. She's fine. She's awesome. She enrolled me in drama in high school for an hour a day for four years. I would basically do skit, which is the most terrifying thing in the history of terrifying things for someone who's an introvert. And I think I broke through whatever that is when I was 1560. So I call it superpowers, which is kind of I'm on the spectrum, but I've kind of broken through that ability to kind of speak. And I've lost a lot of that fear, all the fear that introverts typically have. So I'm not the average tech nerd in that I could be in a room full of double PhDs. Speaker 1 (30:55) But the difference is I could actually explain their ideas back to them, or they could not even explain their own ideas to someone else. Speaker 2 (31:02) Right. So you still are a developer, but you have a foot in another world now. Really? And how have you found that transition? And what were the challenges with that? Because you're not finished yet. You're really just at the beginning of that journey. You've been in it for a couple of years now, but it's a very long life still to go if you're not yet 50. So what have been the challenges and what are you looking forward to continuing to grow? Speaker 1 (31:35) When we really started kind of hitting their stride with this, and we were interviewing these really interesting humans every single day. When I was kind of neck deep in technology, it was just constant anxiety about due dates and deadlines and problem solving, which I love. But the problem is there's always this kind of bureaucracy. If you're doing it for a large Corporation, there's always this bureaucracy, and it takes forever to move with this new life. I can pivot on a dime. That's one of the advantages as far as the actual pivot itself. It was natural for whatever reason, because I was just so sick of technology. And now I'm writing technology, but I'm doing it for this business. I'm writing this online workflow system that kind of allows the creation of these books. So I'm able to kind of do both without any of the BS related to doing it for large corporations. So, no, I'm in a different spot in a lot of ways. But the most poignant is I wake up at 05:00 A.m.. I run downstairs, I slurp down coffee, and I run as quick as I possibly can to the office. Speaker 1 (32:48) I cannot wait to get to the office. And that's I guess the biggest difference is I guess I've lost that passion. Speaker 2 (32:54) Technology was I think that's an important thing for a lot of people to hear, especially people who are our kind of age, and they've always done what they've always done, and their identity is really tied up. And this is who I am. This is what I do. And I was speaking to someone earlier today. He was not in a good place similar age to us, and he was worried that he might be about to lose his job. And I was thinking, you're not done. You can do anything you want at this stage. This whole thing of a lot of people overestimate what they can achieve in a short space of time, but completely underestimate what they can achieve in a longer space of time, like five years. Your life could be completely different if you're intentional about it. And I think you're a great example of that, because if you're not happy with what you're doing, you're not stuck with it. You're not married to it. Nobody's job is your forever job. With a little bit of creativity and curiosity, you might know nothing about what your future life might look like today. You maybe knew nothing about writing or authorship five years ago. Speaker 2 (33:59) Today. You're an authority, literally, and I think that's a really important role model for people to see. Speaker 1 (34:07) So, yeah, I have a couple of points here. So, Bob, how old are you? Speaker 2 (34:11) I am 49 years old. Speaker 1 (34:14) Okay. So the average human lives to 73, right? There's a high probability you're going to be dead in less than 30 years. And anybody who doesn't think that there's a clinic, that the clock is ticking is not paying attention. Humans are terrible at nonlinear, serialised kind of timelines, right? One year, five years, five years seems also almost insurmountable. We care about large numbers. And when there's a point in your life, you've got to say, look, I've only got 20 or 30 years left. You really want to be doing it, not running to the office? Do you really want to be doing it miserable that you've got a boss that may fire you? Do you really want to have the last 30 years of your life that way? It doesn't have to be that way. You can make a change. You can pivot anytime you want. But there's a fact we are all going to be dead at around 73 to 84. That's a fact. Time to make a change. If you're going to make a change, do it right now, whether you're in your 20s, 30, 40s, or 50s. Tick Tock. My grandmother used to say that it's later than you think, and I never understood what she meant by that because she died at 102. Speaker 1 (35:23) It's never really too late for her, right at 102, but it's later than you think. We have one life and it's time to do the right thing. It's time to do the thing that makes you happy and do it right now. Speaker 2 (35:34) And I think that's a great place to bring things to an end. And you might not know what makes you happy today, but you need to go find out. I think that's so important. So what's next for you, Scott? What are you working on at the moment if people are listening thinking how can I get in touch with you? How can I move forward with you? How can I connect with you? How would you like them to do that? Speaker 1 (35:57) So I received the trademark the American trademark for the word bright Ray about nine years ago. So I've named every one of my organisations is bright Ray this and bright Ray that. But if you go to brightray.com, that is where you can kind of read up on what we do and how we do it and also how you can get a hold of us. You can also find me just type my name into Google Scott termin and Google will give you a thousand different ways to make an appointment with me or my team. The time is now. Time is not a year from now or five years from now. The time is right now to write a book. Speaker 2 (36:38) It's not five years from now and I think it's the door that can open a whole new life. I certainly know that from most of the authors that I know. It has been a life changing event. It's why it's a top priority for me and the listeners. Why it should be a top priority for you. Scott, you have been an awesome guest. I've learned so much. Have a great fun and I look forward to speaking to you again and hopefully I will get to Florida as soon as I possibly can because I love the Sunshine. But for now, thank you so much for your time and yeah, speech again soon. Speaker 1 (37:10) Absolutely. It was lovely to meet you. Speaker 3 (37:15) Before I go, just a quick reminder to subscribe and join our Facebook group. Speaker 4 (37:19) You'll find a link in the show notes or visit amplifyme. Speaker 2 (37:22) Fminsiders. Speaker 3 (37:24) Also connect with me wherever you hang out. Speaker 4 (37:27) You'll find me on all the social platforms at bobgentle if you enjoyed the show then I would love a five star review on Apple podcast. It would make my day and if you share the show. Speaker 3 (37:37) That'S friend, you would literally make my golden list. Speaker 4 (37:39) My name is Bob gentle thanks to you for listening and I'll see you next week.