The Compelling Personal Brand How To Get Noticed in a Noisy World

Anita Brick: Hi, this is Anita Brick. And welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career. Today we're delighted to be speaking with Michael Hyatt, who was the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers for eight years and is now the chairman. He has created a wonderful book called Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. Michael has also created a really compelling platform of your own.

Michael, I just love—In fact, I had it up on my screen right before you called—your site, MichaelHyatt.com, and I can't wait to listen to the next podcast, which is about writing blog posts.

Michael Hyatt: Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Anita Brick: We're excited about it because this is a topic that I think—many people want to have a compelling platform, and few actually accomplish it. If we could start off at a very basic level, how do you define what a solid and effective platform actually means?

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, the way I look at it, a platform is that thing that you stand on to get heard. And it used to be, anciently, it was just a small hill or a wooden stage, and it got a little more complicated in the 20th century, because then you had to have, it seems, a radio or a television show or a newspaper or magazine column, a bestselling book, maybe even celebrity status.

Everything changed in 2006 with the advent of social media. Now everybody has access to a virtual megaphone and everyone's connected to everyone else. So when I use the term platform, I'm really talking about people. It's your contacts, your customers, your prospects, your followers, your fans, or what Seth Godin calls your tribe. The people that are passionate about the things that you're passionate about.

Anita Brick: There are a bunch of different questions that I found to be really interesting. One of the Exec MBA students said, I've been in marketing for more than 15 years, and yet I'm not really well known outside of my company. I've done some conference programs, but not a lot. Where would you suggest that someone like me begin to build a platform?

Michael Hyatt: The first thing that you've got to do is what I talk about in part three of the book, which is to build a home base. People get really overwhelmed with, you know, all the social media options because you're looking at blogging and podcasting and video channels and Twitter and Facebook and the list goes on and on and whatever else they're going to invent next year.

So I say start with the right social media framework. And for me, the heart of that is a home base. And this is a place in cyberspace that you own or control where you can express your branding, your own message. It's an archive for your message. And for most people, the easiest way to do that is to start a blog. That's one way to begin to build a tribe. A podcast would work, too. But a blog is really a low-barrier way to get it done.

Anita Brick: It sounds good in theory. I mean, with all the noise out there, how do you get people to actually find you or listen to you or read your blog when there's so many people out there with competing thoughts?

Michael Hyatt: You know, there is a lot of noise out there, no doubt, to get right to the foundation of it. And you can't jump over this particular point. It's the first part of the book, but it's called “Start with wow.” David Ogilvy, who was an advertising mind of about two generations ago, a genius really, he said, great marketing only makes a bad product sell faster.

So in an age of word of mouth, and particularly with social media, you've got word of mouth on steroids. If you're not writing compelling content on your blog, it's not going to get shared. And if it doesn't get shared, you're not going to create traffic. Because the new kind of marketing, the kind of marketing that works today, is relational marketing, where it's people just sharing with their friends and their family what they've discovered and what they find valuable in putting into your content.So it really starts with creating a wow, or remarkable product.

Anita Brick: OK, so there was a weekend MBA student who—I think he must have been reading the book because he said, in your book you talk about creating a compelling product. I'm assuming that's the “well, I'm in it and there are a slew of us.” How do I create a compelling product that differentiates me?

Michael Hyatt: I think you've got to create it in terms of the customer, and sometimes in big corporations internally, that's other internal customers or people inside the organization that are essentially on the receiving end of the transactions, the recipient of your services or your product. But regardless, it is identifying what's important to them. And one of the things I explain in the book is what a wow is.

It begins by defining what the expectations are of our customers, and then making the commitment to exceed those expectations. So again, whether the customer's internal or external, the way you differentiate yourself is to beat their expectations and do it consistently. I think that's why Apple computers, to just pull out a popular example, has been successful: they continue to wow people and their product has really become the new marketing.

Anita Brick: Well, it's true, but when you have geniuses like Steve and Steve, it seems pretty—maybe not simple, but it seems relatively easy because they're so above everyone else. An alum said, Mr. Hyatt, I've been looking for my tribe. I'm a founder of a social venture and would like to grow my platform as a leader of leaders in the field.

How do I find the people who are looking for me? It's kind of tricky because I have lots of people who talk about leadership; there are even lots of people who talk about successful social ventures. How do you build a big fan base, starting with people who will then evangelize for you? I mean, how do you even find those people?

Michael Hyatt: Well, I think again, it goes back to you've got to add value to them and you've got to get inside their head a little bit. And one of the things I started doing when I was blogging in 2004, and it actually took me about four years to find my voice and to figure this out, it's kind of a Copernican revolution, if you will.

For me, when I realized I wasn't the center of the universe—that my readers are, the people that I wanted to read, had to be the center of my universe, and I had to get in touch empathetically with their concerns, their fears, their hopes, their dreams, and to write in terms of that, adding value, solving their problems, inspiring them, meeting their needs.

And I think if you focus on adding value as opposed to attracting followers, you're much more likely to win. It's how I use Twitter today. For example, I don't go out there just spamming people with promotional messages about my content or my book or my products that I'm selling. Instead, I'm trying to link using generosity as a strategy, linking to other resources that I think will add value.

Because ultimately I want to be a trusted advisor to those people, somebody that that they found has value to them, and they keep coming back again and again. My tribe, in a way, because people are sharing that they found value on my website or they found value in my Twitter or Facebook messages.

Anita Brick: It totally makes sense. I personally love doing that, using the social media Scoop.It. They curate, you go out and tag it, send it off to Facebook, Twitter. But it's not anything about me. It's about things that I think would be of interest. Let's go back to how you got started, because at some point, there had to be at least a handful of people who found what you were doing compelling, that you could then test things on and so on. How did you start with that first core that then has expanded to over a quarter of a million people who visit your site?

Michael Hyatt: Yeah. When I started back in 2004, I was just really writing to disentangle my own thinking and to create a repository for my best thinking in the form of my blog, so that I could share it with my colleagues and with other people in my industry, in the book publishing industry. For four years I couldn't attract more than a thousand readers a month.

I mean, it started out like so many people, you know, like 100 a month. And a lot of those were my family. And a lot of those were screen refreshes by me trying to see, you know, if anybody was commenting. And then something really interesting happened in 2008. So I'd been at it for four years. I couldn't attract more than a thousand readers on average a month.

But suddenly in 2008, it went to about 20,000 on average a month. The reason for that, principally, I think, is that I did do what I said earlier, and that is I started focusing more on my readers and what their needs were. But then I got involved in social media, too. So I was out in those places where people are congregating today, and in my case, it was mostly Twitter, some Facebook.

It's more Facebook now, but I was trying to go out there and just be myself, occasionally refer back to something I had written and give those people an opportunity to comment on my site so that we could engage them in conversation. And then, you know, one of the fortunate things is, you know, when you keep showing up day after day and keep slugging it out, sometimes good things happen.

And for me, it was a couple of big sites that found what I was doing was valuable. They wanted to share it with their audience. So in my case, it was Huffington Post and Lifehacker, and that brought in a flood of new traffic, a lot of which sucked because I had a deep archive by that time of content that I could share with people.

Anita Brick: So it sounds like you were really paying attention and engaging in conversations.

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's one of the big changes that people have to get past if they're used to marketing as sort of this old, what I call marketing 1.0, where it's all about a monologue and it's just talking at people instead of talking to people. And so in the form of the blog, that takes the form of keeping your comments open so you can engage in the conversation.

And so many bloggers make this incredibly difficult. You know, you have to register to give a comment, or you have to fill out one of those dumb Captcha tests to prove that you're a human and not a robot. I don't have any of that on my site, and I never have any problem because I'm present. Kind of like a neighborhood.

If you abandon the neighborhood, you might end up with graffiti. But if you're present, if you're out there engaging with your neighbors, you're not going to get graffiti. And the same thing is true on your blog. What you are going to get is people that share your passion and want to talk about it and become—and this is kind of the game changer for me—become like unpaid evangelists that are out talking about your content to other people and recruiting their friends.

Anita Brick: I love that you talked about generosity, because I think that a lot of people don't operate from that principle. A lot of people are like, OK, well, I'll do this for Michael. But now what's Michael going to do for me? It sounds like that's not how you approached it. You were a platform, building and expanding. You just went out there and shared what you love, engaged in dialogue, whether it was comments on your blog or comments in with other people's blogs and Twitter and a lot of different ways of having conversations. But you did it. I mean, not to be corny, but you did it with a sense of appreciation.

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, I really did. I was so grateful for the content that I found, and I thought the least I could do is pass it along without any expectation in return. And I've done that for years. But I do think generosity is the right kind of business model that works today. And frankly, based on my values, I'm really glad that that's the case.

But I think you either approach this whole area of business and this whole area of building the platform from a position of scarcity, in which case you're always trying to protect what's yours. You're always asking what's in it for you. You're always wondering when the return favor is going to happen, or you approach it from a perspective of abundance and you're just going to give and without really much thought for the return, and I can promise you the return will happen.

It just happened in the publication of my book. For years, there were many other large bloggers that I tweeted out that shared their content on Facebook. I've even talked about them on my blog. And so then when it came time for me to publish my book, it was amazing how many of them just stepped up to the plate and wanted to help.

They felt this need to reciprocate—again, not because, you know, I was putting them under pressure. I did alert them to the fact that the book was coming out, but it's something they wanted to do that they didn't have to be talked into or coerced.

Anita Brick: This sort of goes along with another question that an alum had, and maybe you just answered it, but I wanted to share it with you. I know a lot of people, but I don't know how to mobilize them for my platform. This may sound like a naive question, but I'm stuck. I've been successful in operational excellence for nearly two decades.

It sounds like maybe he's coming from a scarcity mode rather than I'm just going to go out there and share the knowledge I have, to share what I find as useful to me that may come from other people, and not worry about getting people to do stuff for him.

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, I think that's exactly the point, Anita, is that if you find yourself feeling like you've got to ask people to peddle your stuff, you're probably not in the right position to begin with. I think that if you're creating the right kind of content, if you're creating the right kind of products or services, people are going to naturally want to help and pitch in.

Apple has never paid me a penny to talk about my iPhone, my iPad, or my MacBook Air. I mean, I push a lot of people to that product because I'm such a satisfied user. And probably Apple, you know, is an extreme—not all of us can be Apple, but we can all within our niche create content or create products or services that are remarkable.

And I think that's where the real work begins, because product, in a sense, or content is the new marketing. And if we create those remarkable products, then we don't put people in that awkward position of having to promote something that's really, to them, just average or maybe slightly above average. People want to share stuff that wows them.

And so most of our focus, most of our energy, needs to be in creating that wow content, whether it's curating and sharing somebody else's or sharing our own.

Anita Brick: So if you were starting out today—one of the evening MBA students asked, I'm just starting my career. I have three years of work experience in consulting and planning to stay in the field, at least for the next several years. If you were starting your career today, what would you be doing to build a successful platform for now and for later?

Michael Hyatt: Thanks. Yeah. Great question. The first thing I would do is I would start a blog. I'd go to, probably, WordPress.com, you know, make it really simple, really clean, and really easy. And I'd start a blog and I'd start putting some of my best thinking about different experiences that I had, things that I was learning, things that I feel like would be helpful to the people that would read it, and I would just start really simple.

And that's really what I did for me. It was like productivity-hack things that I learned to be more productive. It was leadership lessons that I was learning—sometimes, by the way, things that were not yet resolved, things that I was in the process of learning, books that I had read that I found helpful. But just anything there that you think would be helpful to the kind of people that ultimately you want to be able to serve.

And then I would go out into the other social spaces like Twitter and Facebook, and I wouldn't post my content there, or at least my original content and my best thinking, I would leave that for what I call in the book “the Home Base,” which is your blog. But I would go out into these other social spaces, which I call the social media framework, embassies, where I have a presence, but I don't own or control them. But it's where I engage prospects, I engage prospective tribe members, and I'm always pointing them back to my blog where they can get my best thinking about a specific topic. So I would start there.

Anita Brick: So being in consulting actually is a great starting point, a great foundation, because you're exposed to so many different things industries, functions, levels in organizations. There could be a lot gained from that.

Michael Hyatt: Yeah. And you may have to change the particulars of the case study so that, you know, you don’t betray a confidence or get in trouble with your client. But yes, absolutely. And the great thing is, it becomes a wonderful showcase for prospective clients, because if you're a consultant, they want to know, how do you think? How do you approach problems, how do you solve real client problems? And this gives you an opportunity, frankly, to demonstrate that.

Anita Brick: You just made a really great point. A couple of great points, but one thing I'd like to follow on with you. This person clearly works for a consulting firm. I've heard that there are potential missteps with blogging. If you are blogging in the space of your employer, conflict of interest, saying things that may be perceived just because someone looks you up on LinkedIn and says, you know you work for Thomas Nelson, well, you must be speaking on behalf of Thomas Nelson.

If you are blogging about publishing, how do you resolve that? How do you make sure that you still can say what you need to say and not violate some corporate policy or some corporate issues around that? Because it's a fuzzy area right now. There are a lot of things that are just not clear.

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, it can be fuzzy, and particularly in heavily regulated kinds of environments. I was speaking to some mortgage bankers the other day, and there's some pretty strict federal regulations that govern what they can communicate. But most industries aren't like that. I would definitely, if I was in mid-level management or even in top management, I would check in and find out if there is a social media policy or what's going to govern this. At the very least, I'd put a disclaimer on my blog, and I've got one on my about page where it says the opinions expressed on my blog are my own, they don't represent my employer, etc. etc. etc.

If I was in top management, if I was the CEO or the owner of a company, I would absolutely, as I did at Thomas Nelson, encourage blogging. I would encourage tweeting, encourage Facebook. The reason why is because it puts a human face on the company. People naturally, and I think increasingly so, distrust institutions, especially large ones. So the more you can humanize it and make it real and forge real connections with real people, the more it's going to have a positive business result.

You know, we have probably 30% of the employee population at Thomas Nelson twittering. And over the course of the six years that I've been encouraging it, we haven't had any problems. You know, sometimes people may say something that was not exactly what we wish they would say, but people are pretty respectful. And we also believe that the employee handbook covers most of the situations.

I don't care if you're talking on a telephone or sending a fax or an email, you know, you want your employees to be smart, not betraying company secrets. All of that. This is just another communications channel.

Anita Brick: Great point. I love in the book where you say you talk about people who are direct versus mean-spirited when they are commenting, and that you're all for people challenging what you have to say and what you're thinking, but you kind of put them in their place if they're doing it in a mean-spirited way. How have you managed that? Because there's some real ugliness on the web with people having these conversations, basically yelling at each other online. It seems like you've managed that really well. How have you come to do that?

Michael Hyatt: One of the main things, the leaders that I've been present in, those conversations where I noticed most of that mean-spirited stuff, is frankly, on the news sites. It could even be on the big newspaper sites. I won't mention any names here, but because no editors are present, nobody's moderating. Nobody's speaking on behalf of the company. And the space gets just overrun like it would in a neighborhood where people have moved out and there were empty buildings.

The more you can be present, the better it is. In my particular case, because I get so many comments—about 500 to 600 a day—I recruited some voluntary community leaders that help me with that, and I had no idea that this was even possible, that people would want to do this without being paid. But it shows you the value of having a passionate, engaged tribe.

I had over 100 people fill out an application to be a community leader on my site. There was no reward for them. I asked them to spend 45 minutes a day moderating and I picked 10. And I still have the same 10 with me now, about seven months after I did it. They're doing a phenomenal job and their presence there, they're being helpful.

And if somebody does get out of line, and it's very rare, we don't hesitate to warn them or delete them. I have a comments policy and I tell people basically what I expect. I've found that people live up to your expectations, and I just haven't had a problem with it.

Anita Brick: Yeah, I like your policy and it's very detailed in the book. It lays it out, I would say, in a kind way, but in a strict way too.

Michael Hyatt: You know, I think back when I was in high school, I had this, the only teacher that I could really remember was an extremely strict English teacher. And I mean, the first day of class, he told us exactly how it was going to be, what his expectations were, and we were kind of all shrinking back in fear. But it really served the class because we learned a ton. And I love that professor. So I think, you know, you have to be tough in the policy. But then be gracious and generous as you're interacting with people—that really works.

Anita Brick: Switching gears just a little bit, there are two questions related to gaining visibility and getting noticed inside your workplace versus outside. So the first was from an evening student who said, how does getting noticed within your workplace differ from getting noticed companywide or even industry wide? What types of things do you do differently?

Michael Hyatt: You know, I hate to sound like a broken record, but I do think it goes back to that first part of the book. We're starting with the wow. You know how I got noticed in the organization? Because I didn't start—I wasn't hired from the outside to come be the CEO of Thomas Nelson. I worked myself up through the ranks.

I was second in command of the division. Then I became the head of that division, one of 14. And then I eventually ended up being the CEO of the company. But mostly what I tried to do was the same things I recommend in the book that works in the social space. And I think this is the beauty of social media, is that it does leverage what we already know about human relations and how human relationships and how people interact with one another.

And I tried to focus on creating great products—and products as defined by my customer, which was my boss, and being generous with the people around me, trying to add value inevitably in a company. And a lot of people don't know this with regard to promotions that your peers end up having to say they may not be formally query, but inevitably their opinion matters.

And so if your peers aren't rooting for your promotion, there's a good chance you're not going to be promoted. You’ve got to create that platform, even internally. And to be honest, I never really thought about it in that context, but I think it works in the same way that it does externally.

Anita Brick: An alum asked a question related to that, but it's a long question, so I'm not going to read all of it, but the essence of it is how does someone who's an expat create his platform? It's clear to me that people with international experience are in demand in the US, but how do you get noticed by senior execs in another country, if you're really far away? And how do you get noticed at the senior levels in other companies? Again, if you're far away from your home country.

Michael Hyatt: I think the internet has so redefined what it means to be far away. Probably 20% of my audience today is international, and it's people all over the world and in places where, frankly, I didn't even know they had the internet. But they do. You know, it's everywhere—places in Africa where people are reading my content and asking me if they can translate it into languages that sometimes I'm not even familiar with.

I don't think that's a barrier in the way that it was anymore. There may be a language barrier, and there may be some technical things you have to do to translate your content into those languages. I'm not trying to diminish the fact that it's an issue, but I don't think in a global economy with the internet and the accessibility that we all have, it's as big an issue sometimes as we may think.

Anita Brick: Well, let's say you and I are both at the same level. We're both very capable. We've been advancing, advancing, advancing. You sit three doors down from the executive team. I sit 5,000 miles away now. I could Skype with them and I can email and etc., etc., but you have a physical presence that I don't have.

I think that's part of what this alum is saying: How do you bridge that proximity issue? I don't think it's an issue for content sharing, but what about being noticed inside a company when they may not think about me because they see you every day? You may be much more top of mind than me.

Michael Hyatt: For most CEOs or senior level management, they're being hired and being deployed to deliver results. And so I think what I would do is if I were somewhere down in the organization, I would find out what's meaningful to them. Again, this is also back to “wow,” but clarifying what their expectations are. What do they expect of me, and how can I over deliver?

That's the best way to get noticed if I'm exceeding my goals. If I'm over delivering on what they expect, they're going to notice. If you don't do that, I don't care what kind of—you send them handwritten thank-you notes, you send in personalized emails, you do all that stuff. It's not going to help, at least in most companies, if you're not delivering the results.

And on the other hand, if you are delivering the results, I think most organizations are going to want more of you and give you more opportunities. You know, stuff we've done all along, I think refocusing on that and not letting our lack of proximity become an excuse most of all to ourselves. I think this is where the real battle is in building a platform at any level. There's so many times we take ourselves out because we've lost the mental game of winning. We've convinced ourselves that our excuses are valid and we just walk off the field and quit playing.

Anita Brick: That's a good point. That's a very good point. So let's say I'm doing really well. I'm exceeding expectations. How do I make sure that the people who need to know know without stepping on any toes?

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, you have to be careful about that because obviously nobody likes someone who is trumpeting their own horn or just shouting about their accomplishments all the time. You know, my own approach is, and maybe this is a style issue, but it's to keep delivering the results and, you know, just to trust that if I do that, and especially if I start helping people—it goes back to generosity, helping my peers around me—they're going to end up reciprocating on that, and they're going to help me as well get noticed.

And if it doesn't happen, at least I've got the satisfaction of knowing I'm doing the right thing. I'm delivering great results, I'm helping my peers, I'm sharing and being generous. And for me, that's enough. And I think in most organizations when you do that, you're going to move up. It's a winning strategy, but it wins.

Anita Brick: Right before our call, I was listening to Ron Burt, who is a professor here, and his space is social capital, social networks. And he was talking about—and maybe this is what you're saying, too. He was saying that when we put ourselves in a situation where we're forcing diversity of thinking and then thinking about how can I take that content and bring it to a different audience—say, in this case, across the globe—I bring it to a new audience in a way that's meaningful to them, people will notice. They'll notice because there's a new perspective, a better way of doing things, or I've made things relevant because I've customized them in a way that creates wow, even though it might be old school in marketing, it's absolutely brand new in operations. Make sense?

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, totally. I think that's the kind of lateral thinking that we need to be engaged in. It's how can we take what we do in one field of expertise and apply it to another field of expertise? Because for them, it is brand new information. And I find that so many things that we take for granted are things that for a whole new audience are brand new, and they're taking notes, and it's really helpful to them.

And so this kind of goes back to one of the things I talk about in Platform too, and that's about discovering your own expertise. So many people think, gosh, I don't have anything to share. I don't have anything to blog about. I don't have anything to talk about. I'm really not an expert. I've got some formal training. No, you do have an expertise.

I had somebody the other day. They said, I don't really have any original ideas though. And I said, well, even the ideas that you don't think are that are original as expressed through your personality, which is unique as they're expressed through their unique set of circumstances that makes it original. And it's going to, by virtue of that, connect with people that wouldn't connect with it otherwise. So trust in that. Find your expertise and use it.

Anita Brick: I agree. You talk a lot about being present, making sure that you're taking care of business, so to speak. One of the Exec MBA students said, and I sort of echo this, how do you find the time? I’m in a demanding job, I’m in the Executive MBA Program and have a family. Thanks in advance. So how do you find the time? Because you need to be present. Otherwise you could completely lose control and it could blow up.

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, absolutely. And I get that question a lot. You know, I would say first of all, I built my platform while I was a very busy CEO of a significant corporation. So I had a full-time job. I didn't need one more thing to add to my job. I didn't have time for one more thing. So what I had to do was to see social media, or see these platform-building tools, as a way for me to leverage my time, not take away from it, but for me to leverage and actually do the things that I was hired to do.

For example, one of the things that my board of directors expected of me was that I would cast a vision that would be compelling either to our employees and to our partners, and to all the people that were involved in us accomplishing the outcomes that were important. Social media, my blog is a vehicle for that: communicating about my company, making it really interesting to other people.

That was part of my job—talking to the media, you know, that was part of my job. But the truth is, I created an alternative media channel such that when the industry trade journals in my particular sphere of publishing didn't get it quite right, I could actually weigh in for my blog and I had more readers than the trade journals did.

So that was, again, another way of me expressing and communicating what my company was doing. Research and development is a huge thing in recruiting employees. All the social media did was enable me to do that on a broader scale, more efficiently and more effectively. So I think you've got to redefine it in terms of what your job is, and not see it as an admission that you're trying to make time for.

Anita Brick: Good point, because if it helps you do your job, you're going to do a better job, and it will give you, if you continue to do it well and be present, exposure that exceeds your job.

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, exactly. And in fact, I think it kind of puts your ability to accomplish your job on steroids or exponentially able to accomplish it. You know, I had far more reach, far more ability to talk with three authors in my particular business as a book publisher, talk to my customers, all of that. I didn't have that ability before as a CEO, as relatively insulated in the corner office. This got me out there, visible, and gave a face to my company that people could connect with.

Anita Brick: It's a little paradoxical. The more connected we are, the more wired we are. Often the less connected we are interpersonally. It sounds like you've taken this what could be very cold and impersonal medium where a lot of people remain anonymous and made it personal and actually elevated your career to a whole new level?

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, I think that's true. On and I've always seen social media as a mechanism for still facilitating those face to face meetings or those deeper customer interactions I don't see as a substitute for it. You know, I've got so many friends now, so many business associates, so many contacts that have come about completely as a result of social media and then morphed into a more traditional relationship.

And even the relationships I had where I was already connected to people. Social media has enabled me to sustain that connection over time so that even though I may not see somebody for three months or six months because I'm keeping up with them on social media, I feel like we never got disconnected.

Anita Brick: That's a very good point. A very, very good point. Do you have time for like two more questions?

Michael Hyatt: I do.

Anita Brick: Excellent. So one, and I think maybe he was being a little bit tongue in cheek, but an Evening MBA student said, I know you're in the publishing industry, but you're all about social media. Why did you decide to write a traditional paper book? At what point in one's career would writing a book give the boost that you need to the next level?

Michael Hyatt: Well, for me, it's not an either/or question. It's a both/and. You know, I don't think traditional media is going away. You know, we didn't suddenly stop listening to the radio when television came on. And I don't think we're going to suddenly, you know, do away with books and all the traditional media just because now we have social media.

And even if it does eventually go away, it's not gone away yet. To take books, for example, today, at least at Thomas Nelson, probably 80 to 85% of the books that are sold are traditional paperback books, which is far more digital than I would have thought five years ago. But it's not the majority of the sales. My philosophy is I'm format agnostic.

I don't really care. I want to make my content available in the format that my customers want to access it. So if that's in a traditional paper book or if it's a Kindle e-book or it's a PDF, I don't care. My books are available in all those formats, and I'm just concerned about the message, not the vehicle that delivers it.

Anita Brick: Yesterday—I commute on public transportation, which I actually like, because it gives me an opportunity to read a lot, and I was just doing a little bit of searching on my phone, and I ran across Seth Godin’s new project, The Icarus Deception, and he was talking about how he has an agreement with his publisher that if he raises a certain amount of money on Kickstarter with certain rewards along the way, that they'll do a traditional book, and I just went on this afternoon, he was looking for $40,000. They are 536% funded. They have pledges of almost $215,000.

The thing that I find interesting is that for a while he said, OK, no more traditional books. And now he's coming around and I think he's seeing what you're seeing, that it's that combo because not everybody wants it one way. It goes back to what you said at the very beginning: You need to understand your audience so well that you deliver what they want and exceed their expectations. There's an interesting, I want to say, marriage, but maybe it is marriage between the virtual media and traditional books. It'll be interesting to have a conversation with you, maybe in a couple more years to see where everything is going.

Michael Hyatt: I'll be interested to see where it all goes too. And I follow that project on Kickstarter as well. And in fact, I sent him a note after the first day after he already pledged his goal and just congratulated him. And I think it's amazing what's happening out here, and I'm just thrilled. I think this is the best time ever to be involved, in really any business, but particularly in the publishing business, because there's so much uncharted territory.

For me, it comes back to, again, just focusing on the message. We sometimes get sidetracked on what ought to be secondary, which is the delivery mechanism. But really, people are interested in ideas. They're interested in content. That's what they want to share. They don't really think, oh yeah, I was reading that in a book. They just got that idea. And that's the idea they want to share, not the format.

Anita Brick: True. So at what point in a career do you think someone is ready to write and promote a book?

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, I think the earlier the better. I don't know of anything that credentials you more. At least in this country. In the US, there's nothing that credentials you more than a book, not a PhD, sorry, not even experience. But somehow when you've got a book that's been published, you're regarded as an expert. The sooner you can do that and not just do a fluff piece, but something that's, you know, really credible, the better off you'll be. But again, I think it comes back to getting in touch with your expertise and writing out of what you know about.

Anita Brick: So if you were starting today, what are three things that you would be doing today to begin or to really take the next steps to enhance your platform?

Michael Hyatt: Yeah, the first thing I would do is I'd work on my mindset. I would embrace change. I'd realize that everything has changed, and I would embrace what has changed and not try to resist it. And so I’d lean into it, realizing that I don't have to have everything figured out to start. What I do need to do is to take the next clear step and really have faith that the rest of the path is going to unfold.

As I do that, then I think I would jump into the social space by starting a blog first. Again, I want to establish a home base where I had a repository for my best thinking and could refer people back to that. And then I would go out into social media, what I called earlier embassies, the Twitters and the Facebooks, and I would get engaged in those mostly as an experiment, but to learn about them and then to be referring people back to my blog and to begin to build a tribe.

And by the way, you don't need 100,000 people. You don't need 50,000 people. What would be awesome is if all of us had maybe a thousand people, or maybe a couple hundred of people that are passionate about the same things that we're passionate about, that we could mobilize about the things that we care about.

Anita Brick: Any other final words of wisdom?

Michael Hyatt: Well, I don't know if this is wisdom, but I would just say the time is now. If not now, when? If not you, who? We've all heard that before, right? But I think it's really true. And I think we have unprecedented opportunities. You know, I don't want to be naive, but I only think it's going to get better from here. The tools are getting easier, they're getting cheaper. And the only thing that's standing between us and having a platform is our decision to begin.

Anita Brick: Now is the best time.

Michael Hyatt: Absolutely.

Anita Brick: Michael, thank you so much. This was great. And the book is wonderful. It is very practical, and it's very straightforward. I like the fact that you have almost 60 chapters. So they're all bite-sized and each one is self-contained and really captures a specific tactic, a specific approach that you suggest. You did a great job.

Michael Hyatt: Well, I really appreciate that. Thank you.

Anita Brick: And thanks again. Michael has great stuff on his website. It is MichaelHyatt.com. Definitely go visit. The blog is great, the podcasts are great, and if you do sign up, there are some wonderful things that you can access. And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with CareerCast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.