How to stand out in your market as a thought leader with Vince Warnock

Kathi: Hey Vince, it's a pleasure to have you on this show. I'm so happy that you could take the time to join us from down under.

Vince: Okay, down under. Kathi, honestly, the moment you said I should be on the show, I'm like, anything for you. I love chatting with you. So this is going to be a lot of fun.

Kathi: Absolutely. It's going to be a chat among friends. So I know a lot about you, Vince, but why don't you tell the listeners here what you're all about?

Vince: What I'm all about? Oh my goodness. I know that's a hard one. I'm all about helping people tell their stories, essentially. My background is in marketing and AI. I'm a neuromarketing specialist. I've been in AI for about 20 years. Been in marketing for about 30-something years, which is showing my age now. I'd been in and out of startups, been in and out of corporate through most of my career. Everything I do now came off the back of selling one of my largest startups. We sold that for multi-eight figures, which was a crazy stressful journey. But anyway, I finished that journey and realized, while we were going through the acquisition process, it was all well and good, except my wife and I had burned through all of our savings to build this thing. This was really important to us. We knew it was a huge opportunity. We burnt through all of our savings, and suddenly you've got no income while you're waiting on selling the business, which takes a period of time. Turns out you can't go down to the supermarket or the grocery store and say, hey, I'll give you some equity for groceries. So I had to get back into corporate. I became the chief marketing officer at Cigna Insurance and was there for five years, and this was a really important part of my journey, because I was there for five years in what is basically considered the dream job. As a marketer, this is pretty much the pinnacle. You're a chief marketing officer at a Fortune 100 company. The pay, by the way, is ridiculous. The bonuses, multiple bonuses a year, again, they're ridiculous. I got to travel the world speaking on stages everywhere. I was in hot demand, and they would always supply me business class. I felt so special. I also published my first book when I was there. Won a slew of awards, including getting recognized by Adobe as one of the top 50 marketers in the world. And I bring all of that up because it all meant nothing. I literally was sitting in my office. I had a huge office on one of the top floors in our largest building back in New Zealand, and I was looking out over the harbor, looking at all the cruise ships, getting excited because we were going to go on a cruise, and realized I'm completely unhappy. I am so unfulfilled here. And I was writing all those things I just said on a list, because I felt really guilty about the fact that most people would kill for this job. I had the job, and I didn't want the job. That's when I realized that it was actually the unfulfilled part that was not sitting well with me at all, and I needed to get back to what I'm passionate about. It turns out what I'm passionate about is helping entrepreneurs, which has always been part of my journey. So I left there to write books, essentially. I thought I was going to write a lot of books and help a lot of people. Then, about three or four months after I left there, COVID hit the world. And all of a sudden, every entrepreneur that I was talking to was desperate for help. That's when I realized, hey, I've got all this experience under me. I've got all this knowledge. Why don't I just help people? And then that expanded into what I'm doing now. I was trying to work it out last night. Somebody asked me how many businesses we have, and I completely lost count. My team are going to kill me on that. But I think we're up to around 12 businesses. Not all of those are mine. Whenever my team come work for me, I help them to launch their own business, and we come on board as a partner with them to make sure that they've got the support they need. So 12 different businesses under our banner, but every single one of them is about helping people to be seen, helping people to tell their story. So that's basically what we're doing now. We've got a podcast management company, we've got a publishing company, a magazine, a podcast, we've got a PR company. We've got all sorts there. So it's a lot of fun.

Every single one of them is about helping people to be seen, helping people to tell their story.

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Kathi: That's fantastic. So, okay, back up. You were selling your company, but it took too long to sell, so you had to take a real job?

Vince: That's basically it. Yeah. And also, I'm very aware, I've seen this so many times, and I've actually been through it myself with previous acquisitions: when someone sells a company, because that company's often tied to your sense of identity, I find it's really important to find something else to do really quickly. Because if you don't, you get that cycle. It's like a negative spiral that you go into where you're like, who am I now? I'm not the company anymore. It's not my company. And even going through selling it, I'll be honest, I was burnt out, which is part of the reason I made the decision to leave the company and just said, look, I need to spend more time with my family. I had a young family, and I just needed to spend more time with them. I just can't do the day-to-day. We had four co-founders and a huge team, but I can tell you now, of the four co-founders, only one of us was the marketing guy. That was me. I was the CEO and the chief marketing officer, which meant I was the one on the road all the time, selling in the US, selling in Australia, selling all over the world, which meant I never got to see my family. So it was an easy decision for me to step away from there. But that's when we realized, oh wait, people are wanting to buy us. Why don't we entertain that conversation? So we ended up in a really good bidding war. But going through that process, I genuinely at a couple of points went, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. I don't want to sell my baby. Because it was tied to my identity. It wasn't until I saw our bank balance afterwards I went, I'm okay with this.

Kathi: Okay, baby. Bye-bye, baby.

Vince: Yeah. Okay. I've got two real kids. You want to buy them? No.

Kathi: That's fantastic. So, helping people through speaking, publicity, marketing. If you have someone that's at mid six figures and they just can't top that threshold, what would be your advice, or where would you start with these people?

Vince: Well, if you're in your top six figures, that's the perfect place to be, because that's when you go beyond just lead generation into awareness, into positioning yourself as a thought leader. One of the things that underpins every business that we start here is that back when I was at Cigna, we did a huge research piece. Full disclosure, we had two research companies that were on retainer. We were paying them like $30,000 a month each to do nothing. And I'm like, well, that's not cool. So I decided we needed to get them to work for their money. One was quantitative, one was qualitative. I told both of them, look, go out there and research what thought leadership is, because we knew we wanted to be positioned as thought leaders. They both came back with basically the same conclusion, which was pretty simple, just very wordy, but it was essentially that you have something to say, and it's interesting or compelling enough that people want to hear it. That was basically it, which is not helpful at all. But within both of their research, we found 13 different things that you can do. When you use these levers, people perceive you as a thought leader. When you do these 13 different things, people go, oh, Kathi knows what she's talking about. So those underpin every different business that we have. We broke them into seven primary and six secondary pillars. The primary pillars are where we focus, and we only focus on six of those, because one of those is TEDx talks, and I've never done one. I have no desire to do one. So I'm not going to help anyone launch a TEDx talk or anything like that. All the rest of them, though, were things like becoming a published author. That was number one, by far, and there are so many different things even within that. Number two was having your own platform. So exactly what you've got here: your own podcast, your own show. That is the second most powerful one. The third is going on other people's podcasts or other people's platforms. Then you've got things like awards and recognition. You've got getting in the media. You've got constant content. All these kinds of things. But the top three is where I would focus. If you're trying to move past that top six figures, become a published author. It genuinely, I mean, you know this, Kathi, it genuinely opens doors for you. It's crazy.

When you use these levers, people perceive you as a thought leader.

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Kathi: Yeah.

Vince: And there's a whole pile of neuroscience behind it as well. When we had the research come back, most of it made sense. The books made sense, because I was already an author. I'd experienced it. But there were some in there where you're like, huh, that makes no sense. So we brought in some psychologists and neuroscientists and said, look, please explain. And once they sat down and went, oh no, there's some validity to this, this is because of this cognitive bias or that cognitive bias, or this effect or that effect, suddenly it all made sense. So becoming a published author is number one. And the other thing I would say is, seriously, don't listen to anyone that says podcasting is dead. Podcasting is not dead at all. It is one of the most effective things. Start looking at having your own platform, because it does multiple things. It gives you a voice. It positions you as a thought leader, but you also get the halo effect from any guest that you have on the show. And get this, here's the secret no one tells you about podcasting, which you and I know, Kathi. A lot of the guests you have on the show are potential clients of yours anyway. So, particularly as the show grows, you end up with a lead generation machine where people are constantly pitching to be on your show, constantly wanting to have a conversation with you. Hello. It's super easy.

Don't listen to anyone that says podcasting is dead.

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Kathi: Yeah. I find it's getting easier and easier and more fun. And I'm meeting higher caliber guests, like you. So it makes life much more interesting.

Vince: Well, it does. It's fun to upscale and uplevel from wherever you are. That's the game: enjoying the journey and accelerating your pace.

Kathi: Yeah, I totally agree with you. Did you say that on the seven primary you don't do the seventh, and that would be TV? Is that what you said?

Vince: No, no, the TEDx talks. We don't do TEDx.

Kathi: So what is it? TED Talks?

Vince: You know, T-E-D-X.

Kathi: Yeah.

Vince: That's the one. Sorry, my accent throws a lot of people there. TED, TED Talks.

Kathi: TED Talks.

Vince: Yeah. TEDx talks. And mainly because, look, there's nothing wrong with TEDx. It is a very effective platform to be positioned as a thought leader. Not as high as a lot of people think. A lot of people in TEDx will tell you it's number one. It's not. It's in the top seven. But the thing for me is, it's not how I operate. There are so many restrictions about how you can talk on stage. You can't do audience interaction, and you have to presubmit your script and not deviate from the script. I've never kept to a script in my life. I am an audience participation guy. I like to interact with everyone. So it doesn't really suit my style, and that's fine. It's not for me. It's for other people.

Kathi: Yeah, I'm with you. I've toyed with it a lot, and I have never said the same thing twice in the same way. There's no possible way. Every talk I do is completely different, even if it's the same slide deck.

Vince: Exactly. I'll tell you this. When TEDx launched in Wellington, back where I'm from in New Zealand, they approached me and said, hey, we'd love you to speak at this. And I said, ah, this sounds great. I'm totally in. And they said, right, here's the requirements. There were two requirements that broke me. One is the script thing. It had to be approved by the US, and you're not allowed to deviate from it. And I'm like, oh, that's going to be a struggle. That's going to be a problem. It means it can't be natural. But the other thing they said is that as part of it, you have to get coaching from their TEDx coaches, and they had three speaking coaches that they wanted me to do sessions with. And I said, are you serious? And they said, yeah. I said, I don't need that. And they said, it's part of the process. I said, but the three coaches you have are there because I coached them. They are my students. Why would I need coaching from the people I literally taught to do what they're doing? So to me it was just legalistic for the sake of being legalistic. Although I did meet Daniel Sloss, the comedian, a very funny guy from the UK. He told me the secret of what to do, because the same thing happened to him. He had to get up there, and he wasn't allowed to deviate from the script, and he just thought, you know what, this thing's going to go viral anyway, because he's a very well-known comedian. He said, I'm just going to tell them I won't deviate from the script and then just do what the hell I want. And he did, and they ended up still having to put it out there. I don't have the audience that he has, so maybe it wouldn't have worked for me, but I thought that was pretty cool.

Kathi: But he still had to go through all the coaching with your coaches?

Vince: Oh, yeah. He still had to do all of that. He's like, are you kidding me?

Kathi: I always wondered that. I always wondered if you could go on and do a TED Talk and completely do your own thing, as long as you were down to the millisecond on the ending time.

Vince: Right. Exactly. That's the important thing. I do know people that have done a TEDx and it's never been put online because they peed off the Americans. That's how we see it in this part of the world, but they peed off the TED committee and everything. So it's true. I just don't like wasting time with politics and stuff like that. I focus on the things that we know we can move.

Kathi: Well, I know you have many, many companies. What's your favorite company to work with right now?

Vince: Oh, honestly, it moves every single day. Basically, whatever I'm working on that day is what's going to become my favorite. But my softest spot is always for the publishing company. And the main reason for that, Kathi, is we do a lot of work with neurodivergent entrepreneurs. So people with ADHD, people with dyslexia, and that is one of the most fulfilling things. I have to tell you about one of our clients. We have a client, Madison. He is just the most wonderful guy. I can't remember where he is in the US. I think it might be North Carolina or something like that. But he's this big African-American military guy, a retired soldier now. His backstory is completely tragic. He saw his entire family killed, this kind of thing. As a youth he was in and out of juvie, and the main reason is because he has dyslexia. So he could never read or write properly. But he saw his life spiraling down this dark path and thought, I need to do something about this. I need to control my life. So he joined the military, served there for a number of years, found the love of his life, got married, and has about a billion kids, because every time she gets pregnant, it's twins. I'm like, dude, you guys need to stop. You are repopulating the earth here. But he had always wanted to write a book, and he'd followed me for years. He had seen a number of workshops I had done. So he reached out to me and said, look, I want to write a book. I can't afford it, but I want to know your rates, because I want to work with you guys. You've helped me so much already. And a little part of me, the little rescuer in me, if I'm honest, Kathi, thought, I'll do this for free for him. And then part of my brain said, stop. Don't do this. Just trust me. So I listened to my gut, and he went away. About two weeks later, I noticed online he was running a GoFundMe campaign, and it was because he wanted to write a book. And I was thinking, I did the right thing not doing this for free. Not because we get money, but because him doing that, him actually showing that he really wanted it, meant that whatever he did, he was going to put his every effort into it. And I can tell you now, it was difficult for him, obviously, not being able to read and write properly. But when we got to the end of that: with every one of my clients, when they get that first book, they're not allowed to open the envelope from Amazon until I'm on a call with them. They rip it open, they pull out the draft copy, and I always look at their face, because they always do the same thing. They get this little curl on the side of their mouth, this little glint in their eye, and I'm like, oh my goodness, this is awesome. For him, he ripped open the envelope, and nothing. No expression at all. My rejection sensitivity kicked in. I'm like, oh my goodness, he hates it. He hates the cover. He hates how it looks. I was starting to panic on the inside. And then he just burst into tears. That's when I realized how much this meant to him. And to be able to share in that experience with someone and help them to achieve that is why I do what I do, and why my team does as well. My team are absolutely passionate about this. They freaking love it. And while he's crying on the call, of course, I kept very professional, and, you know, I ugly cried. There were two crying men bawling their eyes out on a call. But it just reminded me of why we do what we do. So that's the most fulfilling part of the business.

To be able to share in that experience with someone and help them to achieve that is why I do what I do.

Kathi: Yeah, I get it. And the fact that he did the GoFundMe, he's really, really invested.

Vince: Yes, absolutely. And also, we're definitely not the cheapest, because we're very quality. We've been doing this for a while. We've won a slew of awards. But at the same time, we're very clever, because we keep everything really efficient, so we don't have to charge as much as other people. We're also a ghost publisher for a couple of traditional publishers. They give us their overflow of clients, or if they have marketing experts or marketing clients, they're like, hey, you guys know what you're doing with marketing, go and help them. So we pretend we work for them, and we get paid some good money, and we use that to subsidize the work that we do with other entrepreneurs. As a ghost traditional publisher, we get paid a lot of money to do that, but that subsidizes the hybrid publishing we do. So it means that we're very accessible, which is awesome. For him it was still too much. I mean, this is a guy who's trying to build his business, trying to build his career, and support a billion kids.

Kathi: And a billion kids. Did you have him dictate his book?

Vince: Yeah. The thing is, for somebody who has dyslexia, he was still very articulate. So we got him to talk about it, and some of it we had to go back and forth on, and we interviewed him a number of times on different aspects of it as well. And then when we gave him the final manuscript, once all the edits had been done, he was listening to it, basically putting it into dictation software and listening to it, so that way he could tell if things flowed.

Kathi: Very clever way of doing it, actually.

Vince: Absolutely.

Kathi: And I love the fact that you can do that on Google Docs now, that you can just narrate and it writes it all down. When I wrote my last book, I was actually paid to write the Tetris book. It was such a collaborative thing with my co-author and with the publisher, all in the Google Doc, everybody commenting and editing, and it was just awesome to see it happen in real time. It made it so much easier. Well, I didn't publish, fortunately. All I had to do was write. But it made it so much easier to write and have that final manuscript ready to go.

Vince: I will say this, because I do a lot of work in AI. I actually work for OpenAI, and I'm on the board of a number of different companies. Being in the publishing industry means I get a lot of flak for that. A lot of publishers and a lot of authors are very anti-AI. But that client helped me in one particular situation. I was on a panel at a conference talking about publishing, and AI came up, of course, and there was all this anger, everyone going, oh, it's taking away from us real authors, and blah, blah, blah. And then one of them said, you will never catch me using AI for any aspect of my book. And I was like, oh, really? No AI at all? He goes, yeah. I said, you use Google Docs? He goes, no, I use Word. I said, okay, fair enough. So you use autocorrect in Word? He goes, well, yeah. I said, oh, interesting. Do you use Grammarly? And he goes, of course. And I said, oh, yeah, okay. I was trying to explain to him, you're using AI, you just don't know it. They were saying that if you use AI in any aspect, and by the way, none of our clients write books with AI, but they use AI to help them write, to help them articulate things, and then they rewrite it, which is really good to get past creative block. But he was saying that if anyone uses that, they're not a real author. They're a fraud. They should be ashamed of themselves. So I got to tell them the story about the person with dyslexia, and I said, so are you saying that because he has a learning disability, a learning difficulty, he doesn't have the right to write a book? And he goes, no, I'm not saying that. And I said, well, how else is he going to write the book? And he was like, uh, uh, uh. All of a sudden, when you put real human stakes against things like this, man, he was quiet for the rest of the conference. It was awesome.

When you put real human stakes against things like this, man, he was quiet for the rest of the conference.

Kathi: That was awesome. It reminds me of a young woman who contacted me to interview me for her podcast. She's 12. Twelve, oh my goodness. And she started a podcast. She's brilliant. Then I had her on my podcast, because this girl is amazing. We were talking about AI and how everybody is so afraid of AI ruining school education and all that, and she had so many amazing points about how AI is helping kids in school learn better, faster, quicker, how it's their friend now, and there's nothing to be afraid of. And I thought, wow, from a 12-year-old girl. Amazing. It was great to hear that perspective.

Vince: I will say, talk about feeling like an underachiever. I had a 15-year-old on my show, and she had written 27 books.

Kathi: What?

Vince: Yep. All fiction. And honestly, they were selling really well. She knows her market really, really well. But I'm going, you're 15 years old. I've only published 11 books. You've got 27. This is ridiculous.

Kathi: What does she do?

Vince: She said on the show she's self-published.

Kathi: That's incredible. But she's a pro. Imagine what's going to happen by the time she turns 40.

Vince: I don't know. She might just be over books by then.

Kathi: Right.

Vince: She did tell me she doesn't want anyone to ever read the first five books that she wrote, because those were amateur hour. But honestly, I looked at that and went, any time I feel stressed, I can't complain. Wow, she's written 27 books. The young ones are really starting to take over.

Kathi: So I know your kids have flown the nest now. What are they doing? Have they fallen far from the tree, or what?

Vince: Oh, I've got to be careful how I word this, or my kids will kill me. Yes, they've flown very far from the tree now. Our son is our youngest. He's 23. Yes, 23, I think he's 23. He's back in New Zealand, and he's a software engineer, so he codes stuff and everything like that. I'm a trained software engineer as well. I originally trained as an electronic, computer and software engineer. He would say he's fallen very far from the tree, and I'm like, you do know that was my original discipline? But he's doing exceptionally well, which I'm so damn proud of, and he's just such an amazing human. And then our daughter swears she hasn't followed in my footsteps. She has her own marketing agency.

Kathi: I know.

Vince: And she also owns a sewing shop as well, selling sewing supplies and things like that. But the reason she bought that shop is because the marketing agency solely focuses on fashion labels and designers, and her whole goal is to help designers. So for her, she's nothing like me, because I apparently have no fashion sense, and she talks with fashion designers. I'm like, do you realize you still do marketing?

Kathi: I love that. Oh, I'm so glad I asked for those stories. That's priceless.

Vince: She's 29 now. So I'm so proud of both our kids, obviously, and I'm fully aware that I'm totally biased, but my kids are the best kids in the world, and I won't hear any other argument about it. So there we go.

Kathi: So your dyslexic client published. He worked really long and hard to do that. How do you celebrate successes like that yourself?

Vince: Successes like that, I celebrate with them. It's about them. It's not about us. Yes, we help them to achieve that, but really it is about honoring them and celebrating them, which is why whenever any of my clients do a book launch, I MC the book launch, as long as it's online. I'm not going to fly over to the US just for one book launch. But I do the MCing because I want to honor them. I want to honor their commitment, their hard work, the fact that they did this. It's freaking awesome. So that's how I celebrate that. How I celebrate my own successes is very poorly, if I'm brutally honest. Actually, my kids call me to account on this as well. My son sent me a very expensive bottle of whiskey and said, look, when you have achieved this and this and this, that's when you drink that whiskey. He's just trying to train my brain to recognize that I shouldn't just keep moving forward and moving forward. Look back and celebrate those wins, because otherwise you lose sight of them. So I'm trying to get better at that. And also my wife, she's amazing, and my best friend here as well. The two of them team up on me every time we've got a major accomplishment, and they make sure that I celebrate it.

Look back and celebrate those wins, because otherwise you lose sight of them.

Kathi: Yeah. Take a pause. That's exactly why I put this question in every podcast that I do, because it's a reminder to myself to stop and celebrate. When I published my first book, I went, oh no, now I have to market, right? And I didn't even pause to say, oh, congratulations, you self-published your first book, what a good job, Kathi. No, I was freaked out about marketing.

Vince: I will tell you, actually, with my first book, Kathi, when that came out, everyone said to me, you don't do a book launch. They all said nobody goes to book launches anymore, certainly not face-to-face events. And I went, I'm a marketer. You're all amateurs. Hold my beer. So I organized a book launch. We had a hundred and something people there. It was amazing. And this was back in New Zealand. We had people fly in from all over the world that wanted to support it, which really humbled me. But I also knew that I was going to struggle slightly there, because imposter syndrome is very real. The last 5% of that book was the hardest part to write, because it was me procrastinating and going, once it's finished, people will read it. Uh-oh. So I did the event kind of to spite that. And when we were there, it was a beautiful experience. I told everyone about the journey of writing the book, and there's a very personal aspect to it as well, which is that my book was delayed for about a year because my sister was battling cancer at the time. I had a routine where every morning at 3:00 a.m. I used to write for an hour, and that was how I got my progress on the book. But when she was going through her battle, she was in Australia, I was in New Zealand, and that was about the time her husband and kids were asleep. She'd spent the whole day telling them, ah, I'm not afraid at all, I'm not in any pain at all. And she would ring me, or we'd jump on Zoom together, and she'd be going, I'm so afraid, Vince, and I'm in so much pain. So for about a year, I had daily calls with her to help support her and encourage her to talk to her husband and kids as well, because she was trying to be brave, because that's who she is. She's super strong. But then she lost her battle, and that was the driving force behind finishing the book at that point. In fact, when I said bye to her, her parting words to me were, oh, that book. And I went, yeah. And she goes, if you don't finish that effing book, I am going to effing haunt you. And I was like, well, maybe I don't want to finish it now, so that you can haunt me and we can catch up. But I got to share the personal story, and there were tears, and it was just beautiful. But then something happened, and that was that everyone wanted signed copies of the book. And in my mind I'm going, first of all, why do you want my autograph? I am not a celebrity in any way, shape or form. I am not a musician or an actor. I'm barely an average karaoke singer. But I realized that if I go to a book launch, that's what I would want, so I could justify that in my mind. So I bought a special pen and signed it all for everyone. And then everyone, as I handed them the book, said something along the lines of, oh, I can't wait to read this. And that's when imposter syndrome grabbed me by the throat. That night when I left, I should have been buzzing. I should have been celebrating. Instead, I went home and I spiraled all night. I couldn't sleep at all. I just kept thinking, who do I think I am, writing a book? What right do I have? There are people out there far more talented than me that haven't written books. Why do I think I have the right to do this? Then I go, oh, everyone's going to read the book and realize you have no idea what you're doing. You're making this up as you go along, and you're a complete and utter fraud. All of the usual stuff that we go through with imposter syndrome. So when you talk about just wanting to move forward and not celebrate, I actively sabotaged it. I had an interview organized with Forbes. I had an interview with CIO magazine, Diginomica, and there was one other one as well. I can't remember what it was. Oh, Entrepreneur magazine. I had interviews lined up with all of them, and I contacted them all the next day and said, oh, sorry guys, not going to be able to do that. I'm too busy. I was busy, but that was absolute bollocks. That was just me self-spiraling.

That's when imposter syndrome grabbed me by the throat.

Kathi: Wow.

Vince: Yeah. So I definitely did not take the time to celebrate that. And then, funny enough, that's when all of that got taken out of my hands anyway, because it sold very, very well. It went ballistic, and next thing you know, I'm in San Francisco speaking at a conference there, and Adobe blindsided me. They had 25 of us as keynotes for this conference, and all of my heroes. They had all 25 keynotes on stage. They're all my heroes in the industry. Everyone I look up to. I'm like, oh my goodness, they're on the stage. I can't believe I'm here with them all. And then the head of Adobe said, by the way, we haven't told these guys why they're on stage right now, but as well as being your keynote speakers, we want to celebrate them. And I'm like, hmm, let's see what's happened here. And he goes, and we want to recognize them as the first batch of the top 50 marketers in the world. So I didn't really get to celebrate myself. I ended up with people celebrating in spite of that and doing it for me. So that was amazing.

Kathi: That's amazing. Sometimes the universe makes you celebrate.

Vince: Oh, yeah. I had no choice.

Kathi: I love that. That's a great story. Well, this is a reminder to celebrate, and I'm glad that you have that whiskey sitting there for whenever you're ready to go. A little nippy every once in a while to pause and say, look what I did.

Vince: Yeah. I've got two new books coming out soon, so there's going to be two nips of whiskey. That's going to be awesome.

Kathi: Awesome. Okay. So I know I'm going to put the link to your website down below. Is there something that you want to offer the audience, maybe aspiring authors or authors that want to scale? What would you suggest, or what would you like to give?

Vince: Well, a couple of things there. Firstly, the first issue that most people have around wanting to write a book is, what do I write? It's the most common question we get from people. Most people procrastinate, but there's a whole pile of self-doubt in there as well, where they're like, oh, I'm not experienced enough to write a book. That's absolute crap. Don't even listen to that part of your voice. It's lying to you. You've got experience, and there are people that would love to hear from you. So just note that. But the other thing is they go, well, I don't know where to start. I don't know what book to write. They all think they've got to write an autobiography or a memoir. No one wants to hear that. They just want to hear your expertise on paper. So I've got a free master class, which I'm going to give you the link for. If you want to work out what that book should be, go through that free master class, work out what the book should be, and come to a title. And then the other thing I'm going to say is, on chasingtheinsights.com there is a link to book a free strategy call with me. If you have an idea for a book, or you've thought about writing a book, or any of those kinds of things, grab some free time in my calendar. I make it available to everyone. It's something I'm really passionate about. It won't be a sales call at all. I don't do those. I'm renowned for forgetting to do any part of sales whatsoever. My team keep hassling me. It's not about that. It's about giving you some wisdom, giving you a rundown of the publishing industry and how to approach writing a book.

They just want to hear your expertise on paper.

Kathi: Love it. That's very generous. And everybody who's listening, if you want to write a book, even if you're on your second book, definitely take the master class, because it's going to help you feel more grounded. Even if you think your idea is solid, it's going to solidify it, and maybe even make you a little bit off balance to do something better, bigger and larger.

Vince: Yeah, I appreciate that.

Kathi: Is there anything that we should have talked about, or anything that I should have asked you, that you wanted to talk about?

Vince: Oh, see, this is the problem talking to you, Kathi. Seriously, there are about a billion things we could keep talking about.

Kathi: I know. I know.

Vince: No, look, the main thing for me is I'm very aware that entrepreneurial journeys are riddled with loneliness and isolation. So get connected with people. We could have talked about that. But the other thing, which we did touch on, is imposter syndrome. A lot of us have imposter syndrome, and we have to understand this: imposter syndrome is not actually a bad thing. This is a weird thing to get your head around, but imposter syndrome is not a bad thing at all. It is literally your brain trying to keep you safe, and that's a good thing. The problem with that is it keeps trying to keep you safe by putting fear into you. It recognizes, hey, Kathi, you're outside of your comfort zone right now. I'm freaking out. You're now vulnerable. Someone could say something that would damage you. So I want to keep you safe by bringing you back into your comfort zone. The challenge with that is, as entrepreneurs, we're supposed to be outside of our box and outside of our comfort zone. That's where everything good happens. That's where growth happens, success happens, wealth happens, all those kinds of things. So essentially, we can retrain our brain to understand that when you hear those things, that's not bad. That's just a signal. What you do with that is where it gets bad. If you spiral into self-sabotage, or you pull back from things, or you don't do things, or you hold back, all of those things are the negative. That's your decision, not imposter syndrome. So one of the things I always say to people is you've got to retrain your brain to go, hey, when you hear those signals, that's your brain saying, guess what, Kathi? You're exactly where you're supposed to be. Yes, you're making this up as you go along. That's called being an entrepreneur. We literally make this up as we go along. It's a good thing. And yes, you're way out of your comfort zone. And yes, you don't always know what you're doing. Again, those are good things. That's where innovation happens. So when your brain's telling you that, that's what it's actually telling you: you're where you're supposed to be. And that's where you can have that conversation with your brain, which I have all the time. It's a daily thing sometimes, where I get to go, hey, brain, I super appreciate you. I love you. I love the fact that you keep trying to keep me safe, and I really appreciate that about you. But in this case, you need to understand a couple of truths. Firstly, I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, so don't stress about that. Because the other truth is, I've got this. We always bounce back. We always land on our feet. Let's do this together. So that's the other thing we should have talked about. There we go.

Imposter syndrome is not a bad thing at all. It is literally your brain trying to keep you safe.

Kathi: No, that's really, really good. And I think, to me, it means, oh, I'm getting ready to expand my horizon, right?

Vince: I can tell you now, I've talked to people at every level of business. I don't think I've talked to Jeff Bezos before, but most of the top-level entrepreneurs that I look up to all deal with imposter syndrome. Every single one of them. So if they're dealing with it and you're dealing with it, guess what? There's no difference between the two of you. Just keep pushing in.

Kathi: Yeah. That's great. All right. Fantastic. I really appreciate your time. I know you're a busy guy, and this has been a really fun chat. As usual, we always have good conversations. Everybody, make sure to take the workshop. Even if you don't think you're going to write a book, I think you might get triggered into doing something that might make you expand and feel imposter-like. You never know. Hey, until next week. If you guys like this, please like it, share it, comment, give me some stars, give me some ratings. I very much appreciate your support with the podcast. And make sure to check out Vince's website and his very special offer and link. Thanks, Vince. I appreciate it.

Vince: Oh, thank you, Kathi. It's been an honor.

Kathi: Yeah. Until next week, you guys. We'll see you.