How To Make $100,000+ With 0 Employees (Full Guide) | 052

Josh Kaufman: [00:00:00] It was the number one nonfiction book on Audible. So I have a screenshot. It’s personal MBA first and then The Hobbit.

Nathan Barry: Josh, you’ve done something that I think very few creators have done. And that is run a one person creator business at scale.

Josh Kaufman: It would probably require 20 employees. If I were doing it 25 years ago, very curious how you think about AI.

It’s not replacing the values of human attention. It’s freeing up human attention from the lower value things. I think the big opportunity here is for a lot of these things. It’s like, how can you streamline the process? So then you can reinvest into the core of what you do. The personal MBA is named the personal MBA for a reason.

Getting someone’s attention exactly at the moment when someone becomes interested around each of those ideas, I should be one of the first things that they see there. Is there any principles you’d most want professional creators to dive into as they level up in their career? If you want to be a better [00:01:00] creator, if you want to be a better marketer, if you want to be a better salesperson, the trick is

Nathan Barry: Josh, you’ve done something that I think very few creators have done, and that is run a one person creator business. At scale, let’s start with why, why is that important?

Josh Kaufman: Yeah. So publishing is a really interesting business because it is fundamentally creative and most of the activity in my business happens between my ears.

And so it’s like, as much as I would really love to outsource some of what I do. Fundamentally, it’s not possible. And so, um, the counterbalance to that also is management. And leadership is work. Oh, yeah. And so, you know, if you hire someone, training someone, um, overseeing, managing, directing, coordinating, there’s, there’s a time, energy, and effort cost to that.

[00:02:00] So very early on, I decided that I was just going to maximize the amount of time doing the thing that only I can do and not take that portion of time, energy, and attention that would otherwise go into managing people. Right. I was just going to take that and put it into the creative part of the business and, and that’s worked out very well for me.

Nathan Barry: So. Your revenue is, is it entirely, uh, book sales like printed

Josh Kaufman: and audio books? Yeah, I would say 90 percent plus comes directly from publishing. There’s, um, advice, advisory services, coaching, and that’s, that’s mostly at this point. If I meet somebody really cool and there’s a potential really good fit, um, then, then that’s a fun way to spend time that is also profitable.

And then, it’s a question of the balance between. So, I, some days I could have full, unstructured, nothing scheduled sort of day where a lot of book progress gets done. And there are some days that are a little bit more fragmented. So, on the fragmented days, if I can, Put an [00:03:00] advisory session in there, then that makes an enormous amount of sense.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. So then when we look at it, most people in your physician with, um, books that are selling really well would then say, okay, what else can I layer on top of this? Coaching would make sense. You know, you have that in your revenue stream, that not something that you’re actively pursuing or doing much with.

Um, you know, they’re like, okay, what’s the course, what’s the group program, what, you know, all of these other things. You don’t do that. And one thing that you said to me, this is probably 2015, 2016. I don’t know. Uh, we’re talking about how you don’t have customer support at all. Like if someone is like, I didn’t get my book, that is a problem that they take up with Amazon or Barnes and Noble or audible.

That’s right. That’s right. I guess, besides protecting your time, what’s the reason to not take those additional leaps when normally people would say like, Oh, how do I, you know, I can add an extra a hundred thousand, 500, 000 a year in revenue. If I did these additional things.

Josh Kaufman: Yeah, I think it fundamentally comes down [00:04:00] to the tradeoffs that I feel are good, healthy, appropriate, exciting for me.

So the way that I think about writing books is I can spend a critical mass of time doing the research, doing the experimenting, putting something together. And when I do that well, I only have to write the book once and, you know, barring a 10th anniversary edition or like previous up, like that’s a discreet unit of work that if I do my job well on this as an evergreen resource, it will exist for decades.

And so that’s a very high value use of time by stacking those on top of each other. You’re basically building a series of annuities, right? Just keep ticking along in the background while you’re working on the next project. That kind of adds to that. If someone’s not an investor Sure. Over that. Explain annuities and then tie that books.

So, an annuity is a, a financial instrument that just pays you every month, every [00:05:00] year until the end of time or however long the, the, the annuity lasts. And so in the non financial sense, if, if you make something that has permanent value and you commercialize that in a way that that value can be provided without your direct input, then that puts you in a really great position because you build the thing once, you commercialize it once.

You have systems in the background that keep it selling and to your point, like non customer service options that keep it selling in the background without your direct involvement. And so instead of having to redirect a portion of your attention to support customer service, um, managing a, a, a coursework or coaching program or something on top of that, you just take all the energy that you were putting into commercialization.

And then you. Back into what is the next asset that I’m building, it’s going to [00:06:00] continue to just stacking

Nathan Barry: these up. Exactly. Yeah. And I, I’m just thinking about the leverage that you create. Cause most people would look at the leverage of the audience coming in and this be the, the popular creator mindset and say, okay, what else can I sell to this group of people without really thinking through the trade offs of what do I give up in that process?

Exactly. You know, now I need to get really good at marketing in a different way. Yeah. You know, maybe it’s building my email funnels or, um, you know, now I need to add the whole customer success because we’re support aspect of it, you know, and then I have these ongoing obligations and you’re saying, all right, no, the purest form of leverage here is taking one thing packaging up really, really well and then selling it for absolutely as long as possible.

Yes,

Josh Kaufman: that’s right. And there’s a personal values section of this too, which is, I mean, this is kind of weird coming from a business author, but like more money is very [00:07:00] often not the point, right? And so I am perfectly willing to trade more money against other priorities in my life that are as are more valuable than continuing to increase growth at the fastest possible rate.

That I can

Nathan Barry: was yet the diminishing returns of additional dollars, like the, there’s probably plenty of things that you could do with more money, but it’s relatively less and less as you, you know, there’s a bell curve to it. Yep. Right. And so when you don’t have, like, there’s a point that more and more, like really has a substantial quality of life impact for you.

And, and the dollar amount depends substantially on your goals, your lifestyle, where you live, all of that. But then, you know, it comes down the other side where the next. Dollar has means less, less. And so you’re one of the few people that I know who has said like, cool, yep, this is working for me. I have other things that I value much more.

Yeah. Was there, is there anything, if someone is thinking in those [00:08:00] terms, is there anything you would say to them? Or they’re starting to feel that like, Oh, maybe I don’t actually want to pursue growth for growth sake. Yeah.

Josh Kaufman: Yeah. How would you have that conversation? Yeah. I think it’s, it comes down to being very clear about what you want instead of what you think you should want.

And so I remember early on in my career, I was talking to another author who was just getting started and building their business and had a successful book. And the career path for many people doing the work I do is you write a book. To fundamentally sell corporate speaking engagements. And then the profit model is traveling, giving a keynote speech.

Yep. And the other hand, you hate travel, don’t want to

Nathan Barry: leave your house.

Josh Kaufman: Yes.

Nathan Barry: I really don’t

Josh Kaufman: like people. Right. Or you don’t like strangers. This person said, because they were really struggling with this, and they decided to have it as a portion of their business, but not as the full thing. And the [00:09:00] thing that I remember them saying, which has stuck with me ever since, is I would rather have platinum status with my kids than with an airline.

And then there’s, there’s also the sense of for the type of work I do, there’s a certain amount of structure and stability and predictability that opens the space to input a lot of information and think deeply about it and sit down and write. And traveling can be very disruptive for that process to me.

And so just making that trade off of like, I’m going to focus on making my stuff, not being on the road, uh, 180 days a year or more. And might those priorities shift to the future? Sure. But at least right now. What I should want doesn’t match what I actually want. So I’m just, I’m happy to make a conscious trade off there and feel good about what I’m giving up to get more of what I want.

Nathan Barry: We’re here in Atlanta for a Mastermind event that happened yesterday that was excellent, but it often [00:10:00] leads to scenarios of people asking for advice. I can’t give you any advice that makes any sense at all until I understand. What are you optimizing for? And oftentimes it, people are saying business growth or, or whatever else.

But if you’re saying I am optimizing for platinum status with my kids and a, you know, really healthy income for our business and a lot of dedicated writing and creating time, then like, all right, we can design exactly that’s like right in there, you know, it’s like, all right, we need to define an income level.

And you’re like, all right, I want to make 150, 000 a year. Right. Great. We can. You know, you can make very intentional choices through that, but then you have to remember that most people, right, if you’re out there consuming content, sometimes it’d be like, and here’s how I grew my team, doubled this, whatever else you’re going to be like, okay, cool.

I’m really happy for you, but I actually am going to disregard like this whole category of advice or experiences because it’s not the optimizing.

Josh Kaufman: Sure. And [00:11:00] I think one of the interesting things about the creator market in general, I think. And, and research and write a lot about social status adjacent things.

I mean, the, the creator market is very social status signal heavy in terms of how messaging and marketing and what success looks like. And all of

Nathan Barry: those, you know, you know, all of the, where did you do a keynote? So how much did you pay? You get paid. Yes. What was your book advance? Yep. You know, all of those things.

Josh Kaufman: And those things are easy to measure and they’re easy to communicate. And what’s. Often not included in those conversations are the trade offs that are being made in order to focus on those things. And one of the benefits of this particular career is I’ve met a lot of really cool people with a lot of really cool high status y things.

And it’s really illuminating to see the trade offs that people make in their lives to get more of things that are important to them and valuable to them. And then [00:12:00] also take a step back and be like, yeah, that doesn’t sound good to me. And, and so like, there’s, there’s a joy. I think this is the, the self management part.

That’s really important when doing this, the trade offs are going to be made. Regardless, like we don’t live in an infinite universe. There’s only a certain amount of time and energy. So like it’s going to happen. So if you make those trade offs consciously, instead of implicitly or automatically, you tend to get much better results because you’re just more clear about what you want.

You can start to navigate how to get it and minimize the costs of it. The trick is if you’re doing it consciously, you can also manage the, like Oh, but what if, like, and feeling bad about the things that you’re not getting, just knowing that at a certain level you chose the not getting and the choosing the not getting is okay.

Nathan Barry: Is there a trade off that’s like actually been really difficult to me or that you’ve really struggled with?

Josh Kaufman: There was a [00:13:00] time, so for my second book, the first 20 hours, I did a really big TED talk that ended up exploding. Like exploding in what way? Um, the last, so I, I just checked this about a week ago, um, closing in on about 40 million views of that talk.

And it’s one of the 10 most popular Ted talks that have been released ever. That’s incredible. Yeah, which is fun. And it was, it was also one of those things that’s like, I’m not a professional public speaker, but there’s a cool opportunity. I’m going to do the cool opportunity. And the cool opportunity worked out really well.

So when something like that happens, it’s like. Inbound spirit speaker Bureau, we could, Oh yeah, blow this up. And when you live that life, sometimes the speaking fees can be really great, very enticing. And so there was a, there was a deliberate like, okay, I’m not making a trade [00:14:00] off against a theoretical possibility.

I’m making a trade off against an actual reality and I have to make a decision right now about what’s important to me and what’s not. And when it came down to it, like. This sounds really cool. And it’s not for me.

Nathan Barry: Of going, like building a public speaking, yes. Organizing my career fundamentally around that.

And then stacking it up. The 10, 000 keynote turns into the 25, 000, turns into the 50, 000. Totally. You know, and, and up from there, what I would do in that situation, because I’m a person who tries to do everything. Yes, you are. That’s why it’s good for me to hang out with people like you. Sure. We’re much more thoughtful and deliberate is.

I would say, okay, I’m going to do six keynotes a year. I would like find some version of this. And then it’s like, look, if it doesn’t meet the schedule requirements of this income requirement, I’m not going to do it. But I would put boundaries on it and say, yes, sure. I’m like wildly impressed with your [00:15:00] willpower and discipline.

Thanks.

Josh Kaufman: Yeah. And it’s like, I am very much an option D all of the above please, because there’s, there’s something about, um, I think we were at a retreat together where we were doing like, how do you show up in the world in a career sense? The, the, the red, yellow, green, blue, um, Herman. Yes. Brain scan indicator.

And, and like my result was all of them, all of them all the time. Yes, please. Lots of variety. Let’s do all the things. And so part of becoming more skilled at managing myself over time is recognizing that my impulse is all the things. And that’s where if I try to do all the things, the, the trade offs start to be implicit and they start to get more and more extreme because you’re just juggling glass bottles.

And at a certain point, one of them is going to fall and that’s not going to be a pleasant experience. [00:16:00]

Nathan Barry: Yeah.

Josh Kaufman: So more focuses is better for me.

Nathan Barry: Something that I think about a lot is the core production function of person. So Tyler Cowen talks about this, uh, he’s got his blog marginal revolution. But he will ask, like, what is the, the core activities that you do as a, as a person, as a creator, as a business owner that like creates the ultimate value?

Like, yes, there’s all of these end results is byproducts of where you end up spending your time. But like, what is very core? And for you, you’re very dialed in on, I read things, I’d still it down, I put it into practice, like stress test it. And I write about it and it’s like, and you design your entire life around those things.

Is that

Josh Kaufman: right? Yeah, that’s right. The more input that goes into my head, the better. And that’s also joy. Like that’s the part where it doesn’t feel like work. It feels like the thing that I would be doing regardless of whether or not this is my job. And so, [00:17:00] um, that’s the part that comes easy. And then the actual work part.

Is the, all right, I have inputted enough now it’s time to start distilling it into a format that other people can benefit from

Nathan Barry: for those creators that have moved away from like their core production function, like they’ve gotten caught up in the team they’re building, whatever also their opportunities, maybe advice of like how you would distill it back down and make sure that that That core engine, that core driver

Josh Kaufman: continues to operate.

Yeah. So I think step one is understanding exactly what it is, which is just like, really, I’m, I’m a big fan as a general practice, um, for figuring out stuff like this, take a sheet of paper, write a question at the top, which is what’s getting in the way of me doing my core production function right now, set a timer for 10 minutes and just like go.

Because when it comes to things like this, most of us just we’re busy, we don’t spend a critical mass of [00:18:00] time actually looking at the problem in a sufficient level of resolution to find interesting stuff. And so that’s a really good, straightforward way of surfacing a whole bunch of things that might need to be addressed.

And then one of the things that I talk about a lot in the personal MBA, which to a certain large segment of the creator population. Sounds like the most boring thing on the face of the earth. It’s actually the opposite. Yeah. Systems and process, man. It is, that’s the way that you can take all of the things that are necessary and valuable must be done.

And your goal is to identify exactly what they are, exactly what’s necessary and what’s not, and how to make sure they happen with a minimum amount of time, energy, attention, and stress. So you can redirect the rest of it on the core thing that you do so well. And so I had a client early in my career who is [00:19:00] very much massive creative type, like just loved making stuff and had a day job in order to pay the bills so he could maximally, maximally make stuff.

And when I, when I, when I brought up the idea of systems and process and checklist and all of that, he’s just like, you could just. feel him deflate. It’s like, I didn’t, I don’t want to do that. And his experience was actually the total opposite. And so he started doing some of these things to make his day to day much more streamlined and much more predictable.

And he ended up doing so well that he was Promoted like they wanted to promote him in his day job. And he’s like, actually, I would like to do this 40 hour a week job in two days a week. And I’m going to divert the rest of my time and attention to my creative pursuits. And they were happy to, because he was amazing at what he did.

[00:20:00] Right. And so for a lot of these things, it’s like just a little bit of what are the core things that need to happen? How can you streamline it as much as possible? So then you can reinvest the time and energy that’s freed up into the core of what you do.

Nathan Barry: What they don’t want to go to with personal MBA is this idea of working in public and sharing the content.

Sure. I believe you have the entire like personal MBA online for free. Yeah, it’s, it’s searchable.

Josh Kaufman: Talk about the strategy behind that. Sure. So one of the ideas that I can actually talk about in the personal MBA and the marketing and sales section is called point of market entry. So classic example here is, um, when new parents welcome a child into the world, they are given at the hospital a little care package that’s sponsored by Pampers or sponsored by formula companies or whatever, because like, Prior to that moment, [00:21:00] diaper advertising just really isn’t relevant to your life and just would be completely ignored after that moment.

It is a clear and present need in your life on a regular basis. And so getting someone’s attention exactly at the moment when someone becomes interested in a certain topic is very, very important. And in my case, the personal MBA is named the personal MBA for a reason. Because the moment an adult learner decides for themselves, business is really important.

I need to get better at this. What did they type into Google? What did they type into Amazon? They start looking for graduate business school programs for better or worse than our culture. That’s one of the first impulse. So when they search, they find me first. And as. A potential alternative or as a way of understanding this decision better or whatever, it’s, it’s a pretty compelling first [00:22:00] step.

So I used the same strategy to market the book with the ideas that are contained in the book. Okay, so first at a

Nathan Barry: high level, the book title. Is focused around this like point of entry and all that I was like, I’m searching for, I mean, you have to have MBA in the title because that, that draws people in and then what you’re doing is the book has so many topics that each one becomes a point of entry.

Josh Kaufman: Exactly. Yeah. So if somebody is, is on Google and they are searching for balance sheet, I want to be there because that signals that there’s an interest in this particular cluster of topics and they’re, they’re in a receptive. Right point is intent. And so if the goal of the personal MBA is to explain business concepts to a normal person who has absolutely no prior knowledge or experience, that’s actually a really good fit for somebody who’s, who’s searching for a term like that, right?

And so the, the marketing [00:23:00] strategy for the book is, it’s a book of concepts. It’s about 250 very specific ideas. And if someone is motivated enough. To search for a cluster of things around each of those ideas can and should be one of the first things that they see there. And then the, the strategy of, of providing the content of the book is, it’s a very clear and tangible example of exactly what that is.

What this is and why it’s valuable and why somebody might want to to read the whole thing. And so, there’s also a very deliberate strategy. I’ve heard from a lot of people who actually buy The Personal MBA in all three of the major formats. And it’s because, like, one way of thinking about The Personal MBA as a book is, It’s a very comprehensive business course that would usually cost thousands of dollars that you can buy for 15 for a paperback or one audible [00:24:00] credit.

Yeah. That’s a pretty good deal. And so a lot of people will go through the entire book in audio just as a like introduction to the topic. Here’s how everything works. But then they want a reference version. So they’ll buy the paperback to put on their desk and they’ll buy the ebook so they can search within the book whenever they need it.

And so it’s, it’s the same information, like they read it on my website and then they have the audio book and then they have the paperback and then they have the ebook and each of those different forms of value plays a separate and distinct role in how they benefit from the information and that’s just

Nathan Barry: really cool.

But I’m curious how big of a role search traffic plays in it. Cause you’re right. The personal MBA is particularly made and optimized for all of these points of entry. Has search driver continued to be a really strong driver for years to come? Yeah, strong and increasing. Oh, it’s continually

Josh Kaufman: increasing.

Yes. Oh yeah. Because [00:25:00] the more people find it and link to it and include it in a blog post or send it to a colleague in an email or any of those things. Um, Yeah, that like all of that, the domain reputation, all of that continues to increase over time. And then the way to think about that. So it was actually a really long conversation with my publisher.

Yeah, I’m sure that at first they were like, no, deep discomfort. And to their credit, it was like, let’s do a pilot. Let’s see how it goes. And the results of that were so strong that it was like, yes, this is the obvious right thing to do for this particular book. Yeah. And then there are ways to to encourage people to pick up the primary formats.

We don’t the worst case scenario would be cannibalizing all of your sales by offering the free version. That’s more compelling than the other versions. You don’t want to be a replacement. But the other way to think about it is It is earned media that up, like many companies pay lots of money to have this form of promotion [00:26:00] working in the background all the time.

And so being able to take the value itself and also make it marketing for the primary forms of value that worked very much in our favor.

Nathan Barry: Well, it’s something like with the, how to make things shareable, like make it easy for this thing to spread. And so if I’m like, Reading about something in the book and I want to tell my friend about it and I’m like, Oh, uh, take a photo of it.

Oh, but it spans three pages, you know? Yeah. But then if I know, Oh, it’s available online. Then I’m like, here, I can link, you know, someone to that. And then they enjoy it, read it. And they’re saying, Oh, let me buy the full book. Are there types of books? Obviously this works well with a personal MBA. I’m wondering how far we would take this.

Like I’m thinking about books that I’m thinking about writing. If I would go the full. Publish the thing on

Josh Kaufman: the internet. Yeah. Or like essays or extra bonus material or elaborations. So one of the things that I [00:27:00] added to the website version of this were a bunch of questions for reflection. So we didn’t have 250 concepts times a chunk of text for each of that would 600 page book instead of the 450, 500 it is.

And so I already, I had all of that ready. And so it was possible to, to. add to the book in a meaningful way. And then that also has a whole lot of benefits in terms of asking some really interesting things that get people thinking to want to dig deep into the book. So yeah, I, I would say like, even if it’s not the exact thing, pulling out some extra bits or bonus, like showing your work in, in that way and making it

Nathan Barry: available is a really good strategy.

When having that really strong tie in between your web presence and the book itself or the product, you can go back and forth. I’m realizing how well this ties into The idea of a one person [00:28:00] business, because as a creator, you have to have a marketing department in this case, whatever your employees in your marketing department is the public version of the book.

Yeah. And so you’re like, because I’m not paying someone full time to, uh, source opportunities and build backlinks and all of that, I need to deliver a lot more value for free on the internet

Josh Kaufman: and

Nathan Barry: have that work. I like it. It’s not just a. You know, I want to run this type of business, so I will like, all right, we have to make some very deliberate decisions of, you know, what does one person marketing look like rather than team based marketing?

Josh Kaufman: Yeah. And it’s, it, it’s a system that automates or that, that operates automatically in the background. And so if essentially becomes a project, I’m going to spend a couple of days or a couple of weeks doing this thing. But then once it’s done, it’s going to sit in the background doing its thing for many years.

Nathan Barry: What are other examples in your business of. That working the background either automated or the leverage of, you know, this, this annuity that [00:29:00] continues to deliver results or pay

Josh Kaufman: you over time there. There are a couple things on the publishing side of things. Um, literary agents are worth their weight in gold, particularly good ones.

And so they’re not employees. I don’t manage them. My agent is an amazing human being that I enjoy working with very much. And there’s a certain level of, um, Royalty statements come in that need to be reviewed for accuracy and publishing terms and, uh, renewals for foreign light rights translations and all of that stuff.

So having someone in the background who specializes in that sort of thing and can do it for me at a high trust, high context way, it turns something that might. Turn into a couple day projects that that’s not in my core value wheelhouse into a phone conversation. And that, so that is amazing. Um, and then there are certain things like [00:30:00] this is, this is the benefit of software.

You and I started back in the days where you had to like manually apply to a merchant credit card processor and how, like how painful that was. Yep. Authorized. net. That’s that. You had an authorized. net account too. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And that’s just what you had to do. And now there are just so many much better tools to handle common things.

Um, so like instead of having an assistant, I have savvy Cal for, for booking, uh, either advisory engagements, uh, podcast opportunities, chats, whatever, there’s a really great automated system that just takes a lot of the, the manual effort out. And so I was thinking like for the type of business that I run right now, it would probably require somewhere between 10 and 20 [00:31:00] employees if I were doing it 25 years ago.

Yeah. Just to handle like the manualness of what’s going on. And so, you know, being, being able to add some of those high value, relatively low cost systems to streamline the process. It’s a good thing we’re living in this era because it’s pretty great.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. And it’s like take full advantage of it. Yeah.

One thing that I think about is I’ve made a lot of, a lot of my success in life comes to like conforming the world or my circumstances to my will. Sure. Making things operate the way that I want. Yeah. And being relentless, sometimes difficult, you know, and, and bringing that to life. But what I’m realizing is a lot of times now with systems, like I have a very particular way that I want something and realizing that I could get 80, 90 percent of the way there with very little effort because it works out of the box, you know, but I want it to be a little bit different.

And I’ll often spend a huge amount of effort to get [00:32:00] that a little bit different. Yep. And I’m finding more and more cases where I’m just like, actually, this doesn’t matter. Sure. This is not like the core driver of my business. So I’m going to accept 80%. In this case, it’s not lowering or lowering my standards.

It’s me conforming to what works out of the box. And then the amount of friction, like I’m accepting a software tool as it works instead of like, okay, I can get there, but then if I zap your inductive, this other thing in there and all of that, then it will be perfect. Yes. But it’s also brittle. Right. And like, what I’m noticing in your business is that it’s not, it’s not brittle.

It’s just like, it’s pretty,

Josh Kaufman: pretty simple and resilient. Yeah. And choosing your battles and figuring out where you want to need to apply your craftsmanship. So one of the things I don’t talk about very much. Um, but I did talk about, Okay. So the first 20 hours is a book about learning new things as quickly as possible and going from like zero to proficiency very quickly.

Uh, the experimental part of that book [00:33:00] was I researched the theory of skill acquisition and how to do that well and quickly. That was really cool. But then I didn’t feel comfortable teaching that until I had the experience of teaching it. Doing that for a bunch of different things in wildly different domains.

And one of the things that I decided to learn was programming because systems are a big part of my work and the friction of having to use a system that doesn’t quite do the thing that I want or needed to do, or drives me nuts every single day because it’s brittle and it breaks, which can pull focus from other more important things.

Suddenly there was a value to me in learning how to program. Put some of these systems together or, or build something that works for my idiosyncratic needs. And so I just published a new version of my website where I wrote 100 percent of the backend code to [00:34:00] do that. And I expect that system because I build it exactly to what I want to need and because it will not update unless I spent like take a couple of days or a couple hours, a couple of days, a couple of weeks to make it work in a fundamentally different way.

That is stable and predictable in a sense that’s really important to me. And frankly, I enjoy working in it a heck of a lot more. And so that’s also like, does that make rational business sense? You could argue, maybe not. If I was like trying to, I could spend that capacity doing more advisory engagements or whatever, but there is a joy and a satisfaction.

I mean, Kit wouldn’t exist unless you, you were like, well, I’m sick of everything that exists right now. And this needs to change because I care. And so I think like those being introspective [00:35:00] around like, where do I really just need the results? And however it comes about, as long as it’s not too janky, that’s, that’s fine.

And then finding those areas where you’re like, this is not okay. Like I really need, like something needs to exist in order for. Need to have the experience I want or get the result that I want. Those are often the areas where you, you find the most valuable things that are kind of being ignored. And those are the product opportunities.

Those are the book opportunities. Those are the, the, the chances where you can exert your will on the world and make it better in some, some permanent way. Yeah. It’s some version of choosing

Nathan Barry: your battles and narrowing it down. As you think so much about systems and processes and tools for a one person business in particular.

I’m very curious how you think about AI and the tools coming up now, both like, I’m sure you’ve done a ton of research on it, but then also I’m just noticing so many things that I used to need to hire someone to [00:36:00] do that or ask someone a question about that. Now I’m like, Oh, I can actually build a pretty decent little system or use an AI tool to help that.

And so how are you thinking about that? Sure. I really

Josh Kaufman: like Kevin Kelly’s heuristic. Treat AI as a very, over eager, but not very experienced intern. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It’s the perfect analogy. So like, I, I only use a couple, I never use it for writing for output. Okay. Because for me, That’s what I do. Who are part of your production.

Yes. And, and both the ideas that go into a work as well as every word that I write for the work needs to be me in a way that I can verify. It’s like it’s all output of my brain. That’s the core of the value. And so I’m very strict about that. What is extremely helpful for is surfacing primary source material.

Yes. And [00:37:00] giving, like, the over eager intern high level executive summary of what is this, like, like, a general introduction, and then, um, tools that will point to the primary sources, whether that is internet discussion for, like, consumer behavior sensing sort of purposes. Or like a big part of my job is there’s a lot of really interesting things that are in academic research journals.

And the general audience for some of those papers is, is numbered in the like sub 100. And so being able to find them in the first place is important, but then being able to. Ask a question with a targeted tool that can ingest a huge amount of material and kind of point you towards the things that are more likely than not to be valuable.

That’s great. And so what I’ll usually do is have some, some queries around the topic that I’m [00:38:00] doing research on. And then I’ll find the primary source material and then, then that goes into my brain in a useful way. And then I just kind of go from there.

Nathan Barry: Yeah. I find that the re it’s really good at the research.

I love the over a year intern because hey, I will be so confidently dead wrong. Oh yes. Times. And just like, I’ve never been so gaslit by a computer. Where it’s just like, even when you’re like reference to this exact material and it’s Yeah. And it’s this, and I’m like, wait, I know this well enough to know that that’s not, that’s not correct.

And so you correct it. It’s like, oh, right. I reread it. And it’s actually not correct. But the one version that I got working really well is in my writing, I need to reference specific creators. Yes. You know, I have things that I know broadly to be true. And I need to illustrate that point with a wide range of creators.

And so at Kit, we’ve written. I think over a hundred creator stories now where [00:39:00] we’re profiling, like a creator’s journey and he’s on our team has written all these stories, publish them for free on the internet. And you know, I’d often ask her, like, okay, he said, who’s someone who stayed consistent for years and didn’t really have results.

And then only after like two years of consistency, then they had a breakthrough. Yes. And she was like, oh, well, it’s a list off three people. I’m like, he said, this is amazing. I, so. Cool. I probably should let you get back to writing. I shouldn’t be pestering you over Slack with these questions, you know, and so what I did is I took a giant document of all of the stories and it took a little like first I tried to add GPT and then clod.

Neither of them could ingest that much data and it was it was hard to do. But Google’s notebook LM. Was quite good at it. And then I could ask those questions to notebook LM and even load in the article that I was writing and be like, give additional context that I hate from this source document or who’s a, a, a source story that could work for this.

Give me three of them. Sure. And, uh, it’d be quite good at that. And [00:40:00] then unlike Claude and chat GPT notebook, LM will very confidently cited sources. And allow you to click into it and pull it up and be like, Oh yeah, let me read that section of the story. And that does actually illustrate this point. Yeah.

And so that’s worked really well. One of

Josh Kaufman: the building on that, one of the more interesting, valuable, archetypical examples of, of what’s possible now that I’ve heard. And I wish I remember the designer’s name, a fashion designer early on who has a career, who’s built up a body of work. And, um, was using some of the early image generation A.

I. S. In the most brilliant way, which is here’s my entire body of fashion design sketches and just that A. I. S. Do whatever they do. And then they would use it for rapid prototyping. Okay. So it’s give me 50 examples [00:41:00] of a certain type of dress in the way that I would design it. And so you can take, I can generate an enormous amount of potential iterations or options, And then it’s the designer’s job to look at that output and say, Oh, that’s a cool idea.

Right. I can do something with that. This is

Nathan Barry: all garbage, but

Josh Kaufman: that is And then you can either run it through a couple more times, or just take like a really cool thing that came as a result of that, and then the expert skill takes over, and then you build it out into a something. What is the taste

Nathan Barry: to know which of the 20 that it’s, like, spit out, which one is worth paying the attention to?

I think about that in writing. Send me a conversation with someone the other day where they’re talking about how with a I writing becomes much less important to the skill. And what they were saying is like, now I can take the copywriting greats and I can train an AI on it, give really good prompts and all of that.

And I just disagree with them because I [00:42:00] think that great writing requires taste. And so to be able to distinguish between the garbage writing that I will so happily give you. Yeah. Yeah. And the really great stuff, which with great prompts and all that you can get to as well, it just made me think that we’re finding writing as a skill is even more important now than ever.

Totally.

Josh Kaufman: Yeah. My heuristic here is not writing on the nonfiction side of things needs to be true, useful, and clear. And each of those things takes a certain amount of human judgment to get to, is this true? Is this useful? Is this clear? And I think one of the advantages of, of AIs in general is a lot of the, like, more transactional, lower value things that need to be done.

AIs are great for scheduling. Because, you know, the text that needs to be accompanied, the data format that the invite needs, like, that is a perfect use case for a computer because it’s something that needs to be done often, [00:43:00] even some of the like, you know, you record a conversation and a computer transcribes the whole thing and can give an abbreviated executive summary.

Pretty great. Yeah, it’s pretty great. And it would require hours and hours of an actual person’s time in order to get that result. So being able to get it. In a more straightforward way, in a more consistent way, in a faster way, all of that is really great. And so I think the big opportunity here is it’s not replacing the values of human attention.

It’s freeing up human attention from the lower value things so we can redirect it to the higher value ones. To me, that that’s both exciting and Taking it too far, having too high expectations on, on what that’s going to, to, to result in is like, no, it’s, it’s, it’s an efficiency thing, right? There’s a, a pair of concepts I talk about in the six systems section of personal MBA [00:44:00] called the, the paradox of automation and the irony of automation.

So the paradox of automation is that when you have a system that can produce a result, um, And you have a human overseeing that. It’s actually a really bad situation for humans because automated systems that just run get really, really boring, really, really fast. And so the like quality control, vigilance, all of that, like you might need a very skilled human looking at the output of the system, deciding whether or not it’s true.

But the more efficiently the system runs, like the less likely the human is to actually do that. And if you’re, if you have a system that’s multiplying a particular result and you don’t catch a subtle error, it’s just going to compound. Yeah. So like, this is kind of a deep cut at this point, but [00:45:00] one of the largest recalls in automotive manufacturing history was Toyota, because there was an automation production error in their braking system.

And they had to recall Millions of cars and replace a very expensive thing because like the production line took a tiny error and just like exploded it. So the irony of this situation is that the more efficient the system, the more skilled and on top of it, humans have to be in order to take full advantage of the benefits of the automation without running into the air.

So humans become a more important component in the system, not less.

Nathan Barry: So there’s a period of time on the internet where audio rights, like people realize the power of audio rights and all that. I feel like you and Tim Ferriss and a couple of other people realize the full power of it. Uh, I believe Tim purchased the [00:46:00] rights to, uh, Ryan Holiday’s book.

That’s right. Purchased the audio rights to it and published that himself and he did it with a handful of other books. Part of this was because of the deal that you could get. With audible at the time, which was the best deal in, in publishing. It doesn’t exist today anymore, but can you talk about how that royalty arrangement with audible played out and what it meant for the personal MBA?

Josh Kaufman: Yeah. So at the time in the publishing, like, so podcasts are kind of just getting started and at the time audio rights were kind of this, like backwater. It’s like books on tape for libraries was basically the market. And so. In the original deal, uh, publishing deal for Personal MBA, audio rights were included, but Penguin wasn’t really in a position to, to do it themselves, and so they went out searching for sublicensors, and you can kind of see why that didn’t go over well, right?

Like, who wants to publish a 500 [00:47:00] page business encyclopedia in 16 to 18 CDs for libraries, right? And so I just went back to the publisher and said, well, if, if the interest is not overwhelming, then let’s unbundle this. Like I would be happy to, to purchase the rights back and then I’ll do, I’ll do with the audio what I will.

And that ended up being really good timing. And so at the time I had no idea, zero idea what I was going to do with this. I’ll just do, do something. And meanwhile, two things happen. Amazon buys Audible and develops a program that’s very much like Audible’s ebook. self publishing system. So Kindle Direct Publishing, um, Audible Creation Exchange was the equivalent of that.

So it used to be you had to be a publisher to publish audiobooks on Audible. You had to have a back catalog of at least 10 titles. Like it was, it was pretty difficult to do. And Amazon comes in and [00:48:00] says, no, if you have a book, As long as your audio book format meets these specific requirements to make it a professional production that people will pay for, we’re happy to publish your book.

And so that happens around the same time that podcasts really start taking off in earnest as, as a unique format. And so all of a sudden people are listening to audio in a, like, Independently produced and published audio in general in a way that they hadn’t been traditionally and at the same time, you’re liberated from the need to produce warehouse ship CD sets.

It’s all electronic. And so all three of these things start coming together. And so I, uh, I ended up recording the, the audio book for personal MBA myself. It was one of the first business authors to self publish an audio title on purpose, not [00:49:00] with a major house. And yeah, at that point, because it was new, the, the royalty terms for that were extremely good in the same way that, um, that Kindle direct publishing versus working with, with a publisher to do an audio book, the term they’re extremely good.

And so it was a calculated bet that I think over and. Again, thinking of this as a product that’s going to, to exist for multiple decades, like, yeah, I think this is probably the way to go. This is also representative of the time period, but it was so like when you have a centralized bookseller and the bookseller does promotion that becomes a really big deal.

So they decided to promote personal MBA. Enormous amount of sales. It was, it was the number one nonfiction book on audible for many days straight. And it was, if memory serves the same [00:50:00] year that the hobbit came out as a movie. Okay. And so I have a screenshot that I get a lot of nerdy joy out of, of like it’s personal MBA first.

And then the hobbit, like, that’s pretty cool. You’re like, that’s great. Yes. My life is now complete. Yes. I feel really good about this particular

Nathan Barry: decision. Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah. As a true Lord of the Rings fan, I think I read Lord of the Rings cover to cover probably three or four times by the time I was 12 years old, I would get the same amount of nerdy joy out of, it’s a little things out of that.

What do you think the opportunities are in audio today in 2024? Okay. Um, a

Josh Kaufman: couple of different thoughts. One is, I’m definitely thinking about audio as a primary format for the book. Yeah. We have some friends who Like they sell more audio copies

Nathan Barry: than

Josh Kaufman: print to any

Nathan Barry: book combined.

Josh Kaufman: It’s very common for audio to be above 50 percent [00:51:00] of week one order volume on a, on a new top new, new title.

So thinking about, so most people think about the paper version of the book as the primary thing and everything else flows from there. And yeah, you’re, you’re sitting at a desk putting words on, on paper. That’s kind of how it works. But when I’m writing, I am also Narrating in my head what the audio version is going to look like.

So treating it in that sense, it’s a primary format. It’s going to come out in conjunction with the paperback and the e book. Whether it’s, whether it is published with a major publisher, or whether it’s professionally independently published. You need to have those three formats on day one and the audio needs to be treated seriously.

Yep. As we wrap things

Nathan Barry: up, one thing that I’m curious about is, if there’s any principles from the personal MBA that You’d most want like professional creators to dive into and [00:52:00] explore as they like level up in their career.

Josh Kaufman: Okay, so if you’re going to dive down any rabbit hole, Yeah, just That’s not directly related to like the production side of things, but it’s but it’s very fruitful.

Psychology is a gold mine for creators because understanding how the human mind works, what it pays attention to, um, how people think in general, is very fruitful. Is important for product development. It’s important for marketing. It’s important for sales. It’s important for working with yourself. It’s important for working for other people.

Like, it’s just psychology is in everything. And so, um, there’s some wonderful high level resources around some of these tendencies. Biases, like how, how people process information and there’s just like a handful of ideas that once you have them in your head, you can see them in operation all around you and then it becomes a real [00:53:00] opportunity to put them to work in a useful way.

So a classic in the field and a good representative example, um, influence by Robert Sheldaney is one of the Best psychology books of all time. That’s one of those recommended so many times. I haven’t read it yet. So now I need to actually. I’m I, I am actually mortally offended. Like it’s, it’s so good because, and also like, these are things about humans that are never going to change.

Right. And so when you know how people respond to something like scarcity, when you understand how humans process contrasts in, in things and how they think about it or how. Contrast can highlight or diminish the importance of how information is presented or how, um, uh, a sales pitch goes, um, if you know what authority is that you’ve talked about in extreme detail, like those things are baked in very [00:54:00] deeply into to the human brain and the human body.

And so, like, to the point where I set about writing a book about business. And only the first third of the book is about business. The whole second part of the book is about psychology and how to apply it because it affects everything. And so if you want to be a better creator, if you want to be a better marketer, if you want to be a better salesperson, you want to be a better manager, you want to be a better legally, just this is the core that’s going to unlock a whole lot of different things.

So time spent there is extremely well spent. That sounds

Nathan Barry: good. Well, uh, you’ve been an incredible friend and mentor to me in the last. I had, I think 12 years, I think we met at least 2012 is probably when we first met. And so it’s been a really fun conversation. I’m glad we got a chance to hang out more.

Where should people go to dive into your work?

Josh Kaufman: Yeah. The best place to start is joshkoffman. net and you’ll [00:55:00] find all of my books, all of my essays, all of my book notes, and in my email newsletter powered by kit. Is, um, I, I, I’m including random recommendations of things that bring me joy. In addition to all of the like cognitive work that I do and so yeah, for updates on, on future work, um, signing up for, for the email update is, is the best place to hear as soon as new fun thing, things launch.

Sounds good. Thanks for coming on.

Nathan Barry: Yeah.

Josh Kaufman: Thanks Nathan.

Nathan Barry: I’d love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also just who else you think we should have on the show. Thank you so much for listening.