In this episode of The Book More Show, I spoke with Charles Alexander, a business coach with 17 years of experience helping over 2,000 clients transition into entrepreneurship while maintaining their full-time jobs. Charles shared insights from his book "Start Now, Quit Later" and discussed strategies for managing this dual-career approach.
I learned about Charles's methodology for building credibility through authentic storytelling and personal experience rather than hard sales tactics. His approach resonated particularly with professionals facing midlife career transitions who want to explore entrepreneurship without immediately quitting their jobs.
We explored how every individual's unique perspective brings value to familiar topics, addressing common concerns like imposter syndrome. Charles explained how he transforms his IT and management background into relatable content that connects with his audience.
The conversation concluded with practical strategies for eliminating unnecessary tasks and focusing on essential business elements.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
I explore the concept of starting a business while maintaining a full-time job, drawing insights from Charles Alexander's book, "Start Now, Quit Later."
We discuss the importance of sharing personal experiences and stories to establish credibility and engage audiences, even on familiar topics.
Charles provides strategies for overcoming imposter syndrome by emphasizing the unique value of individual perspectives and knowledge.
The process of writing a book is examined, highlighting the use of past experiences and organized storytelling to create impactful content.
We emphasize the necessity of eliminating unnecessary tasks to achieve entrepreneurial freedom, with insights drawn from Charles's background in IT and management.
The episode delves into how writing a book can serve as a foundation for content creation and personal growth, despite its imperfections.
We explore the advantages of producing concise and focused books that are more adaptable to current work and future changes, leveraging the power of storytelling.
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TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Stuart: hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the book more show. It's Stuart Bell here, and today joined by Charles charles. How's it going, buddy?
Charles: how are you, my friend?
Stuart: good, thank you. Uh, we were just joking before we started recording that. This looks like a bit of a before and after show on the on the cloning of the of the podcast people. We couldn't decide who was before and who was after that's right it.
Charles: It's entirely up to any viewer that might be uh, get a chance to see this later if they. If they feel like I'm before or I'm after leave a note in the comments.
Stuart: Yeah, please um, I'm excited by this one because I think this is going to be a great example of the whole.
Purpose of trying to write a book is to start conversations, and we started a conversation through a linkedin connection and then we jumped on a call like we would do in the real world if we bumped into people in the streets and that call went great and then we thought, hey, we should do a podcast and and share this more with with the um, with everyone that's listening in. So I think the bridge between the active conversations that we're trying to use a book to engender and start and what actually led to this conversation, I think it's that real world example of all of these tools, all of these techniques, all of these methodologies that we're trying to follow up and really just get into conversation with another real human being, and that's what's happened here. So let's get everyone up to speed, share a little bit about your background and the, the organization and what you do for people, just for sure, people up to speed so I have been a one-on-one business coach for 17 years.
Charles: I do this as a full-time gig. I I have coached well over 2,000 people and during that time I even managed to start my own business, started it as a side hustle and grew it into a full-time business creating explainer videos for busy professionals the little 90-second animations you'll see on somebody's site that says meet Stuart Stuart's problem was blah, blah, blah, and then we solved it in a short period of time. So what I learned throughout that process was A I was my own worst business client. So you know a little tip outside any of this feel free to hire other people to help tell you what to do, even if you know what to do, because I could not listen to myself. So I had to go hire a business coach and then go get in a business coaching program to do the things I already knew I needed to do, and from that I realized wow, I was able to actually practice what I preached started a business while I was working a full-time job and managed to grow it to its own full-time thing. I never even moved beyond that. Now you know that that process not just helped me write a book but launched my own own podcast, start my own group coaching program, all within less than 40 hours a week. But more to your point, uh, the book I wrote was start now, quit later. How to start and grow a business without quitting your full-time job.
And I was able to not only use myself as an example, but, golly man, you could imagine the number of people I've met with over the years not just people that own businesses, but I mean a lot of people that want to start a business.
And the biggest issue I ran into throughout that entire period and I still do this people that want to hit that quote unquote midlife crisis mode, and you and I spoke were roughly the same age. Your midlife crisis doesn't mean you gotta be my age, but what you know you. You got to that point where you didn't want to walk into the cube one more time, you didn't want to log in, you don't want to put the cover on your tps reports, you just wanted to quit. You wanted to do whatever you know. You wanted to be the guy that was outside annoying you mowing the yard because it looked like that landscaper was having way more fun than you were in the meetings and I would have people that kept quitting their job to start a business they didn't know much about. So all of that to say the background for anybody watching listening. I used that experience to help me write a book. That book has helped me create a ton of conversation and introduced me to people I wouldn't talk to normally.
Stuart: Yeah, that's the thing, isn't it? It's that sharing experience and interrupting or interjecting in someone's day as they're going about and the thoughts they're having, to be able to bridge that thought in their head to an action that they can take the least of a conversation with you. The reason that books are so effective is because it very, very subtly starts that conversation. Without being sales, that you're giving something first, sharing some information, some knowledge, but orchestrating and leading that conversation towards whatever the next step is. So for you, the coaching business like I say, you've been doing this for many years now the experience of starting your own business and taking that to the point that it's successful, which resonates more with people that you're dealing with as clients. Do they resonate more with the fact that you've been through the process of a more traditional business, or are they looking for someone who's been coaching for many years and has that type of experience?
Charles: Man that is a great question. Years and has that type of experience? Man, that is a great question. So the pat answer I used to give before I started my own business is that people really want someone else who's had their sleeves rolled up. They've been there, done that and they can, you know, practice what they preach and teach it from the trenches and insert buzzword here.
But, man, I can tell you, after having launched my own business and done all of that, I'm surprised about how unimpressed people are Like when I tell them I've done this myself. They seem to smile and not alone. And I get you know, I think they really want my coaching experience, the fact that I've worked with so many other people and seen so many other different scenarios, the fact that I've done it myself is helpful. So and this would probably be advice way outside the realm of what I don't know, maybe by watching, listening, because I think a lot of people get imposter syndrome. They think, well, I haven't done it, or it shouldn't be me, or I can't give my voice. Man, I'm telling you people are more impressed with the fact that you can teach them something more than they are that, uh, that you've done it. Yeah, give you a couple of examples. That has changed my mind on this. I've got three kids ages oh God, dude, stuart, we had one turn 16 yesterday my oldest daughter. She's now driving Golly, anyways 16, 13, and soon to be 12.
When we go see the pediatrician every year, the pediatrician gives you advice. You know the kids should drink more milk, take more vitamins, you know whatever. And the fact that they tell me this based off all their other patients, is what makes me feel a little more at ease. Not necessarily their degree I assume they all have a degree and then when they tell me about their kids, that helps solidify it. But if they brought me in and just told me what they do with their kids and not mentioned any other patients, I'm like man, that's great, but what you do with your two kids is not really relevant to me yeah and then maybe another example, and this might be more stateside and I'm sure you could give a.
Let's say, you give your football examples versus my football examples. But football in the states, some of the best coaches in both the college and national football league level are not guys who are hall of famers. In fact, very rarely is that the case. Most of them played high school. They set the bench in college, but they were great teachers and a lot of the guys who were in the trenches and were great players make terrible coaches. Yeah, so all of that to say to answer your question is that, yeah, people are, you know that helps add to their credibility, so to speak.
Stuart: But, man, I think they're more reliant on the fact that I'm a coach and know how to teach them something I think there's the case the point that you made about people have imposter syndrome and we'll hear people saying I don't know what I would write about, or all of these books have been written before, which is even a funnier thing to say, because that's true, but the majority of the planet's been around for a long time and people have been doing things for a long time, so the majority of things have been done before.
Charles: Yeah, everything's been done. It's done Right, but you're allowed to do it.
Stuart: Right, yeah, that you're talking about it, and even that's less relevant than the point in time of the person who you're talking to. That person is talking to you. They're not cross-shopping all of the other people in the planet who have also done it. It's the conversation with you at this moment, and I think that ties in with the point that you were making. People make the decision that they want to work with you and then, as they're continuing down the path to do that work, they're happily staying on the path, unless there's anything that scares them away or knocks them off the path. So it's less that they're trying to positively confirm that.
Every step is like when you jump on a flight. You don't go through the diligence, check the safety logs, check the pilot's records, check where the flight attendants were out the night before. You're happy to go through each of the steps, through TSA, through check-in, through to the gate, onboarding, all of that is. You're happy to continue down. But if you saw something that scared you, if you saw the pilot drinking, if you saw the wing hanging off, then you might want to get off the plane the same doing business as you. They've made that decision that. Oh yeah, charles is the person I'll work with. This experience in the background is matching my expectations of what's being done. I want the answer to be yes, this is going to be the right solution. So it's only if something knocks them off that path. They get pushed away, not necessarily validating every step, so that this whole idea of I don't know what I would talk about or why would they believe me.
Charles: People are happy to believe you if you are believable that's correct and you said it very well that maybe that book has quote unquote been written, but it hadn't been written by you and it doesn't have your examples. And has quote unquote been written but it hadn't been written by you and it doesn't have your examples and it doesn't have your way of looking at it. That might unlock something in someone else's brain that you know. Maybe they're similar to you in your separate topic that I'm sure you've hit on. But even if you have doubts that, there's other people around you that believe in you and, better yet, there's also people around you that want to. I don't know they. They want to add a little more word out to it and it's your job not to listen to them. Even my dear old dad, who I, you know, thanked in the book and wrote the first chapter and last chapter about him. Well, I just don't know.
Why are you gonna write a book? Well, son, I think that book's already been written well and he, you know how many, how many copies you sell. Let's get this through your head. I'm not trying to be a number one bestselling author who makes a living by nothing but books, but I got all this information in my head. I want to put it into one single place and it'll have all the purpose in the world after that. In the worst case scenario, it's going to let me meet a Stuart Bell one day and that's going to let me be on a podcast and it's going to introduce me to other people. I know it's going to add a little ounce of credibility. It's going to give me opportunity to when you're creating content later, you've got a place to pull from.
But, most importantly, like what you tell people, it's a piece of the puzzle that gets you into real conversations that wouldn't normally do it otherwise. But I'm saying that to say whoever your dear old mom or dad is neighbor or dumb kid you went to grade school with makes a dumb Facebook comment oh, look at this one with a rail. Yeah, they're not writing the book. It's easy to stand on the sidelines and reinforce your self-esteem issues, but don't follow Stewart's advice. You don't have to be the expert. The book yeah, all the books have been written. All of them have been written. You're not writing the first one, uh, but you need to write it yeah, I think as well.
Stuart: It's interesting. I mean, you talk a lot these days, people talk a lot these days about ai and the future of marketing and being in front of people in all of the different channels where they are knowing your audience, knowing who the people are that you're talking to, understanding. The job of work of the book is to start a conversation and not to become a bestseller, so detaching yourself from all of these distractions. The fact that content over the next couple of years is going to exponentially increase in terms of quantity and it's going to broadly increase in terms of quantity and it's going to broadly increase in terms of quality as well, because the the oh, it's, it's, it's a hot mess now right, yeah yeah
there's a lot of noise, but the problem is that if you don't contribute um if in the nicest possible way, if you don't contribute to that noise and stake your claim in this noisy environment, you'll get swallowed up by everyone else who is making that claim. It only takes the thousand raven fans type approach of knowing that you're trying to talk with that small niche of people who would be happy to be your clients if they weren't getting pulled in a different direction. They're looking for these ways of of being in front of people as many times as possible so that when they're ready, you're the person that they're they're looking at. I think the book is the.
The book is a valuable tool in that arsenal because it does create that volume of content that as you say, you can pull from in multiple different ways and not get distracted by the bestseller or caring what other people write the content. When you were writing, when you were creating it, you mentioned that all of this knowledge you had from the experience you wanted to bring it together. How did you go about deciding what was in the book and what wasn't in the book? Was there a kind of uh? Did you go from a top-down approach of I've got all of this content, where does it fit? Or from a outline first and then pull the information that fits a very specific outline?
Charles: so for me, uh, I kept thinking about man, I've got to find a way to teach these people on how to write a book or not, how to write, how to how to start a business without you know, jumping ship and remind me here in a second I don't know, this is not proper podcast etiquette, but I will remember, but remind me here in a minute that even after you write that book, you're not stuck to the book. What I do now is related to the book but isn't specifically tied to the book. The book's still very helpful in what I do now, but in answering your question, the outline for a lot of your listeners, viewers, whatever, uh, odds are, whatever topic you have, this isn't the first iteration of it, like if you're getting ready to write this book. This isn't the first time you scribble something on paper, created a slide deck, had a conversation. You already have some steps in place, you already have a sense of order.
So for me, I have taught a workshop on how do you start a business. Now, what I didn't have in there is how to do it while you have a full-time job. But I already had the outline. So from there, I just wrote the book that I like to read and the book I like to read and this might make me sound like a dullard, but I like to read books with short chapters because that makes me feel really smart.
Stuart: It's a progress.
Charles: Yeah, and I like, and I like to hear a lot of stories and then have a lesson tied to it. Okay, so that's exactly how I approached it. I had these, basically three. You know segments. You know everything in my world is Mark, is you know marketing management and financial. So I thought, okay, well, is you know marketing management and financial? So I thought, okay, well, about how many? You know how many bullet points are in there each? And I figured it out. There's whatever five, six, seven.
And then I got to thinking about it and I thought, well, that'll, you know, if I do 1,000 words per, that'll end up being 50,000 words, because there's 50 bullet points with some stuff in between, and that's where people get over. Well, I can't write 50,000 words and I'm sure you've covered this over and over and over the light. Well, I've already got some of it. Uh, a lot of it is. Uh, you know, I've got. I have 50 stories and for anybody who doesn't think they have 50 stories, I'll challenge you immediately. And this is probably something Stuart's already covered. But I created a spreadsheet of literally all the different areas of my life. You know my childhood and I played basketball growing up in my family, my, my dad and my grandparents, and then I got married, and then I was in, or I was in college and I got married and you got all these different jobs. Either way, you come up with a category of 30 different areas of your life. Yeah, and as the stories come to you, if you'll keep the spreadsheet handy and I've always done that on my phone uh, I'll just make a little note in there because it's a good story. And then by the time I get done doing that, I've got 100, 150 stories. So at that point I've got my bullet points, I've got my stories.
I just pick the story for a lot of people, uh, they, you know, if they have a tough time typing it out, speak it out, go back and clean it up later. Uh, I didn't do that. I actually typed mine out and in hindsight I really wish I would have spoken it out. You know, like I was talking to Stuart and then went back and cleaned it up later. That would have been so much easier. And then you know just dropping your bullet points. You know, this is what I learned from that. And here, you know, even feel free at that point to throw in some case studies or some stats and then the all the reviews. Uh, start now, quit later. Go look it up on amazon all the reviews. I got all five star reviews so far, so nobody going there screw it up. Uh, but they all, you know, easy to read, learn so much great stories. Because that's how I decided to write it.
Stuart: So I just laid out that outline, dropped stories into each section and then finished it up with the do's and don'ts for it people do themselves such a disservice of equating a book with an academic project or a school project, of handing something in and it gets marked and red pen comes back. The reality of consumption particularly I mean even more so these days is that short piece of information that people can consume, get the idea and move on. I mean, the downside of that is how much of the news stories people just read the headlines and not the details. But the benefit of it is we can leverage that and, as you say, 50 bullet points, 50 chapters, 50 talking points.
Not only is that a comprehensive book that's useful and people can skim through and and digest the ones they're interested in and ignore the ones they don't, but the downstream information, the ability to bridge the content into something else or use it in a different way it's almost pre-formatted for that purpose it is a bunch of formulaically going through and structuring it in a way that makes it easy to to create the bite-sized way of creating it again to such a a straightforward way of creating something that turns out to be bigger, but the actual pieces are manageable and easy to see when you've got a full-time job and a business and I don't want anybody thinking, as I said, 50 000 words, that may be daunting to some people and it may not be necessary.
Charles: A lot of you, a lot of like, the next book I write might be 10 or 20 000. It might just be big enough to have a spine. I might be more aligned with what I'm doing now. What I'm doing now then used to evolve or change. So I don't need to necessarily write a 50 000 word book, because I may want to edit the thing from top to bottom, but maybe a 10 000 word book and you know you can speak it into existence what you just said about it big enough to have a spine.
Stuart: I mean. That, I think, is a sweet spot.
12 000 or so is is about 100 pages good enough to get spine text on there looks like a real book.
And the other benefit in terms of the uh, the scorecard book that we refer to a lot. One of the the chapters in there is this idea of beneficial constraints and the idea that constraints are actually freeing rather than a problem. And writing something that is more than 20 000 words, I mean you're really getting into traditional book territory and psychologically then you're just comparing yourself with traditional books and other people comparing it with traditional books, as opposed to a conversation starting book. So the breadth and scope of it just gets out of hand and unless it's your full-time job, hey, we've got other things that we could be doing. Having something that is more focused on a niche, on a problem, that talks to one individual, one group of individuals, rather than trying to be everything to everyone, so much more effective when the purpose is to start a conversation and not to sell a book for a 20 list price that's right you're uh, we're going oh, sorry, I was going to say so, your approach.
You talked about the three areas that you relate the majority things back to those three areas. Do they? Are they then represented in the coaching that you do with people? Does that kind of structure in the book relate to the structure of the coaching?
Charles: yeah, so, uh, what I do now is I have a my own uh community, uh coaching group, uh time freedom community. Teach people how to work on their business instead of in their business. They can spend more time with family, friends and do the things they love. A lot of the people in my group are still they're, you know, mostly are solopreneurs, folks with or four or five employees, and this is a full-time job and they're spending too much time at work or I say at work on their in their business when they know they could be. They could do it in a more streamlined way, and they could. I love what you say. They they need more constraints that will free them up. But even some of the people are in there. They have full-time jobs and a side hustle and they're trying to figure out the best way to approach all of this.
So, when I look at anything, that structure is always to me, is marketing, management, financial. It's been that way forever. I must have picked that up when I was getting my MBA and I don't even know if that's the right way to look at it. That's just how I view the lens. Going back to what you said, those constraints are amazing because I've had so many other people say, well, there's really 12. You know 12 spokes on the way like I don't want 12. This community, we could do three. So anytime I'm looking at helping people do more by doing less, you know to to get that time freedom.
Whether they own a business, whether they are doing a side hustle that's trying to grow into a business, it's always in those three realms and a lot of them is marketing. They're trying to get to the next level and I'm not necessarily a marketing genius, but the concept of what I am trying to teach people, both in this book and in my community what's the biggest bang for your buck, what's the thing that you're the best at and I don't want this term, but it's not my favorite zone of genius what's your sweet spot that you should be doing that nobody else should do? And then, what do you do with the rest? How do you delegate, automate or, better yet, how do you eliminate it? And then, when we move from that, we're into management.
All right, well, who else is in charge of like eight, or, better yet, eliminate? And then, financially, same concept are you looking at a pnl? Are you tracking your subscriptions? Do you have money set aside for the future. Everything goes into those three buckets for me, always, and that's really what's helped me, you know. Not just use this book to teach people but, as you, you know, use that concept to create group coaching programs for folks that don't want to check email at 9 pm anymore right, yeah, and it's a.
Stuart: It's a a disease that really spreads pretty easily, that idea of limitless connections, limitless availability for people. It's very difficult to switch off and I can only imagine the challenge. I made the switch from a full-time career to a business as a, as a hard transition. I mean 15 years or so ago now, but it was. There wasn't really much side hustle side of things, but I do remember for like the two years or so before switching wasn't so much that it was a side hustle but it was a side interest. So all of the time outside of the job was focused on marketing related things. Um, not quite the same pressure of that then being a side hustle, but it was the time sink. So trying to manage both is definitely a real headache.
And then carrying over those all-time management practices of just thinking that more is more into the full-time business it's a difficult habit to break yeah so the people who you work with in the community, are they, uh, are there any similarities or ideal clients or people who you work with best and get the best out of the system?
Charles: so so far I really seemed like and I wanted you know this is something I would advise anybody. I love having a good niche. I know it's supposed to be pronounced niche, but I'm born here in the south of the US so we say things incorrectly. I love having a good niche, but don't rush into the niche if you don't know who you're targeting yet. So I'm trying to ease my way into it, but so far it looks like I've gotten several people you know five or fewer employees, and a few are solopreneurs. All of them are service-based and, uh, they seem to be in their own coaching space and they're trying to. Some of them are creating their own communities and some of them are in the in the digital marketing space. You know they're fractional cmos or digital marketing folks, but they kind of fall into those categories and that doesn't mean I, you know we couldn't take somebody outside of that. But the five and under service-based employees seem to be a great fit because the folks that I'm really working with are close to their ideal revenue, or at their ideal revenue, like they're making the money or they're close to making the money.
But the purpose of starting, you know, we we get way into why, almost to a fault, people love a good one. What's your, why? Look, most people's why's that I've worked with. They want to help other people. That's. That's almost universal, it seems like. And then, secondarily, they want some freedom. Come and go, do what I want, what I want, how I want now every other why? You'll hear in these big elaborate they, they fit under those two categories. I don't care what they say. It's either to help people or to have some freedom. Uh, so I, I'm working with people that are genuinely out trying to help other people. They're not just trying to sell another commodity or a widget that nobody really needs. They, they're trying to change people's lives.
And then, more importantly, they started this side thing that became a full-time thing because they wanted more time with their family.
They wanted to pick and choose not their boss, not their company policy, not their coworkers pick and choose when they worked, what they worked on, who they worked with, how much money they could or wanted to make.
And in doing that, a lot of people unfortunately created a job and they had a bunch of mini-bosses and they didn't realize that they were acquiescing to client demands left and right, even though the clients weren't really demanding stuff. They just felt that way, or they were allowing other vendor relationships or people they contracted with or projects they started because they just somebody said hey, you ought to, you ought to go launch a podcast or you ought to go, uh, you know, post content seven times a day or do whatever. Uh, that didn't really fit with what they were doing, but now they feel trapped in it, and what I spend a lot of time on with I've rambled on helping those folks in my niche is to figure out how do we get out of that. How do we identify the best priorities? What are some actionable things, real tools that you can use, real people that you can outsource to real practices that let you get super focused and eliminate the crap you shouldn't be doing.
Stuart: Yeah, it is such a challenge, isn't it? I love that term of people have created another job rather than a business, this idea that we need to do something, this is something we should do, this and then, once you've been doing this for a period of time, there's no kind of check and balance or revalidation that this is the right this to be doing.
Charles: We've just been doing it Right.
Stuart: Yeah, is the right this to be doing right. So it just we, just we just been doing it right. Yeah, busy work which doesn't necessarily need to be done. I love the idea of elimination before automation but yeah, eliminations.
Charles: My look, anybody listening when you talk about delegation and automation, elimination's gotta be the first thing. We had a call yesterday, a coaching call, and you know going in and you know going into the time frame we holiday period trying to help them figure out what their goals are. Everybody's got goals for next year, but I don't want 15 goals, you want one goal. Don't create a dozen goals, eliminate that, create one. Now, what's the one thing you can do every day that makes hitting that goal inevitable? Great, we're going to do one new thing every day. We've got to eliminate other things. Well, who else do it? Nobody, nobody, we're not gonna, we're not gonna delegate it, it's. There's some things you're doing that we can just quit doing it.
Stuart: Replace it with a new thing that's gonna make that 20 to 25 goal uh, hit, whether you, no matter what yeah, I don't know if it translates into the business, the sort of small business world, quite so directly, but I'm reminded of previous jobs, so my previous corporate background was in it and kind of like middle management type player. Um, so you'd be dealing with a lot of other people's careers and there's this fixation with everything that they do in the way that they do. It is urgent and important and critical to the success of the whole organization. I haven't thought about this for, as I say, 15 years or so, so I can't think how directly it translates to the solopreneur side of things, but I think it must do because it's a psychological hang up. So this idea that the way that you do it and the importance of the organization is critical and if you didn't do it in this particular way, everything would fall apart but then as soon as that person decided that they needed to leave to a different job, or someone else in the organization left.
The amount of stuff that was done, that was critical, that was inconsequential, that didn't interrupt the operations, that didn't make a difference. It really speaks to this idea that it's 90% of it is just a psychological game of whatever part of your brain is telling you that this is how it needs to be done or this is why it's so critical. But separating that from the actual needle needle moving difference, um, your, your mind can mess with you hey, she, she, she just left.
Charles: Uh, she, she quit today. So who's going to take over stuff? Let's well, let's, let's circle back next week. Let's have another meeting, let's talk about it then. And then you figure out, like she's been gone six weeks, ain't nobody been doing her job and ain't a thing in this place changed. I mean, it's, I don't know. You're you coming from it? Sure have you? Have you seen the movie office space?
Stuart: yeah, I purposely, oh my god.
Charles: I purposely re-watched it the other day after the wife and kids were all gone and I I, you know, man, I can quote almost every single bit of it. It is almost 20 plus years old and it's still relevant to the days it was back then. But that's the gist of it, is the majority of what we're doing in a full-time, quote-unquote job. You're doing about two hours of real work per week. The rest of it is just pushing around papers and then, unfortunately, we carry that over into our, into our own businesses.
We keep some terrible habits and one of which, uh, outside of writing a book, well, you know, could be related to writing a book we keep our anybody's got an electronic calendar.
We all live and die by it, but we keep them these 15 minute blocks, which is nuts, and you're taking basically every to-do you can ever pop in your head and you're filling the gaps, and you're just filling the gaps all week long, with no intention, with no purpose of what I'm trying to accomplish. It's just a full calendar. So I must be busy, and busy must be good, and it's usually not the case. So, uh, relate this back to writing a book. You don't write a book in 15 minute chunks and I know people have said, well, look, 10 minutes here, five minutes there, maybe I need to write a book in like an hour hour and a half chunks so I can get into the flow of it. But yeah, we're a lot of that stuff we we've done in the past. We just drag it over and it's just uh, it didn't have to be there yeah, and that's the real benefit.
Stuart: You were talking before about needing to get external help in even your own business. When it's it's the business of what you do, like getting an external coach, when you're a coach people would think, well, why? But that psychological break of being able to um, I'm sure you see on the coaching calls we see it on our coaching calls it's. It's much easier for people to be there and give valuable comments on other people's businesses because you don't bring all of the baggage of the execution to it. You're not good idea but or I would do that, but which it's easy to do for your own stuff because you're too close to it. So definitely that separation of being able to look at someone else's work, that's the benefit of community as much as it is getting the direct feedback for your own stuff.
That's correct right it's to, to the bigger possibility, and then it's just a case of, okay, connecting it to yourself, which I mean there's a separate challenge there, but at least, being in that community, you're really seeing that peer group of of other problems. That sparks some things for yourself I, I love it.
Charles: I've been doing one-on-one coaching forever and I still like doing one-on-one coaching. But I can tell you the difference between one-on-one and a group is a world apart. And me doing that on my own, I've discovered me being in other groups, just like what you just said. I can kind of see here what everybody else is going through and I can get different angles and I can.
Stuart: They'll ask questions that I should have even thought to ask, but it's, it's, yeah, it's a, it's a wonderful thing yeah, I really like the idea of the, the way that you structured the book together into the bite-sized pieces you were talking about this idea of bridging the topics into a modern day context. I mean the book's only. It's not that old, so it's not like it was written years and years ago, but still, the context immediately changes from the day that you write it.
Charles: We just wrote the book.
Stuart: This morning I was talking to the authors and say, hey, this is great. The next step is that all of these things are going to change and as soon as you look at it, you're going to see something you want to change. On the point of view of the book itself, just keep a running list going and once you get that to a reasonable size, then make some changes. Otherwise you'll drive yourself mad. But also try and resist the temptation to make changes and instead bridge into what happens today. So your approach, the the 50 or so steps bullets that you've got in there. You touched on it briefly, this opportunity to bridge into current conversations. So, the book being the anchor point to refer back to, do you find that it is then easier to create other content because you've got this anchor point of of information? So rather than having to write something from scratch, oh yeah, just talk about the difference and relate it to today, as opposed to reinventing the wheel and you're 100 right as soon as you finish it.
Charles: It's like anybody has ever had a house built. They they're taking you on a tour like this is what we did with the kitchen, now the bathroom. So here's what I wish we'd have done with the bathroom. And the bathroom's beautiful, but they wish they had a different countertop. Okay, whatever, uh, but same with the book. As soon as I got done, there was two, three things immediately. I didn't like this and the bullet points weren't right there, and I should have said it this way, and I think I told that story twice in the book and the editor didn't catch it. Whatever, uh, but in still being able to use it, you know this book on starting while you have a full-time job, but then now I'm coaching people on how to you know work on the business that I'm in the business you know all that stuff's very relatable and I very often pull from that book.
you know, I'm still creating new content, still writing some new stuff, I have new thoughts, but it's many times over when I'm trying to figure out how to relay a point to somebody. Man, I've already written this, I've already told this story and if it's an online communication, I swear I've copied and pasted that thing directly into an email for coaching or to a DM to get somebody's attention or for a post, and you might not even have to change much. But if you have to make a couple of quick changes, that that's way quicker than having to start from scratch. So, yeah, this is an anchor point that I use for a lot of different aspects of my coaching practice now, not just in coaching but for marketing and then it you know it even helps me spark additional new things I want to say or do yeah, that leverage ability of it, the fact that you've the worst case scenario that we see is sometimes you kind of work with people through the process and then they you kind of see it in their face they get to the finish line.
Stuart: Even with our process, where we try and make it as easy as possible to create the thing, you still see some people get to the finish line. It's kind of like, oh, thank god for that, I can now move on to the next thing, when finishing the book itself is really just the starting point now.
That's the beginning to use it, but at least, once it's done, you have got the opportunity to use it in many, many ways and it's uh, it's an, it's a, it's an asset that is much bigger than if those same words were just a collection of blog posts or collection of emails. The fact that it's brought together in this particular way as a book has an outsized value perception out there in the world. So such a great um, a great thing to put the time and effort into doing, because it's got this long, long life downstream actually, just talk about long, long lives of of books. Um, I just put my wife a christmas present. I'm assuming that she's not going to listen to this, at least not before christmas. Um, so, and it was a book that she had as a child, um, so like for in the 1970s.
Like a kid's book, but this was like a physical copy of that original book, which is now coming on to 50 years old. I mean, I think we were talking, uh, when we had that initial conversation, I was describing one of the other clients, um lee, from one of the earlier podcasts. He said he had some printed copies and then just put contact stickers on the back and we're leaving him in doctor's surgery. He's like this real gonzo marketing approach you've just print some stickers off because people don't throw them away.
Charles: So it's also got an outsized life yeah, so many reasons.
Stuart: Um, where is? Where's the best place for people to find out more about what you do? I think the coaching community that you've got and this sweet spot of small business solopreneurs looking to make that time-based transition away from a job to a business um, that's the sweet spot of a lot of people who are listening here. So where's a good place for people to find out more and follow along?
Charles: easiest places, go to my website, your charlesalexandercom. Better yet, if you'll scroll to the bottom, in the footer, I've got a nice little toolkit that's very, very curated. So, footer, I've got a nice little tool kit that's very, very curated, so to speak. I've got a ton of materials and I only dropped the best stuff in there. One of them's all the different ai tools that you can use, and one of them's got a little cheat sheet to help you immediately save two hours a week. And there's a third thing that I suddenly, suddenly can't think of, but I know that it's great because I put it in there, but that's, that's the best place I'm on the linkedin. Uh, charles alexander, I'll be the guy that looks like stewart, but I'll be me just with a different accent yeah, but that but that's.
Uh, I don't want to give you 50 different things. You know, obviously there's a book and there's a podcast, blah blah.
Stuart: Go to your charles alexandercom, you'll find everything you need perfect and I'll link directly to those both from the podcast player and from the website so people can just kind of scroll down and click the button and go straight through. But I really wanted to make sure that people have got that opportunity to follow along, because I think not only is it a great use case for a book and see what you've done in order to start that conversation, so from people looking behind the scenes and thinking about doing it themselves, great example.
But also just the framework that you've got to help people make this transition and get back some of those hours, because it's like. It's like housework. I'm looking at my office here and yeah, you're christmas.
I really need to make some effort in here. But it's those little bits of of cruft that build up, and build up, and build up and all of a sudden you look around and think, holy cow, like 10 hours here that I really don't need to do, I can eliminate. So, yeah, highly recommend people follow through those links and check out what you do sounds good sir I appreciate it real good conversation again.
Just to link back to how we started. I mean, this was a linkedin connection. We didn't know each other before. Opportunity to start that conversation in a useful way, like human beings, had a great chat and then that bridged into the podcast so books can do the same thing. Just that opportunity to start the conversation. Forget that it's a book as such and think about it as a conversation starter and I think is the the jumping off point. Very good, fantastic. Well, have a great holiday. Everyone listening have a great holiday too. I think this will release, probably just in the new year, so I actually hope you had a great holiday, but uh, the the internet time going on there. But uh, yeah, thanks again for your time, charles. I'll make sure that there's links through to your stuff in the notes below, so people, just one click through and everyone. Thanks for listening. We'll see you in the next one.