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How to Craft Your Story and Make it Stand Out with Charlie Hoehn

May 26, 2021 // by michaeld // Podcast // No Comments

Charlie Hoehn is a top keynote speaker, author, and Head of Video at Scribe Media. He has been a TEDx speaker four times and was a keynote speaker at the Pentagon, U.S. military bases, Microsoft, and international universities. Charlie is also the Author of several self-published books, including Play It Away: A Workaholic’s Cure for Anxiety and Recession Proof Graduate.

At Scribe Media, Charlie works with top authors and entrepreneurs to produce their success stories. He has shot, edited, and published over 500 videos to Scribe’s Youtube channel.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Charlie Hoehn describes his work with blockbuster writer David Goggins.
Being relentlessly honest when writing your story and capturing the cultural zeitgeist.
Charlie shares some top marketing tips for your book: utilize your own unique take.
How do you get readers to talk about your book?
Balancing emotionally-driven writing and analytics-driven writing.
Charlie talks about the subject of his book, Play It Away: A Workaholic’s Cure for Anxiety.
The boldness of experimentation.
The lessons Charlie has learned in book publishing and content creation.
Every great story falls into the “hero’s journey” story structure.
Using social media to become the hero of your own life.
Owning your journey and becoming a thought leader.

In this episode…

What does it take to become a blockbuster writer? How do you make your story stand out, and how do you get people to talk about it?

Charlie Hoehn knows what it takes to create a great story. He has worked with top authors in successfully producing their stories and has self-published his own books, Play It Away and Recession Proof Graduate. And according to Charlie, the best writers are relentlessly honest with themselves and their readers.

In this episode of The Michael Simmons Show, host Michael Simmons sits down with Charlie Hoehn, author and Head of Video at Scribe Media. Charlie shares his own experience of writing, publishing, and helping produce stories for top authors and entrepreneurs. From story structure and marketing to reader engagement, Charlie’s expert tips can help you become a thought leader and successfully share your story. Stay tuned.

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by my company, Seminal.

We help you create blockbuster content that rises above the noise, changes the world, and builds your business.

To learn about creating blockbuster content, read my article: Blockbuster: The #1 Mental Model For Writers Who Want To Create High-Quality, Viral Content

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:02

Welcome to The Michael Simmons Show where we help you create blockbuster content that changes the world and builds your business. We dive deep into the habits and hacks of today’s top thought leaders. Now, here’s the show.

Michael Simmons 0:14

Today, I have Charlie Hoehn. If you’re interested in writing a book, then this podcast is a must-listen. He has been the right hand person that has helped people like Tim Ferriss, Gary Vee, and Tucker Max, each of who who have sold millions of copies. He’s helped them produce their books. And he’s also produced two of his own very successful books. And he currently is a senior executive at Scribe, and Scribe has helped over 800 thought leaders and coaches and entrepreneurs produce books. So he knows a thing or two about what it takes to create a blockbuster book. And that’s exactly what I want to talk with him about today. In our podcast, we went deep on the three principles that he’s really narrowed down as the patterns that you need, if you want to write a best selling blockbuster book that impacts millions of people and changes their lives. So without further ado, I give you Charlie. All right, Charlie, welcome to the podcast.

Charlie Hoehn 1:26

Thanks for having me, Michael. Congratulations on having a podcast.

Michael Simmons 1:31

Thank you. Thank you. I really looking forward to this just I admire who you are as a person. And specifically within thought leadership, you’ve worked with many of the top writers and book writers of our time, people like Tim Ferriss, Tucker, Max, Gary Vee, and others. And also through scribe, were your head of video there. And it’s a book production company. You’ve Scribe has published over 800 bucks. And so I was just curious, what do you see as what it takes to be a blockbuster writer, not just to be a published author, but to be someone, one of those rare individuals who really breaks through the noise and changes the conversation?

Charlie Hoehn 2:18

I love this question, because I’ve done a few pieces on this because I’ve wanted to dissect and figure out that exact answer. So there’s not a clear cut, very obvious thing. It’s more along the lines of do they tend to meet these certain criteria. So an example would be David Goggins, can’t hurt me, who wrote a memoir, he was offered to traditionally publish, he didn’t like the deal for my understanding, and decided to self publish, and everybody told him Don’t go the self publishing route. But he sold millions of copies. And he was the number two best selling memoir behind Michelle Obama in the first year. So that was when Yeah, so when I looked at his particular journey, as a successful mega blockbuster author, I noticed some things about him. Three, three, in particular, that I think applies to pretty much any author. Number one is to become the book, to be the embodiment of the book, I think it was Naval Ravikant, the founder of Angelist, to had this quote that was like, in order to write a great book, you must first become the book. And I think a lot of authors have this tendency, it’s a human tendency. I don’t, I don’t criticize but we have this tendency to pretend basically, that we’re somebody that we’re not right, one day, you see this on Instagram, every now and then

Michael Simmons 4:04

we’re like, every now and then it’s that’s normal month.

Charlie Hoehn 4:08

Yeah. It’s like, all of a sudden, this guy is posting his own quotes of himself on how to like, change your life. And it’s like, dude, you know, it wasn’t that long ago, where you were binge drinking and, you know, crying in a corner at a party or whatever, you know. So, and I think we’re all guilty of this on some level, right? We want to elevate our status to something else. And so we try on the, this posturing of what we believe a thought leader might look like with David Goggins case, he quite literally is his story can’t hurt me. He started off as a 300 pound overweight exterminator who hated his job wasn’t progress.

Michael Simmons 4:57

To clarify,

Charlie Hoehn 4:57

yeah, bug exterminator and And he didn’t like who he was. And then he saw a commercial for the navy seals, he started training himself going on 100 mile runs, even though he was, you know, overweight, it was a very slow progression for him with a lot of failures along the way of him becoming a navy seal, and then becoming an ultra endurance athlete, and then literally earning the title of the toughest man alive. Right. And so he was the book before he decided to write the book. So I think you become the person you need to become first before you say, I’m gonna go write a book and tell other people how to live their lives, like no one likes, the advice on how to live their life, unless it’s coming from a person who’s like, Look, I had the exact problem that you had, I get it. I totally appreciate it. And so I know exactly what you’re going through. Here’s what I did. here’s, here’s my recipe.

Michael Simmons 6:08

So one question for you there is, you know, you mentioned David Goggins or even Tim Ferriss, they’re being themselves but they’re also their stories are very extreme, you know, you know, Tim found a way to do, you know, stop something, you’re doing 80 to 100 hours a week, and then do for our work, we travel, the country then became like, the salsa champion. And so it can feel I feel this, like, I feel like I’ve done interesting things, but then I’m like, well, not that interesting. Like, it’s, and then it’s like, Well, okay, what, what can I do with become the book, like, don’t have to be more interesting, but then that’s not authentic. So So I think,

Charlie Hoehn 6:47

yeah, I think it has to be really deeply, intrinsically motivated. So I don’t think you need to go off and become this wildly exceptional, remarkable person, I think you just need to solve a need or a problem that you genuinely have, and then share your recipe. That’s really it doesn’t have to be far beyond that. I’ll give you a good example. So I’m, I’m a videographer, a filmmaker. And I’ve taken a number of courses, watched countless YouTube videos on how to set up shots and compose shots. And there was the I, I’ve paid $1,000 for an online course just to learn stuff along these lines. And over and over, they wouldn’t do that good of a job giving a clear recipe. And I was never really impressed with the outcomes even when I was following their directions. So I was always frustrated. And then very recently stumbled upon a course by a guy named Kevin Shen. He, it’s a course called Dream Studio, I believe it’s 300 bucks. I have no affiliation with it. By the way. I was blown away. This guy really knows his stuff on designing a beautiful studio. And he walks you through it step by step by step. And it’s like, that’s not this wildly interesting thing. Right? It’s it. To me, it’s a very specific problem and pain point that I’ve struggled with for years, and have continually search for good answers. And I finally stumbled across the best one I’ve seen without, you know, working and going to film school or becoming somebody in Hollywood, cinematographers. So I think it needs to stem from a specific need that you have, and that a lot of other people have, if we’re talking about blockbusters, right, do millions of people have this need? And if not millions of people, okay, let’s say 10,000 habit, which is a more realistic starting point, can you give them the best possible recipe to solve that problem?

Michael Simmons 9:08

So I like that, is that number two? Are you feel like that’s part of

Charlie Hoehn 9:11

No, it’s just it’s part of the equation though. So number two, is really to tell the whole truth, especially when it comes to memoirs is only you know, I wrote my book, Play It Away. Several years ago, I published it. And it was a pretty raw account of this debilitating period of anxiety that I went through for about two years. My mental health was shot. It was totally taxed. And I originally published that as a blog post that it went viral. And so I did So to write a book with that,

Michael Simmons 10:01

how viral did it go?

Charlie Hoehn 10:03

It was it went on WordPress WordPress homepage like WordPress featured it. And then that boosted its SEO up to the number one search result when you googled the anxiety cure anywhere in the world for that was for about four years. And so at one point, I think I can’t remember to be honest, it was a while it got knocked off a while ago, but it was it was doing significant traffic. And so I wrote the book and the one comment or review, I can’t remember who wrote it. But the the one review that really stuck stuck with me was I wish the author had told the whole truth. I wish she’d gone deeper. I’m just in a haunted me because it’s, it’s true. I went about 95% as deep as I could, in revealing the truth. But I think that the book by all all objective measures, did really well, it was a homerun. But I think what could have taken it really to the next level, is if I told the whole truth, and if you read can’t hurt me by David Goggins man, he tells the whole truth, unquestionably. And it’s very clear, he did not hold back. And I think, if you want to write something, you can do stuff that has mass appeal, for sure. And never reveal really anything about yourself. I mean, Malcolm Gladwell, you brought up earlier, I think he’s a good example. What do you know about Malcolm Gladwell, his personal life? effectively? Nothing,

Michael Simmons 11:57

right? Yeah, nothing.

Charlie Hoehn 11:58

Yeah. But he’s a professional writer who knows how to make these things really interesting and compelling. I think if you’re if you’re writing a memoir, anything with some personal element to it, you really have to be relentlessly honest. And that includes the most painful and difficult shortcomings that you faced. The ugliness that you face. If you look at any memoir, that does exceptionally well, there is a lot of ugliness in there that was deeply painful and terrifying for the author to reveal. And they did it anyway. There’s no guarantee, right? That if you share the whole truth, then your books gonna blow up or your writing is going to blow up. But it certainly gives you a really good chance when when you put your heart on the table, so to speak. Yeah.

Michael Simmons 12:56

How do you think about that with him? Because I feel like his book, The Four Hour Workweek, he kind of took a very authoritative tone. And he wasn’t telling the whole truth at that time. And over time, though, he has really opened up. But the book did really well, without that. So you’re kind of saying that this is a key thing that can really help. But yeah, that’s always there. If it’s not, especially if it’s not a memoir,

Charlie Hoehn 13:20

right? Yeah, so I’m focusing particularly on Goggins, but I’ll widen the lens a bit for authors like Tim. So with Tim, I think there was a cultural Zeitgeist that he really hit really well. So if you look at some of the top movies at the time, office, space, American Beauty, Fight Club, they all have the same theme. The hero hates their stupid corporate job, and finds ways to leave it and rebel.

Michael Simmons 13:52

Right. Or Eat Pray Love?

Charlie Hoehn 13:55

Eat Pray Love? Yes. So we, there was this collective hundreds of millions of people in the world hating their corporate job and feeling spiritually stifled and wondering how they could escape the rat race. And that was the first phrase in the subtitle of that book. The Four Hour Workweek is escape the rat race. Join the new rich, and, man, I can’t remember. In any case, I think Tim really hit the crest of the wave. As as that was coming out. And another book that did that, fairly recently, I believe was Mark Manson’s book right The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F. And it was like, Man, you have suddenly a billion plus people who feel just kind of exhausted by social media and constantly caring about these micro social transactions happening. hundreds of times a day, it was exhausting. And he came in with a book with a really great title and made it cool to kind of showcase like, Hey, I’m going to work on opting out of that he basically combined, it’s like Buddhists, for millennials and Gen Z. Yeah, who are exhausted by social media. So, um, but you know, that’s, that’s one of many, many components. And by the way, to anybody who’s listening, I wrote a post called How to Sell a Million Copies of Your Nonfiction Book on charliehoehn.com And it’s a really thorough article on like, these are kind of the broad categories, I see that really popular writing tends to fall into in the more of these things that they check off the box. Whether it’s, you know, Marie Kondo has the magic, Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up that kind of book, the more they check off that box, the better the book tends to do.

Michael Simmons 16:08

And so one, and also just so people know, HOEHN. Charlie HOEHN. One question I have for you. What you said about capturing this is really interesting, because you see in the startup world, Bill Gross, the founder of Idealab, one of the largest incubators did this whole presentation, where they went back and looked at all their successful companies. And they looked at it as the founder team, is it you know, who they went to, for venture capital? Is that the idea. And ultimately, they found that the key thing was timing. And there’s also their famous quote about there’s nothing stopping a great idea whose time has come something like that. So, but it’s also really hard to do that. Remember, Elizabeth Gilbert from Eat Pray Love. After that came out? She was talking about how much anxiety she felt that she could never make the next book bigger than the other one, it’s gonna be hard for her to capture that zeitgeist. Is there anything? Any way to make it non random in your mind to really capture the Zeitgeist at the crest of the wave?

Charlie Hoehn 17:12

Gosh, I, I’m not entirely sure. And I do wish I was more into data and stats and like monitoring those types of things. So I could see the trends coming more clearly, there are times when, like, I mean, I’ve, I’ve invested in Tesla for a couple of years. But it was because it was like, I see a clear singularity happening where all these technology technologies are getting cheaper and cheaper, and they’re synergizing. And so it’s like, to me that that made sense. But in terms of like writing and books and stuff, I think there’s there’s only really, I’m not the type of writer who can go out and like, hey, there’s this trend that seems to be building, maybe I’ll give that a shot. It’s like, I tend to do best when I’m a geek about something that a lot of people don’t know about yet. And I can evangelize it. So an example is like, psycho psychoactive therapy using plant medicine or psychedelics in order to to heal from trauma. I’m a huge advocate of that. I learned about it when I was speaking for the military or speaking at military bases and learning about Wow, this is by far the most effective This is the penicillin for trauma in the soul. Wow. And it was such a fringe thing. And it’s still like, I remember speaking to a group about it, and they were like, wait, so like, isn’t that the party drug? And I was like, oh, man, people. People really have no idea what’s

Michael Simmons 18:58

interesting, sometimes when you jump cultures, but it’s weird when something so obvious, and everyone knows about it, and then no one’s even heard of it.

Charlie Hoehn 19:05

Right? Yeah. And you feel like an alien in the room. And yeah, its distribution has not reached the masses. So I and I know, Tim, Tim is a great example of somebody who’s like, you know, he knows that stuff is coming. So he’s aggressively positioning himself to be one of the people who’s who can have some influence in that area. Yeah, yeah.

Michael Simmons 19:35

I remember with Cal Newport, you know, followed his journey since he was in college. And he was writing the book and talking about the book and then when he switched to social media, and even when he started it, him knowing that it’s not the biggest thing, but it’s one of those topics that’s gonna become bigger and bigger over time. And it’s amazing to actually watch that happen to the idea is gonna become more and more relevant over time. Do you invest in it?

Charlie Hoehn 19:57

Yeah, yeah. And I think you just you really Do you have to care? Right? It’s like, if social media for example, let’s say that plateaus, I have no idea what the stats are in the rate of growth anymore, it might have plateaued, I have no idea. But let’s say that plateaus and starts to decline even because it’s being replaced by something superior new. People will still be using it and caring about it. If you come out with something good and unique. That is somewhat novel and useful. You still have a really good shot. So I don’t I don’t necessarily think it’s, it is useful to always try to time the site, guys. I think it’s much easier to like, The Four Hour Chef, that’s a book that Tim did that did quite well, how long have cookbooks been going? Right? Yeah, he just brought his own unique novel take. And that’s, that’s another really important marketing element I always try to think about is like, the way our brains are structured are, as soon as we know, we think we know the answer to something we tap out. It’s like, it’s not interesting. We need to have some sort of novelty or uniqueness or discrepancy that we need to figure out why there’s Yeah, why is that the case? Which is why you see a lot of headlines with how I did such and such without doing nothing that everybody assumes you need to do more, and it’s

Michael Simmons 21:35

not what you think that’s right, right.

Charlie Hoehn 21:37

Yeah. So yeah, the, the novelty factor is equally important if you can’t get timing, right. So I did want to add one more, one more thing, or complete the train of thought. The third big thing I saw with David Goggins book is that he made readers into champions of his message of his message. So what I mean by that is, they applied part of his recipe, or his full recipe to their life, and they got clear, big results that they couldn’t help but want to talk about, right. So

Michael Simmons 22:23

I like that,

Charlie Hoehn 22:24

like it with physical fitness people. So I saw this firsthand working with Tim on The Four Hour Body, we would see before after pictures of people after they did his diet, and they would lose a ton of weight, or they would get off of glucose, mad surgery, you know, they had these big results with people in David’s book, they became like Greek gods, you know, when they applied some of the stuff that he was telling them to do, or, or they would simply want to, you know, post on Instagram or something like, Look, I read this awesome book, and I’m now doing this exercise that the toughest man in the world says that he does. And so it Wim Hof is a great example of this. I love his stuff. Because I mean, you you want to tell people you’re you know, you take cold showers or you go in cold bodies of water, you do this weird breathing exercise or whatever. So if it can be something that you’re proud to show others, and you want to talk about with others, it can really, really spread quickly. And so if making readers champions of your message, if they can have some clear transformation that they can’t help but talk about with others, your your writing is going to do great.

Michael Simmons 23:50

Yeah, it’s so interesting. You know, one thing I’m listening from two perspectives, you’re one of the one is when I think about my own writing, I think about optimizing for the kid in the candy store effect. That what are the things I’m so excited about? Like I can’t help but not do it? Like I’m like waking up early, just out of excitement to work on it versus willpower. And then there’s a part of me that’s very analytical where I’m just like, okay, your big results What can I like what is the biggest thing I could do based off that instead I like reverse engineering. And you know, that can come across taken too far as inauthentic because you’re like doing things because that’s what’s gonna get the biggest back and how do you think about balancing those two things the internal and the external?

Charlie Hoehn 24:35

You know, I I’m a firm believer and in Category A but I am like you Michael, where I find myself falling into the trap of like, let’s dive down the analytics and like let’s tweak this to optimize and it’s like, that stuff, I think, can work if you are an engineering type mind but I’m more emotionally driven. And I have found over and over and over and over, when I write from that place of deep emotion, whether it’s deep excitement, deep pain, deep love, my writing blows up. And so what a great example of this, I had no intention of this blowing up. And I because I had written about the topic for two and a half years before it blew up. The topic I was writing about was, how does play affect mental health? In what happens when you deprive mammals of play, and their emotional health goes off a cliff. And what happens when you reintroduce play to mammals, whether it’s children or adults, mental health gets great like recovers very quickly. So I’d written about that from all these different angles and explored it. And not much have taken off except my own personal story and how it helped. And so nothing really hit and then the Vegas shooting happened, which at the time, and I still think it might be the deadliest shooting in the United States, it was really shocking. And horrifying, this dude in in the Mandalay Bay hotel, just shooting into a crowd of people. And I remember at the time watching, you know, people talk about it on YouTube, and I watched this video of Jimmy Kimmel talking about it. And he got really emotional, he started crying when he was talking about it. And he said, Why do people do this? I guess we’ll never know. And it was at that moment, I got mad that he said that, because I’d studied why people did mass shootings. Interesting. Dr. Stuart Brown studied Charles Whitman, the guy who did the Texas tower shooting. And he started studying serial killers after that. And he found consistently, that they had a childhood that was chronically deprived and suppressed of play, like true play. And when that happens to men, not always, obviously, but it has a severe impact, it’s socially handicaps them. And they tend to act out in aggressive ways, either toward themselves or toward others. And so this is a gross oversimplification of all the theories. So don’t just take it at face value of what I’m saying. But I, I sat down that night, and I wrote an impassioned article about why men do this. And I started that article with, I’ll never forget. Columbine, when I was a kid. That was 10 minutes away from where I grew up. And my mom knew the teachers that died and the Columbine shooting, and and she was friends with him and all this stuff. And then I segwayed into Jimmy Kimmel’s, what he said, and then I wrote, but you know, from my perspective, like, this is why I believe based on the research I’ve done, why men do these things, why they the the, it’s not always the case. But these are some foundational things. And that article was read by 3 million people in one week, and on your personal blog, on medium. And it totally shocked me. Because, again, I’ve been writing about it for years. But it was, number one. Suddenly, millions of people were paying attention to this topic and searching for answers, and were fed up with this problem. Number two, I had a completely unique novel take, I wasn’t blaming guns, I wasn’t blaming politicians or media, I was saying, we fundamentally neglect our boys in our men’s emotional health throughout their lives and expect them to not act out. And that is a systemic problem, a systemic failure in our society. And

that was my argument. And I actually got emailed by a lot of people, but one in particular was the daughter of the teacher who died in Columbine. Wow, who was a violence therapist. And she said, thank you so much for writing this. This is exactly on point. And so it was this really incredible experience. But to to your original point, I came at it from kid in the candy store is the wrong analogy for that situation. But I came at it from a place of deep, deep emotion. And human beings are deep emotional creatures. We’re not rational, we’re driven by emotion first.

Michael Simmons 30:17

Wow. Fascinating on multiple levels, I feel like it’s a really interesting time of work. It’s just in the last 20 years that anybody could publish whatever they’re thinking publicly, and that those thoughts could then spread to 3 million people, it’s just even hard to stadiums and stadiums full of people and then resonate and hit parts of their brain as well. It’s just a weird, weird thing.

Charlie Hoehn 30:43

It was in not to cut you off, but I’ll never forget, like, there. I was seeing Facebook videos of people who’d printed off the article, and we’re reading it on video for 20. You know, it’s like a 15 minute read. And it was just crazy. You know? Like, that doesn’t happen. Right. But it was, it was such an emotionally charged, huge event. That, that it, it was it was new, it was a new take on something that people had been talking about for a long time.

Michael Simmons 31:25

There are certain, you know, I always think that authenticity is an interesting idea here, because I personally feel like it’s a confusing word, because we’re never fully sharing everything. Even when you share the full story. It’s like we shared everything would just be boring, because it’s like, you’re just seeing, like, what’s my background and like, the most of it’s not interesting. So there’s always an active selection here. And I guess one thing is, when I’m picking books to read, I always look for rare and valuable books. And part of me is looking for books that other people aren’t reading, that I’m also interested in, of course, because if I’m reading just the latest bestsellers, that I’m gonna have the same ideas as everyone else. And also I there’s a certain element of intrinsic, I feel it’s good to have a unique perspective that is valuable to others. Like, I feel like I can add more value. And I think what strikes me too, is that there’s an ally just doing that for books. But there’s also doing that with experiences as well, is almost giving oneself permission to do. So it’s you talked about, you know, fulfilling a problem that you’re facing, you know, or dealing with it but giving yourself permission to be really bold and experimental, I feel like is a combination of it’s like it’s solving the problem, but it’s in a bold and experimental way where most people will just put up with a problem or do small changes. Is there while still being authentic? Do you feel like there’s something else there about the boldness, of experimentation? And

Charlie Hoehn 33:00

yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s either got to be a, I, when I look back on, like, arriving at the solution of play really saved my mental health more than anything else. It wasn’t from a place of I’m having so I’m enjoying and being bold in my experimentation, it was like, I am desperate to solve this problem, or I think I might die. And I have found with with other authors, Yeah, totally. They can be driven by like excitement, kid in the candy store passion? Absolutely. I have found for the things that I really stick with. It is it’s driving me nuts. That this that the solutions, the conventional wisdom is garbage. And it’s not leading me to the result. And so think about like, you know, Tim wrote The Four Hour Body, that book has kidney candy store energy all over it. You know, he’s a geek about body stuff. And he loves that topic. For me. My first book that I wrote was Recession Proof Graduate, and I wrote it because the conventional job hunting wisdom was terrible, and it didn’t work in a recession. Like, send out your resume to a bunch of people do cover letters, like he nailed these questions in an interview. Guess what? None of it worked. I tried it for months. And so when I started offering free work and doing free work for entrepreneurs and startups and companies that I actually wanted to work for, and got a dream job after dream job after dream, like multiple dream jobs in a row. Like I have not seen this in a book anywhere. I did this out of desperation and frustration. That all of the Conventional wisdom was terrible. And I had to start from scratch out of desperation.

Michael Simmons 35:06

Yeah. So

Charlie Hoehn 35:08

I only stuck with that problem because I had my back against the wall. And, you know, it’s got to be a problem that you care deeply about. And if you don’t, you’ll abandon it.

Michael Simmons 35:23

Have you abandoned books yourself? Where you started? You thought there was a problem? And then you part of the way through just like this not big enough? Or I’m not, I don’t really care about the solution here.

Charlie Hoehn 35:33

Yeah. So I have totally done that. I love that question. It’s, it’s like it. It’s interesting with books, because you think that, oh, I can, I can just write that book a few years from now. It’s actually not true. So I tried to write free work, you know, this bigger, more comprehensive book? Well, after I’d enter the job market, several years later, and I was like, this is going to be my definitive, like traditional publishing route, the book that’s going to be, you know, 250 pages. It was a mess. Like, structurally, I did not do a good job on that book. So it fell apart. But I also, you know, now that I’m saying it out loud, I kind of view that. And this bigger, I also did something similar with a play type of book, where I was like, I could write something that could reach an even broader audience that doesn’t necessarily have as much my story but more this compilation of here’s how play affects mental health and all these areas. In both of those books, I’d abandoned because it was like, no longer deeply cared about it. It was more just like, this academic exercise more than anything else in again, that can absolutely work for some people. And I would say, what made it academic for you? What

Michael Simmons 37:12

made you What made you lose something that you had at the beginning of project?

Charlie Hoehn 37:16

It was it was more like a school paper within it was this like thing rooted in purpose and pain, you know, solving pain? And so it’s, it’s kind of like, I’ve never thought about it until you ask that question, Michael. But it’s, it’s indicative of growth for, for me personally, where, if I’m over a topic, it’s time to move on, right? Something else, right. And so I tried to this was the trap I fell into with Play It Away, Play It Away, has sold over 20,000 copies, which by again, every objective marker that that is a great success for a book. Unfortunately, I run in a crowd of New York Times bestselling authors who sold millions of books. And so in my mind, I was like, man, Did I do something wrong here? Did I not do enough? And so I was always kind of like, well, maybe if I do this one thing, then it’ll, you know, it can take off even more. Or maybe I could pursue a documentary, maybe I could pursue corporate speaking. You know, all this stuff, you name it, I considered it, supplements, blah, blah, blah. And just over and over, it’s just kept fizzling out. And I believe it was because I grown out of it. You know, I put the book out there. That was enough. And instead, I kept trying to like, be double down on that, because it’s like, well, it works. Why won’t like maybe I’ll just get the flywheel going on that, but it never happened. And so I think it’s easier to simply say, Where am I at today? What journey Am I on? Now? What journey have I just completed, that I could share with millions of others who maybe struggled with what I just went through? So two examples, personal examples. I could sit down and write. Let’s say dream jobs on demand or free work or whatever. I don’t know if I would even want the fruits of that labor right now. But I could write a book on your first two years as a dad, which I just went through, right? What it’s like to find out, your wife is pregnant when you sure as shit weren’t ready. And how do you adjust how do you how do you make that transition work when when you’re scared and uncertain and doubting yourself, and then another book could definitely be my therapy journey where I started where I am today. And just as as showing people like, Hey, you know, not all hope is lost if you have felt stuck for several years in certain areas of your life. Hmm,

Michael Simmons 40:28

yeah, it’s, it’s fascinating. I think a lot about the what things mean historically and in the past, and then in the future. And, you know, I think about, let’s say, startups, that’s a field where a lot of people raise money, you commit to something you might be in this for five or 10 years. And this shows me that thought leadership is similar in some ways, because you can take something from your head. And if it really hits at no cost, it could scale across the globe and have a big impact. But it’s also different because it’s so much more personal. And so, you know, I feel like the startup mentality would be like, hey, you’ve got a foothold here. You have to stay focused. And if you’re drifting from topic to topic, you can’t have that in a team. You know, you can’t just go like, oh, the CEO wants to do this thing now. So it’s, it’s an interesting different mindset of

Charlie Hoehn 41:20

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it certainly the the upsides can be greater obviously, when you’re working in a team or on a tech startup or whatever, but I the personal growth that you can have from thought leadership, if you take it if you if you approach it thoughtfully, and and the right way, can be really tremendous. And priceless, even in so. Yeah, it’s, it’s a good point in. Yeah, I’m grateful for this conversation already, Michael, because I’ve never articulated a really piece together, how important it is to as a thought leader to really stay in the present with your own life and not be chasing past successes and trying to turn them into more. But really just where are you today? Who can you be a hero to where you were six months ago or a year ago. And just by sharing your story, it’s not that complicated, and eliminate the posturing and just share it. And the more I’ve done that, and just been honest, it surprises me how much people really appreciate that. It strikes me too,

Michael Simmons 42:55

that there’s an awareness. That is like, there’s one part living the life, let’s say, and having experiences. And then there’s another part, noticing, as you’re having those experiences and what your feelings are, you might great happiness, great sadness, and how those connect together. In a story. There’s a, there’s a level of meta awareness is there. How do you think about that part of it? For somebody for you, it’s natural, though, to be aware of things and your emotions, probably comes naturally, and then piece it together in a story. But for someone who’s never done that, it might feel like, Well, where do I even start? My life’s not interesting, or what does that mean?

Charlie Hoehn 43:37

Yeah, great question. So I say in the way I kind of interpret this question, Michael, is, how do I tell my story? Right? How do I do it if I don’t necessarily know what’s interesting and what’s not. And to me, it’s, there’s, there’s a couple markers. The first one I think that I lean on all the time is story structure. If you know story structure, that’s like 80% of the battle, right? And story structure is, if you’re the hero, if you’re the thought leader, it’s once upon a time, the hero was this, and every day the hero did this. So it’s once upon a time in every day, until one day this thing happened, this massive shift, this change happened that that caused the hero to uproot or to change how they viewed the world. And because of that, and because of that, and because of that, you do that a few times, until finally, some resolution is reached. And ever since that day, the new world has emerged, right? And so every great story falls in That story structure every hero’s journey, right? Harry Potter whether.

Michael Simmons 45:05

The way you phrase it. I’ve never heard it phrased that way.

Charlie Hoehn 45:07

Yeah, it’s Pixar’s formula. And so Pixar is, you know, arguably the best storytellers on the planet, right. And so every story falls into that. And I guarantee you, you’re listening to this, your story falls into that. And you were sent on some journey at some point where you face trials, you face crises, and you had to overcome these challenges. And until finally, you know, you slayed the dragon. And ever since that day, your life has been so and so. And so I think that really is 80% of the battle is establishing who the character is, what your everyday looks like, and ideally giving yourself some vulnerable trait, right. So I did, I did a video earlier this year on our Scribe CEO named JeVon McCormick, at the beginning of the video, I knew this video was gonna go viral. Because at the beginning of the video, the first line is shows it shows him kind of taking notes. And the first line is, this man was homeless when he was a student. The next shot, it shows him handing a book to somebody, he just signed his own book. And so his high school teacher came to see him speak. And at the beginning of that video, I establish the this, this entrepreneur grew up determined to be successful. But when he was a kid, he faced racism, he faced horrible abuse, and he was even homeless, he things got so bad, He even went to juvenile three times. And so I’m establishing hard that like, even though this guy is the hero of the story, he is human he is he’s been through pain, and he is vulnerable. And, you know, I show him as a kid. And so if you can do that with yourself, there’s there was a when I when I was writing Play It Away, this, this reader told me, you have to switch the first two chapters, and he was totally right, because if I kept chapter two is chapter one, I would have come across as this arrogant jerk in chapter two was the way it flowed originally, Michael was me talking about how I was in this, working in these high profile jobs in Silicon Valley. And I was, you know, burning, burning the midnight candle, and, or midnight oil, and, and just working and being successful in these launches. But boy, I was working really hard. And then chapter two, was me describing being in my own internal hell, in really going crazy and like really vividly, like, I’ll never forget, laying on the floor thinking I was dying, and having to go check myself into the hospital and how humiliating and terrifying that was at the same time and, and he was like, you got to flip those chapters gotta start with the vulnerability, it’s got to start with you being relatable, and human. And that’s the most important part of storytelling with characters is they have to be relatable, they have to, you have to identify with them in some way. The quicker you can identify with a character, the the more you’re going to, to root for them and like them, which is why if you study the first episode of Breaking Bad, Walter White, such a great like build up of this character who, you know, he’s this high school teacher who gets made fun of he, his wife gives him a hard time because he bought like, printer ink on the wrong credit card. He’s having another baby, and he can’t afford anything. He works at a car wash in his off hours and and then he gets diagnosed with cancer. And the doctor tells him it’s terminal and he has maybe six months to live. And so like, right, we can all relate and identify with something there.

Where, oh, and he has he has a kid with a handicap and you know he, there’s just all these things that you can latch on to and feel sympathy and relate to him and you’re like, I’m rooting for him. I want to see where he goes. And we all have those things. And that’s what I was talking about when I said tell the Truth, man, because we all have darkness, we all have our shadow. We all have these painful moments that we wish we could hide. And no one would ever know it about us. But that’s the stuff that makes people fall in love with, you know, if you can, if you can share those things, man, like you people are on board and they will go at it, they will they will cry when when they read your stuff, they will deeply move them. Yeah, to make them care about you.

Michael Simmons 50:35

Yeah, I was thinking, as you’re talking that that really resonated, and thinking about social media, that social media is this new thing. And it’s these standards, like, it’s like, a newsfeed and infinite scroll, you can friend and follow different things. And, you know, there’s the social dilemma came out pretty recently, and talking about the consequences of that. And I like to think about, okay, well, what does it look like, at its best case scenario. And I feel like a lot of the things you talked about hit that, that I feel like it’s inclusive, or everyone has a story and feels like they have a story to share, where they’re the hero, and they can really help someone who’s earlier in one area of their life. And by sharing it, they somehow get more whole, by learning something about themselves or feeling less shame, and they help someone else. And I feel like social media doesn’t have to be the way it is. And that is one potential future. That doesn’t really resonate. I completely agree,

Charlie Hoehn 51:34

like social media should be not should. But it could be this place where people are sharing their stories of overcoming, because everyone’s story is a damn tragedy. If you really ask anybody on the street, like, what have you been through over the last two years, you will not be able to come across one person who you’re like, Oh, my God, are you okay? Right, like we’ve all experienced so much tragedy and difficulty. And so it’s like, the toxic effects of social media, I think is when it’s, it’s people using it as a platform to say, I’m angry. I don’t know what to do with this anger. And so I’m going to complain about politicians, or I’m scared and paranoid. And so I’m going to be posting about conspiracy theories, because this is where my energy is. And I need other people to agree with it. And it’s like, be the hero of your life. Man. That’s, that’s what you can do.

Michael Simmons 52:36

Right? Yeah, that you can and then share how you did it without exactly like, share your it’s,

Charlie Hoehn 52:43

it’s one thing to get on Facebook and say, I’ve been struggling with depression, this last month, things have been really hard. My wife divorced me, my dog died, my blah, blah, blah, you know, and it’s just sob story. And it’s another thing to say, you know, what 2020 started off really challenging for me, I went through these things. But I made a decision, I’ll never forget this one day where I’ve looked in the mirror, and I made a decision. And I said, I have to become the person I want to become, I have to get my life back on track. And so this is what I did. I went through this and this and this. And when I joined CrossFit, or when I called up my best friend once a week, and we talked for an hour when it whatever you did share it, and what was the effect, all of a sudden, I could feel my depression, lifting me up. And all of a sudden, my, my ex wife, and I have this repaired relationship where things are different. But we’re great friends again, and blah, blah, blah. And until finally, I am the person I am today, where I, you know, I feel like I have control again. And I know that the cloud of depression is gone. And ever since I made that decision, it’s changed my life. Now, I share this with you, because I know, I could have used this when I was going through my hardships. And I hope that this helps you to it’s not that hard to be a thought leader. Right? Like you can do that in in anybody can do that anybody can be the hero of their story and share that.

Michael Simmons 54:23

And I love that wording of decision. What was the decision to become the person you could be? or How did you say to become the person you were meant to be? Or sure it could be? Yeah,

Charlie Hoehn 54:35

yeah, it could be an outside catalyst. It could be you know, I met this person or I hit rock bottom or it can be anything. It just has to be. I’ll never forget the moment when my life changed. And what was that moment tell us what changed your path for me to in play in a way that I’ll never forget the day that I’ve read the book. To play by Dr. Stuart Brown, I set my pivotal change was finding a book that changed how I thought about the topic of mental health. That was it. And so it doesn’t have to be this grandiose intro you mentioned earlier, which is something that a lot of authors really struggle with. I am worried my story won’t be good enough. I’m worried it’s not gonna be interesting enough. What is interesting about me picking a book off the shelf and reading it. That’s not crazy, right. It’s not super compelling. But it was the thing that catalyzed the change. And that’s all that matters.

Michael Simmons 55:42

Yeah, and I think what you’re saying, around the worried about I’m not being good enough their story, I feel that I know, and I want to share more personal stories. And, you know, I think it’s, that could be also like a, why there’s so much posturing online and things like that fundamentally comes down to you feel like your story’s not good enough, as it is

Charlie Hoehn 56:02

this 100%. And everybody’s story is good enough. The, the issue is, are you working to be the hero? Or are you sitting still in your story? Because I don’t want to read about a person who sits still. Yeah, I want to read about somebody who’s transforming. And this, I

Michael Simmons 56:26

think this is what I’m gonna take away from this interview is, I think a lot of times you think about writing a book, you That, to me, that’s almost the end of a process. The real part of it that let’s say a book takes one year, it’s all about the four years or however long before that, where you were being the hero in your own life to live up to your potential. And then the book is just the cataloguing of that, that process.

Charlie Hoehn 56:49

Yeah, yeah. And it’s, it is the cookbook for here’s how I became a hero. And here’s how you can be the hero of your journey, because I know you’re dealing with the same problems, right? So the test the litmus test of your book of is it any good? is, does your recipe work? When people apply it? Do they get remarkable results that they can’t help but share? If they do, you’ve got a great book, or a great article, or a great video or whatever? Yeah. Beautiful.

Michael Simmons 57:20

Thank you so much, Charlie. I’ll give the last give you the microphone. If you want to say any last things. If not, you know, for people who want to learn more, read your work, your books, your articles, your you follow you on social media, where should they go?

Charlie Hoehn 57:36

Yeah, charliehoehn.com is the best place to go. If this was helpful. Definitely ping me a message I always like to hear when something put out into the world makes a ripple in somebody’s life. And yeah, if you’re a thought leader, an emerging thought leader, and you’re good, hit me up, let’s talk.

Michael Simmons 57:58

Great. And we should they hit you up about Scribe or video, things or just

Charlie Hoehn 58:02

yeah. So I’m, I’m in a kind of a unique box. But I do anything thought leaders try to do I have done many, many, many times. So whether it’s making books, writing articles, although you’re you’re the go to guy for articles that would trust you over me. videos, courses, speaking TEDx talks, et cetera, et cetera. You name it, I’ve done it. And so I love working with not not everybody, but I’d love working with emerging thought leaders who have compelling stories and are just scared to tell them and so I can help them really step into who they are, and own it and and really become it in I help them see it. So I’ll give a quick example. And then we can we can wrap up if you’d like. Several years ago, I started working with a guy named Azul Terronez. Azul was a former teacher. And he’d written a couple, you know, course books for students and teachers. And he wasn’t really sure what he wanted to do next. And so we talked for I was running a little group coaching group at the time. We talked for a few months. And he shared this thing offhandedly that he didn’t think was that remarkable, which was over his entire teaching career. He had polled surveyed over 20,000 students on one question, which was what makes a good teacher great. And that’s he was like, Yeah, I was like, so what are you doing with that information? He was like, Oh, you know, I just did it for myself. I thought it was super interesting. I was like, Yeah, man. Why don’t you share that with people because there are a lot of teachers and students who care about those answers, and so I helped him realise you have a good TEDx talk right there, and help them, set it up, create the speech and deliver it. And last I checked, it’s got 2 million views in so it came this thing for him where he was like, wow, I have, I have this, this really cool part of me of my story that I can share with others and really make a deep impact on teachers and education around the world, just by sharing what I was a geek about. And I think a lot of people have that. They just have a tough time. We, I struggle with this. You can’t read the label when you’re the jar. Exactly. And so it’s, I help people read their label, and then own it. Beautiful.

Michael Simmons 1:00:58

I’m gonna follow up with you for myself on that as well. Thank you so much, Charlie. You’re awesome. And we’ll have to do a round two sometime.

Charlie Hoehn 1:01:05

Thank you, Michael. Likewise, brother.

Outro 1:01:09

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Michael speaking at the National Chamber Foundation Annual Meeting to senior executives and entrepreneurs

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