210 How to Write a Book (Part 1)

"This is for the people that believe that their life is worth living and that they're ready to achieve greatness." - Lewis Howes If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/210. Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 210 and you're entering the solo round.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to the episode today, episode number 210. Feel free to share this out with your friends. LewisHowes.com/210. And I'm going to share with you a story today. This is the story about how my book came about, The School of Greatness book, which is coming out in three months. And I want to share with you everything that's happened in between the time that I had the idea for the book, when that happened, to actually building up a brand that was big enough to get a book agent. How I got the book agent, from there, writing the proposal, the marketing plan, pitching to publishers,

• 1:12Lewis Howes?

  to getting the deal, and now the process of marketing what the goal is to be a New York Times bestselling book. And the story starts back in late 2007. I just got done playing professional football. My, my career was over, but I thought I was going to come back. I was in a cast for six months, sleeping on my sister's couch. A lot of you have heard that story. But what some of you don't know is that during Christmas time, 2007, again, going into 2008, so almost the new year, about five and a half, about seven and a half years ago from now, we did Secret Santa. So for those that don't celebrate Christmas, Secret Santa, you essentially get,

• 1:56Lewis Howes?

  you choose a family member out of a hat and whoever you choose, you give them a gift. And you don't know who's giving you a gift. So I probably gave one of my sisters a gift. I forget what it was. But that year I got a gift that my brother gave me and he's a pretty incredible guy. But he is, you know, never really detailed, let's say with gift giving. So he will never wrap anything. And so he gave me this book and it wasn't even a bag. Everyone's unwrapping gifts. He just, he just like pulls a book out of a backpack and says, hey, bro. I got you this book. Um, and I was like, oh, cool. Thanks. And it was called The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris.

• 2:39Lewis Howes?

  And for those that don't know me as well, I was pretty dyslexic growing up. It was really hard for me to read. It was really hard for me to write and spell correctly. And still I, I have challenges spelling correctly. Uh, it's a good thing that there's autocorrect, uh, and spell check because it helps me a lot, um, to correct myself. So he gave me this book called The Four Hour Work Week and before then I'd probably read five to 10 books, cover to cover. That I was actually interested in, that I wasn't forced to read and complete for homework or something. And I read this book in about three days. And I remember it was from again, Christmas till about New Year's Eve. I read it before New Year's Eve was up.

• 3:22Lewis Howes?

  And I remember it gave me one thing that was so powerful. It gave me possibility. It gave me possibility, gave me ideas and it showed me a different way. Because at this time I was pretty stuck in my way of thinking that, hey, I was going to go back and play football. This is the only skill that I have. This is the only thing I can do. I don't want to go get a job right now. I, I don't want to give up on my dream. I want to have this lifestyle. And fortunately slash unfortunately, after I got my cast off, after six months later. I got my cast off and it took another year to really recover, to get full strength back in my arm. So I missed a whole nother season playing football.

• 4:05Lewis Howes?

  It was pretty, it was going to be pretty challenging for me to come back and really try to achieve my dream of making the NFL and getting to the next level. It was just a lot harder at this point.

• 4:16Lewis Howes?

  But this book had me started researching online and it showed me possibilities. And I didn't do everything that Tim wrote about in the Four Hour Work Week. And I highly recommend you guys checking it out if you haven't read it yet. I didn't do everything he wrote about. I didn't, you know, even believe on all the things that he said. But there were so many things that he did say that opened me up to possibilities and created this new way of thinking that, hey, maybe if these are the people who created these results, then maybe I could create something in my own way, in my own design.

• 4:45Lewis Howes?

  And so I remember after closing this book, I told myself, one day I'm going to write a book that's as powerful as the Four Hour Work Week and inspires millions of people all around the world that gives them a possibility, that opens them up to possibilities and creates a new thought process in their mind where they can be inspired and then have an action plan to take action and get results in their life, whatever it is that we want to be. And I remember thinking to myself, I'm not there yet. I'm broken on my sister's couch. I don't have any money. I'm sleeping on a couch, living off credit cards. I'm definitely not where I want to be to write this book. But someday I'm going to build myself up to become that person

• 5:27Lewis Howes?

  that can serve other people in a powerful way with possibilities. And I said this to myself. And I remember also saying, whoever the agent is for this book did an incredible job. I'm going to figure out who this agent is and I'm going to become his best friend. And he's going to become my agent. I'm going to make him become my agent and we're going to do this book together. And I'm going to become a New York Times bestselling author. And that's my plan. And a few years later, I actually became pretty good friends with Tim Ferriss. I was starting to do, I was starting to implement a lot of things that Tim said. But I was doing a lot of my own research, following other mentors online and starting to build my own little business, my little side income, my brand online.

• 6:10Lewis Howes?

  I was going to events, I was hustling, I was creating content, putting out products and speaking and doing all these other things. And so I started to make a little money over the years. I started to build a brand, I started to build a following. I was doing the right things to build an audience and to build an online business. And I started to get traction, I started to pick it up. And Tim and I connected and we've, we've been friends since. But I also started semi-stalking Tim's agent. I found out who he was. I connected with him on Facebook, started following and liking and commenting on all his photos and posts, just trying to get in with him through that way of connecting and reaching out and saying, I love what you're up to. I think I sent him one email and just said, hey,

• 6:54Lewis Howes?

  my name's Lewis. I'd love to introduce myself and get on the phone one day to just hear about how you became such a successful agent and what it would take for me to become an author and all these things. And he probably blew me off the first time, but eventually he gave me a phone call for about 10 to 15 minutes, probably the next year. And we had connected originally on this phone call. And I said, listen, I would love for you to be my agent one day. And he, he said, you know, right now I'm full. I've got 35 authors that I work with at a time and the roster is full right now. So I think that was his way of politely saying, you're not ready, right? You're not at the, the level that I want to work with. And, uh, you know, that was fine. I said, okay, I'm not ready. There's something that's

• 7:36Lewis Howes?

  not ready, that's not working for him, for him to want to work with me. So I said, I'm going to step my game up. And, uh, you know, a couple of years pass and I connect with him in person a few more times. We connect over email, you know, we're just, I'm constantly reaching out to him and just saying, hi, you know, great job with this author. I was interviewing his authors as well for different things that I was doing, my podcast. And one day, he reached out to me and says, I think it's time we do a book together. And I said, perfect. Now might be the time that makes sense. I had sold a company for seven figures. I was building a nice platform. I had a lot of PR and press that I was getting, I was getting

• 8:17Lewis Howes?

  notoriety. I went back and played with the USA National Handball Team. So I, I was showing that I was working my butt off to do what I loved in my life, to be inspiring to myself and then showing that and inspiring others along the way. Family members, friends, people in my social network, things like that, people on my email list.

• 8:37Lewis Howes?

  And I got an idea originally to write a book about hustle. Cause I was like, this is really the key to my success is hustle because I'm not smart enough. Uh, I'm not really that talented, but I'm willing to dive on the floor more times than anyone else next to me. I'm willing to sacrifice my body, my mind, my heart, my whatever. I'm willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to get the results I want to get. And so I had this idea of writing a book called Hustle and I pitched it to him. It was more about building a business and the, but the mindset approach and the champion's mindset and the hustle and what it takes. And he was like, I will not do a book with the title called Hustle. He was just like, I'm not going to do it.

• 9:21Lewis Howes?

  And I, and I was kind of bummed because I really wanted to do this. And we went back and he said, why don't we do like a business book? And I wrote a proposal about a business book. I probably spent six months writing this proposal about building a business and building a lifestyle business as a lifestyle entrepreneur. And for whatever reason, after about six to nine months of this process, going back and forth, back and forth with him. I was like, you know what? I'm just not happy with this. This is not me. I felt something in my gut that said, this is not where I want to go. And I had spent again, six to nine months on building out this proposal, this plan for a book. That I did not want to upset my agent about, because I was just like, I'm not feeling this. You know, this is really is not what I want to do right now. This is not the book I want to write right now. Maybe another book down the line, but this isn't it.

• 10:07Lewis Howes?

  And I told him one day, I was just like, you know, I don't think this is the book I want to write. I want to write really something about living your best life and, and becoming great at anything you want to go after. And the mindset and the principles and all of those things. I was like, that's what fires me up and that's what's exciting. And I was doing this podcast, the School of Greatness already for about a year at this point. And he said, why don't we do it, call it the School of Greatness? This is already a great brand. It's been building, it's been blowing up. And this is the stuff that fired me up. And this is the information that fired up people that were listening to me. I said, yes, that's what I want to do. I want to be around living a great life and what does that really take? So I spent another nine

• 10:46Lewis Howes?

  Months re-editing and creating the outline for and the proposal I wrote about a 90 to 95 page proposal. Probably 30 of those pages were a marketing plan, but I I'd found a ghostwriter to help me write the proposal, actually. And we we put the proposal together. He interviewed me a number of times. I created the outline with my agent. Going over kind of the the main principles and we probably started with like 12 principles. But boil it down to eight. He wanted seven, but really for me it needed to be eight. Because we couldn't just fit something in somewhere. It really needed to be the eight solid principles. So we boiled it down to these eight principles. I wrote kind of a rough outline for each principle.

• 11:31Lewis Howes?

  And then we worked on a sample chapter. We worked on a sample first chapter. And really fleshed out the content for all of the chapters for the proposal. So this proposal and this process going back and forth with the writer.

• 11:46Lewis Howes?

  Took some time. It took a few months till we finally got it right. And I was working on the marketing plan for it because I knew that. If I wanted to make a big sale, if I wanted to get an advance, that was really worthy of me doing a book. That was worthy of my time to spend another year writing a book and marketing the book. That I needed to make a big advance in order for me to make it worthwhile. Because if it was just like a hundred thousand dollar advance or something like that. I knew that it wouldn't be worth it to me that I could just do an ebook online and make more than that. And do it in in a weekend, you know, as opposed to the years of process it's taking to really get to this point. So the the proposal is complete.

• 12:29Lewis Howes?

  And it's now time to go pitch it to publishers, right? It's now time to go pitch to publishers. So my agent and I had a game plan. He's like, here's who I'm going to mail these email this proposal to. I'm going to start emailing them and calling them and telling them that I'm sending this proposal. It'll be building you up, talking about you. And getting your name in the door so we can go to these meetings, these press meetings with these these publishers, right? These desk side meetings. And he sends them out to probably 15 or 18 different publishers. I think maybe it was 18 publishers. And the first person we sent it out to, we got an email back saying that they're very excited. Like they want to learn more. They set up a meeting.

• 13:12Lewis Howes?

  And then I was like, awesome. Everyone's gonna say yes to a meeting, to at least meeting me and being interested in this. And only, I think, eight publishers were interested out of the 18. A lot of people said no. And then I think one or two actually canceled. So we only did like six or seven meetings in New York City. And I was kind of worried. I was like, oh, man. Okay. Hopefully we have more offers and hopefully people are interested. And I remember thinking, you know what? These other people that did not have a meeting with me are gonna be really sad one day that they didn't. And I just remember thinking, you know, they don't know what they're missing out on, on what I bring to the table,

• 13:51Lewis Howes?

  the energy that I would bring to a launch, the, the marketing capabilities, the passion I have for a book. And they don't, they don't understand that. They just blew it off based of what they didn't like in the proposal, or maybe it wasn't a good fit. But I thought to myself, you know, those guys are gonna really miss out. And we started doing these interviews. So we went to, I went to New York City and it was probably like, um, it was like a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we had these meetings and some of them, there was like two a day, one had three a day and another one had two, I think. We did six or seven meetings. And we met with, you know, um, all these different publishers, a lot of the big publishers, Hachette, Penguin,

• 14:32Lewis Howes?

  Random House, Rodeo, Hay House. Who else did we meet with? St. Martin's Press. We met with a few different places. And had all these meetings with them. And I remember just feeling like so alive in these meetings. I felt like so passionate, so on fire about what I was gonna create and what, and I was trying, you know, there's a lot of different energy. These different meetings had different energies. And each one brought something, a unique challenge for me. They, they brought a unique challenge because I had to match and really rise above the energy that they were putting out there. Because some people were guarded, some people were very open.

• 15:13Lewis Howes?

  Some people shared a lot, some people shared a little. So I kind of had to match and mirror and, and flex my personality style, my communication style with each. Meeting to really make sure I'm not pushing any buttons or any feathers, but also inspiring them to wanna bring me on board. And give me a big advance. That was the whole goal. And I remember going into it and my agent said, you know, I said. I said, here's my goal. I want a seven figure advance. You know, I dream big. And so I put that out there. I said, I want a seven figure advance. And he goes, to be honest, Lewis. If you get a hundred and twenty five thousand dollar advance, that's a huge win. For a first time author, that's a huge massive win. And I'd be really happy if we got a hundred and twenty five thousand to a hundred fifty thousand dollars.

• 15:54Lewis Howes?

  I would be really thrilled. And I was just like, I don't know. I really want that seven figure deal, right? I was really committed to this. And I said, okay, I'm gonna go through these meetings and we'll see. But I was like, I'm not gonna take this deal if it's a hundred fifty thousand dollars. I'm probably just not gonna take it. It's not worth my time right now. With all the other things I have going on. I didn't tell him that, but I was telling myself that. And I was like, okay, we'll see what happens. And after every meeting, you know, meeting after meeting, they were like, you know, we usually don't say this, but we really want this book. We really want you, Lewis. We want this book. Uh, you know, one person even said, you know, we want to do whatever it takes to make this deal happen. And I remember after every meeting, you know, me and my agent, uh, Steve, we would go.

• 16:39Lewis Howes?

  You know, to a coffee shop and debrief. And I was just like, could this have gone any better? Every meeting I go, could this have gone any better? Because I feel like they said everything we want them to say and. They were happy and they kept asking more. And he was like, to be honest, I've never seen it like this. I've never seen everyone this excited. And, you know, show, show their cards that much of how bad they want my authors. And he'd been doing this for, you know, decades, right? So. He had been in these rooms for a long time with bigger authors than me. Who, uh, and he was just like, I'd never seen them people this excited. And so I was like, okay, this is a good sign. This is a good sign. We're gonna get more than a hundred fifty thousand dollars. I kept telling myself that.

• 17:21Lewis Howes?

  And the last day after the last meeting was Thursday and I was leaving on Friday around probably like noon to go back to Los Angeles. And he said, okay, this is a great job. You did incredible and we couldn't have asked for any better feedback. So tomorrow morning I'll start calling everyone and telling them what we're going to do. And we're going to do an auction the following week where I'm going to open it up for a couple of days for an auction and I'm going to see where they're going to bid at. I'm going to see where they're going to open their bids at, right? And see where, what their price is. And so we started calling them. He was like, okay, I'm going to tell them that we're going to open it at $250,000. And I was already like, okay, perfect. At least it's above the market you thought it could already be.

• 18:04Lewis Howes?

  And so the next morning he starts calling them and he's, he's calling me after each meeting and he's like, okay, I told him I were going to do it 250 and that's, they didn't even balk at it. They were like, perfect, that works. And everyone was like, okay, that works, that works, that works. Then we got a couple of interesting emails that came in and I don't know how much I'm going to be able to share right now. I'm going to have to share some of this a little bit later, but I'll kind of give you the, the Cliff Notes of it. We got a couple of interesting emails from different publishers that wanted to do a preempt offer. So they wanted to essentially say, listen, we don't want to go to auction because we think it might go up too high for us. So what we're going to do is we're going to offer you a big offer right now and take it off the table so that it doesn't go to an auction.

• 18:50Lewis Howes?

  And I was like, okay, but I kind of wanted to go to an auction because I wanted to see the excitement of it, right? But these two publishers essentially were going to make a preempt offer on Friday. I was at the airport getting ready to go back on a plane and my agent's calling me, he's like, okay, we've got these two publishers. I believe the other one was Penguin and Rodale. They were both going to do a preempt offer. And I was like, I don't know. I was like, I really like Penguin, but I like Rodale as well with their marketing machine and, and they had a great team and I really loved their energy. And so I was like, I don't know which one to be better. You know, what if one of them gave a huge offer that was much higher than the other? Like, I was just not sure of what to do.

• 19:34Lewis Howes?

  He said, okay, let's wait and see what happens. And so, right away, we get an email from Rodale. And I am now on the plane at this time, about ready to fly back to Los Angeles. And he calls me and he says, I'm like, literally, the announcements are happening. They're telling us, you know, put on your seatbelt, turn off your cell phones, we're about to take off. And he calls me, I pick it up, and he goes, okay, Rodale just made an offer. And I don't want to tell you guys the offer yet, because I'm waiting to announce exactly what every, what everything happened with the exact prices. But he made a pretty big offer, a substantial multiple, multiple six-figure offer. And I was really excited about it. I was like, okay, cool.

• 20:18Lewis Howes?

  But I still had the seven-figure number in my mind. And so I was like, you know what? They made this big offer, and I had literally about 10 seconds to reply to him. I said, okay, here's what I'm gonna do. Tell them to make it $50,000 more, and they got a deal. I saw their proposal. He like sent over their proposal of what they were gonna do for me. They essentially said, we're gonna put you in all of our magazines, which is men's health, women's health, bicycling magazine, runners, magazine, prevention magazine. We're gonna put you in all of our publications. We've got 12 million people on our email list, subscribers. We've got all these things we're gonna do for you, a full in-house PR team. They were like blowing it out of the park for what they were gonna do for me, marketing. So I was like, I was sold, because I loved their energy, and they were the top of my list

• 21:03Lewis Howes?

  of who I wanted to go with. So they made an offer, and I said, listen, it wasn't close to what I wanted. And I was like, you know what? I think I could get a couple hundred thousand dollar more if it goes to an auction. But a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush sometime. And I wanted to really make sure that I was going with one of my top choices as well, and not have to be locked in with someone who was willing to give me seven figures, but maybe was a nightmare to work with, or wasn't as enjoyable, or didn't really believe or push me more, they just wanted to have the book, to have the book. So I said, tell them to make it $50,000 more and they've got a deal. And he said, okay, I'll email you in a little bit.

• 21:47Lewis Howes?

  I'll call them right now and let you know what they say. For the next 30 minutes, I was sweating, right? I had no clue what was gonna happen. The flight is taking off. I've gotta wait until I can get wifi on the flight. So I'm like sweating, I'm like freaking out. And I finally get the wifi up, you know, I'm typing it in and the uh, the go-go in-flight, I'm like putting in my code, I'm like, let's go, log on, you know? And the email is right there from my agent, Steve. And it says preempt, preempt offer accepted from Rodale. And I open it up and they say, congratulations, we've accepted your offer for this number. And um, and I was so thrilled.

• 22:31Lewis Howes?

  It was like the most enjoyable, happy six-hour flight I'd ever had in my life back to Los Angeles. But I was the only one that could really celebrate. Uh, you know, no one next to me knew what was happening. They probably had their headphones on. So I was just like jumping for joy inside of my body when this happened because this vision from, you know, seven and a half years ago of wanting to write a book, this type of book that opens up possibilities for people and inspires people in a powerful way to enhance their business and lifestyle. I saw it one step closer to happening. One step closer to making it come true for me. And to inspire and impact people in a powerful way.

• 23:15Lewis Howes?

  And so now the real work began. This was last October, October 2014, when this happened. So now I, I, I secured, I'll kind of fast forward it for you guys. I secured um, a couple of people to help me with really fleshing out the storyline and the content.

• 23:36Lewis Howes?

  And so we worked back and forth on writing together and they would interview me. I would, I would go through these questions. They would flesh out some ideas. I would fill in the blanks and edit it with them and really flesh it out to make sure that all my spelling, again, as a dyslexic person, all my spelling was correct and my grammar was correct. They really helped with all of that. And making sure that the ideas were connecting and, and making powerful points and laying it out in the right way. So I had a couple of people that really helped me with that. My agent was helping with that. The publishers have been incredible. Uh, Rodale, they've been an incredible publisher. I, you know, I went into this deal thinking they're going to do nothing for me because all my author friends said

• 24:19Lewis Howes?

  they have nightmares from their publisher because they never do anything they say they're going to do. So I went into this deal thinking my publishers aren't going to do squat for me. I'm going to do this all with my own team. And we're going to do it, right? We're going to make it happen. That's what I went into it with the mindset. And they've gone above and beyond. I've been blown away. Like they surprised me left and right. And it's such a blessing and pleasure to work with the Rodale team. I'm not just saying that because I, I'm, I'm with them. I'm saying it because it's like, I've been blown away by how supportive and amazing they have been. And it's the best experience so far. The book hasn't launched yet, but the best experience since I've signed with them to date.

• 25:00Lewis Howes?

  That I think a, a new first time author could ever experience um with a publisher. I mean, I don't know the, a better experience they could give me, to be honest. And so we've completed the book and that took, I don't know, six, seven months, eight months, maybe it's nine months now, nine months, I guess. And it was a lot of time and energy, a lot of back and forth. I was in Brazil. I was uh in, in Alabama, playing with USA national team, going back and forth, writing. Uh, I've been traveling the world. I've been running my business, doing this constantly. And it's been late nights, constant editing, tweaking, testing.

• 25:39Lewis Howes?

  It's a lot of work. I'm going to tell you that if you want to write a great book, it's a lot of work. And now we're less than three months away to the book launch. And in the meantime, I've hired a full PR team.

• 25:55Lewis Howes?

  I've hired a book launch manager to help kind of manage the the routing of the distribution of all the sales and really capturing new leads for bigger bulk buys and managing the street team and things like that. So I've got a launch manager. I've got my team, people on my team who are dedicated to the book. I've got the Rodale publishing team. I've got my agent. I've got my list of my influencers and my network. And last week, we went out to New York City with my public, my publicist, and we did a week tour of press. You know, I was meeting with the Dr. Oz Show and the Today Show and Rachel Ray Show and Oprah Magazine and Fast Company and Mind Body

• 26:38Lewis Howes?

  Green and all these other places to do meetings to talk about the book. So three months in advance, I was in New York talking about the book, getting the book out there to the people that can really make the decisions in the media. And a lot of people forget to do this. They start doing this like a month before, but I'm putting in the work and the energy now for it to be a successful launch way in the future. I've been putting in the work for seven years, really, to be successful for the book launch. And most people don't put in that time, that energy, that work. They just think the publisher is going to do all the work for them and market the book for them. But that's not the case. You've got to put in the time. You've got to put in the developing of skills. You've got to put in the the energy to build relationships with the media, with

• 27:22Lewis Howes?

  influencers, with people who are going to buy your book with your own audience. You've got to do all this. And it takes time. It takes energy. You've got to build trust, build credibility. And it's taken me over seven years to get to this point, since the moment I had the idea of writing a book. Seven and a half years, to be exact. It's taken a huge team. It's going to take an army. I'm going to have 500 people on a street team who are going to support the book. And if you guys are interested in that, I'll tell you at the end of this episode of where you can go to really be a part of the street team and what's included and what you're going to get by being a part of the street team. So all these things have happened. There have been so many opportunities that have come along

• 28:04Lewis Howes?

  the way. So many things that have come to me, so many people I've met through this process. It's been incredible and it continues to blow me away. And the podcast, the School of Greatness podcast continues to grow because of this process, because of the book deal, because people know I'm coming out with a book. People are talking about me in a different way now because of it. And it's been so inspiring. I'll tell you what, it's some of the hardest work I've ever done. You know, I've trained for, you know, I played college football, three a days I've done, you know, played arena football. That was extremely challenging. Played with the USA national teams and training camps in Brazil and Argentina and all over the world. I've spent, you know, 15 hour

• 28:45Lewis Howes?

  days working and up all night, working and doing so many different things in life. But this is one of the hardest things I've ever done. And it's one of the scariest. It's one of the things that has been making me second guess myself the most, let's say, because this is something that's permanent, right? An online course and product, I can create it, I can delete it, I can edit it. You know, I can take something down, I can block it from people. But this is a physical book. This is eight principles that I discovered through my experiences as an athlete at playing at a high level in three different sports, from building a seven figure business and selling a company, investing in companies, to interviewing some of the most inspiring human beings in the

• 29:28Lewis Howes?

  world. And the lessons that I pulled away from all of those interviews and how they mirrored some of the lessons in my life. So this is a scary, vulnerable experience for me because I am putting so much into marketing it and putting it out there. And I wanted to get out there to hundreds of thousands of people in the first few months. And eventually I want to sell millions of copies. And that's a scary thing because it opens me up to a lot of vulnerabilities. It opens me up to a lot of people criticizing me, questioning certain things, maybe giving their own opinion on something that is different. And it leaves me very worried about that. So I've been back and forth with so many different little details. The cover, the name, the subtitle.

• 30:13Lewis Howes?

  I mean, I've been going back and forth with my publisher for like six months to figure out the subtitle that really works and split testing it. Some of you may have seen me posting on Facebook. What option of subtitle do you like the most? Which one would you pick up? I've gone back and forth with so many different things with these stories in the book. Carefully picking out which stories are going to make the most sense for each chapter. Then creating exercises at the end of each chapter. I mean, I really want to create something so powerful that when people go through these exercises, they see a possibility. They see what's opening up for them to create a result in their life. Not just read another book and say, that was a good book.

• 30:54Lewis Howes?

  But say, wow, I actually did these exercises and I am blown away of what I found out about myself. I am blown away of what I see as possible for myself. I'm blown away by the results I got after this simple 30 minute exercise. And what it created in my life in the next 60 days since then. How it transformed my health, how it transformed my mindset, how it transformed my relationships. How it helped me create deeper meaning and purpose in my life. And how it helped me make more money in my career or my business.

• 31:35Lewis Howes?

  For me, it's been a lifelong journey to get to this point. It's really been seven and a half years since I had the idea. But in the last seven and a half years, it took so much hard work to develop skills and put myself out there in so many scary, uncomfortable ways to be able to get to this point right now and come out with this book. And we're less than three months away. The School of Greatness is coming very soon and it's going to be coming in a powerful, powerful way. I have many more stories to share and I'll be sharing this over the coming months. Sharing with you exactly what's happening during my book launch and what happens afterwards.

• 32:19Lewis Howes?

  Because I know a lot of you already want to know, what are the results of the book? What does it actually do for you? What will it do for you in the future? How will it impact people? Will it help you financially? Will it open doors? I'm going to be sharing with you everything and all of the stories along the journey. I want you guys to be here with me. If you want to support, I'm making the announcement right now for people that want to be on my street team. We're taking 500 people. You have to fill out an application to qualify. And if you go to greatnessbook.com to sign up there, you'll get an email right after when you sign up that tells you how to get on that list for the street team.

• 33:04Lewis Howes?

  And we'll be making that decision very soon. So make sure to opt in right now, greatnessbook.com. Also, when you go to that link, you can preorder a copy right now. I would love it if you go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble. There's links on there where you can go to different places or you can just go to Amazon and type in School of Greatness. I would love it if you preorder the copy right now or get five or 10 or 20 for your friends. For me, this is the thing that I'm most excited about. It's something I've been thinking about for years and I'm very excited and nervous to have you read it. But you guys have been along this journey for the podcast for a while now. And this is really for my listeners, people that have been following this podcast who

• 33:49Lewis Howes?

  are. Dreamers of greatness, who are doers of greatness, people that believe in the next level and believe in possibilities. This is for you. This is for the people that really are inspired to step up in life in a major way. People that believe that their life is worth living and that they're ready to achieve greatness. This is for you and I'm excited for you to have it. Again, go to greatnessbook.com, sign up there in the email form and then get on the street team. If you want to be a part of that, you'll get some exclusive behind the scenes stuff from me, some extra bonuses and buy a copy right now on Amazon.

• 34:32Lewis Howes?

  You can go and buy a copy or Barnes and Noble. I am so grateful to be able to have this platform to share with you this information and I want to share with you so much more about launching a book, about the process of launching a book. So if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends who you think might be interested in learning about the entire book process, you know, speakers, consultants, brand managers, freelancers, anyone with a passion, any type of personality with an idea, consultant who wants to write a book, share this with them, lewishouse.com/210. Let them know, hey, you're going to follow the journey of writing a book. This is going to be the place to check it out. If this is your first time here, please subscribe to the podcast over on iTunes or

• 35:17Lewis Howes?

  on SoundCloud. You can go to iTunes.com/SchoolOfGreatness to check that out and we'll have this all linked up back at lewishouse.com/210. I'm very excited. I'm so grateful for you guys. Thank you for being incredible. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.