615: Brad Thor - The Art & Science of Storytelling, Creating Surprise, Billions, Ray Donavon, & The Willingness (& Ability) To Break The Rules

Go to www. LearningLeader.com https://www. LearningLeader.com for full show notes and all episodes of The Learning Leader Show Notes: Brad Thor best selling author of 22 thrillers... Excellence as a leader… What has Brad seen from the military leaders he's studied: Empathy - Understand what it's like from their perspective. LISTEN - Care for your people. Actually LISTEN to them and be there. Creativity. Innovate, and think of new creative ways to solve problems. Effective storytelling - Don't start with the weather. Leave out the parts people skip. Don't be boring. This same advice is useful for leaders when communicating with your team. Put yourself in their shoes. How can you most effectively share your message without being boring. The more entertaining it is, the more likely they'll remember it. Effective storytellers - Plotters (outlines, Dan Brown), Pantsers (write by the seat of your pants). Brad is a pantser. Take the first 4 ideas and throw them out. You need the element of surprise. Create surprise. Be comfortable breaking the rules. Loves Ray Donavon and Billions for the element of surprise "No joy in the writer, no joy in the reader." "No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader." Brad has served as a member of the Department of Homeland Security's Analytic Red Cell Unit. Excellence as a leader (McChrystal) - Empathy, Listen, Creativity. PBL - Problem-Based Learning. John Bettis (country singer). How do you recharge your battery? International travel. Immerse yourself in another culture. Loves politics. Ran for President. Advice for writers – "Gotta Keep Writing" Mary Higgins Clark did it for 2 hours each morning before her family woke up. Whatever it is we want to be great at, we have to get the reps. Consistency beats intensity. 00:53 The Art of Storytelling 04:13 Elements of Effective Storytelling 08:26 The Importance of Surprise in Storytelling 11:33 Writing Process and Challenges 20:43 Research and Realism in Writing 27:04 Leadership Lessons from Writing 30:59 The Importance of Open-Mindedness 32:01 Pre-Publishing Feedback Process 35:09 Homeland Security and the Red Cell Unit 39:05 Maintaining Creative Energy 42:38 Political Ambitions and Leadership 50:57 Advice for Aspiring Writers 54:36 The Benefits of Reading Fiction for Leaders 56:43 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The mind's like a parachute. It has to be open to work. And if people are going to come to you because they want to make you better and they want to offer you advice, this is where the listening comes in. I always think it's a good thing for a leader. Don't assume you know what's motivating the other person. Keep your mind open, keep your ears open. And what's amazing is those customers, the ones you depend on, they're the reason you're in business. The customers will tell you what they want more of, and sometimes they'll tell you what they want less of. And that's like striking gold.

• 0:29Ryan Hawk?

  This episode is brought to you by Insight Global. I love the leadership team and the people at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit insightglobal.com/learningleader today to learn more. That's insightglobal.com/learningleader.

• 1:15Ryan Hawk?

  Welcome to The Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here. Text HAWK to 66866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email from me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how our book, The Score That Matters, will help you become a more effective leader. Text HAWK to 66866. Now, on to tonight's featured leader.

• 1:53Ryan Hawk?

  Brad Thor is the number one New York Times bestselling author of 24 thrillers, including Shadow of Doubt, Near Dark, Backlash, Spymaster, The Last Patriot, and Blowback. Brad has also served as a member of Member of the Department of Homeland Security's Analytic Red Cell Unit. And in 2008, Brad shadowed a black ops team in Afghanistan to research his thriller, The Apostle. This guy lives an incredible life. During our conversation, we discuss what it means to be an effective storyteller, and how we can improve our storytelling ability.

• 2:34Ryan Hawk?

  Then Brad shares his daily routine to be a prolific producer. He signed a contract with Simon and Schuster to write at least one book per year. And during our conversation, he shares how he does that. And then we also talked about all of the military leaders he shadowed over the years while researching his books, and what he's learned from the best of the best. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Brad Thor.

• 3:10Ryan Hawk?

  Brad, it is awesome to have you here on the Learning Leader Show. Welcome.

• 3:15Speaker 00

  I'm glad to be here. You know, you're the first podcast I've done where our backdrops pretty much match up and look like we're in the same room.

• 3:21Ryan Hawk?

  I love it. I love it, man. It looks good. It looks really good. So I know this, this may be a little bit different from the typical podcast or media you do, because I focus heavily on leadership and sustaining excellence as an individual, and then for your team. And you write some of the greatest thrillers that have ever been written. And so I was most interested to tap into your mind of like, how do you do that? How do you write these great stories? How can leaders learn? What can they learn from you in order to become better communicators, better storytellers, to inspire people towards a stretch goal, for example?

• 4:03Ryan Hawk?

  So to start, Brad, I would love to, let's start high level and then we'll drill down. What makes a great story?

• 4:12Speaker 00

  Okay, I was thinking you were gonna ask me what makes a great leader and I was gonna roll into We're gonna do that too. We're gonna do that too, just to kind of set the table. I'm the son of a United States Marine, okay? My dad's no longer active Marine. The Marine Corps got him out of the South Side of Chicago. He went to school in the GI Bill, started his own company. I consider myself as an author. I have people who work for me. I consider myself a small business person. That's just to kind of set the table because I actually think that your listeners and the viewers of this podcast and I probably have a lot more in common than people might think. But what makes for a great book? First and foremost, my job, Ryan, is to entertain people. So I'm your summer beach read. You take me to the lake. You take me to the pool.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  It's toes in the sand, book in the hand. And what makes a good book, I think, is something that people can't put down. So I love it when I do interviews and I get introduced, "Well, ladies and gentlemen, the reason I didn't get any sleep last night is because of our next guest, Brad Thor." I write short, crisp, cinematic chapters. I want people to keep turning those pages. I have a cliffhanger at the end of every single chapter. So I'm in entertainment. So that's primarily my number one job is to keep you entertained throughout the book. If I do that, then I've done my job as an author. I call what I do "faction", where you don't know where the facts end and the fiction begins. I really do a lot of

• 5:39Speaker 00

  research for my thrillers and I've done 23 with the current character, protagonist Scott Harvath, and I tell people that my books are like the James Bond movies. If there's a new Bond film in your local multiplex and you've never seen a prior Bond movie, it's okay. You can go see that Bond movie. You're not gonna be left behind. You're gonna know who he is, what he stands for and what he does. Same thing with my books. So, but I realize that it is show business. So on the business end of things, as an author who is putting these books together, I have to constantly keep in mind that I'm competing against, you know, binging a series or the thing that I hate, which is just constant scrolling because there's no end of

• 6:22Speaker 00

  Scrolling and it takes a lot of self-discipline to finish a book and I know that. So I want to create when I create a book, what makes a good book is that people lose track of time and they keep going and going and going. And listen, you know, if you buy a hardcover book, you're spending about 30 bucks. If you're buying an ebook, you're probably spending about 15. Audio book is right in that ebook kind of range. So you can go out and make more money. What you can't make more of is your time. That is a finite commodity. You could be spending that on other hobbies. You'd be spending it at work, developing your business even further. You could be spending it with your family. So it's incumbent upon me to give you the best thrill ride I'm capable of because I want you to come back and I don't

• 7:06Speaker 00

  want to waste your time. And that's part of the way that I was raised. My dad, like I said, was a marine. My mom had been a flight attendant in the 60s for TWA. And I was taught that even if you push a broom, you'd be the best damn broom pusher you can be. And that's what I try to bring to the writing of my thrillers.

• 7:22Ryan Hawk?

  So good. Let's break down the element of stories because that's what you do. You're a storyteller. You tell stories for a living. You create a world and within that world, the characters live and there's a constant movement and action and suspense and cliffhangers. So all that goes into it, but at its essence, right? You're a storyteller. So if you had to break down the elements of storytelling and how to do it effectively, because I think this could help all people, certainly leaders, because leaders need to tell, be effective storytellers, I think to move people and inspire them. What are those elements of effective storytelling?

• 8:03Speaker 00

  It's a good question. I think everybody is going to be different when it comes to what makes for good storytelling. A certain amount of it is just raw talent. There's two types of writers, two types of storytellers. We call them plotters and pancers. And plotters are big outliningers. They think of every single thing. My buddy Dan Brown is an outliner. I got to see the outline for the Vinci Code. Dan was kind enough to share it with me years ago and it was fascinating what Dan left out. And that is one of the greatest pieces of advice L. Moore Leonard used to give, the fiction author, used to give young writers is, he used to give two pieces of advice. Number one, don't start with the weather. It was a dark and stormy night. Don't start with that. And leave out the parts that people skip. So,

• 8:46Speaker 00

  my dad used to read Clancy and swore that Clancy got paid by the word. And, and my dad would skip these long passages about like how the guidance system on a missile works. And I swore that I would never put that in my thrillers. That I would leave out the parts that people skip. It's not important to know what kind of propellant goes into the missile, or how a gyroscope works, in my opinion. That bogs the storytelling down. And I have to be fluid. Again, I know I'm competing against a lot of distractions. So I don't want to bore people. So it's most important that you know that there's a couple of, maybe a couple of Green Berets that are hiding in the bushes and have this laser that's painting the side of a house. And that's how the Hellfire missile is going to find the house. So as a storyteller, don't bore people. How about that? As the number

• 9:30Speaker 00

  one thing, don't bore people. I used to promise when I sat in assemblies in high school, I used to promise myself that if my high school ever had me back, I would not stand on the stage and bore these poor kids the way these adults would come in and bore me as a high school student. I know you and I are going to talk about the benefits of, of reading fiction. But to be a good storyteller, you have to have empathy. That's something else. Don't bore people. Have empathy. Put yourself in their position. And that's what I do as a writer. I write the kind of books I would like to read. So a, a good leader not only knows his team and his audience, he can read the room and can move on the fly a little bit, too. I think that's, I, I think anybody who's a good leader is creative and has that

• 10:15Speaker 00

  ability. So, don't bore people. Be empathetic. Understand how you can read the room. And then my, one of my greatest pieces of advice is, is when you have to tell a story, take the first four ideas that pop in your head and throw them out. Because those four ideas, if they're occurring to you, they're probably occurring to your audience. And if you want to keep your audience's attention, surprise them. Give them things they did not think were coming. And I think probably the final piece of advice I would give for storytellers is be comfortable. In fact, make it your talent to break rules. There were 10 commandments that came down. Two had to do with adultery.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  There were zero about telling a good story. Right? So you can do whatever you want. Ignore the rules, but you have to entertain people. If you want them to listen, if you want them to absorb what you're saying, you have to entertain them. Don't be like everybody else. Don't bore them. Actually have them hanging on what you're going to say next and have them look forward to hearing your stories. Because if people recognize you as a good storyteller, they're going to look forward to the next story you have to tell and the story after that and so on, so forth. So if you can tell as a leader, good stories, people are not only going to look forward to those stories, but their ears and their minds are going to be open to the information that you want to share with them.

• 11:35Ryan Hawk?

  I love the element of surprise. I'm with you. I think that's what makes the best stand-up comedians in the world are really good at that. They say obvious things in a way that maybe you haven't thought of before, but then they also surprise you. And I think that's something you're also really good at. Can you think of an example, whether it's something you've read or written or watched where it opened? Because I think the openings of stories, the openings of books, the openings of chapters, movies, shows, a quarterly town hall, if you're the CEO leading it, the opening is so important where maybe there's humor, maybe there's surprise, suspense, usually starts with some sort of good story though.

• 12:17Ryan Hawk?

  So can you think of an example that you could point people to, to say, oh, okay, that's what Brad's talking about?

• 12:24Speaker 00

  Listen, I think every TED Talk, every good TED Talk that blows up starts with something surprising. Okay, this is you've got to grab the audience's attention. You've already been introduced, people know who you are. So it is that first thing out of the box. You know, there was this old thing about Chekhov's gun. If you're gonna put a gun on stage, you have to fire it by the end of the play. You can't just have a gun sitting there and never fire it. And I'm a big believer of fire the gun immediately. Fire it, shock people, grab them. Because if you grab them once and you really surprise them, they're gonna expect some more surprises. And that's what puts people on the edge of their seat.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  You want people leaning in, leaning forward to what you have to say. Leaning forward into what you have to say. So if you can really give them a bang up front, you will have them for the rest of the talk. If you keep peppering in some surprises. But what you're doing is you're basically setting the bar for whatever story you're gonna tell by surprising them right out of the gate. And that's, that to me is the, what makes a successful storyteller. I used to love watching the, I believe it was on Showtime, with Liv Schreiber, Ray Donovan, the series. Which, everything that could go wrong for this guy would go wrong. And I would think that I knew what was gonna happen next. And they constantly, again, went through like the four things that probably came into the writers' minds and threw them all out.

• 13:51Speaker 00

  And then started kicking around what a five, six, and seven look like. So that, for me, is one of my favorite all-time TV shows, Ray Donovan, because constantly surprised me. I tuned into each episode not knowing what's gonna happen next. Billions is another one. Where these guys were constantly in the business world, outdoing each other. Whether it was the, you know, the AG going after the Axe Capital or whatever it might be, Paul Giamatti. I was constantly surprised by the twists and the turns. And that's good storytelling. Where I'm on the edge of my seat, I don't know what's gonna happen next. And I can't wait to see where you're taking me in the next couple of minutes.

• 14:30Ryan Hawk?

  That's so cool. I got to tour the Billions writers' room with Brian Koppelman when I was in New York to record with Brian. And that was a thrill for me, just to hear, one, how he assembled that team, as well as then the process. That's why I'm fascinated by writers like you guys. Because you create these worlds, and these characters within these worlds. And yet somehow...

• 14:53Ryan Hawk?

  Keep coming up with new and fresh ideas and new misadventures and new conflict intentions to bring up and then resolutions and then cliffhangers. It's like, how do you do that? Do you, how much of it is, were you born with this versus how much have you developed this skill to keep people on the edge of their seats?

• 15:14Speaker 00

  You know what, if I could have picked any talent to be born with, I would have chosen to be a singer. I love the great American songbook. So I love Nat King Cole and Cole Porter and Frank Sinatra. That would have been, that would have been the talent I would have chosen. I've done, as I said at the beginning, 23 books in this series and you would think it would get easier and it doesn't. It gets harder because I have to come up with, like you said, I have to come up with scenarios for my character that he hasn't been in before. I've got to keep him fresh. I've got to keep revealing parts of him. So it is a constant, ongoing discovery of the character and his world, even for me. And that's, when I talked about, I never finished my previous thought and I'm sorry. I talked about Dan Brown being a plotter and I got to see what was in Da Vinci and

• 15:55Speaker 00

  more specifically what was not in the Da Vinci Code. I'm not an outliner. I'm what they call a panzer where I come in every day. I don't know what's going to happen next. I want to have the same experience writing one of my thrillers that you do reading it. And there's a quote by Robert Frost that I love very much and he said, "No joy in the writer, no joy in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader." So I'm a panzer. I, we joke in my house that my wife knows if it's a red wine night or a bourbon night by the look on my face when I leave the office. You know, how badly did I paint myself into a corner? And on those rough nights when it's a bourbon night, my wife will say, "Listen, I know it doesn't seem like you can figure out a way to get

• 16:38Speaker 00

  your character out of this tonight, but you're going to figure it out tomorrow when you go back into the office." And again, that's the, you know, you toss in the trash can those first four ideas and then you really start workshopping five, six and seven. So.

• 16:49Ryan Hawk?

  So you're, you said a panzer. Am I saying that right?

• 16:52Speaker 00

  Seed of your pants. Yeah. Seed of your pants. So it's, so sorry. Yeah. Seed of your pants. Fly by the seed of your pants.

• 16:58Ryan Hawk?

  How often are you looking at the blank page?

• 17:01Speaker 00

  All the time, all the time. And I will admit, I'm a perfectionist. Okay? That is just part of my personality. And that makes it even more difficult because I'm constantly saying to myself, can this be better? Is the way this character said this the right way? And so I toil. I really work hard. You know, people think that you do this many books and oh, you must have a formula. I wish. I wish there was a formula.

• 17:27Ryan Hawk?

  No formula. You just go.

• 17:28Speaker 00

  I approach, nope, I approach every single book as if it's the first thriller I've ever written. And I ask myself, is this idea and the execution of the idea good enough to get me a contract with Simon and Schuster? And will it land me on top of the bestseller lists across the country? So I am always only as good as the most recent thing I've done. I got a great big body of work, 24 books in total, because I did a spinoff series called The Athena Project, one year about an all-female Delta Force team. But it's always about how good is the most recent thing I've written and then trying to get better with next year's book.

• 18:05Ryan Hawk?

  Are you always only working on one book at a time? Or do you sometimes have multiple ideas working on multiple books at a time?

• 18:12Speaker 00

  I've got more ideas, I think, than I'll ever be able to put in book form in my lifetime. So, but it is pretty much one book at a time because I'm looking for a big geopolitical set piece for my faction that I want to use as the background, the backdrop for the book. So I'm not, you know, working on a book that's three years down the line from now. I'm just focused like a laser on whatever the current project is.

• 18:36Ryan Hawk?

  I spoke with Ryan Holiday recently. He's written 12 nonfiction books.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  I love Ryan.

• 18:40Ryan Hawk?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:41Speaker 00

  Love him. Met him in an elevator in New York. He's the best.

• 18:43Ryan Hawk?

  Oh, that's cool. We just recorded in Austin, but he is always like the second he finishes, he's starting the next one. So before the book even comes out, like the next book is almost done in some cases. Are you like that? Are you on a pace like that? That second you finish the book, you turn it in and then you're working on the next one? Or like you're pacing like?

• 19:02Speaker 00

  I mean, so first, you know, Ryan does nonfiction, I do fiction.

• 19:06Ryan Hawk?

  Right.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  And I tell people, it's like the difference between NASCAR and Formula One. They both have four wheels, they both go around a track, and that's where the similarities end. So, I mean, I joke around about Stephen King, too, that Stephen King has got, he creates his own world as he goes. Me, because I'm doing stuff like Clancy and Ludlum, that kind of espionage thing and special operations peppered in there. I have a certain amount, I have a box that I'm in. I can't have Navy SEALs with laser guns. They have to be carrying the weapons that SEALs carry, or if I'm talking about guys out of the unit. It's gotta be, all the tactics have to be correct and everything. So, I do a book a year, and the amount of time, it's like, how, people say, how long does it take you to write a book?

• 19:50Speaker 00

  And I say, how long is a piece of string? Each piece of string is different, each book is different. So, some require more research for me, some require more travel, where there's many more locations I want to go to in research before I write the book. So, everyone is different, but I have a, I'm under contract with Simon and Schuster to produce a book a year. So, each book takes a different amount of time. They're like kids, every single one is different, so. And then when I'm not writing, I'm reading Ryan's stuff, believe it or not.

• 20:19Ryan Hawk?

  Really?

• 20:20Speaker 00

  I just, I just shot a video this morning for Amazon in Simon and Schuster in India, and they asked me to recommend three books, and the first one I recommended was The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan. I'm a huge fan and ambassador for Ryan's work.

• 20:36Ryan Hawk?

  Do you ever get to the point, so you have a, you have a book a year contract, and let's say you're close to finishing it, but you're like, God, this one just doesn't measure up. Like, it just isn't all there, it's not to my standards, but I have to ship it because I committed to this contract with Simon and Schuster. Have you ever got to that point?

• 20:55Speaker 00

  I've never gotten to that point because I, for me, so one of the best pieces of advice I ever heard for writer's block was to give yourself permission to write a crummy first draft.

• 21:07Ryan Hawk?

  Yep.

• 21:07Speaker 00

  And what that does is it removes the, it kind of takes away those, that lens of perfectionism. It allows you to make mistakes and things like that. And the fact is, is that if you've got any talent as a writer, you're not going to write a crummy first draft. But giving yourself permission to do that, permission to fail, helps to kind of widen, open up the tap a little bit more. So more of the water comes out. But no, I am writing the book for myself. So I'm not going to write garbage and get to the end of the book and go, wow, this whole book sucks. It's going to be, it's going to be to my standard. And every year, whether the readers notice it or not, I'm trying to raise the bar. So I'm reading books in the off season about

• 21:51Speaker 00

  writing, about character development, about plot twists and things like this. So I'm constantly trying to improve my craft so that I get, I get better. And I think it's because I care so much, and I am such a perfectionist, that I'm still at this point in my career, 24 books in, where, you know, I'm adding to my audience constantly and we're putting, I'm, we are, meaning me and Simon and Schuster together, we're putting out books that people enjoy and people look forward to and plan their vacations around every year. And I think that's just because of my commitment. Right? I don't work for Simon and Schuster. I work for the readers. And I serve at their pleasure. I have a job for as long as they will allow me to have the job. And so that's why I work so hard on my books is because, again, these people

• 22:35Speaker 00

  can go make more money, they can't make more time. And I want to, I want to be a good steward of their time. And if I'm a good steward of their time and I tell them a great story, they're going to let me go back and write another book and tell them a great story next summer. And so that's how I focus on my business.

• 22:53Ryan Hawk?

  So Stephen King wrote On Writing. So he wrote a book about writing, about storytelling. Have you thought about doing that?

• 23:00Speaker 00

  No, it would bore the hell out of me.

• 23:02Ryan Hawk?

  Do that? You don't think it would be good?

• 23:04Speaker 00

  You know what? I went to the University of Southern California and at one point they said, "Keep an open mind about coming back and teaching here at some point." They said, "You might get to the point in your career where you want to come back." And I think that would be fantastic.

• 23:19Speaker 00

  I don't think I could do a nonfiction book like that. That to me, it would bore me. I gotta be honest with you. It would bore me. I'd rather, that doesn't mean I don't want to transmit that information, but I would rather be in a classroom setting. I'm very much an extrovert and I like to interact with other people. So that's how I would like to communicate that knowledge is, you know, whether it's a master class or whether it's going back to USC to teach or teaching at Vanderbilt or something here in Nashville, something like that. I think with, with human interaction, that to me would be more exciting and more fulfilling than writing a book.

• 23:53Ryan Hawk?

  So, one of the things I, I was, uh, when I was talking with your team about your background and your history, I love the amount of work you put into understanding the worlds in which you're creating. For example, it's like in 2008, you shadowed a black ops team in Afghanistan to research for your thrill or the apostle. So that part of your job, one, seems really cool, but also seems that it shows your dedication and commitment level to really grasping and understanding what you're writing about. You don't make it up. Like you're actually living it. You're there. You go there. You go to the place. Can you take me back to that story when you're shadowing this black ops team in Afghanistan

• 24:36Ryan Hawk?

  to research for your book and like what that was like and what you learned from that experience?

• 24:41Speaker 00

  It was funny. They told me at the very end of the couple of weeks that I was over there that they had reserved a hotel room for me in Kabul. That if I had, if we had touched down in Kabul and I stepped onto the tarmac and started trembling, they were gonna secret me away in a hotel room and let me sit there for two weeks while they did what they had to do and then they were gonna come back and get me. I didn't. I actually really had a good time over there. In fact, the best fried chicken I've ever had was in Jalalabad in my life. It was fantastic fried chicken. It was really interesting. I learned a lot. I learned that there's capital T Taliban and little T Taliban, which the best way I can equate that is it's like people that get involved, maybe in LA,

• 25:23Speaker 00

  the Bloods and the Crips, and somebody has an association with one of those gangs because it's necessary for survival. They they're not necessarily a gang banger themselves, but that's necessary for survival. I learned a lot about the Pashto code called the Pashto Wali, which we did not go into a single village where we were not invited by the village elders because of their code, which is if you're a guest, they will fight to the last man in the village to keep you alive. So that was pretty cool. And then what was interesting is the team that I was with always introduced me, explained who I was and what I did for a living. Because in Afghanistan, there are a handful of professions that are very highly respected. One is physician and the other is actually author.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  So there was a lot, I got a lot of street, I don't know if we call it street cred, but it it it opened a lot of doors. They don't have a lot of authors rolling through Afghanistan, particularly the places we were at. So they asked a lot of questions. They were really interested in writing books and, you know, they would tell me if they had read certain books by Western authors and stuff. It was very, very interesting. There was one other thing. I wanted to go down to Kandahar. There was something that was going to be happening in Kandahar that I wanted to see. And I told the guys I wanted to go down there and one of the guys on the team who was responsible for kind of knowing what the temperature was in different places we had to go to, said, you know what, that's too hot. We would need to take a truckload of pancheris with us

• 26:50Speaker 00

  to to to serve as extra guys on triggers. He's like, we're not going. And so we cut that out of our trip and had we gone, there was a massive suicide bombing that happened right at the spot we were going to go to and they were taking out a police chief with the suicide bombing. And so the guy who had said no to that, who had said, okay, well, if we can't go, we can't go. He then made a joke. He said, Brad, you don't even get to decide where we stop to use the restroom for the rest of the trip. He said, your instincts are so. Bad. He said, if we had listened to you and gone down there, who knows, we could have all been, you know, victims of this, of this terrible terrorist attack. So anyway, I, it, the, the attack itself was not funny. The fact that they acted like somehow I could have seen it coming,

• 27:34Speaker 00

  you know, that was that just kind of busting my chops for the rest of the trip. So it was, it was a fascinating, fascinating time. And I think added my, my trip over there really added some great color to that, to that thriller, The Apostle.

• 27:48Ryan Hawk?

  There's something about being there. I think that is a leadership learning too, Brad, because it's one thing to sit in the office and to talk through things with other leaders. It's completely different to go there, see customers, be on the front lines. General Stanley McChrystal talked about that on this podcast, how he couldn't stop doing that, even though it's dangerous for a four-star general, but he had to get out on or near the front lines with the people on the ground to get a real feel for what was happening. And it seems like that's something that is very important to you because you want to make your books are fiction and their novels and their thrillers. But in a way, part of what makes them good is how real they are. And

• 28:33Ryan Hawk?

  I just sense that that's a big value of yours.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  Well, first of all, that's a, that's high praise indeed. So thank you. And the details are the bedrock of a good thriller. There's that old expression and it applies to details. You watch the pennies and the pounds watch themselves. You need to pay attention to the details. One of the things that drives me crazy is if I'm reading somebody's book and they put a safety on a Glock, there is no manual safety on a Glock pistol. And that's a very simple piece of technical information. And if you blow that, now I start not being able to trust you. You, you know, there's a willing suspension of disbelief that happens. When you ask people to come into the world that you create, you're not going to psychologically bump them out of the, the magic and the world

• 29:19Speaker 00

  that you've created. But when I read authors that get something that's simple wrong, now I'm kind of putting walls up and everything. Now I'm looking for more stuff that you're going to have that's incorrect. I'm not perfect. I have made mistakes. There's no question. But I really pride myself on having developed a network of experts in all of these areas, whether it's the intelligence community, the special operations community, the diplomatic community, law enforcement, just on and on and on. And I've got these people I call my sharpshooters and I'm able to share the manuscript with them before it goes to press so that they can say, hey, I think I know what you were talking about here, but you said it wrong, that kind of a thing.

• 29:58Speaker 00

  So a lot of people have this image of just the writer toiling away in, in seclusion, just being in isolation. And it's not true. Without the wide network of experts that I have, without them, I wouldn't be able to write my books.

• 30:14Ryan Hawk?

  When you think about Brad, the amazing leaders you've had the good fortune to be around, whether it's the special operations community, your dad, others where you've gotten to witness it up close and personal, your own life as a leader running a business, because you are. What have you found to be some of the commonalities among leaders who seem to sustain excellence over an extended period of time?

• 30:39Speaker 00

  Well, I will include Stanley McChrystal in this, since you mentioned Stan. And a very good friend of mine worked for General McChrystal after General McChrystal left the military and I got to, I got to meet him and introduce him at a function. So I got to spend some time with him. There is number one, we talked about empathy, right? In being a good storyteller. So I think, I think empathy is a, is, is key for a leader. It's one of the reasons that I love that TV show, Undercover Boss. The idea of a leader disguising himself so that he can go in, whether you've, you know, you've got a bunch of franchisees or whatever it might be. But this idea of going in and being able to see things, get closer to the customer

• 31:21Speaker 00

  and see the experience from the, the customer's point of view, if you do that. And at the very least, to see the experience of your employees, your team, no matter where they fall, kind of in the organizational hierarchy. So I think empathy is critical for good leadership. We've been given two years. In one mouth. I used to always love that expression. You know, you're supposed to listen more than you speak. But I don't think you can get into a position of leadership without being a good listener. Because if you're not a good listener, you're not going to be able to, one, detect when there are problems and two, fully take in the information as to what's causing the problem. So you can come up with a solution.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  Creativity, obviously another big thing for for leadership, but I'm a big believer in being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes. Whether it's a member of your team or your customer and then being a good listener. Because there's a lot of stuff. Even when they're not talking, people are talking. So there's so much stuff that your team and your customers will tell you if you're willing to listen. I know authors that hate reading bad reviews on Amazon. And I just say to myself, well, that's just foolish. That's a virtual suggestion box sitting in the lobby of your business. Why would you as the leader, as the author, why would you not want to hear what people have to say? I know it can be tough when people knock you. You have to have a thick skin. Art is really tough.

• 32:46Speaker 00

  Because it's very subjective, right? I could write the best book in the world and I'll have some guy go, this is the worst thing I've ever read. And I could have a thousand people say it's the best thing they've ever read, but the one that sticks with you is the guy that's complaining. Now, if he says it's just that he didn't like it. Okay, that's subjective. If he gives you details. That's like finding gold. If he says, okay, I didn't like this, this and this. Agree or disagree, I'm not a big, I'm not a believer in the customer is always right. The customer is often wrong. In fact, one of the things that's interesting about being an author is you do get people that want to play gotcha. So they show up on your Facebook, just I caught the big author in a mistake. And I'm always respectful. I always say thank you because I appreciate that.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  It's very rare is it somebody playing gotcha. Okay. Oftentimes when I get somebody who shows up on social media to correct me, it's because they love the books and they want to help the author and make me a better author. But what has happened more often than not is that I'm correct and they're not. So there's a French expression that's very funny and it's, it translates to. To encourage the others. And you would think that it was a whole thing about, I believe it was one of Napoleon's Colonel. No, it was like a lieutenant who ran away from a battle because they didn't think he could win it. And they like had him drawn and quartered or something like that to encourage the others. And I use the term in French and I had, you know, five or six people jump on Facebook and say, no, no, no. It's to discourage the others. And then I said, no, no, no.

• 34:12Speaker 00

  It actually is a funny play on words and it is to encourage the others. And I put a nice link in for, to Webster's for where it is. But I've had people say, oh, that gun's not made in, in, in 38 caliber. And I'd say, actually, 10 of those guns were made. Three went to the Saudis. Four went to the British royal family. Here's the article. But the mind's like a parachute, right? It has to be open to work. And if people are going to come to you because they want to make you better and they want to offer you advice. This is where the listening comes in again. I always think it's a good thing for a leader. Don't assume you know what's motivating the other person. Keep your mind open like a parachute, keep your ears open.

• 34:52Speaker 00

  And what's amazing is those customers, the ones you depend on, the one, they are the reason you're in business. Your team absolutely extremely important that you take care of them and they function well. But the customers will tell you what they want more of. And sometimes they'll tell you what they want less of. And that's, that's like I said, that's like striking gold.

• 35:12Ryan Hawk?

  I'm curious about your pre publishing process of getting feedback from those you trust. So I, I've written a three D book so far, Brad, all nonfiction.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  How many?

• 35:21Ryan Hawk?

  Three.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  Three.

• 35:22Ryan Hawk?

  Nonfiction. And one of my parts of the process is when it's technically done. Then send it to this early group, small group of people that I really trust, that I think are excellent writers. A few of them are lawyers, so they're like properly trained from law school. A few of them are just the creative writers. One of them writes fiction. And I say, hey, just like redline this thing to death. And, and I'm not going to take every suggestion, but I will, I will definitely look at it and, and consider it. And that's been one of the most helpful processes for me with all three books of sometimes changing things or thinking about them or rewording them or rewriting them before it actually goes to print.

• 36:04Ryan Hawk?

  What's your process like when you feel like you're either done or close to done? Do you have a team? Do you have a group of people that you get feedback from? Or are you like, you know what? I've done this a long time. I know what I'm doing. When I get this thing done, I ship it and we go. What's it like for you?

• 36:20Speaker 00

  So I have my sharp shooters who are not creative writers. They're CIA guys, people from the SEAL community, guys out of the unit, whomever they may be. And I share with them former administration. Yeah, I try not to bug guys if I know they're currently working for the government. Like in an administration, I had a very good friend, but I had a very good friend of mine who was the hostage czar. His name is Robert O'Brien and I did a book called Backlash and I had included the hostage czar in there. And I was really delicate with how much stuff I asked him. So I didn't ask him to read the whole book. I'm like, here's a couple of chapters. You know, based on what it is, I think you're kind of doing there and could you critique him?

• 37:03Speaker 00

  That kind of thing. So I'm looking for content, not creativity. I don't want people to say, oh, you could have written this sentence different or whatever. I just want to know, hey, no, in fact, yeah, the Marine Corps white top helicopters used to be this type of helicopter. We've now switched them. Those all just came into service in the last 18 months. That kind of stuff I'm interested in. So I get that. I finished the book. My wife is my first reader and I call her Zorro because she goes through with a red pen and she'll just she'll take out stuff if she thinks it's repetitive or it doesn't drive the story forward. She's fabulous. She could have been a professional editor at Simon and Schuster. She's, she's great. So she'll go through it and then I'll, I'll look at the suggestions and I don't always agree with her.

• 37:45Speaker 00

  And then I will, I'll make the changes and then send it to my editor at Simon and Schuster. And by the time my editor gets it at Simon and Schuster, it's extremely clean. Because my wife, you know, the Oxford comma, I mean, anything at all. You use this word, you meant this word, or this is a better word to use. She's really helpful because instead of just saying, I don't like this, she'll make some suggestions. She'll say, you can say this in one sentence instead of two, and here's how you do it. So I'm very lucky that I have somebody who could be a professional editor just in the other room.

• 38:15Ryan Hawk?

  Wow. Another cool part of your background and experience is you served as a member of the Department of Homeland Security's Analytic Red Cell Unit. How did that happen? What was that like?

• 38:29Speaker 00

  So in the aftermath of nine eleven, when the Department of Homeland Security got stood up, one of the things the federal government realized immediately before the nine eleven commission was ever impaneled, they said, this attack was successful because of a failure of imagination on our part. So they said, we're never going to be caught with our creative pants down again. And they set up this thing called the Analytic Red Cell Unit, and the goal was to bring creative people from outside DC and Northern Virginia in to that part of the United States to help them brainstorm how terrorists might strike, what targets they might strike at home and abroad, that kind of a thing. And so I was invited into

• 39:12Speaker 00

  it. Michael Bay, the director of the Transformer movies and the Benghazi, the Thirteen Hours movie, Michael Bay was in there. And it was pretty cool. I call it the Las Vegas of government programs, because what happens in the red cell stays in the red cell. I can't use any of it for my books. Michael Bay can't take any of it and put it in a movie. You know, as we discussed, my dad, no longer active Marine, but once a Marine, always a Marine. My dad served his country by picking up a rifle. I am honored to have been asked to serve my country by just using the gray matter between my ears. So it's one of the proudest things I've ever done in my life is to be able to just be part of the Red Cell Unit for the government.

• 39:51Ryan Hawk?

  So you were coming up with creative ideas of ways people could attack us and sharing like?

• 39:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is, these are some attack methodologies that might be employed, or they would feed us little bits of information. So you wondered, did, I don't know, pick anybody, I'm just going to randomly grab like the Defense Intelligence Agency. Did they have some clues where they couldn't understand how they fit together? Like, hey, we've got these Michael Jordan shoes, these kicks that were bought in Brooklyn, but they showed up in Karachi, washed up on the beach, and the kid that found them had been arrested in Lahore, three months earlier, and he had a cellphone chip that was sold out of a store in Dallas. How might all these things knit together? Kind of a thing. So and we didn't

• 40:41Speaker 00

  know if these were creative exercises, or if they were feeding us bits and pieces of puzzles that they had not yet been able to figure out what the full puzzle looked like.

• 40:50Ryan Hawk?

  Wow. Was there a lot of pressure in that room? Was that tough?

• 40:53Speaker 00

  No.

• 40:53Ryan Hawk?

  Or like, what was it like?

• 40:54Speaker 00

  They were, they were actually really, really good at, creative people are tough to keep focused and, you know, and to keep, you know, they're not good after lunch because they all probably had a glass. Well, we didn't, we didn't drink wine while we were doing this, but the creatives can get distracted very easily. But they had good facilitators who really understood, because it wasn't just one-on-one. They put us in a, in a room with a bunch of people that, you know, we never knew what agencies the other people work for, but it was pretty obvious, you know, all the alphabets in the soup had people there. And they were really good. My, my wife did, when she was in medical school, she did something, a different track for learning called PBL, problem-based learning. And she went on to teach PBL afterwards.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  And I remember going to some of the PBL sessions with her. And it was very interesting on, if you had somebody who dominated a discussion, there are actual physical cues you could do where you give them a little bit of your back and you don't give them the attention. And it slows them down from sucking all the air out of the room and hogging the full discussion when you had other people that needed to participate. So having been exposed to that through my wife, it was fascinating to watch the facilitators do the same thing. There's, there's some of this stuff, the psychology into how to solicit the best out of everybody in the room. It's a, it's a real art form.

• 42:14Ryan Hawk?

  Wow. So cool. For someone like you that has to be a prolific producer of something, that also I think translates to all leaders. Leaders need to be prolific in what they're doing each day. I'm curious about how you regularly build up energy in order to do that. You gotta use your brain constantly. You gotta write. You gotta do this all the time. And you've been consistent for a long time. So what is your routine? What is your process like in order to build up the energy in order to be a prolific producer of things?

• 42:50Speaker 00

  So I have a friend here who's a very successful songwriter here in Nashville. His name is John Bettis. And John wrote most of the hits for The Carpenters. And he's written for Madonna. I mean, he's just had a lot of success. And Bettis is just a brilliant guy, so creative, very, very smart, very funny. And Bettis asked me a great question once, Ryan. He asked me, he said, Brad, how do you recharge your creative battery? I'm like, what are you talking about? And he said, well, I'd finish an album. He said, I'll tell you my process. I would finish an album with The Carpenters or whatever, you know, star I was working with. And I'd hop on my sailboat. He lived in LA at the time. And he said, I'd sail to Catalina and I'd anchor off Catalina for a week. And I didn't have a cellphone.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  I only ate what I could pull out of the water. And he said, that helped me reset. So in between, I love to travel. International travel is my thing. I had a television show on public television for several years called Traveling Light before I became an author. And so immersing myself in another culture always made me a better American. But being able to shut off the news and the constant bombardment that we have coming in at us. I'll put a out of office on the email and I'll actually respect it. I mean, I just won't, I won't answer the emails. And I'm very clear, there's a couple of people that know if they text me, if it's an emergency, I'll do it. So that's, that's important between projects. You, you need to reset, whatever that is for you. I mean, they could, I have no idea.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  But for me, it's international travel. The actual writing of the books, the process. My children are gone now to college, so I've got an empty nest. But my process is still the same. I treat it like a job, Monday through Friday. I get up, I work out, I get into the office by about 8:30 and then I'm here till 6, 6:30. It's not constant writing, but it is, you know, seat of pants to seat of chair. I mean, the water doesn't flow unless the tap is open. That's an old line about writing and you can't, you can't rewrite a, you can't edit a blank page. So there's all of these great sayings about writing, but you really do have to put yourself in the chair, sit in front of the computer. My computer.

• 45:00Speaker 00

  You can't see, I'm looking off camera because there's a wall and I have a standing desk. I have a great, beautiful desk. I never use it anymore. I've got this standing desk that I can raise and lower all the time and I roll my computer over to the blank wall. I don't want to look out the windows. I just have to sit there because when I write, the story plays out on the movie screen of my mind. And again, I want to have the experience writing it that you do reading it. So it's very cinematic for me and that's the way I write, short, crisp cinematic chapters. But it really, it can be, it can be tough because I am a voracious consumer of news. I get a lot of inspiration from what happens in the news and I'm not a sports guy.

• 45:41Speaker 00

  Politics is my baseball. I am fascinated by politics. I've worked on presidential campaigns, been to the White House.

• 45:48Ryan Hawk?

  Didn't you run for president? Or you thought about it?

• 45:50Speaker 00

  I announced, yeah, I did. I did think about it and then I ended up leaving the Republican Party because I just was unhappy with the way it was going. And so I've been, I've been an independent since, for several years now. So I just didn't like the direction that it took. And that again, is part of being the son of a United States Marine. We talk about character being destiny and all that kind of stuff and the importance of integrity. Just all of the things that you would think about, that you would put under kind of the umbrella of what makes for a good leader. That was drilled into us by my father, growing up. The, you know, it's hire slow, fire fast, all the things you want to look for in your team. And then if you are assembling a team, if you have the privilege of leading a team,

• 46:35Speaker 00

  what are your duties? Not only to shareholders in your customers, but also to your team members. And so we really were taught that we're stewards of this country. We don't own America. It's incumbent upon us to leave a freer, more successful, stronger, better defended, more successful nation to the next generation. Because again, we're caretakers. We hand it off and we should hand it to the next generation better than it was handed to us. So we had a lot, we, we marinated in, in leadership and what makes for good leaders, growing up with, particularly with my dad, who's a Marine.

• 47:09Ryan Hawk?

  Wow, so I mean, to announce to be to be the President of the United States is a like massive thing, huge ambition, like where were you at in your mind at that point to say like, I want to make a run at this thing, let's go.

• 47:22Speaker 00

  I'm gonna be very honest, I don't like Trump, I never thought he was a man of good character, I couldn't stand him, and I really don't believe that, I don't want to see another, here's where, this is what I'm motivated by, Ryan, I don't want to see another 9/11 to bring us together the way we were on 9/12. I think, people ask me, what do you think the greatest national security risk is to the United States, and I say the internet. The internet has been so bad for us culturally, I don't think we've reaped enough benefits. You see what Instagram does to young girls, and even young men, young boys, I just think the internet's terrible. I think it's, we're doing this interview right now, via the internet, that's great. There's not enough goodness in the interview, in the internet to outweigh the badness, in my estimation.

• 48:04Speaker 00

  I didn't like the fact that people were not directly challenging Trump, he can do his word salad and run rings around people, and he just avoids answering questions. So when I did that, when I said, I want to run, that was during the, it was in the lead up to the primaries, I wanted to see if I could pull enough to get on the debate stage with him, to really put issues about character and leadership and that kind of stuff, and what makes America great, it's, you know, to build a wall and all this nonsense, you know, his tariff war with China, the amount of subsidies that went to US farmers, it was twice as much as the US auto bailout, and Americans don't know this, because they don't have the attention spent, not enough Americans know, there's plenty who do, I can't say Americans don't know this, but there are so many things that I think are important

• 48:47Speaker 00

  in, we are the greatest nation in the history of the world. If you were a soul up in heaven right now, and God was saying, okay, you could be born at any time in history, and in any country, but I'm not going to tell you what color you are, if you have any handicaps, what your sexual orientation's going to be, none of that, you just get to pick the time and the place you're born, and roll the dice on everything else, you would pick America, right here today, right now. And I think that matters, and I think protecting what we are is important. That said, I also understand the surge in populism that we've had. I mean, it's not just us. It's Brexit in the UK and things like that. There's a lot of ways in which globalization failed the United States. You have these towns where grandpa worked at the factory.

• 49:32Speaker 00

  My dad worked at the factory. Shit, the factory's closed. What do I do now? And it's not like the Dust Bowl and all these other kinds of things where there was no government assistance and people had no choice. If you wanted to eat, if you wanted to survive, you packed up everything you owned into your car and you drove someplace else where the jobs are. That doesn't happen now, right? People can get a certain amount of government assistance. And by the way, I've never met anybody who's on government assistance who likes being on government assistance. But people can get glued in place. And we've got the fentanyl crisis and people are abusing drugs and things like that. I, I, I think that we were very short sighted in maximizing profit. I'm a capitalist. I like maximizing profit.

• 50:15Speaker 00

  But when we began to offshore everything, I don't think anybody, not the politicians, not a lot of people in boardrooms. I think the, the focus was such that people didn't take a breath. There wasn't the empathy to say, what does this do? We're now taking our business away from this factory in the Rust Belt. What happens to those people? And now we're reaping that, just the way the Brits did too with Brexit. There was a reason, right up until the vote, they thought, oh, we're not going to exit the EU and all this kind of stuff. And it showed a lack of empathy. It showed a lack, they wanted to paint people as hillbillies or just uneducated, blue collar workers. These are your fellow countrymen and women. You can be a capitalist. You can be about maximizing profits.

• 50:58Speaker 00

  I know I like to see profits maximized at companies I invest in. But we have responsibility as citizens, as Americans. Uh, and I just think, again, mind's like a parachute, gotta be open to work. I think we're kind of learning. Unfortunately, sometimes we only learn lessons in hindsight. Uh, and I think we're learning a big one now. And again, the populism, it's not just here. The Germans have it, the French. I mean, there's a, this is, it is not just an American issue. It is a global, particularly in the Western world. It is a big. Issue. So that's the kind of stuff I wanted to be on stage talking about. I didn't want Trump to be able to rope a dope. The other people and having worked on a couple of presidential campaigns, I understood that.

• 51:41Speaker 00

  If you wanna, if you wanna really get into it with this guy, you've got to be able to kind of put Marcus Queensberry rules aside. And go after him and not let him rope a dope you and get some answers. And then I realized. It's I I wasn't going to pull support that I wanted to pull and the country was going a certain direction and. And I was watching the Republican Party fall in line behind Trump and I was like, no, okay, it's this is this is not the part, you know, listen. I'm a sunny Reagan optimist. Reagan wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I thought he was fantastic. I really liked him. I liked his personality. Like what he did as a leader. I thought he was very, very create courageous, creative, empathetic, funny. Goodness, that guy was funny.

• 52:23Speaker 00

  So I I I just felt compelled to rise to the level to the calling that we were taught as kids in my house, that we are responsible for this country. And like I said, hand it down to the next generation better. So that's that's what had influenced that.

• 52:38Ryan Hawk?

  I don't feel like.

• 52:41Speaker 00

  My family, my family jokes, Ryan, that like Al Anon, there should be a 12 step program for me, except it would be called on and on and on.

• 52:49Ryan Hawk?

  I feel like I found what you're really passionate about. I don't think that's the end of your politician days, Brad. I don't know. Like you're gonna run again for something.

• 53:00Speaker 00

  You know what? I I have this dream and my wife doesn't, my wife doesn't like politics. So I have this dream about going back to Chicago.

• 53:08Ryan Hawk?

  You love it, though.

• 53:09Speaker 00

  I do, I do. I I love it. I I have a friend of mine back in Chicago who's in the media back there and he keeps encouraging me to come back and run for mayor. Of all things of Chicago. And I told him, I said, you know, if I ever did do that, I would launch my campaign. From a very significant place. I'm not going to give it away because if I ever do it, I want it to be just surprised. But I I've thought about it. I I don't know that I have the necessary background to to to go for such a high office so quickly. But you know what? I mean, at some point, my. Kids are grown up. They are insulated. You know, I would hate to run for politics and have, you know, all the slings and arrows coming my way and my kids active on social media and having to hear that stuff. But as they become adults, that might be, I don't know, we'll see which way

• 53:52Speaker 00

  the country's going and, um, but I would love to see us again. I don't want another nine 11 to bring us together. I really hope that doesn't happen.

• 54:00Ryan Hawk?

  Yes, 100%. Do look forward to seeing this announcement in Chicago here in the future, though. One more question, Brad, before we gotta go. I'm curious for somebody who is a bit earlier in their career, who wants to be a professional writer. They want to earn their living through writing, which is insanely hard. You've been doing it for a while. A tiny, tiny percentage of people who want to do it actually get to do it. So I know it's, it's a long shot for everyone. But what, what life slash career, because I know there's a life element to it. It's not just the career part. What life slash career advice would you give to a person like that?

• 54:37Speaker 00

  You've just got to keep writing. You've got to keep writing and writing and writing and rewriting. Um, you know, Mary Higgins Clark used to get up, uh, two hours before the rest of her family and sit at her kitchen table and write. And she's one of the most successful authors ever. I mean, Stephen King was a school teacher and he was writing. So you just need to do it. Uh, you know, writing is something you can always get better at. So that's the other thing, too. I mean, I'm, I've met this, you know, like we said, over two decades, 24 books, and I'm still reading books about how to get better as a writer. I don't think I'll ever be, uh, finished learning how to be a writer. So, and I would also say, so many people I see jump right into the self-publishing thing. And I don't know if you want to make a career. Some people can, some people can, but I

• 55:22Speaker 00

  think, you know, I don't want to be so kind of high bound and old school to say you, you know, the only way to do it is through a traditional New York publisher kind of a thing. Cause there's plenty of people doing it on, on, on the internet and things like that.

• 55:35Speaker 00

  It's it's hard. I gotta tell you, I don't know that I've got a magic piece of advice. I was very lucky. I came out of the TV world where I had a bit of a brand developed already. Because I was doing my travel show nationwide on public television. I was able to parlay that in my stuff with the Department of Homeland Security. I was able to discuss not what happened in there, but terrorism issues that was really, really big. I mean, my first book came out only a couple of months after nine 11. So that for a long time with the global war on terror, that was a big subject. So I I think to sell books, you have to figure out a way to let people know about your books. And that's probably the biggest thing is you could write the best book in the world.

• 56:17Speaker 00

  But if nobody knows about it, you're not going to sell any copies outside, you know, your your family. So that's the key is how do you have a non if you're a fiction author, what's your nonfiction hook? Because traditionally, you know, if you want to do TV, local TV, all that kind of stuff. Normally, authors aren't good interview subjects. So there's a built in resistance to putting authors on TV. It's a great way to sell books and to let people know about them. But so is probably ads on Facebook and things like this. You just have to be creative. You have to realize that it is a business. You have to write a great book and then you have to figure out ways to sell it. Because even if you have a New York publisher, you're still going to need to know how to sell your books. Because you're going to want to augment what they're doing. I don't know if that's helpful. You that's actually a curve ball. I hadn't considered that question, to be honest with you, Ryan.

• 57:02Speaker 00

  So I don't necessarily have a canned answer ready to go on that one. It's that's a tough question.

• 57:07Ryan Hawk?

  No, no, the other thing too, I actually have one more is a lot of us. I put myself in this camp of we're strivers. We're trying to sustain excellence ourselves as leaders and build things. And so we read a lot of nonfiction. And sometimes that puts the fiction on the back burner, even these great thrillers like you write. And you teased this earlier that there is a lot of science to back up the fact that us, again, putting myself in this camp, need to be reading more fiction, need to be reading these thrillers. It'll make us better. Can you share a little bit about why the primary group of people who read nonfiction should actually read more fiction?

• 57:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, particularly if you are a leader, which involves a tremendous amount of problem solving, right? A good majority of your day as a leader is like constant problem solving. So there is a, there is a very solid base of scientific study that shows that if you read fiction, we're not talking about nonfiction now, we're specifically talking about fiction. Again, if you read fiction, that your empathy develops. So we talked about how important it is for leadership to have empathy. So your, your, your ability to be empathetic increases. Blood pressure comes down, which a lot of leaders need. And it also helps with your creativity.

• 58:31Speaker 00

  So reading different characters, points of view and all this kind of stuff, and trying to guess what's going to happen next in the book, actually, listen, we all know your brain's a muscle. It's gotta be, it's gotta be exercised like every other muscle. Fiction exercises the brain in such a way that it contributes to great leadership skills. Empathy, problem solving, creativity, and you have the added physical benefit of lowering blood pressure. So that's just some of the things that, there's a good body of science out there that supports how good reading fiction is, particularly for leaders.

• 59:07Ryan Hawk?

  Love it, man. And if you're gonna get started, maybe on your first fiction thriller, why not start with Shadow of Doubt? This is by Brad Thor here, my guest. And, and then, once you get started with that, I have a feeling it will make you, because like you said, these are like Bond movies. You don't have to read them in an order. You could just pick them up, pick anyone up. And I think once you get hooked on one, and I know you have probably countless examples of this, you'll then go to the next, and the next, and the next, and the next, because you realize, oh, I didn't realize I like this stuff, but this is amazing. I love reading these fiction books. I'm gonna keep going. So I highly recommend, let's start, especially if it's your first one, or if it's not, hit up Shadow of Doubt by Brad.

• 59:52Speaker 00

  Well, I appreciate that. And I have to tell you, what's really interesting is my protagonist is dealing with the greatest leadership issue of his career in Shadow of Doubt. So he's got one foot in one particular arena, one foot in another, and there are all these forces back in DC that want to pull him over the line one direction where he doesn't know if he wants to go. So he's wrestling with what it means to be a leader and what he wants his future as a leader to deal with. So he's a spy, there's lots of action, but there is this subtle kind of theme about what is leadership that reverberates throughout the book.

• 1:00:27Ryan Hawk?

  So good. Brad, thank you so much for being here, man. I know we went on a wide range of topics beyond just writing thrillers, but I really appreciate learning more about you, your background and the stories. And I certainly think this will be helpful for leaders. I would love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man.

• 1:00:46Speaker 00

  Absolutely, absolutely. It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

• 1:00:49Ryan Hawk?

  Thank you.

• 1:00:53Ryan Hawk?

  It is the end of the Podcast Club. Thank you for being a member of the End of the Podcast Club. If you are, send me a note, [email protected]. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Brad Thor. A few takeaways from my notes. Effective storytelling. Don't start with the weather. Leave out the parts people skip. Don't be boring. I think the same advice is useful for leaders when we're communicating with our teams. Put ourselves in the shoes of the audience and think, what does it feel like to be receiving this message or this story? How can we most effectively share our message without being boring? And

• 1:01:38Ryan Hawk?

  remember, the more entertaining it is, the more memorable it will be. So if we're trying to clearly communicate something and make sure that the message sticks, we need to think about the story. Think about making it entertaining. Then Excellence as a leader. What Brad has seen from the military leaders he's studied. Empathy, understand what it's like from their perspective. Again, goes back to the storytelling. Listen, care for your people, actually listen to them and be there. And then creativity. This is how we innovate. This is how we think of new, creative ways to solve problems. And I like the end, the advice for writers, gotta keep writing.

• 1:02:19Ryan Hawk?

  Mary Higgins Clark did it for two hours each morning before her family woke up every day. And so whatever it is we want to be great at, we have to get the reps. Consistency beats intensity. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leader Show with Brad Thor. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you also go to Spotify or Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the show. You write a thoughtful review, you rate it five stars hopefully. And by doing all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a

• 1:03:01Ryan Hawk?

  daily basis and for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.