- Hi. This is Lea Woodford with Between the Lines.
And I'm in beautiful Las Vegas
with Mitchell Levy, new, actually you're not a new author.
You've had several books, Mitch.
- I do. Listen, we're talking about my 59th book.
- Fifty-nine. That's amazing.
Now, Mitchell, what was your inspiration for the book?
- You know, I ended up doing a TED Talk last year.
And I was given the opportunity to do that with,
I applied, they waited for three months,
and then when they said, "Yes,"
they did it about six weeks ahead of time.
- No.
- And so then all of the sudden I did the TED Talk,
it was done and I was looking back and saying,
"How do I market a TED Talk?"
because you're not doing a commercial
in the TED Talk at all.
And it turns out, I said, "Well, if I was an author."
We're a book publisher, we've published over 800 books,
If I was an author and I was talking to you,
you just did a TED Talk, I'd say,
"You need a complementary book to go with your TED Talk."
And so it was after I did the TED Talk I said,
"Oh, I need a book that complements what we did."
- Isn't that the way it always is?
It's kind of after you do something,
it's like, "Oh, I shoulda did that."
- Yes.
And I like that you said that
because that's what this process is.
The platform AHAthat allows you to
almost snap your fingers and get a book.
And so I was just practicing what we do as a platform.
- So explain your platform real quick.
- So the platform AHAthat has
43,000 and growing
messages people could share.
It's free to use, free to share.
It's the writing side where we actually do
charge authors to publish on the platform.
And you can either write yourself,
we have an eight-step writing process.
Actually, I take that back,
we have an eight-hour writing process, three steps.
And what's interesting is when our go-to-market strategy
is we will interview you for two hours
and the write the book from there.
- Wow.
- And so that's the interesting part with the TED Talk.
It's like, "Okay. How do I do this?"
Do I write myself and spend the eight hours,
or do I interview.
And so I ended up taking the interview practice
and then what happens after the interview,
my ghostwriters then write the book from there.
- With your new book, what do you think our viewing audience,
what's the message that you want to impart with them?
- So when I talk about,
I'll talk about both the book and the TED Talk.
We're in the transition, we're in the largest transition
that mankind, humankind has ever gone through.
And we're in the middle of transitioning
from the industrial age society to the social age.
And so if you look at our education system,
look at all the things that happen in the world today,
many of the things that happen
are based on what made sense in the industrial age.
- Gotcha.
- And the social age, it's different.
And as humans, how do we act? Who are we? What do we do?
And largely the TED Talk focus
is how can we be successful in that transition.
And then in the book, which has the same title,
BEing Seen and BEing Heard as a Thought Leader.
What's interesting about this book
is simply there are 140 AHA messages.
And an AHA message, the design of an AHA message
is to get you to go, "Aha, I get it."
- Right.
- And the simple focus there is,
and I'll give you an AHA message
from the book right before this.
We live in a seven-second sound bite economy,
so make it count.
- What was your biggest challenge writing the book?
- So, by the way, this is a great question.
I was prepped for this question,
what was the biggest challenge.
I actually, with the AHAthat writing process
there is zero challenge for writing the book.
So the biggest challenge was coming up with the idea.
- That's always the way it is, right?
- So it's kind of interesting when you have a TED Talk.
Once again, this book is not a commercial book either.
The importance of this book is to say,
"Okay. What are the AHA messages? What do we take away?
What could inspire somebody
to basically interact in a better way?"
And so the overall inspiration,
what I would want your audience
or anyone watching this to take away,
is the fact that they will act better, be better.
Be better humans and have better
relationships and better collaboration.
And if they could do that
then their audience will come to them.
In the decision of think ... in terms of writing the book,
it actually took two hours
but I did it in a slightly different way.
What I wanted to do, is I wanted a book that demonstrated
how thought leaders should be sharing their content.
Typically, a thought leader, 80%,
and this is in slides you gave as well,
80% of the content a thought leader
shares should be somebody else's.
- Right.
So what I did in this book, if you look at the back cover,
is I interviewed four thought leaders.
And so 80% of the content is somebody else, 20% is mine.
- So you bring up an excellent point, Mitchell.
What is a thought leader?
- Oh. I love that question.
We actually have on my website,
I have a two by two definition of thought leadership
and I point to it in the book.
What I'll suggest to people is
go to my consulting website thinkaha.com.
There's a definition for thought leadership
where you can see it there.
But let me answer it in a way that makes sense.
So in the old world, our thought leaders were handed to us.
They were handed to us by the broadcast media,
by the recording companies, by the publishers.
We were told who we were going to listen to,
who we were going to watch on the big screen
and the small screen, and who we were going to read.
Well, in today's world with everyone having a camera,
and everyone having a microphone,
the thought leaders are the people
who are able to grow an audience.
They are known, liked, and trusted by other people.
And so the thought leadership
is different now than it was then.
So let me give you a quote from the book,
and this is from one of our authors, Robert Clancy,
and so he is one of the contributors to the book.
He's got a nice following.
His Twitter handle is GuideToSoul.
And what he says is, and this is the difference
between thought leaders of the past,
so thought leaders of the past
you could say they were just thought leaders.
Now I'd say thought leaders of the past
are good or bad thought leaders.
So what he says is,
"A good thought leader is at the top of the mountain.
A great thought leader is at the bottom
of the mountain helping everyone up."
- Now, what is your favorite chapter of the book?
- You know, it's section four.
We do sections instead of chapters, and it's section four.
And the section is on we do business
with those that we know, like, and trust.
And really the overall theme of the TED Talk,
the overall theme of the book is:
how do you go about being known, liked, and trusted?
Being known is the thought leadership piece.
The being liked is you be like your mom wanted you to be.
You listen to other people, you pay attention, you focus.
On the trusting piece, what's really involved here
is how do you do trust?
One of the quotes that I have in the book is simple.
It's "Be you. Be authentic."
Demonstrate authenticity and integrity and vulnerability.
And if you can do that you're actually becoming trustworthy.
And if you're not trustworthy,
how would anyone want to do business with you?
- You make an excellent point but I know for me personally,
customer service and taking care of your clients
seems to be almost unheard of these days.
- Oh. So that was a fascinating point.
So I went to B-school.
In MBA school, you were taught
how important customer service is.
And then I went into the work world and all these companies
did not demonstrate customer service at all.
I would argue today, that more and more companies
are figuring out what is the importance of customer service.
What is the importance of being,
not only known, but being liked.
And what I'd say to you is,
"When was the last time you went to a city
and stayed at a hotel or went to a restaurant
and didn't check a Yelp score, right?"
And so what you're doing is you're looking at your peers,
and you're looking at how they evaluated that area,
and determining whether or not you like,
based on good customer service.
And so as we move forward, I'm using Yelp as a verb.
- Right.
- There are people who talk about you.
There are people who have given references about you.
If somebody wants to be a sponsor of you next time,
they're going to talk to your other sponsors
and say, "Was it worthwhile?"
This is a trend that will continue
to be pervasive in terms of what we do.
We will all have personal,
I'm using the word Yelp as a verb,
we'll all have personal evaluation upon us,
but not just about us, but how we deal with people
who are like those that are our customers.
And so customer service is, if you think it's bad today,
I don't, I think it's getting significantly better,
and it will only significantly increase over time.
- So I need to go to the places that you're going to.
Mitchell, can we show your book again, please?
- Sure.
- How can our viewing audience get a copy of your book?
- So the interesting part about interacting with me,
getting a copy, you can get a copy anywhere,
so just Google this term.
Go to YouTube, you can actually see the TED Talk
on BEing Seen and BEing Heard as a Thought Leader.
For those that find this fascinating.
If you are thinking that you need a book to demonstrate
that you're the expert at what you do,
it's simply a two-hour interview.
So what I'm going to suggest is go to AHAthat.com/author
and there you'll see the three-step process.
If you decide to write yourself, you absolutely can,
and the whole process is laid out right for you.
If you decide that you don't have the time,
and many people can't even find the eight hours to write,
then what happens is follow through those links.
What'll happen is I will be the person doing the interview,
my team will actually do the writing.
And just like you as an interviewer
are good at bringing out the best in others,
that is my super power.
What I can do is help you bring out the best of you.
My role, and I got this from the swami
who's part of this book.
The swami said to me, "Mitchell, what do you do?
Let me tell you what you do.
You empower thought leaders to share their genius."
So what I'm going to do is help pull the genius
out of your head in the interview.
My team will then write it up.
And you now can get not just this book to read,
you can also go to the AHA platform and read it for free.
You can not only do that, but then you can have your book
that focuses on the audience that you want to reach.
- That is awesome. Great information.
Thank you, Mitchell, - Thank you.
- for being on the show.
- My pleasure.
- This has been Lea Woodford with Between the Lines.
Thanks for watching.