Authority Marketing: Turn One Book Into Leads, Sales, and Referrals

At a certain point in your agency’s growth, visibility becomes the constraint. You’ve built the systems, the team, the client results. But the question becomes: how do you scale influence without scaling your time?

In this episode, I sit down with Chandler Bolt, CEO of SelfPublishing.com, Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, and author of seven bestselling books, who has helped more than 7,000 people publish books that grow their income, impact, and business.

We unpack the strategy behind authority marketing and why a book can become far more than a credibility asset. Done well, it becomes a lead generator, a revenue driver, and a scalable authority engine. Chandler shares how he calls his book a “$7 million business card,” the launch frameworks that convert readers into clients, and the systems that transform expertise into leverage.

If you're building thought leadership, refining your marketing systems, and looking for a smarter way to multiply your impact, this conversation will change how you think about authority marketing.

Books Mentioned
- Published by Chandler Bolt

If you’d like to learn more from Chandler, you can explore his work at SelfPublishing.com or grab a free audiobook version of his book Published at publishedbook.com/audio. You can also find him sharing insights on his YouTube channels and Instagram.

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

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Transcript

Meet Chandler Bolt

Dr. William Attaway 0:01

It is an honor today to have Chandler Bolt on the podcast. Chandler's the CEO of Selfpublishing.com, a Forbes 30 under 30 honoree, and the author of seven best-selling books, including his most recent titled Published. Through his books, YouTube channels, and selfpublishing.com, he's helped over 7,000 people publish a book that grows their income, impact, and business. Chandler, I'm so excited you're here. Thanks for being on the show. This is fine. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

Intro 0:39

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host, author, and leadership and executive coach, Dr. William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway 0:56

I would love to start with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners, Chandler, particularly about your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Chandler Bolt 1:07

Man, I I dropped out of school because I was tired of learning how to run a business from professors who have never ran businesses. And then I launched what became now self-publishing.com. And so I've done some businesses in high school and college, and and but then when I dropped out, it was kind of full blown. And so uh that's what kind of led to starting selfpublishing.com. And there's been a lot of lumps and bruises and ups and downs uh along the way.

Dr. William Attaway 1:33

Have you always had the entrepreneurial gene? You said you started some while you were even young.

Chandler Bolt 1:38

I think so. My I think I got it from my parents. My dad ran a small-town construction company. My mom was a realtor, which is, you know, basically like being an entrepreneur. And so I think, I don't know, subconsciously, I think it it settled in that when my friends, you know, when I be at my practices or my games or whatever important event, a bunch of my friends' parents wouldn't be there, but my parents would be. Well, why is that? Well, because their parents were working and my parents had a more flexible schedule. Now, you know, the the joke about being an entrepreneur is you give up working 40 hours a week for someone else so you can work 24-7 for yourself. I mean, it's not like they weren't working really hard, they were working real hard, but they also had some flexibility of schedule so they could show up to my stuff. We could go on a vacation once things started to grow within the business. And so I think subconsciously, you know, it's it was caught more than it was taught. And I just kind of saw that and I said, hey, I want to do that. And then you start doing it at an early age, and it just these little businesses that I had. I remember I had this landscaping, lawn care, and pressure washing and moving business. Basically, just if you would pay me to do it, I would do it. It was a little bit of everything. But I remember one day move doing a complete doing a moving job, and I got paid 500 bucks. And I realized that was an iPod, which tells you about the time period that it was in. But also it was a month or a month and a half of paychecks that I would have gotten in my maintenance job that I was working at the time. So my head exploded, and I that's when you really start to catch the bug because you realize hold up, if I start my business, I can make make way more money, and that's exciting. And so I think, you know, just starting to have some early successes with little business ventures showed me that I want to do a little bit more of this.

Dr. William Attaway 3:32

How'd you get from landscape pressure washing moving to self-publishing?

Why Writing A Book Matters

Chandler Bolt 3:39

A lot of blue-collar stuff. I mean, I I come from a blue-collar family. Uh my uh parents met work and night shift at a factory, and so the first business was a canteen at school, the second business was the landscape and lawn care pressure washing, the third business was a house painting business in college. That was the first one that did six figures. And but that was kind of like an internship meets franchise kind of model. And so that gave me the confidence to drop out of school. While I was dropping out of school, I published a couple books. Those books started doing decently well. Then people started asking how I did that. And so I would I would just teach for free just to be a nice person for a while there, but then I realized hold up, people really want to know this stuff. Maybe I should create a business around this. And so that's where we started the first cohort of what has become self-publishing.com, teaching other people. So I think we had 44 people in there. And I just wanted to prove can I replicate some of the success I've had with other people's books? Because I can't sell something I don't believe in. So I wanted to first test it at a low price. And then if we had success, say, all right, there's a business here. This, you know, kind of the classic lean startup kind of methodology of prove the concept, get to proof of concept as quickly as possible. And then if you have proof of concept, then pour gas on the fire. And so that's what we did. And 60% of those people published a book within, I think it was six or nine months, which was just kind of an insane success rate for that first cohort. So then we should, the then we said, there's something here, and just kept doubling down and refining the process and bringing in more authors and all that stuff.

Dr. William Attaway 5:17

My goodness. You know, there's a lot of people who would say, Oh, I want to write a book one day. But very few actually do. Why should people take a step toward this? Why is it important that they put words on paper?

Chandler Bolt 5:35

Because I think if you if it's something that you wanted to do or you thought about doing for a really long time, you're robbing yourself the joy and the impact of doing it by continually putting it off. And to your point, William, everybody says, you know, well, eighty eighty-one percent, according to New York Times, say that you they want to write a book. We know that less than one percent actually do it. Why is there a huge disparity? I think because it seems daunting. It seems hard to do and only for those elite few, and I couldn't do that. But and so people just keep putting it off. And so I think you you you're robbing yourself of that experience, but also of creating this asset and this thing that long after you're off this earth, it it lives. And oh, by the way, it's really good for business. I mean, it's you do hard work once, you create this book, and then the book goes on to impact thousands, tens of thousands, maybe millions of people. This book right here, I call it the $7 million business card because over the last 12 months or so, the book's brought in about 7 million in sales for the business.

Speaker 3 6:42

Wow.

Chandler Bolt 6:42

Because we integrate it into everything that we do. And so I think if you're trying to get leverage in your business, there's no better way to do it than to write a book and then put that book in as many hands as possible, specifically prospects, customers, employees, everyone in your world that you're probably, you know, helping or teaching or doing whatever in a one-to-one kind of uh modality. Now the book helps you go from one to one to one to many.

Dr. William Attaway 7:12

I love that. And that has been my experience as well. You know, I'm working on my third book now. And the second one is almost like a top-of-funnel business card in so many ways, because people will read it and they say, okay, now what? How do I work with you? How do I like what's the next step? And of course, we built that into the book's publication, right? We we provided those next steps. Uh this sounds very similar to what you're describing, and it resonates so deeply with me, and I know with so many of our listeners, because we don't want to just create something for a moment. We're thinking legacy, we're thinking long-term impact. And that's what I'm hearing in what you're describing.

Chandler Bolt 7:53

Yeah, we we call it leveraged impact, right? It it brings leverage to the impact that you're trying to make because you create it once and then it lives forever. But then to your point, I think there's a couple of fundamental mechanisms that you got to do. You can't just just, you know, write the write and publish the book and then just put it out there and then move on. There's the first piece, is which is what we call the one-year launch. Most people treat their launch like a Lamborghini, which is sexy and flashy and uses up a lot of fuel, but shoom, it's gone in a flash. They do the one-week Lamborghini launch. We're what I like to do instead is what I call the Toyota Camry launch, which is just, you know, Toyota Camries just, they're not sexy or flashy, but they just keep going and going and going and going. And so, how do you create your book as a vehicle that continues to go for a long period of time? Well, you do the one-year launch and you keep talking about it for a year at least instead of a month. And I mean, it's my book is a great example of this. The second edition, this red version here, came out, I want to say in 2021. So five years ago, but it's still my new book.

unknown 9:00

Yeah.

Chandler Bolt 9:00

Absolutely. Because it's the newest one I've done. And I'm gonna keep talking about it and I'm gonna embed it into everything I do, and because I do that, it's still a major needle mover in the business. And then it that's where we move over into kind of specifically how I like to think about it, which is use the book to get leads, sales, and referrals. So, how do you integrate it in each part of your business and funnel? And obviously, I'm sure it's some of the stuff that you're doing uh with your second book, like you mentioned, so that it flows into the business and brings in a lot more revenue.

Dr. William Attaway 9:33

And this is this is what you teach in self-publishing school.

Chandler Bolt 9:37

Yeah, yeah. We teach this, I mean, all day, every day. There's uh there's what we call we call the millionaire author plan, which is kind of a YouTube series that we have on our self-publishing.com YouTube channel, but it kind of walks through okay, what starts with a million-dollar idea, then you move to writing a book that converts readers into customers. Then how do you do a six-figure launch? Then how do you turn it into a seven-figure business card or asset? So there's all those kind of core fundamentals. But then we just did a case study here recently as part of that series where we said, okay, but what about eight-figures? Uh it's kind of crazy and it's very aspirational for most people. But what does it look like? Uh uh if you can see it, then it's possible. And so then I said, All right, well, let's look at these eight-figure launches. We've got Alex Ramosy, we've got DM Martel, we've got Cody Sanchez, we've got Amy Porterfield, and we've got myself. Well, let me break down all of how did they do it? And so we kind of broke that down into video format. And it's a lot of it, the spoiler alert is it's event-based marketing. It's using a book to feed into an event and using the event to feed into some sort of back-end thing for your business. But all of these things are learnable and they're replicable. It's just a matter of what scale do you execute it at.

Dr. William Attaway 10:52

By event, you mean a live event or a webinar?

Chandler Bolt 10:55

Or yeah, great question. Uh, most of these were virtual events. So it would either be a so kind of a, it might be a a one-day or a two-day virtual event, or it might be there might be a webinar. Um, but I think, you know, like we've done a bunch of virtual events uh in a in a studio with uh Sage, who's the event company, they're awesome, they're out of Charleston, and we'll go in there and we'll host a two-day, it's kind of like a virtual experience. It's hard to explain because most people just think, oh, I'm gonna show up on Zoom and it's gonna be a very static delivery, but it's this dynamic, kind of fun. There's big screens in the back, and and uh we make it kind of a dynamic experience. But that type of thing is what you know Hermozie did, it's what Cody Sanchez did, it's what Amy Porterfield did and what we've done as well.

Dr. William Attaway 11:46

That's so good. You know, when when you think about launching a book, you know, there's so many moving parts to it. And listening to what you're saying, I'm like, oh man, there's pieces I haven't even touched yet. Like I need to think about as we're getting ready for the next one, right? The last one, I went on 85 podcasts as a guest over about nine months talking about the book, right? Just trying to spread the word. And that leveraged other people's audiences, right? So million and a half people that I didn't have a first degree connection with, but that heard about what we talked about in the book. You know, there's so many different ways to do this. Like as you've looked at these other successful entrepreneurs who are using a book to grow their business, what do you say when I say how do you successfully do this? Like, what are the pieces, what are the elements that the listeners can can look at and say, oh man, I didn't even thought about that.

Chandler Bolt 12:42

Yeah, I mean, I think it comes down to what we call the launch triangle. So there's kind of three core components of this: there's a launch team, there's getting as many reviews as possible, and then there's doing promotions, right? And so a launch team, got it. This is a small group of people who support your book, right? So if if you do nothing else with your book, just do that. And with your with your third book coming up, I would that would be a key pillar. So I'd say, all right, how do we get 50 people, 100 people on that launch team? They read the book ahead of time, they leave a review on day one. So now all of a sudden you're launching with a bunch more reviews. Then how do you get as many reviews as possible? There's a book, the launch team's a big part of that, but then there's a bunch of other mechanisms. Uh, and then how do you do promotions to move books, right? And so I've got a chapter on each of these things in my book published on how to get your first or your next hundred or a thousand reviews, how do you run a launch team? And then the promos, that's the one that's kind of like the accordion between what we would call more of an MVP launch, so minimum viable product launch, or a traditional launch, which would be like any traditionally published book that you see, probably follows that type of framework. And there's a menu of options that you can say, okay, depending on how much time, money, and energy I have to spend on this book, I'm gonna pick, you know, more or less things on that on that menu. And so with you, like podcasts, one of the best ways to do it, and a we call it a virtual book tour, is go on a bunch of podcasts and and that's gonna move a ton of books. But then there's other stuff like do you work with influencers? Do you run ads? Do you, you know, there's a bajillion things you can do. And so that's kind of the part that really just kind of accordions in or out based on how much time, money, and energy someone wants to put into the book.

Dr. William Attaway 14:32

I think there's there's often a tension and a lot of misinformation around the difference between the traditional publishing route and the self-publishing route. You know, and and people really struggle with this, like what should I do? And I've had more than a few conversations with people who are in that moment of having to decide which route do I take. There's this idea that traditional publishers do all the marketing for you and they make sure that the book sells for you, and they're gonna do all the heavy lifting. And that's a cute myth. Yeah. Yeah. Like what when you think about it. I didn't know you're a comedian. I got the stand-up going, man. I'm good. Like when you when you have conversations with people about this, like how do you frame this so that people understand the value of publishing this yourself?

Chandler Bolt 15:22

I tell them traditional publishing is a scam. I mean, it is the one of the longest running, most perpetuated scams on the earth. It's they're not going to market your book. They used to matter because they got you distribution. So you had to get into bookstores. They had a chokehold on that. So the only way you would sell books is to get into bookstores. Well, now 70% of all books sold are sold on Amazon and other online retailers. And you don't need publishers to publish on those platforms. So they're largely irrelevant. They're trying to stay relevant by giving advances or whatever else, but they're only going to give you advance if you don't need it because they know that you're going to be the one selling the book. And so it's just, it's kind of like taxis were before Uber came along. Everyone knew it sucked. The experience was kind of slimy and no one's really happy, but there wasn't really a better option. Well, now there is a better option. And so self-publishing has kind of become the preferred option for most authors because you realize you can keep all the upside, you can keep the IP, you can keep the royalties, you can do all the things that you want to do. Now you need to be strategic and you need to have a plan. That's obviously where we come in and that's where we help people. And there's there's a lot of great people in the space. So I just think it's a it's a better option. And some people still care about some of the vanity metrics of, oh, I want to hit on the New York Times list, or I want to be in a bookstore for a singular week during my launch week, or you know, whatever the things that maybe still a traditional publisher can help you do. But if you don't care about that vanity stuff, all roads lead uh to self-publishing. That's not that I'm biased or anything.

Dr. William Attaway 17:08

I don't hear a bias at all.

Chandler Bolt 17:12

I will say, like, if you can get a massive advance from a traditional publisher, that's the only time where I tell my friends, hey, I'd consider that. Because, you know, say they're gonna get, but you that means you got to have a massive audience and you're gonna move a ton of books. And so it's kind of security in a sense where you can say if a traditional publisher is gonna come to you and give you half a million dollars, which they would only give you that if you got a big audience and can move a lot of books. I might take it because you know I would make sure that contract is really good. I would make sure that maybe I have the rights to the audiobook carved out so that I can own that. Or I might, there might be certain things that I care about, like I want to do free bus shipping funnels or have access to purchase my books at cost. And so you just get really limited. I maybe I want to be able to run ads to the book or whatever. There's just a lot of things that traditional publishers limit you in. But if I could check all those boxes, I might tell a friend, hey, yeah, take the half a million bucks, spend it all on the book and marketing the book, and use this as your breakout moment where you're you can just basically plant your flag and have a huge coming out party and have the publisher pay for it and don't expect to make a dime from that, but use their money to blow up the book. Like I think that's an interesting strategy. The huge caveat being, can you actually get that advance?

Dr. William Attaway 18:32

Yeah, and I and like you say, I think that's as they say where I'm from, that's uh scarce as hen's teeth. You know, that's uh they're not handing out those half million dollar advances every day.

Chandler Bolt 18:45

Not often, rarely ever.

Dr. William Attaway 18:48

As you think through the people that you have served through your business who have published books, is there one or two that stand out that you think, oh man, this one like look what they did with this. They're scarce as Hensteet. No, I'm kidding. I have no success stories at all.

Chandler Bolt 19:11

Not even in the slightest. Uh no. Oh my gosh. You know, we've we've published 7,000 books. We publish about two to five books a day. So there are so many awesome success stories. I mean, whether it's the eight-year-old who wrote a book because she saw her dad do it, and then it totally changed her life, whether it's the widow who published a book about crazy experiences that happened in their life. I mean, I can just turn around and look at this bookshelf right here and almost just say, oh, yeah, the memoir written by Kieran Wilkinson about her husband going through this crazy health scare during COVID. And now she's been booked on hundreds of podcasts and speaking gigs as a result of this. The nonprofit leader that wrote the book that he always wanted to write that about heart-centered leadership and and being able to pass that on to people in his organization and all that. I mean, I could just go down, down even just this small bookshelf of books, and there's just so many fun examples of all genres. Not even to mention the business building ones that I get really excited about, where we can say, Oh my gosh, you added how many six figures in revenue to your business from this book that you did you wrote around that thing? So there's a there's a lot of fun ones.

Dr. William Attaway 20:36

I love that. Your newest one, the second edition of published, right? You wrote this to help people to take their next step. Is that right?

Chandler Bolt 20:47

Yeah. I I wrote it, you know, because I wrote the first edition. Gosh, I don't know, 2019, 2016? Shoot, yeah, maybe it was 2016. And this is the beautiful thing about self-publishing. I read that in 2020 or so. I reread it. Because I gotta think, I'm like, I haven't read this book in years. So I reread it. And my initial thought was, this sucks. Oh no, oh no, yeah, because we learned so much. I mean, we had published thousands of more books since then. Our frameworks had gotten better. And I also was reading it and I was thinking, okay, this some of this is good, but there's no framework, there's no catchphrase, there's no memorable thing around this. So again, the beauty, the beauty of self-publishing as I said, all right, well, I'm gonna rewrite it. And I kind of put it off, put it all, put it off. But then finally I said, Hey, I need to be an example for what we teach, and that's that you can do this even when you're crazy busy. And so I think we had 30 or 40 employees at the time, and I said, I'm gonna prove the concept. And I went from picking up my pen to publishing a hundred and five days later. And it's it it proved out the process while running a company. Right. And so I could then say to people, hey, you don't have time? Yeah, let me tell you, I didn't either, but here's what I did. And so I did it, and it was really cool because it allowed me to then go back and framework and template things like the more writing method, the four P's of a best-selling book, our outline template framework, these eight milestones that it takes to write and publish, all of these little things like that. I just started creating the launch triangle that we talked about earlier. I started creating framework after framework after framework. And then a beautiful thing happened. The book got way better, and so did everything we teach and coach. And so it's almost like what we teach to people, which says when you crystallize it into text, now all of a sudden we use this book to onboard every employee, to onboard every client. We give it to every prospect when they're thinking about working with us, and it's become the pillar piece of the business because it's a great book. And but it all came back to just I could have never done that traditionally published. They would own the rights, and I would say, ah, well, I don't know, maybe, maybe in the future I'll write a different book.

Dr. William Attaway 23:06

You know, so often people have so many ideas about what they want to write about. Maybe there's one idea that's kind of been burning inside of them for years, and they just got to get it on paper. And sometimes there's so many ideas, they're like, I don't even know where to start. Do you help with that?

Chandler Bolt 23:23

Yeah. A lot of people come to us, they don't, they don't know what they want to write about, or they've got some fuzzy ideas. And so what we typically say, well, first off, everyone kind of falls into three buckets. Either that you you're not sure what you want to write about, you have an idea, or you have way too many ideas. So then we got to figure out, depending on where you're at, how do we narrow it? The end objective is let's get one idea that we can write about, and let's write that one book at a time. Don't write two books at a time, three books at a time, write one book. And then once you learn the process, learning how to write a book is kind of like learning how to ride a bike. Once you know how to do it, you can do it again and again and again. And that's why you don't see many one book authors, even you, right, William? I mean, it's coming up on book number three, because you learn the skill set and then you can repeat that process. And so we just try to help people focus on one idea. We've got some frameworks and process of how to do that and you know, kind of pull that out of people. But then we get that one idea, we go through the more writing methods, mind map outline, rough draft edit, and then that helps people get through the creation process faster with their one idea that they figure out that they want to write the book.

Dr. William Attaway 24:34

So good. You know, I I love what Renee Brown out of the University of Texas says. She says clarity is kindness with other people, and most often with yourself. And I think what you're describing is that process of bringing clarity to what so often is chaos and bringing this down into this is going to be the direction, this is the focus. And then they're able to translate that into words on paper or words on screen, so to speak.

Chandler Bolt 25:02

Yeah, it can feel like a chaotic process, but that's why we start with a mind map, because the mind map is the chaos. You're just putting everything out on the page. This is all the things I could possibly talk about in this book. And then we say, okay, how do we turn that mind map into an outline? So we're starting to group the ideas, we're starting to order the ideas. What are the sections? What are the chapters? And then now how do we use the outline to write the rough draft? Which still feels like chaos, by the way. I mean, you know it, you've done it multiple times. But then as you start to work through that outline, it brings clarity to the chaos and to the message that you're trying to write in that book.

Dr. William Attaway 25:41

So good. You know, when I was when I was preparing for this conversation, I was reading about your entrepreneur house in San Diego. And it's absolutely fascinating. I'd love for you to share a little bit about that.

Chandler Bolt 25:56

Yeah. So I dropped out of school and I was really self-conscious because I never didn't get to the business classes. And so I was terrified. I'm thinking, gosh, all these business classes that I needed to get to, I didn't get to them. How in the world am I going to run my own business? I didn't get to the accounting classes, I didn't get to these classes. And so I said, well, what do I need to do? Jim Rohn has this quote: you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So I thought, how do I spend time with people I want to be like? And so it all started with a mentor of mine who had this entrepreneur house in Iowa. And so when I dropped out, I convinced him to move into his house. And at first he said, uh, no, but then I was pleasantly persistent. And then I moved into this house with him and all these other entrepreneurs. So that was my first taste of an entrepreneur house. And so then when I decided to move across the country to San Diego, because I had a buddy say, Chandler, people like us live here and they're running online businesses. We need to get out here. And so I moved and then I created my own entrepreneur house. So that's where I said, how do I create a house where I'm going to surround myself with five people that can challenge me in the different wheels of life? So I've got, hey, this person's going to challenge me in my faith. This person's going to challenge me in business. This person's going to challenge me in health and fitness, and we're going to come together. And so I created it. We would do masterminds every Monday night, talking to our goals. We had a chef. We had uh someone that cleaned that. Like there's, you know, when you got five people in a house, the economies of scale rock. Yeah. I mean, it's like, oh, we can get a chef. Oh, that's only like, you know, a few hundred bucks a person per month, and we can get all of our meals cooked for us for the entire month. And so we just started doing all that stuff, and it was life-changing. And then it started spawning off into other ones. There was multiple entrepreneur houses started popping up in San Diego. And then I started another one in LA years later, kind of the 2.0 version was a little bit more of a baller addition because we had all started having some success in our business. And the first one was more beans and rice, but this one was on the beach in Venice. And then there was multiple in LA. And then I think last I heard it still exists over a decade later. Uh, that the first entrepreneur house that I started in San Diego, I was thinking, because I'm like, my name's on that lease. I didn't get my name off that lease. Because they they just started, they can't, we kept adding names, and the landlords were super cool. And so we but before you know it, you know, you got like 50 names on this lease. I'm thinking, I'm not pretty sure my name's still on there. But it just kept going, and and that's a testament to just kind of what we created is this community of people supporting each other and supporting each other's businesses growing. So I had I know it's not attainable for most people because you got you're married, you got kids, you got whatever else. But the principle is still remains, which is how do you intentionally get in rooms with like-minded people who challenge and encourage you to grow? So good.

Staying Sharp As A Leader

Dr. William Attaway 28:57

You know, leaders create culture, you create environments, and that was a very intentional environment that you created. Now that environment is self-publishing and the community that you're creating there of people who are encouraging and supporting one another and growing together. And I think that's just the next outgrowth of that. So let me ask you, let me ask you this. Like, you know, you are a continual learner. That's obvious. You know, you're always growing, always seeking to learn what you don't know. How do you stay on top of your game? How do you level up with the new leadership skills that your team, your company, your clients are gonna need you to have in the next three, four, five years?

Chandler Bolt 29:43

There's a quote that I love. It says, Every man I meet is superior to me in some way, and then that I'll learn of him. And so I think entrepreneurship and leadership is a spotlight on your flaws. If you don't want to know where you're lacking or struggling or where you're not good at, don't get into leadership, don't get into entrepreneurship because it is a spotlight on your flaws. And so your job as a leader, as an entrepreneur, is to embrace those, to acknowledge those, and to own it, and then to say, every man I meet is superior to me in some way, and in that I learn of him. So you look, A, you got to get in rooms where people are better at those things than you, but then B, everyone is like, so I learn more probably from my staff than I learn from mentors or other stuff like that. Because I've got great people on my team, and they're better than me, than me at a lot of stuff. So then I say, oh, wow, that's really good. This person's really good at that. Let me learn how they're doing that. This person's really good at that. Let me learn how they're doing that. And hopefully I'm able to do the same with them. But I think it's just constantly trying to self-assess and say, what is the bottleneck in my life or in my business? What are the deficiencies or skill sets that are either lacking or I need to grow in order to solve that? And then for me, it's I call it $15 mentors, it's books. And so, what are the best books on those topics? And then what are the best people I know that are really good on those topics? And then how do I read those books and then ask questions to those people who are doing that really well? Or even better, how do I just hire those people on my team to just do it for me so I don't gotta learn it? And I just bring that talent into my organization. And so that's kind of how I think about it. I love that.

Dr. William Attaway 31:39

Last question You know, everybody listening to this is thinking, oh man, Chandler, what a success. Like, what an incredible journey. I bet he's never struggled like I struggle. I bet he's never dealt with the things that I deal with, the problems and challenges that I'm having today. We know that's not true, that the entrepreneurial journey is difficult. So, in in light of that mindset, I ask you this. If I had the ability to snap my fingers and solve one problem in your business right now, what would you want that problem to be?

Chandler Bolt 32:15

Wow, what a great question.

Dr. William Attaway 32:17

How to grow faster.

Chandler Bolt 32:19

Which is the most generic answer ever. But I mean, I think there there's there's so many, you know, we've we've kind of hit eight figures and kind of plateaued at that mark. And so now I'm trigger trying to figure out what got us here, isn't getting us there. And so that if I could snap my fingers, I would teleport my whole team in person into Austin. Because we're about 40, let's call it maybe 30, 40 remote and 25 in person, but we've only been in person the last 18 months. So I would say uh that would be the magic one. If you could solve one thing, it would be getting all my existing team here in Austin. Is that going to happen? Probably not. So then figuring out how to build up a really good nucleus here. And then I would just encourage people. Uh this isn't so much the question you asked, but maybe it's encouraging for people, is if you're thinking, hey, Chandler, his poop probably doesn't stink and he's just had nothing but success. Uh the bigger the shine, the bigger the grind. So if if you see someone who's shining bright, it's because they that there was a grind behind the scenes. Where, and not only that, there was a lot, a lot, a lot of hard times. I mean, I've had so I've had to borrow six figures from my parents' retirement at one point to buy out my business partner. I've had all my bank accounts negative. I'd it with with also I've borrowed money from people. I've had, you know, p moments where I lost hundreds of thousands, if not over a million of dollars, and and on business deals that went bad. I've, you know, just probably went through the one of the hardest 12 to 18 month stretches in my business life where you just feel like you're just getting hammered. And so it's, but that is that's part of the journey. That's what you sign up for. If you want to be a leader, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you probably didn't sign up for that because you thought it would be easy. You signed up for it because you're passionate about it and you you believe in that thing. And so nothing great, nothing worth having is just gonna happen. You you gotta go get it. And the the harder it is, is I was talking to a buddy yesterday. I said, you know what's funny is is I start these days when we're trying to do tackle a hard problem and it starts getting really hard. And we're six months in and we're nine months in, we still haven't solved it. I've had to remind myself and retrain my brain to say, yes, this is great, because this means this is going to be a defensible moat, because everyone else gives up right here. And and so if everyone else gives up right here, or everyone else gives up three months ago, that means when we crack this, not if we crack this, it it's a defensible moat because it I know what it took to build this. Nobody else is willing to do that, or they maybe they don't have the skills to do that. So use those really hard times and those struggles as green lights that you're actually tacking, tackling a hard problem. Because if it was just easy, you're probably either not thinking big enough or or dreaming big enough, or you're not tackling hard problems. And so, not to go on a massive monologue here, but the the the bigger you get, the more problems that you have. I mean, and I had to remind myself of this recently, where I said, oh my gosh, it feels like we just have so many problems. And it's just the law of large numbers. If you got 100 customers a year, you might have five upset customers a year. You got a thousand customers a year, and then you have 40 upset customers a year, well, you're actually better. But it feels like you're worse because you got 40 upset customers, and that's gonna show up in every area of your business. And so it's just the law of large numbers. Don't take it personally. And I'll I'll end my monologue, but it's just so good. You're getting bigger, it's gonna be harder.

Free Audiobook And How To Connect

Dr. William Attaway 36:05

That's so good, man. That's so good. And I think that that wisdom and insight is exactly what we need to hear. Because no matter where we are in the journey, in the entrepreneurship, it is a journey. No matter where we are, there's not a point at which you're gonna get to and say, Oh, every problem is solved. Oh, I've got no more challenges. Ah, nobody's complaining about anything. I've never met that business owner yet. If you meet him, uh introduced me to him, I got some questions. All right. That'll be the most listened-to episode ever. Channel, this has been such a joy to get to talk with you today. And I'm so grateful to you for sharing so generously from the insight and wisdom that you have gained so far on your journey. I know our listeners are gonna want to stay connected to you and learn more about what you're doing at self-publishing and about your book. What's the best way for folks to do that?

Chandler Bolt 37:02

Yeah, thanks for asking, William. I would say uh obviously you can check us out. We've got a couple YouTube channels. You can subscribe to those. Chandler Bolt channel is all about scaling your company. Self-publishing.com is about publishing books. Same with our Instagrams there. But if you're interested in the book world, there's two resources that'll be helpful. One is a copy of my book. I'll just gift you guys an audio. So if you want a free audio book, just go to publishedbook.com forward slash audio. So publishedbook.com forward slash audio. That'll give you the free audio book. Uh it's a podcast of probably a lot of listeners. Um, and then secondly, if you want to book a call with my team, uh, go to self publishing.com forward slash apply. We can chat through your goals for your book, put a plan together, see if we can help.

Dr. William Attaway 37:48

I love it. That's so generous. Thank you for doing that. And I know our listeners are going to want to jump on that. We'll have those links in the show notes. Chandler, thank you again.

Chandler Bolt 37:56

Thank you, William. This is a lot of fun. You're an amazing interviewer.