Today on Radical Personal Finance we talk about personal marketing, entrepreneurship, and lifestyle design while you're running a pretty large company. My guest is David Hancock. He is the CEO of Morgan James Publishing. I think you can learn a little bit from his experiences. Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast.

My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host. Thank you for being with me today. Today we're going to talk with David Hancock. How cool would it be if you were running a publishing company and yet you could still force your work into a very tight schedule? My guest today has done exactly that.

He's also learned how to use publishing as one of the best tools of personal marketing. I connected with David Hancock when I was out researching potential publishers to work with on the book that I'm working with. I just started talking to him on the phone and he was very kind and listened to my story a little bit.

I started finding out a little bit more about him and I invited him on the show because he's got such an interesting story. He runs a significant company that came out of just a personal love and a personal passion that he had for a certain industry. You'll hear the whole thing today, but he's got a lot of wisdom to share with us and I think you'll enjoy this.

Get a notebook and get ready to take some lessons because I love – this is one of the things I love about podcasting. I love that podcasting can offer the opportunity for you and me just to connect with somebody and to hear somebody who's the CEO of a company, who's blazed that entrepreneur trail and hear some of their stories.

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If you would like to support the show personally, thank you to those of you, to the many of you who do. I appreciate each and every one of you. Let's go to the interview with David. David, welcome to Radical Personal Finance. It's a privilege to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

I think you are officially the first owner of a publishing company I've had on the show and this ought to be a fun discussion because you have an insight into the world of business and entrepreneurship that few people do due to your position. Sketch out your professional path. How did you wind up to where you are today where you're running a publishing company?

Oh, that's a great story. I won't go back to birth, but it's definitely got a little bit of God's sense of humor in it. So I'll go to where it really started to point in the direction of writing and publishing. But I was a banker in the '90s. Okay, I'll tell you a little bit prior to that.

So before that, I was a home builder. So I was always kind of tied to that home ownership space and ended up finding myself in the '90s on the banking side. And I was really enjoying it. I really never imagined ever doing anything different. I mean I was fat, dumb, and happy.

They were paying us stupid money, which is good. I dropped out of college and barely passed high school because I was too busy doing sports and chasing girls. So I found myself in a great job and I had nothing to complain about. But as the years went on, I was really enjoying myself, but I came to the point where in my career I'm like, "I want a little more." I was making good money.

I was wanting to eventually start a family, but I was working a lot of hours. So I was trying to figure out what I could do to improve what I'm doing, maybe work a little less, earn a little more, reach a little more, stop competing as much, or stop trying to fight for the business.

So I just kind of wanted to grow, but I didn't really know where to start. So I just kind of went down the path that probably many people do. I started looking internally, looking at the resources that my employer gave me, the bank. They had access to some of the biggest banking-related training series from banking professionals like Bill Bachrach and others.

I was really engaging with those things, but I just wanted more. So my boss put up with me. We had a good friendship, so he let me go out to all these seminars. He flew me out to see Tom Hopkins and Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins, you name it.

If it was industry-specific or not, he just let me go because I was hungry to do more, and I was a top producer. I would go out to these things, and I would buy their home study courses. I would listen. I would take notes. I'd come back, and I would implement.

I'm a really good implementer because that's half the battle. You can learn something great today, but if you don't put it into action tomorrow, it doesn't do you any good. I was really good at doing stuff. After going through some of those courses over a period of a couple of years, I was doing good.

I was making a little bit more money. I came back, and I hired assistants. I fine-tuned some processes. I started to work a little smarter. I started to earn a little bit more money, go home a little bit earlier in the evening. But nothing really gave me that bolster in my career that I was looking for.

I didn't necessarily know exactly what I was looking for. I just knew I hadn't found it yet. But I continued my path to just grow my own knowledge, grow my own self, whether it was through books or seminars. I just wanted to continue to grow, try to master my own product knowledge for what we were offering as a bank.

Just as a background, I ended up being a wholesale banker, so my client was other smaller banks or mortgage brokers. But it wasn't until I discovered a very specific book that changed my life. And trust me, I'm going to answer your question, I promise. Well, hey, anytime somebody says, "I discovered a specific book that changed my life," my pen is ready, and I'm ready to take a note.

So don't stop there. This is a good part. That's right. Well, it was a book called "Guerrilla Marketing." And although it was in its third edition, by the time I discovered the book, I had never heard of it. And there are still some people out there that have never heard of the concept of guerrilla marketing and what it means.

But for me, it was just another book. I didn't necessarily know what it was. And it had already sold 15 million copies, been on the New York Times Best Seller, and it was just a phenomenal book that I had just never heard of. So I started to read the book, and I realized, "Wow, he's telling me all the things that I'm already doing.

He's teaching me to be unconventional and do things with more of my time, my energy, and my imagination instead of the bank account." Because I worked for one of the big Lehman Brothers banks, and I could literally spend whatever I wanted to, no restrictions on advertising or marketing because we were just making crazy money.

But those things weren't working as well as what I was trying to do, and I was trying to create relationships and add value and help others succeed, and that's part of what guerrilla marketing is. And I resonated with the book because I realized I was a guerrilla and just didn't know it.

I was doing all the things that Jay Levinson, the author, said that I should do. And so I just immersed myself in that particular book. It's funny, when I look back at it, I don't even remember where the book came from. I don't remember buying it. I don't remember if it being a gift.

I know I didn't steal the book, and somehow it landed on my desk, so I ended up reading it. And I ended up reaching out to the author because in the book he said, "Hey, if you want to know more or you want to hire me as a coach, here's my contact information." So I ended up reaching out to the author, Jay Levinson, because he encouraged me to do so in the book.

I could probably learn more, maybe get a little extra insight that I was really lacking, and he certainly offered, so I wanted to take advantage of that. So I reached out to Jay and ended up hiring him as a coach, and he taught me really nothing more than I already knew, which at first seemed a little frustrating.

But it was good confirmation to know that I was heading in the right path at least. Certainly I did learn a little bit extra, but there was one thing that really had the impact on me. He basically taught me one extra thing, but he stretched it out, and it kind of tortured me in the process.

He said, "David, if you wanted to charge more and negotiate less"—I mean, who doesn't, right? He said, "If you want to charge more and negotiate less, you've got to keep doing what you're doing, but you need to add one more thing." I'm like, "All right, tell me what this is." And then he went on to say, "David, if you wanted to have the people that would never give you the time of day start begging to get on your calendar, you've got to keep doing what you're doing, but you need to add one more thing." I mean, we all have this whale of a client that we wish we could talk to that don't even know you exist.

I mean, that's kind of what I wanted. But he confirmed. He said, "If you wanted to get those people to start knocking down your door, you've got to just keep doing what you're doing, but you need to add one more thing." And then he finally went on to say, "David, if you wanted to have the media call you on a regular basis, you've just got to keep doing what you're doing, but you need to add one more thing." And sure enough, in banking, the media—something was always happening in the media, and they were always talking to people.

And I'm thinking, "Dude, you're about to kill me. What is this one thing? I'm ready to strangle him at this point." He said, "David, you should write a book." And I literally laughed out loud. I hope I wasn't too disrespectful, but I didn't get it at first. I mean, I was like, "Who am I to write a book, and who would ever want to listen to me?" But he kind of calmed me down and helped me realize a couple of very important things.

He said, "All these seminars you've been going to, well, they've been based on books, right?" I'm like, "Yeah." And he said, "All these homesteading courses that you've been taking and using and implementing, they've been all based on books, right?" I'm like, "Yeah, I see where you're going with this." He said, "All these books that you've been reading, well, they're books, right?" And I'm like, "Yes, they are books.

I finally kind of get it." But I still wasn't sure if I could be the one to do it. But he just continued to kind of encourage me. So I ended up writing a book. I didn't realize that was a hard thing to do. And I looked at it not in the aspect of, "Oh, my gosh, I need to write a book.

This big elephant I need to eat." It was basically, I just thought to myself, "If I could just jot down eight or ten things on a piece of paper that I wanted to make sure I got across to this whoever is reading my book before they threw it away or walked out of the room." I just kind of jotted down that line, just kind of plugged in the pieces and ended up writing a book.

Again, like I said, I didn't realize it was a hard thing. Then I ended up getting it published. I didn't realize that was a hard thing to do either. I had some friends that had been published authors. I had made friends with some of these speakers that I've been going to their seminars.

So I got a couple of introductions, and I ended up getting it published. And it ended up being one of the worst experiences of my life. Now, I promised it would be good stuff, but it was really one of the worst experiences of my life. It was really one of the worst experiences of my life.

I didn't know how to negotiate a publishing contract. I ended up giving all my rights away, and I ended up feeling, and really I think this is typical even with more traditional publishing today, is I was just the least important part of the process. I was needed for the initial content, but they didn't need me anymore.

In fact, when the book was done, I had no input in the final title. I had no input in the cover. There were three chapters added to the book that I didn't even know were there until I got my sample copies in the mail. It was just really not a fun experience.

I was just a clog in a wheel of this process of churning out books, and hopefully one day one of them will do good. It just wasn't fun. But me, as this entrepreneurial kind of author, I was leveraging the book for different reasons. So it really didn't get me down so much, but it still wasn't a fun process.

But an amazing thing happened. Just like Jay said, I literally doubled my income in less than a year. Really, it was about eight months. Doubled my income within eight months, and the only thing I had done different from yesterday and today was the book. In fact, yesterday I was the same guy just hustling in a good way, doing well.

The next day I was this recognized authority who had the book in front of me as my credibility tool and booster. Sure enough, I doubled all my fees, and nobody negotiated with me. I'm like, "Oh, I should have done that a long time ago." And sure enough, people that would never even knew I exist or would not even return my phone calls were begging to get on my calendar because now they thought I knew something.

Again, I didn't necessarily know any more than I did the day before, but that perception was a reality. Now, I had to swallow my pride and talk to these people because I wanted their money, but that's beside the point. And then sure enough, just like Jay had predicted, the media called me on a regular basis because I was in the Yahoo area that had anything to do with the banking, had a book out there.

So I had that credibility and authority, and I had already been vetted by publishers. They were calling me weekly, whether it was to be on TV or radio or quoting me in the newspaper about the industry. Of course, the banking industry has always been so volatile. There's always something to talk about, but I was the only local guy to talk to.

And it was amazing. And I literally looked at it and thought to myself, "Wow, this really is one of the most powerful weapons you can have in your arsenal of things to do to market yourself and my business." And I became very passionate about two things. One was guerrilla marketing in itself.

I really resonated with it because that was kind of deep into me, and I didn't know what it was, but I was just doing the unconventional to gain conventional goals. And like I said earlier, just leveraging everything but the bank account. Now, for me, again, I had access to the funds to the bank to do the marketing, but so did literally a thousand people in my community offering the same products and service to the same people.

So I had to step out. And then the second thing I became very passionate about is, "Wow, that book is a powerful weapon." So I became very passionate about talking to anybody and everybody, specifically starting with my clients because I was a wholesale guy, so my client was another professional.

I was talking to them, helping them grow their business. I was teaching them guerrilla marketing, and they would get their money from us. And I would share this secret weapon as being the book, and I would help them grow their business, and my business was just booming. And I became very passionate about that book being a very important part.

So in fact, you even got stuck in an elevator with me. You heard all about the power of a book. It was just kind of crazy. It drove my wife nuts. And then over the last few years of the '90s and into the early 2000s, it almost got a little crazy because I was doing so well in the banking business but had so much flexibility.

I literally was working about two hours a day in this thriving banking business, and all I really was doing was taking my best friends to lunch because I had set it up so well. But I was spending the other 20 hours a day playing in this book space. And anybody, clients or friends or neighbors who wanted to get books out, I was helping them find editors and publishers or printers and teaching them how to leverage a book.

And I just kind of got caught up in that whole space. And finally, my wife cornered me one day, and this is where a good balancing act of a great spouse could help out. She said, "David, we have to talk," which if you guys know what that means, that's not a good thing.

Anytime your spouse says we have to talk, you've done something wrong, or at least that's my case. I'm like, "Okay, what are we talking about now?" Well, she sat me down. She said, "David, you're working two full-time jobs. You're only getting paid for one." Now, granted, I was getting paid stupid money, but still, she said, "You're working 24/7.

I've never seen you. We've got two small kids now. Something's got to change. You can't keep this up." And I knew she was right. I was having so much fun, but I was neglecting everything, including the day job as a banker, although it was doing well. And so she sat me down and said, "Why don't we maybe look at this from a different perspective?

I recognize you've got this new passion for this whole book thing, and the book's done well for you and us." I ended up selling over 40,000 copies to the bank that I worked for. In fact, even by this time, I had published two books. The second one was co-authored with the Guerrilla Marketing guy.

It was actually called Guerrilla Marketing for Mortgage Brokers. That one did really well. That's when I sold 40,000 copies to the bank I worked for, so it was really going good, but the publishing process was still not very fun. So I had even tried self-publishing. I had self-published two books, which I think is an absolutely better thing to do than not doing anything at all.

It's still a very, very powerful tool, regardless of how you publish it. I just think that third-party validation and that distribution from a larger house really helped me a lot. But I realized that neither models were fun. Neither were exactly what I had expected. With the traditional house, like I said earlier, I had no control over anything.

And then when I self-published, I was in complete control of everything, but nobody knew how to buy the book or could only get it from me in my garage. Or the very early days of something called Amazon, which was very humble back then. But she helped me recognize that maybe if we looked at this a little different and built balance in from the start, maybe we could start our own company helping others facilitate the same goal that you're doing, but maybe you can get a little control of it.

So we ended up doing that, ended up starting a little house, named it after my kids, which is Morgan James, and started this little path of trying to help others leverage the power of a book to grow their business. And found a nice little niche. And ended up quitting my day job as a banker about a year later, after we had already published about 12 of the 17 speakers that I had gone out to see in the earlier days on their seminars and whatnot.

And just started to grow this whole concept of a book being a tool for a business person to leverage to grow their business. And an amazing thing happened. The more that their business grew, the more books they ended up selling, and then it just kind of all snowballed. And just looked at the same concept from the publishing side as I do from the guerrilla marketing side.

How can we be lean? How can we make money? How can we impact people but do it differently than everybody else? And that's how my path to publishing started. Now I'm on my 13th book, and we're publishing about 137 titles a year now. It is so much fun. When you said you wanted to do it but build balance into it, what do you mean by that?

Well, I had lost control of my life. Literally, I was working all day long, 24/7, really just not having any time for faith, family, food, or fun for that matter. All the work was fun. But it was sacrificing relationships, sacrificing the relationships I had with my wife, sacrificing relationships with my other family, and I just didn't have balance in there.

So one of the things that I did ultimately learn from my wife prodding me but also from guerrilla marketing was that balance is a very key part of an entrepreneur's success. Having all aspects of your life, not necessarily equal, but at least having some sort of balance so you have time and you give time to do the things that you're wanting to do.

The reason why you grow in a business in the first place is not necessarily so you can work more. It's so you can do other things. It took a little while, took me a couple more years to kind of master that, but we tried to build the publishing house so that we could work from that perspective and do initially both the banking job and the publishing job and still have time for family.

She was very good at helping me do that, but also Jay was very good at encouraging me to do that as well. So that's kind of what I mean. Even now today, I'm a big fan, and I do teach this to anybody that I ask, but also to all of our authors, that they do need to make sure they leave time and make time for faith, family, food, and fun outside of their business.

Great question. How do you actually manage a day, a week, a month in your current role then and implement those principles? I'd have to lead by example for the rest of the team, but it's something you have to do on purpose. It is something you have to schedule in.

You have to schedule in balance. So right now, I wouldn't expect somebody to start doing this tomorrow, but you have to build yourself up to it. But right now, I work Monday through Friday, and depending on my travel times for when I speak, I may work Monday through Thursday.

I work from 10 to 5, and I do it on purpose. I usually take a two-hour lunch. I always take a two-hour lunch, and it's usually with a friend or a family member, so I build that in on purpose. If I have to meet with a client, it's probably because I really wanted to meet with that person, or because they are a friend or something like that.

But I kind of built that in so that I left time in the morning for my kids. So I fix breakfast and have breakfast with my kids every day before they go to school. And then when I get home in the evening, I turn the iPhone off. I turn the email off.

I don't get any phone calls. I even do not disturb on the phone or whatever. And I have evening time with my family, my wife, and the kids. And then the weekend, same thing. I don't work on the weekends. It's just something you have to do on purpose. It took a couple years to get there, but first I started to go home an hour earlier, and then I started to go into work a half hour later, and just kind of built and found this nice little schedule that I'm on right now.

But it took doing it on purpose, but it's been great. In fact, one of the things that has helped us over the years is the fine art of delegation. I realized that I don't have to do it all myself, so I realized something very humbling. Every time I delegated something that I thought I was the only person that could do it, it ended up getting done better and quicker, and we grew.

And I'm like, "Why didn't I let go of that a long time ago?" So delegation is a big part of achieving balance for me, and I do recommend it for others as well. Do you believe it's possible to build such a lifestyle intentionally from the beginning, or do you have to pay your dues for some period of time first?

I really think you could probably do it from the beginning. It just depends on where you are in your lifestyle when you get started, because obviously I'm making more money and having more opportunities now than I was when we started the publishing business. It's funny, I haven't replaced the income that I had, but I definitely replaced the need and beyond.

But for me, it was easier to start from closer to the start on the publishing side, because I had such good income coming in, even though when I quit, I lost that income. We weren't living to the means that we were making, so that's important. So I think you could start from the scratch.

Building that balance, it's not necessarily easy. You just have to be prepared for it. So most entrepreneurs are out there taking risks to get potential gains, and I'm a big fan of that. But it's nice if you can have a little cushion or have some other things in play to help you do it.

And I think me playing in both banking and publishing worlds for the first year definitely helped me at least set down that right path to get there. It's interesting. I'm kind of asking just selfish questions for my own journey. But I walked away from the – although I believe this current business could make far more money than I ever would have working as a financial advisor – I intentionally walked away from the big money business to build a lifestyle business.

I looked around and I said, "You know what? I'm not getting any younger, and I am not interested in wasting time, wasting years of my life building something that I'm not going to like the final product." And what happened was I looked at the final product and I said, "I don't – I have this remarkable ability.

It drives some people nuts, but I have this remarkable ability to look at something, an industry, a job, an occupation, and then just automatically assume that I'm the best in the world at it without doing the work." So some people like that. Some people say, "Well, slow down a little bit." But that's just how I look at it.

I'm like, "Okay, if I'm going to do it, if someone else has done it, I can do it too. Yeah, if I put in the same amount of work and effort and have a little bit of talent and skill and serendipitous timing." But as I look at – I looked at the business.

I said, "Well, this business that has full success, I don't like it. This other business that has full success, I like it more." But the challenge has been now that I am a – I have absolute control and also total responsibility because with control comes responsibility. But I have absolute control over everything I do and that's a good thing.

But it's also a really hard thing because I have no one to blame except me for everything I do. And so even on a day-to-day basis, I continually – I say, "Okay. Well, I should work, work, work, work. This is the time to work." But then I'm not getting enough sleep.

So then I get sick and everything gets thrown off. So I'm looking at it saying, "Am I building – can I build it while enjoying the lifestyle along the way, working the 10 to 5? Or do I need to do this idea of putting in the hours up front recognizing that it will pay off?" It's an interesting nut.

Yeah, it is. And you'll find – and I really admire you too because I remember in our first conversations even just looking and learning more about who you are and where you came from. It's scary for some people to think of it. Man, you just stepped out and did it.

So I really admire you. But you do need to get control. You do need to make sure that it's something you do on purpose. And test me. Go out there and delegate one small task that's not going to kill the business if it doesn't get done right. But start delegating one or two things here and there over the next few months depending on your patience level and see what happens.

You'll be surprised that things can get done just as good as you were doing it yourself and freeing up some time for you to do something else. It might be more income producing or depending on where you are in your family life, it might be to be able to free up some time to spend more time with the family because both those things are very important obviously.

But I challenge you to delegate one small thing there and then purposely don't work 24/7. It's hard. I mean it's hard as an entrepreneur who's got something really exciting to do and you're eager to go to work every day and you've got things you need to do to grow it.

But you've got to build on that balance or you'll just drive yourself to the grave. When you look at your company and you're kind of considering the skills that you have now, what are the skills that you have had to learn that took you from employee to effective entrepreneur and how did you learn them?

Through continual studies. So I still even to this day, I go to seminars to improve what I don't know and I go to industry stuff to improve what I don't know. So always taking the time that's necessary to learn my craft even better but also to learn how to do things smarter.

So I'm constantly reading. I mean I read 5,000 books a year anyhow because those are the ones I've got to decide whether we publish or not. But I still have to find time to read for pleasure or business to help fine tune those spaces. I think delegation was something that was the hardest thing for me to learn.

So I just challenged you to do something that was very hard for me to do but it was very significant because I saw such an immediate opportunity for me to grow after starting to delegate. So that was one of the hardest things but that was one of the things that I didn't necessarily learn.

And then I've also learned something that was kind of taught to me from a young age from my father but I never really appreciated it until it came time for me to need it. And he told me to surround myself with people that were smarter than me. So as I did delegate and bring in people to help out, I always made sure I tried to find people that I really respected, who I really felt were way smarter than me or definitely better at the task at hand than I could be.

And then not be intimidated by it and try to help them grow. And then I would always be happy and grow. And it was true. I mean everybody that works for us is significantly smarter than me in my eyes. And things are getting done with very little stress and we're growing.

So those are a handful of things that I've had to kind of learn. And then from just the running the business side, the publishing industry is changing so much on a regular basis, all for good I think. And I've got to stay ahead of the curve on which trends are happening and where we can go to continue to be successful and lean.

So those are some new challenges I've had to kind of master. But those are the things I've learned over the last 13 years now. - Did you say that you read 5,000 books a year? - I should say I skim 5,000 books a year. - You look at it.

- That's right. - So that is remarkable. And I'm interested to know of your workday schedule, is that what you consider to work? For example, would you be in your office from 10 to noon skimming through a dozen or two books? Is that what you consider work or do you do that outside of those working hours?

- It's all done during the working hours. So we formally meet every Wednesday to talk about the books that are on hand. But all of us, there's five of us on our publication board. But all of us use the week to kind of go through the manuscripts to see if they're right for us.

I do read for pleasure outside of the work. And sometimes the things I'm reading for pleasure end up helping me in my workday, but I do that outside of the work hours. But I do. I skim through, you know, gracious. It was 5,200 and some change last year alone.

- When you approach a manuscript and you're looking to--and I know you're looking at it with a critical eye of should I publish this or not, but also as a consumer, you sit down, you got a book in your hands. What's your thought process as far as looking to gain the information that you can learn from that book?

How do you approach it? - All right. This is kind of top secret insider information, so I'm glad it's just the two of us. - Indeed, indeed. - But the reality is 80% of our decision, mine included, is the author. And I mean that. So the books--and I'll answer your question, I promise.

But the books that get to a certain point, we end up having an opportunity to talk to the authors. But for us, ultimately, 80% of the decision is the author. Who are they? Why are they doing this book? What's their end game? Is the book going to help somebody?

Is it going to help their career? All these things are kind of built together. But the author, are they a knucklehead? Are they fun to work with? Are they coachable? Are they just doing it for the right reasons? And this doesn't mean that somebody writing a book just to write a book or write a book just to be a bestseller doesn't mean that's not the right reason.

It's just not necessarily the right reason for us. So that's 80% of our decision. But from the book perspective, I'm a marketer. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a consumer first. I'm an editor last. I mean, really, I'll look at a book and not know if it's been edited, not know if it's good quality writing or not.

I'm looking for am I or is somebody going to benefit from reading this? Is it clear? I've got a logical path for the reader to go through. Is there some sort of benefit for them to read it? And is there a compelling reason to start a relationship with that reader?

Because remember way back in the day when I read Girl of Marketing, Jay encouraged us readers to reach out to him, and it changed my life. So I want that same impact for every one of our authors but also for everyone who reads our books. I'm looking for things in the manuscript that are unconventional.

So that's kind of what I do. I'll skim through the table of contents. I'll start in the middle of the book. I'll go left and right. I won't start at page one. I'll just try to find some nuggets and see if it makes sense, and I'll see if there's a way that somebody else might be able to benefit from it.

But the reality is 80% is the author, 20% is the book. And really the reason for that is you can always hire a better editor to improve the book. You can always put some of those elements in that I really like to see in a book. Heck, you could delete it and start all over from scratch and hire a ghostwriter to do it all for you.

It's the author you can't fix if they're not doing it for the right reasons. When looking at books, so not the books that you're reviewing for potential publication but actually the books that you're reading to stay current in your industry, your job, the goals that matter most to you, how do you approach those books?

Do you read with a pen and a highlighter in your hand? Do you just look for one key idea and note that and then toss it aside and go on? How do you actually approach that kind of reading? I am probably guilty of being one of those – I think the stats are that 70% of book buyers only finish 30% of the books.

I'm probably one of those. I look for key things. I'll buy a book because of one topic on the table of contents that I saw or a friend recommended it for a specific reason. So I find myself not necessarily reading the whole book from front to cover to cover as I'll find what I'm looking for, what I can actually get out of it immediately right away.

But not surprisingly, oftentimes you end up learning a whole lot more from a book than you initially thought that you would. So I end up finishing most of the books. They come in pieces. So recommendations is a big way that I find books. I browse bookstores on a regular basis.

I'm like a kid in a candy store. It's just crazy. But I look for topics that interest me. I look for different ways to do things. I look for different ways to see things. I'm just browsing for interesting titles and topics or paying attention to people in my space as they come out with books and seeing if what they say is a bunch of hogwash or if it's really good.

It's a process. But I enjoy it. Do you keep books after you read them? I do. I never throw a book away. I sometimes shuffle them to a storage place, but I keep books. I'm one of those crazy guys that will get recommended a book or find a topic that I want to find a book on, and I'll go buy the book either at the local bookstore or at the local bookstore.

I'll buy it from Amazon, of course. But I'll go find the e-book so I can have it right now because I need it right now. We all need something right now. Once I get the physical book is when I really start getting into it. I'll break out the highlighter.

I tend not to fold the pages, highlight and underline and make notes in the margins. And then sometimes if I'm just so busy or have a lot going on, I'll end up still buying the audio book so I can finally finish the book while I'm in the car or traveling.

Yeah, I love the Amazon. You could buy the book, get a discount on the Kindle, and purchase the audio book and do all three things all at one time. It's a beautiful model. Do you have a note-keeping, note-taking system or a journaling system of some kind where you capture key ideas?

I could do a whole lot better, but I usually use either pen and paper or just a simple notepad on the iPad. I've been paying for Evernote for years but still haven't used it. I've got friends that use it and love it. They keep telling me I should learn it, and I'm like, "I'm paying for it so I'll eventually learn it," but I still just go back to my old school and write it down.

Do you ever read through your notes or journals? I do on a regular basis. I travel a lot, so I tend to spend a lot of airplane time going back and fine-tuning some ideas or remembering that I forgot to implement some notes that I took, but I always go through my notes.

There's a theory that perhaps you're familiar with it. I sometimes ask guests on the show about their income and the rate of growth of their income. When I was in, I think it was either high school or college, I came across Brian Tracy's 1,000% Formula. You're familiar with it?

Yeah. Okay. He talks about the 25-second version. He talks about the impact of learning, and he talks about how reading makes a difference as far as your general knowledge. I've long had a reading habit, which has helped me tremendously. He charts the amount of knowledge that you have and compares it to the income.

He indicates how if you can just find the ideas that help you to get one-tenth of one percent better every day, that compounds over time to be equivalent of 1,000% more productive, more effective over the course of 10 years, and thus your income could increase by 1,000% over time.

He has a formula that he teaches for doing that, one of which is reading 30 to 60 minutes per day in your field, which comes out to be equivalent of 500 books over a 10-year period of time. Looking back at your income over your working lifetime, do you have any guess of how percentage-wise how it's increased over a period of years or decades?

Could it be anywhere close to that 10x growth per decade number? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Now, there was a period of time in the banking business that it just really spiked. Of course, it all crashed and burned, and nobody is making that kind of money anymore. But, oh, yeah, absolutely.

From the time that I really started to take that same concept and use it as far as studying and learning and mastering my craft and learning more about the industry and reading, just like Brian Tracy has taught us – in fact, he was one of the ones I studied – oh, yeah, absolutely, 10x by far.

It's growing, so I'll end up making more this year than I made last year, and I expect to do the same thing next year. Now, I'm also really good at multiple streams of income. I'm one of those guys that understand that having income streams from many different sources is a good thing.

And so a lot of things that I do and recommend to authors are things that just improve my day-to-day existence I recommend to others, and I get paid for those recommendations. So I've got income streams from speaking, income streams from affiliate marketing, income streams from books I write, books I co-author, white papers I co-author.

So it's just a matter of continuing to do some more of those things, which take very little of my time, very little of my effort, but all grouped together have a significant impact on my income as I continue to grow. Are you in a position where if you wanted to, you could choose not to work and be able to maintain your lifestyle without running your business?

I think I probably am now, although right now I could imagine not doing this every day because it's so much fun. But I think we've got enough income streams coming in that I could take some time off. In fact, I accidentally proved this not too many years ago. I ended up getting sick.

I had a thyroid issue back in probably '08 or '09, and I was out of work for nine months. I mean I couldn't go to the office for nine months while they figured out what the heck was wrong with my thyroid. And the business grew, and my income grew, and I didn't show up one day at work.

So that is the true test of a true business, is if a business can continue on. And I've aspired to create such a business. I have no idea how to do it because I've kind of chosen this thing that has me at the middle of it. Maybe someday I'll be able to figure out how to create that type of business for myself.

It's a process, and it's all about building a good team around you. I know it's a personal question about your income, but I just feel it's such a key driver. And it seems in many ways so easy to differentiate yourself from the pack just by simply taking an interest in your job or your business and paying attention.

And I am shocked and appalled sometimes at how few people do. And I just look and say, "This is so obvious." So I like to ask people like you if it's actually worked. But I made a decision some time back. I'm kind of a frugal, cheap guy. I just made a decision.

I'm never going to dicker around over the price of a book. Because no matter the price, even if I wind up paying full retail – and I generally don't. I buy the used copy off of Amazon, and it's $2.99 or $3.99 of shipping. But even if I buy a new book retail right off the airport – the marked-up $32 airport book stand, still, think about one idea.

And all you need is one idea that comes from a $32 book, and there's a potential for hundreds or thousands of dollars if you're reading the right type of book. So I never buy fiction. I always get fiction from the library. But I'll buy any nonfiction book that's recommended to me just about any time it's recommended.

And even if you don't read the whole thing front to back, just one or two ideas. And what I've found in a decade of doing this, the ideas cross-pollinate. And it's not that I'm interested in everything, but you find an idea here, an idea there, and all of a sudden you see an application in a different industry.

And that could potentially lead to the millions of dollars ideas that are disruptors. Yep, absolutely right. You're brilliant. I stole it all from Brian Tracy. All those were ideas that I learned from other people. I just stole them and made them my own. That's right. Dave, we've ended up talking just a lot about personal stuff, and I really appreciate it.

It's been really interesting. With regard to the book publishing business, would you like to make a few comments? And I'd love to see just a few comments as far as what the landscape of the book publishing business is and how people should approach that topic. Yeah, absolutely. So the landscape of publishing is definitely changing, but publishing in itself is still pretty much the same.

Publishers are producing books that people like you and I are writing, and we're hoping people are reading it and getting some benefit out of it. What's changing is the relationship that publishers are having with authors. And the larger houses, the ones that have been around for 200 or 300 years, are slowly starting to realize this, that it's not about them anymore.

They're very important, obviously. The credibility of a big house, the existing relationships into bookstores, the quality of work and the help of your team to get you there is very, very important. But it's amazing. Over the last 500 years, they never have really realized that they have nothing unless they have an author out there peddling their wares and writing good things that people can enjoy reading, whether it's fiction or having something good to say that people can learn from on the nonfiction side.

The book publishing industry is basically changing how it's serving people, is what you were saying. Yeah. So the book publishing, they're slowly over the last 500 years realizing that the author is the most important part of the process. They're still slow to change and really adopt building a relationship with the authors and helping the authors succeed like we do at our house.

We want to make sure that the authors succeed because if they succeed, what's going to happen? We're going to end up succeeding. The whole idea of publishing – in fact, HarperCollins is known to publish 1,200 books a year. Now, obviously, not all 1,200 are going to be mega bestsellers, but they're publishing just enough to find the one or two that's going to float them for the next year.

So it is a process. I'd rather spend time investing the relationship and helping fewer authors succeed because ultimately, we'll end up succeeding long term because of that relationship is where the real value is. Remarkable. All right, a couple of quick questions. Best book on relationship skills you've ever read?

Relationship? You mean like business relationships or marital relationships? I was thinking of marital relationships, but if you got one on each, that's fine. I'm thinking. So the best book on business relationship that I've ever read was a book called The Gorilla Entrepreneur. There's a pattern. I told you I immersed myself in gorilla marketing.

It's by Jay Levinson. I think the first edition was called The Way of the Gorilla, but it's a really, really good book. In it is actually where I really spend a lot of time learning the balance aspects, but also it talks about balancing those relationships and the importance of having relationships and the understanding that as an entrepreneur, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a solopreneur.

You can be more successful by surrounding people around you. So that's a you may not have realized it by the cover or the title, but that book has had a significant impact on me from a relationship aspect. And then the other book from a marital or personal relationship thing is it's an older book, but it's by C.S.

Lewis, believe it or not. And it's called The Four Loves, an explanation of the nature of love and obviously from a marital perspective, making sure that you can love somebody the way that they need to be loved and being consistent and realize that you're not in it of yourself and your goals and needs aren't the only thing that's important in a relationship.

A lot of us tend to fall into that trap. I think that's probably the best book from a relational aspect from a marital point. Now you may not have pictured that book as being a marriage type book, but that's kind of what I've got out of it. Interesting. No, I've never even heard of it.

I've read several of C.S. Lewis' books, but I've never even heard of that one. Yeah. Best book on sales and marketing? Let's see. J. Conrad Levinson, all 47 titles published by Morgan James Publishing. How many books have you written in that series? We do publish most of the guerrilla marketing, so I think we're at 39 of the series.

Okay, there we go. Obviously, the best book on marketing would be the guerrilla marketing, so I guess sales is only part of the marketing process. It is really the ultimate endgame, but it's a big part of getting to the sale. I think guerrilla marketing is probably the best one.

Your best or favorite book or books on money, investing, and personal finance? Dave Ramsey, believe it or not. I just really like the way he simplifies things. Powerful. Yeah, it really is. I never really – the whole balancing with my wife has been good. I'm the guy who would like to go out and spend – buy new cars on a regular basis, although finally I understand that if I buy my Beamers and my Land Rovers two years old, I get a much better deal, so she's helped me learn that.

But we had some debt. We didn't have a whole lot of debt, but we had some debt. But implementing and listening to Dave Ramsey helped us realize that debt is not necessarily a good thing. I mean, I realize that. But obviously, some debt is necessary. Sometimes you have to go into debt to do some things.

If you can not do it with borrowing, that's great. But he helped us really just from a mindset get completely out of debt. Now, we're totally debt-free right now except I think we probably have just a little bit left on our mortgage now. But it's just a matter of thinking about where that money is going that you could just do it differently, and that for me was one of the biggest impacts I've had from him.

I wasn't necessarily following Dave Ramsey or listening to his radio show or reading his other books. It was recommended that I at least listen to it. And I picked up the book and said, "Oh, yeah. This makes sense." And I had a banking background, so a lot of the things he talked about, I was like, "Yeah, that's how I made money." "Oh, yeah.

That's how they make money. I need to stop doing this." Last one. Book that you most want to make sure that your kids read as they go through their teenage years. My teenage year. You might laugh, but my father gave me this book. I had gotten into my 20s by this point.

But Who Moved My Cheese was a great, great, great – still is a great book. Times are changing for them faster than it did for us. I think my son's probably already read it, but my daughter hasn't yet, but she will. I think that's a great book for teens, mid-teens to upper teens to read to understand that you're not always in control of the environment around you and how you react and respond to situations and understanding that change is just part of the process.

And recognize you can still get through it. Who Moved My Cheese is the best book for that, for them. So I'll give you one on that subject that I like, and this is significantly more involved than Who Moved My Cheese, but there's an author named – just double-checking here – Charles Hugh Smith.

And he wrote a book. Let me just pull it up on the website here to make sure I get it right. He wrote a book called How to Get a Job and Defy a Bewildering Economy. Hang on. My books. It's a weird, wonky title, but it was good. Okay.

It's called Get a Job, Build a Real Career, and Defy a Bewildering Economy. I mean, the thing's $9.95 on Amazon right now and on Kindle and $20. But it's one of the best overall discussions that I thought – that I read recently. I published it in 2014 that talked about the comprehensive aspects to, I guess, career selection.

And where he went through basically an actual understanding of what's going on today, what's actually happening in today's world with regard to the changes in the economy. Really good book. So also one that just as a reader you might enjoy checking out. Yeah. Thank you. I will. Awesome. David, thank you so much for coming on, man.

I really appreciate it. Where would you like – do you post a blog? I'll be able to check you out on the Morgan James site. Where would you like people to connect with you after this interview? Yeah. So my doors are always open. You can check us out at MorganJamesPublishing.com, and I'm on Twitter @DavidHancock.

Awesome. Thanks for coming on Radical Personal Finance. Man, I appreciate you. I certainly enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having me. Sure. Are you ready to make your next pro basketball, football, hockey, concert or live event unforgettable? Let Sweet Hop take your game to the next level. Sweet Hop is an online marketplace curating the best premium tickets at stadiums, arenas and amphitheaters nationwide.

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