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Getting To The Best Idea (a conversation with Niki Papadopoulos)

Getting To The Best Idea (a conversation with Niki Papadopoulos)

Released Thursday, 9th November 2023
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Getting To The Best Idea (a conversation with Niki Papadopoulos)

Getting To The Best Idea (a conversation with Niki Papadopoulos)

Getting To The Best Idea (a conversation with Niki Papadopoulos)

Getting To The Best Idea (a conversation with Niki Papadopoulos)

Thursday, 9th November 2023
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to grow your business no matter what stage urine

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so even the best idea

0:43

needs direction need someone

0:45

to help you get to the heart of the matter and really

0:47

figure out what is the gym in the

0:49

midst of the pile of all of the

0:51

fluff in the dirt around

0:54

the gym itself and that's

0:56

the role that an

0:57

editor plays in the

0:59

role of editor can take many forms it can

1:01

be a friend who helps you get to

1:03

the heart of the idea you can be a creative

1:05

director in the organization

1:06

or a can be an actual editor

1:09

and onto the issue we have an actual editor

1:11

we have nicky papadopoulos nicky has

1:13

edited probably frankly many of

1:15

the books that are sitting on your shelf right now she's

1:18

have that many many high profile authors and

1:20

she also edited my book called hurting

1:22

tigers and we're going to talk about

1:24

how to get to the just have an idea how

1:27

do you know when an idea is right and then had you

1:29

prune away all of the non

1:31

essentials so that your idea is

1:33

pure and that it resonates

1:35

deeply with the audience

1:36

you're trying to reach

1:38

and has its intended and where

1:41

it is a great privilege

1:43

sat on the show to nancy that very

1:46

sincerely digging nicky papadopoulos

1:48

nicky is my editor

1:51

at portfolio on my book hurting tigers

1:53

and she is a profound

1:56

thinker and a sister

1:58

of ideas and some who

2:00

I have tremendous respect for, especially

2:03

with her ability to get to the heart of the matter

2:06

very quickly. Thank you for having me, Todd. I'm

2:08

so excited to be on. Awesome.

2:11

I obviously just gave a little bit of

2:13

the reason why I wanted to have you on the show. I

2:15

know there are a lot of people out there who

2:18

have to, they have to get to the heart

2:20

of the matter quickly when they're trying to do a complex

2:22

project or they're trying to communicate with

2:24

someone. You've edited any

2:27

number of books that probably are sitting on

2:29

people's shelves right now that they have no idea

2:31

you edited that have had tremendous

2:33

cultural impact. So I want to get into

2:35

some of that. I want to talk about how you think about

2:38

ideas and how you push people to get to

2:40

their best idea. But before we

2:42

do that, how did you get into editing

2:44

books? I mean, is this like from birth

2:46

you said someday I will be editing? Or

2:48

is it like what was the journey like for you to

2:51

get to this place?

2:53

Thank you. And thank you for

2:55

your comment about the books being on people's

2:57

shelves. I mean, that's certainly the goal,

3:00

right? Is that we produce work

3:03

that helps people and that influences people.

3:06

And I think

3:08

your community especially is a

3:10

community that we value a lot at Portfolio

3:13

and that we're actively trying to help and to

3:15

reach.

3:17

But let me answer your

3:19

other question.

3:20

So I don't think I ever

3:22

really knew what an editor was for the longest

3:24

time because I didn't grow

3:26

up in a family of publishing people and

3:28

I wasn't surrounded by

3:30

publishing people.

3:33

So I grew up mostly in

3:35

Greece before the internet.

3:37

So information was scarce and

3:40

rare and books especially books

3:42

that are hard to find. So

3:44

if I hoarded them and I read as many of them

3:46

as I could, my

3:48

high school book about God was served

3:50

in feminism and cultural history

3:53

and a lot of really dorky fantasy

3:55

and sci-fi novels which we can talk about

3:57

someday. And I was always

3:59

really

7:46

thought

8:00

and some of the transformational

8:02

business books that you've edited, it's kind

8:04

of funny that that would be a question, but I think

8:06

people can probably relate to that. I'm sure there are many artists

8:09

out there who are probably getting the same questions from

8:11

their parents even as they're listening. So

8:14

I want to talk about the process of editing

8:17

a book. And really, I think that this process

8:19

applies to any kind of editing

8:21

that we do in our life. If we're

8:23

doing a project, we're trying to create something for a

8:25

client, I think a lot of the same principles apply.

8:28

But specifically, in your process,

8:30

when you initially hear an idea for a book,

8:32

how do you know that it's one that you want to work on, one

8:34

that you want to acquire and then help

8:37

edit?

8:37

I mean, there is a set of questions that

8:39

you learn to run through when you

8:41

encounter

8:43

a new project after

8:46

a few years of doing this kind of work. And

8:49

I imagine it's not totally unlike what happens

8:51

in Hollywood or what happens with venture

8:53

capitalists. What is

8:56

this? Who is it for? How do we

8:58

talk about it? What does it remind me of?

9:00

How do we signal in the package

9:03

that people know that it's for them? And

9:06

what value can we add to

9:08

it that

9:10

no one else can add in order for it to reach

9:12

a wide audience? So

9:14

those are really publishing questions

9:16

more than editorial questions. But

9:18

I do think that they are really important. When

9:21

it comes to the idea itself, one

9:23

thing that I like to say is an

9:26

idea is not a topic. It's

9:28

not like managing your career

9:30

is not an idea. An idea

9:33

is a statement that someone

9:35

can and will

9:36

disagree with.

9:38

And a great

9:41

example of this, and he's really

9:43

good at this kind of shorthand, but it's the work of Simon

9:45

Sinek. Start with why is

9:47

a statement that not everybody agrees with. Or

9:50

the last is a statement that not everybody

9:53

agrees with. And it's an idea. And

9:55

if you hear that idea and it

9:58

resonates with you and it's... touches

10:00

something that you kind of thought that you might already

10:02

be on to, you know that

10:07

that book is for you. So

10:10

that's kind of how we think about the idea

10:12

piece. Now that's not always, not

10:15

every book is about arguing an idea, right?

10:19

A lot of books offer a different kind of

10:21

service to the reader. And so that's also

10:24

a question that we ask, like what is the service

10:26

being offered to the reader

10:27

in this book?

10:29

Is it offering comprehensiveness,

10:32

right? Like our mutual friend Josh Kaufman

10:34

wrote a book called The Personal MBA. Well,

10:37

the value proposition of the personal MBA

10:40

is you don't have to go to business school, you

10:42

can read this book. And

10:47

another kind of book, the value proposition offered

10:49

to the reader might be, you're going to read this

10:52

book and you're going to feel something. You're

10:54

going to feel motivated. You're going to feel

10:56

confident. You're going to feel less afraid

10:59

or you're going to feel empowered. So it kind

11:02

of depends on like, what

11:04

is the book trying to achieve? And

11:08

has the author got a

11:10

strong enough plan for how they're going to achieve it?

11:12

Yeah. And that's always, I mean, again, even

11:14

that's a subjective thing, right? I'm sure

11:16

there probably have been books that you thought were

11:18

going to be smash successes that ended up

11:21

not. And books that are surprise hits

11:23

that you had no clue were going

11:25

to be that way.

11:28

Is there any rhyme or reason about why some ideas

11:30

take off and others don't, in

11:32

your opinion? A

11:33

lot has to do with the cultural moment

11:36

into which the book is published.

11:38

And that is something that we can never be 100% sure about. When

11:43

we published Girl Boss,

11:45

that was the right moment for that book. I think

11:47

if that book had been published in the

11:51

Reagan 80s, it would have not met with

11:54

the same audience at the same moment

11:57

with the same message that they needed

11:58

to hear. And the reason

12:00

that that book worked was because

12:02

there was a cohort of young women who

12:04

were coming into the world,

12:07

into the professional world, and

12:09

having this sense of dissatisfaction that while

12:11

they were very ambitious, the traditional

12:15

structures of the professional world

12:17

were not really for them. And that book

12:19

came along, Sophia came along and said, you

12:22

can be a boss, even

12:24

though you're a young woman. You can be on the cover

12:26

of your own business book. That is a

12:28

thing that is now available to you. And

12:31

that was huge. Now if

12:33

someone comes along and does that today, it doesn't

12:35

have the same

12:36

impact.

12:38

And it could be just as good of a book

12:40

and they could have

12:41

just as good of a story. But you can't recreate

12:43

that moment of the cultural zeitgeist.

12:45

It does seem like there's almost like the earthquake

12:48

and then there are the tremors that follow the earthquake,

12:50

right? Like the aftershocks. Right.

12:53

People always try to capitalize on, like, you

12:55

know, a couple of years ago there were a handful

12:57

of books that are really just like one

13:00

or two books that came out with profanity in the title.

13:02

And then all of a sudden you see profanity everywhere

13:04

in titles. And it's like people think that that's

13:07

the reason it was successful versus the

13:09

idea, you know, or whatever. But it is kind

13:11

of maddening. You

13:14

know, because to your point, or your earlier point,

13:16

this idea that, you know, because people,

13:18

I mean, as I'm sure they do with

13:21

you, you're probably less accessible

13:23

to people than I am from the standpoint

13:25

of like, hey, I've got a book idea. Can I run it by

13:27

you? Right. Like I get that all the time

13:29

because people know I write books and I'm always happy

13:31

to talk to people and help them. But

13:34

often I hear something like my book is about

13:36

how to market your business better. That's

13:39

not a book. Like, that's like

13:42

good advice. Like market

13:44

your business better. That's fine. But it's

13:46

not a book. I mean, a book to your point, your earlier

13:48

point, I mean, a book has to have a point of view.

13:51

And that's maybe something that you're willing to drive a stake

13:53

in the ground and say, here I stand and

13:56

I'm going to offend some people maybe even

13:58

with what I say. offend some people,

14:00

you probably don't really have a point of view with

14:03

your book. You

14:06

mentioned Simon's books earlier. I

14:09

had that same experience with Die Empty. I

14:11

got so many hate emails from people

14:13

who just hated

14:16

that title and they were really, really mad at me. But

14:18

the people who got it really, really loved it. They really

14:21

understood it and got it. You

14:23

have to be willing to take a risk like that with

14:25

your idea. If it doesn't

14:27

feel a bit abrasive, then

14:30

you probably don't really have anything

14:32

yet.

14:34

Absolutely. It's funny, Todd,

14:36

because I remember internally

14:38

with Die Empty

14:41

that we had a lot of, as with every book, we had

14:43

a lot of conversations about the book. But

14:47

the psychographic profile of the

14:49

reader for that book was never in question.

14:52

Nobody ever asked, well, who is this for anyways?

14:54

Because it was so clear that it was going

14:57

to be for some people and not for

14:59

other people.

15:00

Yeah.

15:01

I still get that to this day.

15:04

Frankly, I still remember the emails back and forth too

15:06

where we were discussing alternative potential

15:09

titles for that book, none

15:12

of which were really all that great. But I know that

15:14

there was, I could sense that there was some trepidation

15:16

about what to call it.

15:19

I do remember, I think actually it was

15:21

Adrian Zakim, I do remember a

15:24

planted flag Die

15:26

Empty is the title of the book. I

15:28

think that's actually what it came down to, which

15:31

I really appreciate. But

15:33

I do think that when you're thinking about ideas,

15:38

especially titles and containers and things like

15:40

that, I would love

15:42

to hear your perspective on

15:45

how do you think about, when

15:47

an idea for

15:49

a book or you think about a set

15:51

of ideas within a book. Because every book isn't

15:54

just one thing. There's a set of ideas

15:56

that have to hold together. How

16:00

do you think about what belongs and what doesn't?

16:02

How do you really get to the heart of, hey,

16:05

these are all good ideas, but some of them

16:07

don't belong

16:10

together. How do you sort through

16:12

that? Authors do not struggle

16:14

with having enough ideas to put

16:16

in a book. Typically it's like, I want to write seven

16:19

books in this book. How do you

16:21

decide what stays and what goes? I

16:23

like to work backwards from the

16:26

imagined use case of the book.

16:29

I like to think about

16:31

who the reader is and what their relationship

16:33

is with this particular book.

16:36

And I have a lot of assumptions about who

16:38

this reader is. My first assumption

16:40

always, and this is very important, is

16:42

that our reader is a reader. They read

16:45

lots of books. I find

16:47

it very difficult to talk about making books for

16:49

people who don't read. That is a very frustrating

16:51

conversation. And I'm not... Some

16:53

people are good at that. I'm not good at

16:55

that. I'm good at thinking

16:57

about how do we make something

17:00

for someone who cares a lot

17:02

about getting information from a book,

17:05

getting an edge from a book, feeling

17:07

like they have a relationship, an intellectual

17:10

relationship with the author of a book.

17:13

That's a relationship I care about very much. And

17:16

honestly, it's because that has been my

17:18

relationship with books throughout my whole life. I

17:21

feel like many of these authors are

17:24

not necessarily friends, but definitely mentors

17:27

and people who I felt like have

17:29

guided me at a particular moment in

17:31

my life. But that relationship has gone two

17:34

ways, right? These authors didn't just show

17:36

up and boss me around.

17:39

I looked for their book because I had a

17:41

particular problem or a

17:43

point of curiosity that I was looking to solve.

17:46

So I work backwards a lot from that relationship.

17:49

That's all very theoretical. Concretely, what that

17:51

means is a lot of times I like to talk to

17:53

an author and I say, what is the reaction

17:55

that you want to have from

17:58

a reader who has found your book? at

18:00

just the right moment. What is the Amazon

18:03

book review look like that

18:05

is success for you? Like

18:08

I met this person at exactly the right moment.

18:11

You and I just had an email exchange

18:14

about herding tigers and about, I don't

18:17

know if you want to talk about it, but about an

18:19

interaction that happened around that book. And

18:22

I thought to myself, that's exactly what

18:24

we were trying to do. That person, that moment,

18:27

that

18:27

is what we're going for.

18:28

So by getting really granular about

18:30

that, I think that helps

18:32

answer a lot of other structural questions about

18:34

what goes in the book and what doesn't.

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Yeah, all this.

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I think it's really valuable because we forget,

22:02

you know, we don't just make products to

22:04

make products. We make things to

22:06

have an impact, right?

22:09

And that's really what our voice is. It's

22:11

an expression through a medium to achieve an impact.

22:14

And so if you forget about that impact, if you don't work

22:16

backward from that, it's really easy to make

22:18

something and get to the end of the process and say, ta-da.

22:21

And everybody's like, oh, are you still making things? I didn't

22:23

realize you were still making things over there, you know,

22:26

which happens often. And we see books that, you

22:29

know, people launch them with great fanfare

22:31

and people are like, or, or, or,

22:33

because it doesn't really solve a

22:36

problem. It doesn't really have an impact.

22:39

It's kind of a me too book. Not

22:41

me too in the very, you know,

22:44

cultural movement kind of way, but me too. And I like,

22:47

hey, listen to me too. I've got some things to say. Well,

22:49

no, that I mean, you have to step up and really

22:51

claim your space if you want to have impact.

22:54

Definitely.

22:55

Another thing I think is that is important

22:58

and I'm, I'm, I'm stealing all these ideas,

23:00

by the way, like these are all ideas that other people

23:02

have had. Sure. Like specifically

23:05

Seth Godin, but, but, but. By

23:08

the way, you edit Seth's books. Yes, I edit

23:10

that. Seth has been a, has been a huge

23:13

positive force in my life. And

23:17

but I was going to talk about Kathy Sierra, who

23:19

is not one of my, one of my authors, but

23:22

Kathy Sierra has a talk

23:24

where she talks about how,

23:25

you know,

23:28

a

23:28

bad book makes the

23:31

author seem smart, but

23:33

a great book makes the reader feel smart.

23:36

Oh, I love that.

23:38

Oh, I love that. Very important. Yeah.

23:41

And if you don't leave space

23:43

for your reader to, to have

23:47

their own ideas

23:47

and their own reactions and make their own

23:49

connections, if you write your

23:51

book in such a way that this is like, this is everything

23:54

I want to say because I want to say it and it's

23:56

really important to me, that's going to

23:58

be really hard for someone else to connect.

24:01

Yeah, which is, by the way, a lot

24:03

of the people that I sit down with, that's why they're

24:05

writing a book. I have things to say.

24:08

I'm like, that's not a reason

24:10

to write a book. You need to write a book because other people

24:12

have things they need to hear, right? And

24:15

you have to flip it on its head because

24:18

one is a very narcissistic approach

24:20

and the other one is a very empathetic approach, which

24:23

is why I always

24:25

tell people when you write a book, you have to think about one

24:27

person. Not an avatar, not

24:29

a group, not a target market, but think

24:32

about the one person in your life that really

24:34

needs this advice right now. And

24:36

if you were sitting across the table from them, how

24:38

would you offer it to them and write it as if you're

24:40

sitting across the table from them? And if

24:42

you do that, you'll reach a lot of other people too. But

24:45

if you try to write it to a group,

24:48

you're not going to hit anybody, right?

24:50

Because it's not going to feel personal.

24:52

I promise this is the last plug.

24:54

I'm going to have... No, please. Plug as much

24:56

as you

24:57

want. But there is a new book out by

25:00

my friend and mentor, Seth Godin, called This

25:02

Is Marketing that talks about

25:04

a lot of these questions about how do

25:06

you think about what you're making and who it's for

25:09

and how it's going to reach them. And

25:11

it is a terrific book. And

25:14

I would say that even if I didn't publish it. But

25:17

I think especially for people

25:20

who are grappling with...for creatives

25:22

who are grappling with the kinds of questions you're asking

25:24

here, I think it offers a tremendous amount of insight.

25:27

It does. I think that having people like

25:29

us do things like this framework

25:31

has been really helpful to

25:33

me and making things for someone, not

25:36

just for anyone. Just the idea

25:38

of you have to be willing to say it's not for you. That's

25:41

a hard thing for people to do when they're creating

25:44

work and when they feel the pressure of time and space

25:46

and money and their

25:48

boss is screaming at them. If

25:53

your goal is to create impact in the world, you

25:55

have to be willing to say it's not for you. I

25:58

mean Seth, we were talking before we... started recording, but

26:01

Seth and I both spoke at a conference

26:03

about a month and a half ago. And in about

26:06

two minutes, as Seth does, he completely

26:09

reframed the way I'm thinking about my

26:11

latest book and how I'm taking it to market and

26:13

some of the things I'm doing. And the

26:16

biggest chunk of it was this

26:18

idea of, I mean, back to the idea

26:20

of people like us do things like this. What

26:24

do the people I'm trying to reach, what do they do? How do

26:26

they see themselves in the world? And

26:29

what kind of story do they want to live

26:31

out in their life? And I've

26:33

not really been thinking about that. And

26:36

as Seth does, in like two minutes, he completely

26:38

reframed how I think about what I'm doing.

26:41

And the book is just a wonderful articulation

26:44

of many of those same sentiments. So I echo

26:46

your praise for the book for sure. And

26:48

for you, by the way, who

26:51

endured editing that book

26:53

through a pregnancy, which

26:55

was probably not easy. The

26:57

final weeks of my pregnancy, I was

27:00

eight months pregnant when

27:01

Seth Godin called up and said, great news.

27:03

I want to do a book and I want you to edit

27:05

it.

27:07

And I said, oh, you know, like,

27:09

I guess I won't be here when you deliver the manuscript.

27:12

And he said, when are you delivering? And I said, in

27:14

four weeks. And he said, hang on.

27:18

And we... Hang on? Yeah.

27:22

And then I think a week later, a manuscript

27:24

showed up. And we

27:26

just worked on it together every day. And it

27:29

was really wonderful.

27:30

It was really wonderful. That's awesome. All right.

27:33

So I want to just ask you one more question. And then

27:35

we have a lot of potential authors out there. And

27:37

I know people, which by the way, please do not

27:39

email Nicki. Don't go looking for her email address

27:42

and email her and send her

27:44

something. There's a process for all

27:46

of that. So please honor the process. But

27:49

you

27:49

know... I can tell you what the process is.

27:51

Yeah, please do.

27:52

Okay. Is that helpful?

27:54

I think it would be very helpful. Yeah.

27:56

So I work almost exclusively

27:58

with literary agents. And the

28:01

reason why I do that is not because I'm a snob,

28:03

but because I think it is better for

28:05

the author to have an agent who works for

28:07

them and who represents them. I work for

28:09

Penguin Random House, which is

28:11

an amazing company. We are the

28:13

biggest publisher in North America, but

28:16

it is a big company. So

28:19

I recommend that you have an agent in your foreigner who

28:22

is experienced, who knows the industry

28:24

very well. How do you get an agent?

28:27

Well, you can spam people or

28:30

you can think strategically about the fact that this

28:32

is a people business. And

28:35

you can do things like read the books that

28:37

you think your book is like and

28:40

reach out to those authors and reach out

28:42

to those agents and start to

28:44

build actual connections based around

28:47

shared areas of interest and care.

28:50

Yeah.

28:51

Yeah. And it's interesting because

28:53

the way I landed a portfolio is because

28:56

I had an agent, Melissa

28:59

Sarver-White, who's amazing and

29:01

awesome. And she was helping me. Yeah,

29:03

she's incredible. But one

29:06

of the ways we landed a portfolio is because I

29:08

was so obsessed with the kind of books portfolio

29:10

was publishing that I was just interviewing

29:13

portfolio authors left and right for the podcast.

29:16

And it was just so obvious and evident

29:19

that this is kind of the stable that I

29:21

belonged in if I ever wrote a book because

29:23

so many of the big idea books that

29:26

you all were publishing were just right in my wheelhouse.

29:29

And it's kind of funny because I think you tend

29:32

to gravitate toward the people who think like

29:34

you or the people you tend to find your tribe,

29:36

I think in publishing often. And

29:39

I definitely found my tribe with

29:41

portfolio. I think, again, because

29:43

I was resonating so deeply with the stuff

29:46

that you all were putting out at the time.

29:50

So what advice do you have then for potential

29:52

authors about how to shape their

29:54

content and to get it into the world?

30:00

The cliched advice is to write a lot,

30:02

but it's cliched for a reason,

30:05

right? Like if you want to be

30:06

an Olympic skier, you should probably put some

30:08

skis on at some point. Probably.

30:10

But the

30:13

point at the heart of that advice is not

30:15

just to write, but to share your work

30:18

often and

30:22

to be listening for

30:24

who it is touching and who it is not.

30:27

It's to hoard it,

30:28

because hoarding is a form of hiding,

30:30

and when you tell yourself that you're keeping your idea

30:32

from being stolen, what you really mean

30:34

is that you're hiding your idea

30:36

because you're afraid that people won't

30:38

like it or that it won't be enough.

30:40

So ideas in writing get better

30:42

when you're consistently and softly

30:44

testing them in front of an audience.

30:46

And thanks to the Internet, there's nothing stopping

30:49

you from doing that. You can do it in a newsletter,

30:51

on a blog, you can do Twitter, or if you

30:53

don't even like the Internet, you

30:55

can do it in physical form. There

30:59

are these two amazing women in publishing who

31:01

a couple of years ago started an analog

31:04

newsletter about soup that

31:06

they physically mailed to people who opted

31:08

into a Kickstarter, and it was really successful.

31:11

I mean, if you care about something

31:13

and you want to get better at talking

31:15

about it so that people listen, then just talk

31:17

about it. And if you're doing

31:20

it in a way that is sincere and

31:22

resonant, then publishers

31:24

and agents and all of those kinds of people, they will

31:26

come to you, because our business

31:28

depends on finding you.

31:33

It's funny because each of my, as you say that, each of my

31:35

books started with a blog

31:37

post or a podcast episode,

31:39

right, where I put something out and all of a sudden

31:42

it started spreading and I'm like, oh, I think there's actually

31:44

something here, more than I thought was

31:46

here. But if I had just held

31:48

those things close to the chest, I never may

31:51

have known that there was something there. I

31:53

think that's excellent advice. And people think

31:55

that if I share it, somebody's going to steal

31:58

it, right? And the reality is, listen, they're probably

32:00

already 50 people out there writing

32:02

about the exact same thing. Nobody's going to steal it

32:04

from you.

32:06

But if you don't share it, you may

32:08

never find the space that you

32:11

are wired to occupy. I

32:15

like to tell people that I think a lot of people

32:17

would rather live with the illusion of invulnerability

32:20

than test their limits and actually discover that

32:22

they have some. And so it feels good

32:24

to just live with it. That's a great statement. Yeah,

32:27

I think it feels good to just live with this

32:29

notion that, well, I could be a best-selling author

32:31

if I ever put this out. But I don't really

32:33

have the time to do it. I'm not going to go through the effort.

32:36

It's easy to live with that. Instead

32:39

of putting it out there and realizing, actually,

32:41

I have limits. Actually,

32:43

maybe it's not as good as I thought it was. That's

32:46

a risk worth taking, though, because it's

32:48

only when your work is in the world that you're

32:50

actually going to have impact on the people you're trying

32:52

to reach. So I think that's excellent

32:54

advice. We have been

32:56

talking with the brilliant, the

32:59

eminent Nikki Papadopoulos

33:02

editor at large. That's not actually

33:04

your title, but I think that's an awesome way

33:06

to describe you because you are certainly

33:08

at large in culture. Nikki, if

33:11

people do actually want to find

33:13

you or learn more about you, is there

33:16

any place they can go to do that? I am on

33:18

Twitter,

33:20

reservedly.

33:21

It's

33:23

at Nikki underscore

33:25

Pop.

33:26

By the way, Nikki Pop is what I

33:29

always call you when I'm informally referring to you

33:31

to ... When I'm talking to my agent or I'm talking to Seth

33:33

or anybody, it's like Nikki Pop because it's just so great.

33:36

That's what Seth calls me. Oh,

33:38

really? Okay, that's funny.

33:39

Yeah, it's a thing. I mean, Papadopoulos

33:42

is very long, but I'm on

33:44

Twitter. I would say 95%

33:45

of what I tweet about is books

33:47

that I'm publishing and working on.

33:51

And so if you want to

33:54

connect with me, I am there. I also

33:56

will be hopefully ...

33:59

World Domination Summit this summer.

34:02

The last one. The last one.

34:04

That's where, I think that's where we met in person the

34:06

first time. It's where we first met in person. How

34:08

about that?

34:09

Yeah, it's a wonderful community. I'm

34:11

very sad that it's coming to an end,

34:15

but it was, and you know, we have a lot

34:17

of, we have a lot of authors who

34:19

have gone through there and met each other

34:21

through there, and so I am

34:24

going to the last one.

34:25

Wow, fantastic. Well, Nikki, thanks for

34:27

the work that you do, and thanks for taking the time to share your

34:29

wisdom with us today.

34:31

Thank you, Todd. Thank you for bringing

34:34

it every day with heart and sincerity,

34:36

and I think you do a tremendous service to your listeners,

34:38

to your readers, and I am

34:41

so damn proud of our book together. Well,

34:43

I hope you enjoyed that revisit of a conversation

34:46

from 2018 with Nikki Papadopoulos. If

34:49

you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe

34:52

to the weekly newsletter. It's called Three Things, just three quick

34:54

ideas to get your week off on the right foot. You

34:56

can subscribe at toddhenry.com slash

34:58

subscribe. Remember friends, cover bands

35:01

don't change the world. Don't be a cover band. You need to

35:03

find your unique voice if you want to thrive. We'll

35:05

see you next time.

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