Hi Reader,
Welcome to Rev Up for the Week, where every Sunday at 4.05pm UK time, I deliver a positive or productive thought for the week ahead. If you’re new here, then a very warm welcome to you.
This weekend I’m catching up on sleep (daytime nap for the win today!) and I can feel my body ‘adrenaline dumping’ quite hard. It’s a weekend for doing very little except catching a breath, after Wednesday’s ‘launch eve’ Digital Launch, Thursday’s London launch and Friday’s Brighton launch of KIND. If you’ve bought the book already, then I just want to take this moment to say thank you. We’ve sold a lot of books. It’s well over a thousand copies at this point and could be a lot higher. On an average week, that’s usually enough to sneak onto the Sunday Times Bestseller list. In the week that the Guardian dubbed ‘publishing’s super Thursday’ and up against Boris Johnson, Stanley Tucci and Miranda Hart, it’s going to be tough. We’ll find out next week.
Getting on the Sunday Times list was my ‘BHAG’ for this book (a Big Hairy Audacious Goal). And whether I achieve it next week or not, the goal has served its’ purpose – it’s given KIND an incredible start in the world. It’s got a lot of people interested in it, and what’s exciting is that I already know that the word of mouth potential of this book is huge – kindness is infectious, after all. I’ve had so many people on LinkedIn and socials recommending it to their friends, and seen so many comments along the lines of “that sounds like MY kind of book!”. So it already feels like we have some momentum and good vibes.
Today I want to tell you the story of the marketing of this book, as an illustration of intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation.
You see, this is my sixth (and final) book. I’ve had a weird career in publishing terms. How to be a Productivity Ninja was my first book. I wrote it almost by accident, and didn’t think of myself as a writer, really. I self-published it, and it did well on Amazon. Then Icon Books made me an offer to buy the rights to it and have me re-release it with them. It turned out to be a good move. We were number 1 in the WH Smith Business chart for several months, and the post-it note Ninja on the front cover helped the book to jump off the shelves into peoples’ hands. In truth, I did very little marketing for it, but it was quickly a best-seller. I released four more books with them, and all sold reasonably well, but I never had another massive ‘hit’ like I’d had with Productivity Ninja, and every time I was left feeling a bit frustrated, and chasing the high bar that that first book set.
When it came around to KIND, with those five books behind me, I was clear on two things:
- That I was naïve to be relying on the publisher to do the marketing and publicity required to have a hit – Icon Books having a hit with Productivity Ninja wasn’t largely down to the cover and their expertise in getting it into WH Smiths, not their genius marketing. And what I started to notice while I chased those highs was that it wasn’t always the best books (in my opinion) that became big hits, but those who had the best marketing campaigns driven by the authors.
- Unfortunately the second realisation was that I hate marketing. I find it icky. I sort of resent it. My attitude has often been “But I just want to make good stuff and do good work! Why should I have to SELL good stuff and good work, too?!”. In short, I have zero intrinsic motivation for marketing at all. It’s not part of my DNA. I don’t enjoy making myself the centre of attention. If I was offered a deal where I could avoid marketing altogether in exchange for working twice as hard on everything else, I’d take that deal every day of the week.
And when you put those two things together, that’s a problem.
With KIND, the longer I spent writing it (and it’s been looooong – four and a half years), the more I realised that relying on myself to suddenly become a natural marketer and love it was a recipe for more mediocrity. So I had to find someone or something to give me the ideas, to push me outside of my comfort zone, to hold me accountable and to guide me through.
Step forward the incredible Ayanna Coleman, who over the course of the last year or so, has been doing all of that on more, on monthly calls with me. The Talking Kindness Podcast Summit and #timeforKIND referral campaigns? Her idea. The Pre-order campaign with tiered rewards for 1, 5 or 200 copies? Also her idea! Yes, it was something I’d definitely thought about but, but I’d have had no idea how to execute it without her.
And then my assistant, Emilie, has been by my side too. She’s done a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of the tech, and we’ve been in a great flow, where she’ll do a lot of the research, and then I’ll add the words, or the videos, or chip in with ideas (all stuff I have a lot more intrinsic motivation for).
So my question to you this week is this:
What parts of your job do you have intrinsic motivation for?
And what parts of your job do you need extrinsic motivation for?
Using extrinsic motivation to create momentum and get results is much more than just hiring a brilliant marketing consultant like Ayanna. Here are five other ways I play with intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation to make stuff happen:
- I tell other people it’s happening so that they hold me accountable – The best way to quit drinking for a while or eat more healthily when you don’t really feel like doing those things is usually telling someone close to you what your new rules are (I’ve been doing both of these recently too as acts of self-kindness around the launch). Most of us are more motivated by the fear of looking foolish than we are by the potential success, but that fear works just fine.
- The Pomodoro Technique – An old Productivity Ninja favourite, this one. It’s named after those old style kitchen timers and the ideas is that 25 minutes of work = 1 Pomodoro. Knowing that you can just do “one pomodoro” is usually enough to get some momentum going. I remember saying to Ayanna at one point “But I HATE LinkedIn. I don’t want to spend any time there!”. She basically told me to put some lovely jazz on in the background and just do one Pomodoro. 25 minutes doesn’t feel too daunting, and then suddenly I’m over the hump and doing stuff.
- I put a deadline in someone else’s world - If I’ve got a really boring report to write, or need to create PowerPoint slides for a team meeting, then I’ll tell someone else when they’ll be ready and even set up a meeting to go through them if necessary. Again, the idea of sitting in that meeting with nothing is usually enough to force the work I don’t want to do out of me.
- Remembering the ‘why’ – For me, thinking about doing marketing feels icky and horrible, but thinking about the work being in service of getting a book I’m proud of into the hands of people I care about to make change I care about? That would help me develop a smidgen of intrinsic motivation which would help things along.
- Accountability Partnerships – If you know of a colleague that struggles with the same stuff, you can create an accountability partnership where you check in on each others’ progress regularly. I see this a lot when people are trying to adopt some of the habits from Productivity Ninja, such as the Weekly Review. And I’ve been very lucky to have my assistant Emilie holding me accountable as much as I hold her accountable too.
So this week, I’d love you to think about intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, and how you get the momentum you need on your work – even on the bits of work where you don’t have that internal lust and love to get started. And as always, please hit reply and let me know if this prompts any lightbulb moments for you.
Finally (and because I’ve learnt from Ayanna!), with KIND now out in the world, here are 3 ways you can help me continue that push:
- If you’ve yet to buy your copy, order it from wherever you like. I’m often asked where the best place for you to order your copy for algorithms and so on. The simple answer is “it all counts”, and I’m all for supporting local bookshops over Amazon. The top level if you can be bothered would be going into branches of WH Smiths Travel (the ones in airports and train stations) and ordering it from them – for some reason, they’re currently stalling over making an order, so seeing people ordering it might convince them to put their order in! But honestly, anywhere.
- If you’ve bought it already, please share your favourite quotes on social media and Linkedin. The quotes in-between each chapter are deliberately designed to be ‘Instagrammable’!
- And finally, please leave it a 5-star Amazon review. Those early 5 stars really help convince the Amazon algorithm to do its work. I already have some, which I’m thrilled about.
That’s it for this week. I’m off for another nap. Because “Kindness Starts with You”.
Have a great week,
Graham