 Think Tech, I'm Jay Fidel. This is Making Books Come Alive with Chris Trammell, who was a life coach and also a book coach. Welcome to the show, Chris. Hey, Jay, thank you so much for having me today. Really greatly appreciated. So what, you know, what is it to be a life coach? Let's address that first. How did you get to be a life coach? And as a life coach, what do you do? Well, really good. So the two things I'm going to clarify as we start is I'm a life work coach, and I'm an author performance coach. So now we get to talk about what's what is a life work coach versus a life coach. In the space of life coaching, someone that's going to give you the tools, the strategies, the pair of eyes on your actions that you're taking that maybe you can't see that you're doing to help you grow, succeed, improve in those areas of life that matter most to you that maybe you haven't been as successful as you'd like to be on your own. That's a traditional life coach. I say as a life work coach, Jay, what are you here to do? Are you doing what you said your life's mission was to be about? I look for that alignment, that congruency between self and what we actually do in the world. Not the, I got a great job. It's paid me really well, but I really kind of fell into it. It wasn't what I wanted to do as a passion type guy. I'm the one that comes in and looks for that deep, meaningful life work alignment. It is a life work coach. You remind me of the guidance counselor at high school who said, what do you want to do in this life? She had a chart there of 50 things. I'm sure it's much more than 50 now. She said, let's look through the chart and okay, you wouldn't be a physics teacher. You want to be a lawyer or a doctor, whatever. You'd make a pick and then she'd have a kind of commitment from you and you'd sail off into college and beyond and you'd try to follow what your guidance counselor suggested to you. We know now that's not the right way. We know now that you have to have some life experience under your belt so that you can make that decision. We know now, correct me if you disagree, we know now that most people make the wrong decision. It depends on the time frame in which you're looking at the wrongness of that decision, right? Because there's a little bit of wisdom inside of the Robert Frost, two roads diverged in the woods and I took the one less travel. That I think speaks to the uniqueness of our circuitous journey sometimes and then absolutely, Jay, there are times where we've made choices that they were impulsive, they were young, they weren't mindful, they weren't aware, but man, they might have sure felt good at the time. Well, and then, of course, and I always want to crank this into my thinking, there's the dynamic. Nothing stays the same. Nothing is as intransmutable as change itself. And so here I am and say her advice was good to me for five or 10 years and I look around and say, wait a minute, wait a minute, this is not, it may have been correct at the beginning, but it is no longer correct and I'm adrift because I have to make that choice again and I don't have, I don't have the life experience to help me do that. So I'm really, tossed and turned about it. Really great, Jay. Two people, you talked about high school counselor, I still remember mine to this day in his last name, not going to say it. And the thing that he told me to do, he said, you're not equipped to do what I said I wanted to do, I'm not equipped for that, you should do this. And then later in life, around the age of 25, someone I really respected inside of a specialty program I was in said, Chris, I don't think you're made to do that, you should just open up pet stores, you'd be really good at that. And I thought, all right, well, everybody's entitled to their opinion. Just because they're born before you doesn't make them the smartest kid on the block, it just means that's what their life experience has them say at that point in time. Okay, a pet store, that sounds like it might have been very fulfilling. But you got off into something else. And that reminds me of another question I wanted to ask you, please, you know, we live in a world, in a country, not a world, it's a world, it's a world where you can fall into things by virtue of walking down the street. Yeah, you could you could pass by a store, which has, I don't know, needle point, and say, Oh, I missed out on this, let me go look in the store. And I'm really sold on needle point. So I'm going to I'm going to change my direction right now. Now, a needle point is only an example. But, you know, it could be anything. I could, I could get in trouble. I could be drafted. This is my own experience. I could be drafted. And then I could say, I have to find something that would be better than the draft. And low and low and, you know, low and behold, I did. I was able to do that. And that changed the direction of my life. And it was involuntary. It was completely, you know, the historical opportunities folding in on me. And there I was coming out of the tunnel with something brand new, I would not have expected. And it was right. Wow. So query. I mean, all these factors are coming together for an individual. And they're always out there in play. All of these factors are always possible. Yes. So what does a life work coach do to succeed the guidance counselor? Oh, really great. It really is. Well, let me let me ask you to illustrate how I respond. Was there something you wanted to be in your youth that you're like, I want to do this? I wanted to be an architect. An architect. All right, very cool. I wanted to be a veterinarian. I loved being around dogs. My dad was military police for the United States Air Force. So when he came home, I grew up with German shepherds. I didn't have a nanny. I had a German shepherd. So inside of architecture, have you, did you design things? Does your home look always have a specific look and placement for things? Do you find that thread of architecture, that thread of structure, a visual creativeness being expressed throughout your life? Or did you know it might have been thus, Chris? It might have been thus. But that what I described to you was a long, long, long, long time ago. And had I been exposed to it, had I had more input on that discipline, I might be able to answer your question more positively. But I've been torn away from any thought of that for a long time. And if you and I can I can tell you, I like colors and shapes. But beyond that, I don't demonstrate skills and propensities that would make me a good architect. I could have been wrong. I could have been wrong, you know, that was a flash in the pan kind of decision that never went anywhere. And I think there's another factor there. Are you qualified to do this? Okay, and later on, if you revisit that same issue, have you been doing things that confirm? Yes. To really qualify? Maybe it was just a, you know, a will of the wisp idea that really wasn't accurate. Yeah. Well, you're doing both parts right now. It's really interesting. You may not see it, but a coach sees it. You're speaking into the possibility of something. But at the same time, you're also saying, are you qualified? Qualifications immediately put boundaries and buffers on stuff. And it kind of goes to that statement. It's not so much the destination, it's the journey. So yes, I want an architect for my final product for something. I want a physician that has gone through medical school. But in the process, Jay, there's no one that's stopping you. If it really was what you wanted to do, that doesn't have you going to the local JC, taking up an architecture or design class. But here's what I'm hearing. It wasn't a fire in the belly thing you wanted to do. For me, working with animals was something that I knew I wanted to do. Boy, since I could crawl, you might as well as been Romulus, Remus, and Chris, because I was there that much with my animals. So for me, I still work with training animals. I still work to be part of a national park system or to work with zoos. So I find ways where I still bring it into my life. And that's what I'm talking about, life work. Maybe what pays you did not follow what you said you really wanted, but it doesn't eliminate that there's that something there, that opportunity, that playground, that creativity that said, I never got to do that. How can I still incorporate that into my life? Well, I can have a dog, which I do. And I love my dog dearly. And I guess it's not the same, of course. And I am not likely to walk by a pet shop and, you know, and change my life because it looks so good. But I guess that's an opportunity that is always open. And if you have the resources, if you have the drive, you have the time, you couldn't walk by the pet shop and say, I think I'll do this now. Even as a volunteer, like, you have amazing skill sets. Maybe someone would want to use those skill sets. But that goes away from, well, it's part of life work, right? Like, it really is, Jay, what is your education? What is your enthusiasm? And what is your life experiences all prepared you best to do in your life? Deliver that? Okay, we could talk about that forever, but we're about halfway through our time. And I wanted to go to the next, you know, area of discussion. And so what you've been talking about is finding yourself in the world, finding where you belong, you know, what, who you are. And the other thing we're going to talk about is making books come alive. And I suggest, you can agree with this, I suggest as a huge relationship between, you know, being a work counselor, a work coach, and coaching on somebody writing a book, because you're looking for a lot of the same things. And you're making the assumption that this person knows what's in that book, or this person, you know, has the ability to translate his or her life into a book that others will read and enjoy. Am I right? At least segments of their life, parts of their life. You know, if they're a Napoleon Hill, it's a good summary of life, but many people just take their professional experience. They don't do the whole life, but they do a deep dive on a segment of their life that they could really deliver their expertise from. And those are the types of people that I support inside of the author launchpad where I say, yes, bring a book to life, you know, take it from wall, which is where everybody wants to be published and be up on the bookstore wall. I say, from wall to world, what does it take to bring your book out into the world as a tangible, usable experience? Not as a good conversation, aha. Oh, I read this great book by J. Fidel. It was wonderful. Oh, it was fantastic. And then what? But if J had some nuggets in his life where he's like, hey, these are Fidel's five ways for living a great life, you would want to know that people are applying those five ways to have that life. You know, last hour, I had a discussion with an historian. And we got into the thing about ideology. We got into the thing about great leaders who adopt and speak great ideology. Not every one of them changes the world. But a lot of them do change the world. And the question is, how do you find that in yourself so that you articulate a view and ideological view could be in any subject of human experience that will make you a leader, let you emerge into the world as a leader. And of course, you've got to write it down or at least speak it in the media. And not everybody can. But to me, that is one of the things that would make me want to write a book. Because I think that in all human beings, there is some wisdom, some more, some less. But there's also the need to share that wisdom and have it improve the lives of others around us. So it seems to me that if you take that approach, then anyone can find in himself or herself the nuggets, as you say, not everything that you've experienced, but some of the things you've experienced that are worthy of sharing and that will, you know, help other people lead better lives, at least philosophically. And so the question I put to you as a life book coach, a life work hyphen book coach, is how do you help this person who articulates a desire to write a book, find a subject, find a subject that's consistent, you know, with what he or she has been doing, and what he or she believes is her core? The finding the subject part's really good. So if someone were to come to me, that's really at the seed of a book project, right? And I like what I say, people who are ready for varsity. If you remember back in high school, there's Brasov, there's JV, I want them book published or about to publish is my ideal client. Now, I've been hired by a few people to help them in the longer development of the process to kind of be a consultant to what you're talking about. People say, well, what's that thing I'm going to write about? Well, it's at the intersection again, of life experience, life enthusiasm, and your professional or your traditional education. But where does that passion intersection happen for you? What do you want people to know? And the one that I'll say sometimes, Jay, is, you know, you and I are someday going to reach the end of this wonderful mortal journey. Yeah, speak for yourself, Chris. And they're going to say something about us. What is it that you want them to say about you? How do you want to be, you know, if you got to be the final writing in tombstone? Well, it's the part of the eulogy, right? Like, what do you want them to say? And if that's what you want them to say, then have you reverse engineered it all the way to your book? Because maybe that one book is the only one you got time to get out in the world. What do you want to say there that builds on what you are most passionate having another human being know about themselves? What do you say to the guy or girl who says, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to share that. That's my professional secret. Yeah, that's that's that's that's my business intellectual property. Yeah, I can't I can't give that away. And I would be I would be cheating the people around me in my business. If I told all the secrets about how I was successful in my business or whatever the enterprise was. What do you say to that person? Well, there's a couple answers. One is kind of it depends on what it is, right? Like there's intellectual property of a process, a system, a patent, electrical engineering. There's one thing there. But in the world of intellectual process, Jay's five ways to live in an awesome life. I don't know that Jay's going to come up with anything new at this point in time, he might say it newly. But don't be so concerned that someone's going to steal it be concerned about how frequent you could be how omnipresent and sharing your message you can be how active to getting it out in an audience to where essentially you're the person that gets known for it. That's where I want people to be is like, don't worry about who's going to worry more about how many people can you serve on any given day. That's a better game to play than the protection game. Good answer. So you know, I'm thinking of Marcel Proust, you know, who had this thing about the Petit Madeleine. It was a little cake that you had for breakfast in France when he was a kid. And he would go to the little cafe on the corner and he would have a Petit Madeleine at some cafe. And then it would remind him of his life at home, you know, when he was a kid. And it would be a kind of keyhole for him to get through that keyhole and it would open his memory on everything that happened that he was a kid. And if you can do that, there's a lot of satisfaction. So he said to himself, and Marcel, Marcel Proust was a great French writer in the 19th century. He said to himself, gee, I think that would be a value I'm making this up. I have never talked to him. I would like to share with people this whole notion that the tactile, the taste of the breakfast roll, or any tactile experience, any taste, physical experience, can get you back into a time where you really enjoyed yourself with your only good memories. So I will tell you my story, but I want you to have the same experience. It is the core of an 800 page book that he wrote called Remembrance of Things Past. And it's not in English, it's in French. But my point, though, is that that that is a kind of documentary about his experience. It is certainly not technical or a discussion of intellectual property or his business. It is merely sharing with you an experience, an important experience he had, offering it to you to have the same experience. Well, as you say, a French guy who gets reminded of his youth, did you ever see the animation called Ratatouille? I remember the term. All right. So in long and short, there's a very cool, I think it's Pixar Disney cartoon called Ratatouille. And ultimately, the big critic of France is going to go into this restaurant and taste the something and his words are either going to make or break the restaurant. And the moment he takes the taste of this Ratatouille, which is considered a peasant meal, but it was made for this elite, this elite character of restaurant worlds, you see a flashback and it goes back into his childhood. And it's very Jungian, Carl Jung style, Jungian, because young said, pay attention to the children's stories, to the myths that you enjoyed reading up reading in your youth, because they will allude to the journey you're going to have as an adult. All of that, all of the seeds of who we became now are usually found in our youth and more power to Marcel for, you know, turning it into a very nice piece of literature to give people a lot of good access to what he was trying to describe. Yeah, but you can take the notion of having the taste and remembering things. And that was for him, for Proust, you know, it was probably true. This is what happened to him and the things he describes really happened. However, you can take that notion, I could come to you and say, Chris, I want to write a book about a petite Madeleine small role and have it open the keyhole for other things. And those things are going to be completely fictitious. It's just the notion of remembering things past, starting with a breakfast roll. So is that a worthy subject because that's personal, it's autobiographical. But it's also, it's probably better than the actual experience he had. He wants to take you another step. He wants to give you the best he can remember or fabricate. What do you think? Yeah. Well, and now it depends on the audience, you know, I'm not a fan of pontification. I kind of roll my eyes at it. I'm an action guy. Like, you know, prior to this, you said, Chris, can you stay still? I'm like, I keep moving, Jay. I don't know how to stay still. So when I hear people just kind of win bag, I get turned off. But there's some people who love a good intellectual exercise and to talk about something and to emote about something. So for that audience, proves would be perfect. But for guys like me and all the other thoroughbreds that can't sit still and we got to be doing something, we'd be out of there after, did it have sugar on it? How did it taste? Okay, great. Is this done? I'm out of here. Well, as a, you know, if there's seven billion people in the world, there are seven billion stories, you know, well played. And which ones do we really want to read and which ones move humanity forward? Right. So when you're a coach about such things, what what is, you know, do you help them with this kind of evaluation choice based on some thought they have or some sequence that they would like to deliver to their audience or the world? How do you handle that? What do you say to them? Because, you know, you don't want to put your ideas on top of theirs. You want to you want to pull it out from them, right? That's really great, Jay. You pointed to one of the most important parts is allowing that self-discovery. You know, the name of my book that I'm going to last 2024 right now, I have my advanced reader copy called Living Your Life's Work, From Discovery to Delivery. It really is the discovery process. And if you could allow someone to discover for themselves, that's where transformation really exists. I have been with the preeminent leaders of transformational work, and I hear the word transformation just thrown around too often these days. There's you contribute to somebody, you cause change to somebody and true transformation is metamorphosis, caterpillar to butterfly. That way of being is just gone. You've transformed the trajectory. I want people to have that self-discovery that in the book, it's not just the book, it's the publishing of the book, the first stage of transformation, but the delivery, the reception that you get from the audience that says, I've been looking for you. I've been looking for somebody that knows what I've gone through, and now you could guide me through it. I've been reading all the, and most of the time you go to Amazon reviews, it'll say something like, I've been reading all these books, but it didn't tell me how to do it. That's why I'm an advocate that authors move from author writer to author coach. Because the author that's going to succeed in this world of so much artificial intelligence, and now you and I could go write a book tonight and have it on Amazon tomorrow just using AI. It is the author that shows up and allows for the discovery and is there with the discovery that is going to continue to have the sales and the impact that they want to have. Yeah, that's an interesting question. We're worthy of a whole other show and talk about how AI fits in all of this. I read recently that you could write a book, a story, a full-length story with a prompt that's only 100 words long, and the thing will write it for you, and you say, you know, could that be any good? Well, yes, it could. Yeah, it could. It's kind of the super coach. I wonder if that's threatening for you. It'll hand it to you, and then you can send it back, and you can say, no, I don't like this the way you wrote it up. I want it shorter, longer, use more of this word, change that character, and it will in a moment. And I suggest to you that writing a book with AI is going to be more easily done, and you won't be able to tell a difference. When AI first came out, it's, ah, you can tell the difference. No, you can't. You know, you can polish all of that up. There are certain red flags, but the AI gets by the red flags so easily. So, query, what's the intersection between, you know, writing or helping somebody write a book, bringing a book to life, as we say, and AI, and where does it fit in your relationship with, you know, the projected author? AI cannot deliver transformation. Only people can. It is a human dynamic. It is a dynamic of the human psyche. It's a dynamic of our collected past. AI could give us great content. It could give us great how-to's. It is a powerful search engine that will collectively bring it together, distill it, and say, here's the five things that you need to do to save more money, to have a better relationship with your family. But it's the mechanics. What AI isn't observing is the mindset, the being, right? The joie de vie, you want to talk about French guys, right? What is that passion, the joy of life that comes through? AI is not going to touch that. If we want to beat the box, Jay, it is us delivering our passion and our purpose live. Now, if we're talking about just straight sales, then use the AI to help your editing. You know, that's fine. As a former teacher, I had programs that would help me scour and see where did my students not cite, give me the references cited, right? So if you just want entertainment reading, AI is all day long. But if you want difference making, that's people, Jay. Wow, that's something to think about. Preserving our humanity, if you will, because there is a difference and there will always be a difference now. Absolutely. So what about the next phase of this? You know, it's found a subject. We have a few minutes more. So found a subject and, you know, and the relationship is good. You're exchanging ideas the way you're exchanging them with me here now. And the guy says, well, Chris, you know, here's the 50 pages that I wrote overnight, and I'm very excited and passionate about this. And it's what I want to do. It's not finished. Can you take a look at it and give me your reaction? Does that happen with a with a book coach? As a book performance coach. So remember, anything we produce is a function of performance. So I'm interested in the performance of the author, both in the process, because they're building muscles for delivery, even though they're writing, they're still building muscles for a type of delivery. And then I'm a performance coach for bringing that book to life that has a different set of muscles. You're exquisite at being able to have great talks, Jay. But that was a practice. You built the muscles of that. Probably if we went back to your first couple of them, they were awkward. There was some dead air. Who knows what you did. Some people think they're still very awkward. They had less punch lines like that, you know. So inside of being an author performance coach, I want people to stand. What performance does is it keeps it real. The minute we just go into the silo of information, we disconnect from the audience that we're trying to impact, we build the muscles of being alone. And then someone gets up and they say, hey, I wrote a book. And I'll ask, do you have an audience? I wrote a book. Do you have an email list? I wrote a book. Vanity press is all it is. You can, for a few bucks, you can have a, you can write a book and publish it. But it isn't the kind of book you and I are talking about. Now, we framed this as bringing books to life. Let me ask you an ultimate question. What is a book that's alive? What is a book that achieves that goal? Okay. I'm going to swing out with a big one. I think we all know this book. Most people know this book. It's called the Bible. I knew you wouldn't say that. Well, here's the thing, right? Talk about the biggest anthology of a bunch of authors pontificating. The Bible in and of itself is a collection of literature. This is just writing. It is through the medium of the pastor, that sacred space leader, that reverend, that spiritual counselor that brings the words to life in a certain way. And he brings a certain enthusiasm or she brings a certain enthusiasm behind certain words and then delivers with a certain interpretation that causes the book to live in the listener. But I'm not writing. I'm not writing another Bible. The Bible is unique. I don't think anybody can actually compete with it. I want to say that are the great books of the last two centuries, you know, are unique. Karl Marx, Pascal Pitao, you know, all these books, these are extraordinary books. So if I want to write an extraordinary book, come to see you. All right. Make this book live. Help me to make this book live. What are the parameters? What do you tell me I have to do to bring the book to life? Oh, I love it, Jay. Thank you. Okay. So let's do this like we're doing it for real. We'll set a timer. Jay, can you think of three guests that were on your show that really left an impression on you? Okay, I can do that. Okay. Give me one. If you could remember one, you're like, yeah, this was one of my favorite talks. Do you remember that one? Jean Rosenfeld. She's one of our regular guests. All right. Jean Rosenfeld. And what is it about Jean that you just love? What's that something you just love? Or what does she say? How does she be? What's the content? She can answer any question. She is always prepared to answer any question. Excellent. And she will skate anywhere on the pond that we go. So that makes her an extraordinary guest. And she brings to the discussion enormous depth of knowledge. All right. About history and about the history of various things in the world. And my own personal view is that you cannot possibly understand where we are today unless you know where we've been. Very good. You added a number of things. So we would have been transcribing this on order. And what I heard is one, she's a Renaissance woman. She's really got that depth. And she's got the knowledge. She's got the expertise. I imagine there's grace and there's poise. So there's a way of being that you see that maybe you haven't articulated yet that like there's a way of being that an expert needs to show up as. There's a level of mastery of content that an expert should also have. And then there's their unique something, their special sauce. That's something that they're known for in the world. I would say, okay, now that you got that, Jay, I want you to look at the three people that resonate most to you. And let's start to distill down the commonalities there. And now start to lay Jay Fiddell's five principles for living a great life, living a lo-ha life. What is the word? It's a umami is Japanese for fantastic. What's a word in Hawaiian for fantastic? Fantastic. Fantastic. But something like that, right? Pono is good. Pono. Pono, right? So, you know, Jay Fiddell's five principles for a pono lifestyle. Now you get to go through and distill down from those persons that you're able to contrast your ideas. Do I have to make reference to them or can I just extract from my engagement with them what is, what I believe is a value for this truce that we are discussing? Yeah, very good. Well, it depends on what the outcome is. If they're still living, I would say yes, because having them be acknowledged and shared with their groups is going to generate sales and visibility, right? And even if they're not living, there's usually enthusiast groups for certain persons that you can say, hey, I quoted Neville Goddard. I quoted Napoleon Hill in my book. I'd love to get your feedback on it. And now all of a sudden that group is interested in what you've done, right? There's the prayer of pono, pono, right? Pono, pono, something, I forget it right now, a Hawaiian prayer that has that. So, you would find maybe a group that uses the word pono and say, did I use this word correctly? Do you have any feedback for me? And now your book permeates another level of community. See, we're great in community. We are who we are by ourselves, but who we really get to be is in community. And a book is an access to community, but if you don't do something with the content of the book, it doesn't live in the community. It's just a good aha for a book club. Okay, we're going to have to leave it there, Chris. Very interesting discussion with you. I'm so glad we went from the pillow to the post on this and learned so much. Thank you very much. I hope to see you again on a show which we will name Bringing Books to Life. Love that. All right. Thank you, Chris Trammell, a coach, a coach about life work and a coach about books. Thank you. That's right, Jay. Thank you. If anybody wants to find me, it's it's www.theauthorlaunchpad.com or christrammellcoaching.com. And that's where I will help them bring their expertise to life. Aloha.