Adam Met, PhD, AMPLIFY: How to Use the Power of Connection to Engage, Take Action, and Build a Better World
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[0:45]Adam Met is the author of Amplify, How to Use the Power of Connection to Engage Take
[0:49]Action and Build a Better World.
[0:51]Adam seamlessly transitions between his roles as a musician, educator, and advocate.
[0:57]As the bassist in the multi-platinum band, AJR, he has played for millions of fans worldwide.
[1:03]He is the co-founder of the Climate Research and Advocacy Nonprofit, Planet Reimagined,
[1:07]and teaches about climate campaigning and policy at Columbia University.
[1:11]Welcome, Adam.
[1:12]Thank you so much for coming on Totally Book to talk about Amplify, How to Use the Power of
[1:17]Connection to Engage, Take Action, and Build a Better World.
[1:20]Congrats.
[1:21]Thank you so much, Zibi.
[1:22]I'm really happy to be here.
[1:23]Yay!
[1:24]So you told us in detail about how your whole path to life has been a bit unlikely, particularly
[1:31]being a musician, and then moving on to how you built your fan base and how we all can
[1:38]take what you've learned and apply it to the causes and things that we care about the
[1:43]most, which is really great for you to share with us, so thank you for that.
[1:47]Why don't you tell listeners a little bit about your path to getting here, and then we
[1:52]can go into the nuts and bolts of it?
[1:54]Absolutely.
[1:55]That sounds great.
[1:56]So, I am a musician.
[1:58]I'm in a band called AJR, and the band has been growing and growing for the last 18 years,
[2:03]and it was never one of those moments where we had a song that just blew up and we immediately
[2:08]had success.
[2:09]It wasn't that overnight success story.
[2:11]It was growing it day by day, fan by fan, playing the kinds of venues where we would
[2:16]play for 12 people, and then 20 people, and then 100 people, and then finally this
[2:20]past year we reached arenas, and we played a bunch of sold out arenas across the United
[2:24]States, but it took 18 years to get here.
[2:27]So, every step is something that we spent a lot of time and effort on and really understood
[2:33]how to grow a fan base from nothing all the way to being able to sell out arenas and
[2:38]having billions of streams on our music.
[2:41]And so, as I was thinking about that, at the same time I stayed in school for the last
[2:46]bunch of years.
[2:47]I'm undergrad by masters in my PhD, and I worked a lot in the climate space.
[2:52]So, I spent a lot of time in climate trying to figure out how to make it more accessible
[2:56]to younger people, how to work in policy.
[2:59]I worked a little bit with the Biden administration on there, big climate initiative.
[3:04]I worked with the UN.
[3:06]But the thing that kept coming up over and over again was fans coming up to me saying,
[3:10]I want to participate in something.
[3:11]I want to figure out what the thing is that I care about and I want to do more, but
[3:14]I just don't know how to do it.
[3:17]So this book was really to answer that question.
[3:21]I had done a little bit of problem solving by doing it with the band, but then realized
[3:26]that all of these strategies that the music industry is so freaking great at, those strategies
[3:32]can be applied really effectively to any movement you care about, whether it is the climate
[3:36]movement or if you're working in gun reform or immigration or healthcare LGBTQ rights
[3:41]really anything, all of these strategies from the music industry and entertainment industry
[3:46]more broadly can be applied.
[3:48]So that's how this book kind of was, was ideated to begin with.
[3:52]Amazing.
[3:53]Wait, take me to the time in your life when you were like, should I get the PhD or not?
[3:58]It's so funny because as I was starting to work in policy, I would meet with mayors and
[4:05]governors and senators and members of Congress and the conversation would be, I don't know,
[4:10]60, 70% music and then 30% policy.
[4:14]And then as soon as I got my PhD, it became 5% music, 95% policy.
[4:18]And so not that I did it.
[4:20]So I would be taken more seriously by the people that I was trying to kind of move legislation
[4:25]with, but also at the same time, I have been obsessed with school.
[4:31]And when I was working with my PhD advisor who was amazing, she was saying, Oh, do you want
[4:34]to go into academia?
[4:35]Do you want to teach?
[4:36]And I said, I just love being here.
[4:38]I love continuing to learn and I ended up writing a PhD and that book essentially is
[4:46]over 300 pages and like three people read it.
[4:49]So I wanted to do something that was more accessible this time and that's how we got to
[4:54]amplify.
[4:55]Amazing.
[4:56]I thought about getting a PhD in multiple subjects because I just like you.
[5:00]I'm like, I just want to stay in school, but then of course did none of them.
[5:02]I got an MBA and I was like, that's enough.
[5:05]MBA is great though because I like that idea because you get to touch on so many different
[5:09]things and business.
[5:10]So yeah, yeah, we all end up there like this is just how do we find our place now that
[5:16]school is over.
[5:17]And we love it.
[5:19]Okay.
[5:20]So you have found a way to apply these principles of fandom to whatever we all care about,
[5:27]whether it's like you climate or like me spreading literary world and the power of books
[5:33]and all of that, you know, for me it's like one podcast at a time and so tell us what
[5:39]is the secret?
[5:40]What do people in the entertainment world get right so much that you want to try to
[5:45]hope about it?
[5:46]Yeah.
[5:47]So there are a couple of core principles and then they're really interesting in different
[5:50]ways to apply it.
[5:51]So one of the core principles that I love is this idea of creating evangelizers.
[5:57]So when you first are starting a band or a movement, the key thing is to bring new people
[6:04]as close to you as possible, give them all the tools to be able to go out and be the evangelizers
[6:11]of the movement itself by having a really kind of strong corporate structure that doesn't
[6:17]work.
[6:18]So historically movements have been built on this idea of a ladder.
[6:21]People take one action and they become part of the movement.
[6:24]They then attend a rally or a protest.
[6:26]They go and sit in the city council meeting.
[6:28]They do whatever it is and they keep climbing up this ladder of engagement.
[6:31]That's the historic approach.
[6:33]That doesn't work anymore.
[6:35]With the way communities have been built in the digital space and in the live space, it
[6:39]looks a lot more like a hurricane and there's a whole chapter in the book about this.
[6:44]With a hurricane, it brings people in really close to the center.
[6:48]So with music, we bring our new fans in really close, give them the tools to be able
[6:53]to go out in the world.
[6:54]We give them first access to concert tickets, Zoom sessions with us.
[6:58]We give them early listening to our music.
[7:00]They get really kind of first look things.
[7:03]Then they take those and say, Oh, I'm really excited about that.
[7:06]I want to share that with my friends, my family and my community.
[7:09]They go out into the world and they end up being part of the movement that is the music.
[7:15]And so if you think of it that way, it's more about different ways that you're treating
[7:20]different segments of the fan base in order to have them go and be the people who can
[7:25]help grow it for you.
[7:27]It's not just about the musician growing the thing, it's about the fan base as a whole.
[7:32]And so that same idea can be applied to movements.
[7:35]So this ladder of engagement doesn't work anymore or looking to build hurricanes, giving
[7:40]people the tools in order to go engage their communities towards collective action as opposed
[7:45]to focusing on the individual actions of participation.
[7:49]So how do you make the evangelizers into an actual structured thing?
[7:57]Like do they know their evangelizers or is that your shorthand in the band?
[8:01]That is the shorthand in the band and I'll give you two examples of how we do this.
[8:05]So a handful of years ago for one of our albums, we employed this gaming strategy.
[8:11]And again, there's a whole chapter on gamification in the book.
[8:14]So Taylor Swift does an amazing job with gamification with her fans, right?
[8:17]She puts her fans in competition with each other in order to solve puzzles and it reveals
[8:21]new things competition.
[8:23]Great strategy for gaming.
[8:25]21 pilots, another artist uses a strategy called open world building where like a video
[8:30]game, they keep expanding on this world, album to album and the fans get to explore, learn
[8:36]more about this world through the lore of it.
[8:40]But we tend to do something that's a little different from both of those.
[8:43]We do something that we call collaborative gaming.
[8:46]So what I propose with this is when we put out this album, what we did is we took the
[8:52]track list before we released it.
[8:55]We divided it up into 36 separate jigsaw puzzle pieces.
[8:59]And we put each piece in a different area of social media one on Twitter, one on Facebook,
[9:04]one on Instagram, one on Discord, Reddit to our text list, our email list.
[9:08]And we forced the fans from all of these different places to work together to create something.
[9:14]They then took this and shared what they had created across social media, unlike anything
[9:20]we had seen before, because they took ownership over it.
[9:23]They created the track list.
[9:24]They worked together.
[9:25]They made it.
[9:26]They posted it before we even did.
[9:28]And that kind of ownership, they felt over the product allowed 10 times more eyeballs
[9:35]to see the content than if we were just going to post it ourselves.
[9:39]So this kind of gamification and ownership over the idea itself allows the fan base
[9:45]to grow in a much bigger and more organic way.
[9:49]So that was one.
[9:50]Who's out of that?
[9:51]I did.
[9:52]Yes.
[9:53]Yeah.
[9:54]Yeah.
[9:55]Yeah.
[9:56]So these kinds of strategies are my favorite things ever.
[9:58]Because they're a mix.
[10:00]the psychology and business and creative,
[10:03]you can probably tell from the fact that I stayed
[10:06]in school forever while also doing music,
[10:08]while working the climate space.
[10:09]I can't focus on one thing at a time.
[10:11]So these kinds of solutions that apply
[10:13]all of these different strategies at once
[10:15]are my favorite things to think of.
[10:17]And that's just one, there are dozens and dozens of strategies
[10:20]in the book.
[10:21]We do the same thing with the live space.
[10:22]How do we create a new kind of live space?
[10:24]In the movement world, you're either at a protest
[10:27]or you're at a gala where the food isn't very good, right?
[10:30]It's always one of those two things.
[10:33]What if we created something in the middle where
[10:34]the live space was actually fun?
[10:36]What if it really was a dance party?
[10:38]What if it really was a concert kind of approach?
[10:40]What if it was something that had merch
[10:42]that you could take home with you?
[10:43]What if there was a way to participate
[10:45]in a much deeper way?
[10:46]And I kind of lay out how to do that in the live space
[10:49]in the book?
[10:49]So these kinds of strategies are the things
[10:52]that I find to be the most fun.
[10:54]How willing is your whole team to experiment?
[10:59]Are you just like, this is the ethos of how we do things?
[11:02]And let's just give it a shot.
[11:04]Yeah, we've always been a very outside the box band.
[11:08]We stayed independent for a really, really long time.
[11:11]And by doing that, we kind of wrote our own rules.
[11:15]And another one of the chapters in the book
[11:17]is about how to effectively break the rules
[11:19]without kind of stepping over the line.
[11:22]But breaking the rules is such a fun thing to do
[11:25]when you think about it as, okay,
[11:27]this hasn't been done before.
[11:28]Why hasn't it been done before?
[11:30]And if there's no good reason why it hasn't been done
[11:33]before, it's probably worth trying.
[11:36]So that kind of rule breaking is something
[11:38]that we do all the time.
[11:39]On our last tour, last summer,
[11:41]we had all of these advocacy moments
[11:43]where people could actually register to vote,
[11:46]volunteer with nonprofit sign petitions,
[11:48]and also phone bank and call their representatives
[11:51]on site asking for specific votes on local legislation.
[11:56]We had 35,000 fans take action on climate
[11:59]during our tour last summer.
[12:01]So this is actually working because they're doing it
[12:04]with their friends, with their family.
[12:05]The band isn't incentivizing them to do it.
[12:08]It's just this kind of great mix of energy
[12:11]all happening at the same time at these shows.
[12:13]And now we're expanding in doing
[12:15]with a bunch of other artists this summer.
[12:17]Amazing.
[12:18]So what if you believe strongly in a cause?
[12:20]But it's not your nonprofit,
[12:23]like childhood mental health or just for an example.
[12:26]How can the individual participate more?
[12:29]Is it aligning closely with organizations
[12:31]that are already doing them?
[12:32]Is it trying to start new things?
[12:34]How can you take your energy and creativity
[12:38]without having to start your own thing?
[12:40]Yeah, so there are two different,
[12:42]or I guess there are like 10 different answers to that question,
[12:45]but there are two kind of main categories.
[12:48]The first thing that I always advocate for
[12:51]is looking at what already exists out there.
[12:53]Because so many people have tried to jump into movements
[12:56]and say, I want to start an organization
[12:58]without looking around to see if there's something just like it.
[13:02]We don't want to repeat other people's work.
[13:03]We don't want to do unnecessary work.
[13:05]So the first thing is you care about something.
[13:07]Go see if there's an organization
[13:09]that you can volunteer with, participate with in your area.
[13:12]And that's great.
[13:13]And if there isn't really to make a case
[13:16]like it's necessary for this movement,
[13:19]this protest, this campaign, this organization to exist.
[13:22]And in chapter two of the book,
[13:25]it's all about all the different roles you can play.
[13:28]And not everybody needs to be a leader of a movement.
[13:31]Not everyone needs to go out in the streets and march.
[13:34]Not everybody needs to do letter writing campaigns.
[13:37]Those are not the only things.
[13:39]I give a lot of talks at colleges
[13:41]to students about climate.
[13:43]And so often they say to me,
[13:46]oh yeah, I wanted to climb it on the side,
[13:48]but I'm studying pre-med
[13:49]and that has nothing to do with climate.
[13:51]Or I'm studying art and that has nothing to do with climate
[13:53]or polycyte or whatever it is.
[13:56]And I literally go around the room
[13:58]and explain to everybody how the work they're doing
[14:01]is related to climate.
[14:03]Your pre-med, the amount of insect-borne diseases
[14:07]that we have in the United States now
[14:09]have increased tremendously
[14:10]since the temperature has started to increase
[14:13]because as the temperature increases,
[14:15]these insects move from the equator,
[14:17]further and further and further and further and further south,
[14:20]and we have more and more hospital related cases
[14:22]from insect-borne diseases.
[14:24]That's a health issue.
[14:26]Immigration is a climate issue
[14:28]because we're gonna have more and more climate refugees
[14:31]as an immigrant, as a result.
[14:33]And that's something that can be absolutely be addressed,
[14:36]same thing with our food systems.
[14:38]If you're in farming agriculture,
[14:40]pretty much every job,
[14:42]whether you're in construction or you work in water
[14:46]or whatever it is, you work in art.
[14:48]And we need more climate communicators.
[14:50]Every role, everything that people do for jobs
[14:55]can be applied to the climate space.
[14:57]And so what I help people to do in this book
[15:00]is think about the things that they're good at
[15:02]and think about the things that they love doing.
[15:05]And this model has been used before,
[15:07]but I also lay out a bunch of different philosophies.
[15:11]So it's not just the things that you do,
[15:13]but it's the way that you think about things.
[15:15]Are you somebody who likes to bring people together
[15:17]who disagree with each other?
[15:19]Are you a convener of people?
[15:20]Do you like to listen instead of participate
[15:23]in the conversation?
[15:24]What kind of person are you?
[15:26]And then we figure out how you all can contribute
[15:29]to the movement that you care about the most.
[15:32]Are you going to be launching Amplify Consulting
[15:35]for our drink clients?
[15:38]I mean, I have not thought of that,
[15:40]but you heard it here first
[15:42]and maybe this is the beginning of Amplify Consulting.
[15:45]Thank you for the idea.
[15:47]I'll cut you in.
[15:48]Great.
[15:49]I'm fabulous.
[15:51]What does the layperson need to know about climate these days?
[15:57]I follow the news, I read the papers, blah, blah, blah,
[16:00]but what you have an inside scoop, if you will.
[16:03]What should we know and what is the most helpful thing
[16:05]we can do?
[16:06]Yeah, so everybody is in this kind of doom and gloom moment
[16:11]when it comes to climate, because a lot of the climate
[16:14]legislation that has actually moved forward over the last
[16:17]four years is being rolled back or has been rolled back
[16:20]by the current administration.
[16:22]Now, at the federal level,
[16:24]a lot of climate action can be taken,
[16:27]but so much more climate action can be taken
[16:30]at the local level.
[16:31]Community boards, state legislators, mayors,
[16:35]they determine where petrochemical plants are built,
[16:38]what waste systems look like, farming protocols.
[16:42]All of these things are decided at the local level.
[16:45]Community boards, there are many, many across the country
[16:48]where these elections have been decided
[16:50]by less than 10 votes.
[16:53]Your vote at the local level is thousands of times
[16:56]more powerful than your vote at the federal level.
[17:00]So my call to action for people on climate,
[17:02]because it is everything like we were talking about before,
[17:05]is to go look up when you're next to local elections.
[17:08]So I'm in New York City.
[17:09]We have a primary for our mayor,
[17:12]and that's happening at the end of June,
[17:14]but in pretty much every city, every state,
[17:18]there are local elections that are happening
[17:20]at some point during a year.
[17:22]Go look it up, take the time, go look it up,
[17:24]and see what the profiles are of the people
[17:27]that are running, see where they are on climate,
[17:29]or any other issue that you care about,
[17:31]and commit to going to vote in a primary
[17:33]and a local election.
[17:35]That is the number one most important thing
[17:37]that you can do to have a real impact.
[17:39]Cause like I said, your vote could literally be
[17:42]the deciding vote in that election.
[17:45]Have you thought about running for office?
[17:48]I've been asked that question before,
[17:50]and I have been asked to run for office.
[17:53]And at this moment in my life,
[17:55]because so much of my work is bipartisan
[17:58]and nonpartisan from the ground up,
[18:01]I think that my role is to stay outside of political office
[18:06]because I can work with Republicans,
[18:08]I can work with Democrats and bring them together
[18:10]effectively over certain issues.
[18:12]And as soon as I run on a ticket,
[18:15]I lose that ability.
[18:18]And I think that I at the moment am meant to focus
[18:22]on the non-partisanship and bipartisanship side.
[18:25]So who knows maybe in the future,
[18:27]but at the moment, I'm gonna stick where I am.
[18:30]I mean, it would be so cool to have a president
[18:31]who's also a musician.
[18:33]I employ all of these skills to getting people to vote.
[18:37]I don't know.
[18:38]It feels like it's in the bag.
[18:39]I appreciate that.
[18:40]I mean, Bill Clinton played this saxophone.
[18:42]That's true.
[18:43]That's true.
[18:44]Sorry, I forgot.
[18:45]Of course, there's some images of that, of course.
[18:49]Yes.
[18:50]In addition to everything, you are now a writer, right?
[18:52]How can you employ all of your strategies
[18:55]and smart thinking to releasing a book?
[18:58]Great question.
[18:59]So we have done some of these similar ideas
[19:02]as in building the AJR fan base
[19:05]in order to release this book.
[19:06]So engaging deeply with fans who are kind of close to us,
[19:10]giving them the tools to go out
[19:11]and spread the word about the book.
[19:13]The book tour is something much more than a traditional book
[19:17]tour.
[19:18]We're not going to book shops and signing.
[19:20]What I'm doing is I'm going to all of these different cities
[19:23]and basically putting on a show.
[19:24]There are musical moments.
[19:26]There are special guests.
[19:27]We're doing all of these kind of gamified things.
[19:29]There are advocacy moments in the show
[19:31]where altogether everybody in the audience
[19:33]is taking a local advocacy action
[19:35]that's being sent to their local representative
[19:38]and it's different each night.
[19:40]So it's meant to be a more fun advocacy experience.
[19:43]Again, not the protest and not the sitting in a gala,
[19:47]but this is where action can happen
[19:49]when people are in community in spaces
[19:51]where they're having a fun that's built around entertainment.
[19:54]So we're using as much of the strategy
[19:57]as much of the strategy as we can on this tour.
[19:59]Bye.
[20:00]Do you feel like readers are as receptive?
[20:03]We'll see.
[20:07]I mean, this may be a new model.
[20:09]Everybody who publishes a book is always looking for the next way to break it.
[20:14]I hope so.
[20:16]I'm happy to share any insights that I have after I finish this tour with any authors,
[20:22]because that sounds so much more fun, right?
[20:24]Then sitting in a Barnes and Noble, or an indie bookstore, whatever it is,
[20:28]and just signing book after book, wouldn't it be great if you had to talk about it
[20:32]with a guest that's different in every city, and you actually played games
[20:35]and had all of these different things in order to promote your book?
[20:38]That's fine.
[20:39]It does sound fun.
[20:40]I'm going to have to stop in on your tour.
[20:42]Are you all over the place?
[20:43]All over the place, all over the US.
[20:45]Amazing. I'm sure we'll put it in our show notes.
[20:48]We're behind you on tour.
[20:50]What do you like to read when you're not reading about climate and devising your own theories?
[20:56]It's funny.
[20:57]I listen to a lot of nonfiction, and I tend to read more fiction.
[21:02]I listen to nonfiction, because I feel like I need to stay up to date on all of the stuff that's happening.
[21:08]I don't tell anybody, but I put it on 1.5 or double-speed in order to listen to people doing there in school.
[21:15]There's a book.
[21:17]This is probably the last fiction book I read that I really enjoyed.
[21:21]It's called Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
[21:23]I'm sure it is really excellent.
[21:25]It's a story about three students and building video games.
[21:30]I'm not a big video game person, but it was really interesting to learn about that industry through the lens of these three front.
[21:35]It's really excellent.
[21:37]Yes.
[21:38]And into your game of 5.2.
[21:41]That's on brand for you.
[21:43]I like that.
[21:44]1.5.
[21:46]I've tried that.
[21:47]I can't go past 1.2, but I can read really quickly, but I can't live quickly.
[21:52]Did you train yourself?
[21:55]Did you work your way up?
[21:56]I did.
[21:57]Even with each new book, I started one, and then I go up to 1.2, and then 1.5, and then 1.7.
[22:03]I need to get used to the author and their voice.
[22:07]And when do you divide the time in your day?
[22:10]What is the typical day for you look like?
[22:12]Yeah.
[22:13]So nowadays, it's mostly working on my climate nonprofit, which is called Planet Reimagine.
[22:19]We've grown endlessly over the last year.
[22:21]About a year ago, we were five people or so, and now we're more than 30 people working in it.
[22:27]So that takes up a good chunk of my time.
[22:29]Now I'm all book promo all the time, and this summer we're doing a tour with the band.
[22:35]And so that's going to take up more of my time over the summer.
[22:38]But I really try and divide my life in a way that makes me happy.
[22:42]I also teach climate policy and campaigning at Columbia University.
[22:46]So I'll be jumping back into that in the fall once the book tour and summer tour is over.
[22:51]How have you found things to be at Columbia?
[22:53]What a loaded question.
[22:55]I just gave the commencement speech at the Gritler graduation for the Columbia Climate School.
[23:01]And I think it's impossible not to speak truth when you're giving, when you're put in a position like that.
[23:10]And so I have a lot of problems with the way the administration of the school has failed to stand up to have our terrorism.
[23:18]And I think it has been a massive slight on the school itself, and the students feel it and the professors feel it.
[23:25]At the same time, the curriculum in places like the Climate School and the International Affairs School around teaching really focus on in preparing the students to go out and actually do the work.
[23:36]The framing of the speech really was, we have all the what's to solve climate change.
[23:41]We could solve climate change today if we wanted to.
[23:44]We know what the what's are, but the how's are the things that we need to be focusing on.
[23:50]We need to take everything they learned and figure out what implementation looks like.
[23:55]And that's not something that you teach so much in school.
[23:58]That's something that you need in the real world.
[24:01]So I love Columbia.
[24:03]I went there as an undergrad.
[24:05]I went into the fellowship there while I was doing my PhD.
[24:07]I now teach there.
[24:09]And I really hope that things are going to improve very soon.
[24:13]That was a good answer.
[24:14]I mean, you know, maybe people can listen to the listen to the subtext.
[24:19]Oh, my gosh.
[24:22]What have you learned from one of your students?
[24:25]Oh, well, it's funny.
[24:27]Two of my students have ended up hiring for the nonprofit because I'm just so inspired them by them.
[24:33]I love teaching in the International Affairs School because the last semester that I taught pretty much every student was from a different country and from a different background and brought something different to the table.
[24:45]And when you're working in campaigning to have that diversity of ideas is so key because everyone brings something completely different.
[24:53]And when students from Southeast Asia are talking about social media approaches to campaigning there as opposed to what's happening in the US or South America.
[25:03]I learn new things every day about campaigning about how to reach people about the language to use about how to engage celebrities about how to give speeches, things like that.
[25:13]And so the most impactful things are when students disagree with each other.
[25:19]And it's really because they're coming from such different backgrounds.
[25:23]And what I love talking to students about is how to find your audience because an audience is not one thing.
[25:29]And an audience is not stagnant.
[25:31]It is this ethereal, amorphous thing that ebbs and flows.
[25:36]And there are audiences within audiences.
[25:39]And I thought about that in writing of this book, but it happens in campaigning all the time.
[25:44]So I think that's probably the thing I learned most from my students is how to expand my definition of audience.
[25:50]Love it. Any advice for aspiring authors?
[25:53]Yeah.
[25:54]So I was very lucky I found somebody to partner with on this book.
[25:58]I have a co writer and her name is Heather Landy. She's an incredible journalist.
[26:03]And what I learned from writing this book with her is that for me, collaboration is key.
[26:11]I love working with people that will push back against me that will make me think harder.
[26:16]I also did a lot of interviews for this book and there some of them made it in and some of them just the ideas made it in and not the interviews themselves.
[26:23]But engaging people along the way as you're telling these stories is vital because you might have a lot of amazing ideas.
[26:34]But they're not going to resonate unless you test them out with other people and let other people who you trust be the shapers of your ideas.
[26:44]That was kind of key for me.
[26:46]There are multiple chapters that didn't end up making it in the book because it wasn't resonating with people in the right way for me.
[26:52]So there was a whole chapter about digital and instead of having a separate chapter about digital, I took different pieces of it and wove it through the rest of the book because I realized that digital doesn't live in a silo anymore.
[27:12]It's a tool that's working across the live space and the rule breaking and gamification and building a bigger tent and how you tell stories and all of these different pieces.
[27:22]So instead of it being its own silo in now kinds of lives as this horizontal piece in each chapter.
[27:29]And do you have any tips on working with family?
[27:32]Oh, working with family. It can be incredible and it can be tough.
[27:37]And I think that family needs to come first and the work needs to come second no matter what.
[27:43]Excellent. Adam, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
[27:46]Thank you.
[27:47]Thanks for helping us all amplify and collectively change the world. Thank you.
[27:52]So nice. Thank you so much for having me. This was great.
[27:55]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi, formerly momstone have time to read books.
[28:00]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens and spread the word.
[28:08]Thanks so much. Oh, and bye the books.