Today on the Book More Show, we're talking with Sam Altawil from just outside Sacramento, California.

Sam is the author of On the Edge of Effectiveness, a book dedicated to helping individuals and organizations make the most of their HR capabilities, and I really wanted to get Sam on the show to talk about why he wanted to write his book, and his experience almost a year later.

His is an interesting book because he doesn't have a specific commercial intent. Rather than having a specific product or service to promote, Sam's goal was to share the knowledge he has and help people avoid some of the mistakes he's seen.

It lead to a great book, very authentic in its message, and now he's in a position of wanting to add more value, having received feedback from the first version being out in the real world.

We had a great conversation about how to best do this while keeping in mind one of the Book Blueprint mindsets of Beneficial Constraints. How can we best include the information most valuable in the book, and provide a way for people to continue the journey, without the usual lead model of guiding someone toward a specific outcome?

I really enjoyed this call. Sam's passion for his subject comes through in everything he does, and this conversation about adding the right value to the pages, and having the right information elsewhere is very useful to everyone, whether you have commercial intent or not.

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Transcript: Book More Show 098

Stuart Bell:
Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of The Book More Show. It's Stuart Bell here and today I'm joined by Sam Altawil who's an author of ours who's written a book called On the Edge of Effectiveness. It's subtitled Refocusing HR Efforts to Strengthen Organizations. Sam finished writing originally I think about a year ago, so we're just doing some work now on a version two and making some updates.

This was a really great episode that I was excited to do, because Sam, unlike a lot of the lead generation books that we're talking about, doesn't necessarily have commercial intent to his book. As a HR professional in the field for 20 years, he really wanted to write something that shared his experience and his background, and the things that he sees as common mistakes people make, easy mistakes that people can avoid, his desire was to really write that and get that out there as a piece to really help everyone improve their HR departments if they're HR professionals, or as employees to improve the way that they deal ... with the HR organization that they have to work with. Very interesting episode.

The authenticity of message really comes across, and I think this is true for both if you're considering writing a book where there isn't commercial intent, and you're just thinking about what should be included or excluded, or how to frame the book that you're writing, but also if there is the idea of writing for a lead generation purpose, this thought of including not necessarily as much information as possible, but including the right amount of information that really gives people value just in the pages of the book themselves. Not necessarily whether or not they become clients. But that delivering the value in the pages then compels people to take that next step with you.

Super interesting episode. Sam's got a great story and his approach to writing it was very interesting. You're going to get a lot from this. With that, I'll catch you on the other side. Hey there, Sam. How you doing?

Sam Altawil:
I'm doing well, Stuart. How are you doing today?

Stuart Bell:
Yeah, very good, thank you. Very good. This is going to be an exciting call. We were talking just briefly before we started recording, I always say I think when I get a chance to speak to real people, not that Betsy isn't a real person, but a chance to speak to real authors, it's super exciting to be able to share those stories. This is going to be another one of those great opportunities to share what you're doing with people. I know that when Betsy was getting the call on the schedule in the first place, she was very excited for this to happen, because you guys had some great conversations.

First time that we're speaking, Sam. Excited to play the part of the listener, and ask some questions about how you're using it, and then see where the conversation goes. Probably the best place to start is for the benefit of everyone listening, do you want to give people a background on what the story is and your background, and how you came to think about writing a book in the first place?

Sam Altawil:
Yeah, fantastic. Well, my name's Sam Altawil, and currently I wrote a book that basically has to do with human resources, and designing leadership training. It's mainly for any organizations that employs people, so whether it be businesses, private sectors, public sectors, nonprofit, and so on. I've been in HR for 25 years in my career, and 16 of that in leadership roles. Earned my bachelors and also my jurist doctorate, which is a law degree, of course, and been in some of the most diverse industries in which I got to experience many different challenges, and seen a lot of different things.

One of the reasons I wrote the book is, part of it is because I've seen certain things that actually work for organizations, and I've seen things that just fail. For some reason or other, they have a lot of smart people and have done a lot of great work, but as the department took over, it seems like something is failing. It seemed like something always just not going the right way. A lot of times I nod at those things, I'd make notes of it throughout the years, and so on, and finally got the chance to put it together in a book. In a book that kind of just sums it up a little bit more about really refocusing these HR efforts to help organizations, help employees, and design really proper leadership training so that way they can thrive.

Stuart Bell:
It's such an interesting dynamic or the thought process that comes together as people start thinking about books. Obviously we're talking to people who come from all different backgrounds and all different outcomes that they have in mind, but there's a definite common thread of what was the frustration in a certain way that people say, "I see this time and time and time again, and people keep making the same mistakes, and they don't have the opportunity to learn from other people." Perhaps what their experience has been hasn't made them think about some of these things that to people like you who see it time and time again, become these fundamentals. Over time, those coalesce around certain principles, and then you have a certain framework that you're using, and then you're able to share that with people, and it begins to resonate.

Was that a similar path for you? All of the experience that you've got started to come together into these specific fundamentals that are simple to communicate with people and people resonate? Or was it more broad and diverse, and it was a wider collection of ideas that maybe weren't quite so thematically drawn together?

Sam Altawil:
Yeah. That's a great question actually. It's a combination of both. Part of it is seeing things being repeated over and over, and things have been passed, you knew that past mistakes of being defeated, going all right, and keep burning it up, and yet the heat never does change. But at the same time there has been certain things in certain different industries, certain behaviors that show you little different point of views.

It's really when I came across these things, I would always look to see, okay, what's the disconnect here? Why are we not being efficient and why are we not being effective? We really don't know the answer to that. One of the things I always go back to is fundamentals. Once you go back to the fundamentals and find out, are we covering the fundamentals as the first thing we do? If you're saying that yes, we are, then you take the next and start determining really where you are and where the disconnect is. But nine out of 10 is fundamentally that organizations or behaviors, that those are the things that are actually failing.

This is categorically how and why I refocused the book starting with fundamentals. I want the book to be fundamental yet also tactical as well.

Stuart Bell:
That's an interesting point. You talked about the version, the book's been out for a year now, starting to get some feedback and thinking about the version two changes that you can make to refocus it slightly or to address some of those things that weren't necessarily covered in the first version. The feedback that you've gotten from people, I think there's a resistance that some people have to the idea of writing in the first place, in that it's almost like the exercise analogy. People almost sometimes think that they're not fit enough to exercise as opposed to thinking about exercise as a way to get fit. For you, was there any concern going into this in the first place that you wanted to have a more complete picture, or were you very happy with the first version and it's literally these are all improvements and refinements that now have come along in the second version?

Sam Altawil:
Again, another great question. What I want to do is give the audience a little bit broader picture of the topics and so on. One of the feedback I did get is that there's some areas, and it was a very positive feedback, they liked it all, but they'd love to hear more of this area, specifically for example certain areas. I wanted that, I really did, because I wanted to know what the audience wanted. When my readers read it, saying, what is it that I want to walk away from? What is it I want to know more of? I try to be very, very broad in this book. I cover some specific areas here and there, but more to give a general overview and a big picture look. It's more of a macro level.

When I started going into more micro, I started getting the feedback. Interesting enough, the people that gave me the feedback are the ones who are not in the field, but they're ones that either want to try to get in the field or ones who are just basically saying, "You know what? I'm an employee. I really want to know more about this. What does this mean?" And so on. The more and more information I'm getting back, the more it's setting up for the next time around, for what area of the book I'm going to be more specific on in the next writing.

Stuart Bell:
And that's a super interesting insight, because a lot of the time we find people either come to us with a project that they've already started, or they find themselves in this endless loop without a scope constraint. One of the book blueprint score mindsets that we have is this idea of beneficial constraint. With nothing stopping how much you could write, people often find themselves in this problem of writing, writing, writing, writing, and then it either never gets finished or they get worn out with the project, and it just is a project that's incomplete. This process that you've gone through of getting a great version one, which is absolutely fit for purpose, it does a great job of starting the conversation, but now you're in a position of receiving feedback. Moving from a place of having that already, so not moving from the start but moving from the place of having something to move from.

Now you can look at it and decide, okay, which of these pieces of feedback makes sense? Which does it make sense to include in the book as a later version to expand on a particular topic? But potentially, which subjects need expanding out of the book? Rather than trying to think about all of the words ending up on pages, some of them might be references off to other material. You're talking about people being out of the industry and looking to go into one of the subjects more deeply. If that's the case, or if it turns out to be the case that they want that information because they are out of industry, everyone in industry would understand it, it's kind of like baseline of insider knowledge that a general person doesn't necessarily need. I wonder if it's going to turn out that those particular words don't need to be in the book because it's serving a different audience.

But there's ancillary reading or there's a link off to some further content, there's an opportunity for people to dive deeper out of the pages that conserve all of this additional audience. I think that's really where the benefit comes from, of having a scope constraint project to begin with, which means you're more likely to get it completed, but then with the feedback that comes back and just with your own capacity and capability, being able to do more in the second, third, fourth year, the opportunity to decide which of these pieces makes sense to be included as words or which makes sense to be included not as words, as this whole host of opportunities to take the conversation further? But when you're doing that in the first place, it's very difficult not to think that every word needs to end up on the page.

I guess, turning that into a question rather than just a monologue, have you had any thoughts about that kind of model? About which of the feedback makes sense to be in the book and which of it can live externally and just referenced as take the conversation further by heading over to the website and checking out more details, that type of approach?

Sam Altawil:
You know, it's tough right now because I'm still in the evaluation process, to be honest with you, in many ways. I really would like to see more. There's, like I said earlier, one of the things about getting some specification on what area that I really like to focus on in the future. The biggest thing that I want the reader to walk away is that, whether you're a person who's in the field or a person outside of the field, is to understand really what this is about and get a clear vision on this. Because how did that reflect in your life and how does that work in your life?

For example, I touched upon this and I used Maslow's hierarchy of needs as the five needs necessary that people really want, they kind of look for into their lives, and that applies to the workplace. A lot of people that read the book, they say, "I never even knew about that. Never knew how the evolution that happened."

When they walked into their job, now they have different expectations. You have a lot of people that read it and now have a kind of expectation to read it very differently than those in the field example. In HR they always talk about they want employees to be engaged in the company, and yet they have all these different tactics, they have all these different things that they do. That again goes back, do you really have the fundamentals? A lot of times really how we know that employees are happy or not happy is the way they tell us. They don't tell us, it's hard for us to know that, but for them when reading this, they understand their needs. This is some of the basic needs, and they understand okay, if I have all my needs and I'm being fulfilled from the workplace, what's next? What's keeping me from being unhappy?

This is the kind of way that I want from the general public, this is what I'd love for them to read when they're reading it and understand that. Ironically enough, that is actually the feedback that I've gotten is that those who are not in the field say, "I kind of understand that, where you're coming from. Now I have my expectations differently when I go to my employer and say, 'You know what? We want to be able to more this, we want a little bit more of that.'" Have a little bit more expectation.

Stuart Bell:
Yeah. I guess a common language as well, if people not in the HR field are reading it as a development tool, then knowing the type of language that mentor or the HR advisor or the development in the company, knowing the type of language that they're likely to be using must put the employee in a stronger position as well, both in terms of-

Sam Altawil:
That is correct.

Stuart Bell:
... understanding what's being said and how they can articulate it more to the professional that they're dealing with.

Sam Altawil:
Yeah, I'm sorry, go ahead.

Stuart Bell:
No, go first. Sorry, I was going to preach slightly into something else.

Sam Altawil:
When you mentioned the language is really important, it really is. There's a lot of terminologies on human resources, and every year they change it. It's really interesting because they have this thing about reinventing the wheel, and I've heard other HR professionals saying, "We take the stuff that we've been doing for a long time and we either combine a few processes and so on, now we give it a new fancy term." This has been going on in HR for years now. We take something that we've been working for a long time.

Sometimes ironically, and that actually confuses employees, and it confuses people who have been in HR for a long time too because they'll think they're out of touch. They really are not out of touch, because the processes have been the same for a long time. When you talk about for example just as employee engagement, being involved in that. That's a nice word for saying it, but it really has been around since employment started, so to speak. It's really, we have these languages and really what I'm trying to do with this is my thought is trying to simplify things that, not to complicate things for people. Not just the people that are going into HR, but the people actually being employed. For a lay person to understand what does it all mean.

Development, what does it actually mean to develop in the workplace? Things like that. I'm kind of critical of some of the fancy words that come out every few years, as it seems to confuse more than help.

Stuart Bell:
It's, yeah, become the financial services occasionally sometimes where we'll try to think of examples to illustrate points that we're making on the podcast, because it's a background I'm familiar with, and we've got quite a lot of those books. That group of people seem to be using insider language and making the products and services that are sold, highlighting the complexity as a way of reinforcing their value, as opposed to trying to make it simple for people and get to the basics, and start it at level one. I guess it's the same in every industry, as you're saying, the fundamentals, the underlying thing that you're trying to achieve within the HR world, doesn't necessarily change from decade to decade, but having to come up with a shiny new model in order to keep the engagement or to sell more programs or to keep that feel that the industry's moving at, as an insider, it kind of ...

My background is more on the corporate side than the small business side. Although actually I've been out of that came for almost 10 years now, so I probably need to get to that. I'm probably crossing that threshold soon of more doing this than doing that, but coming from a very large organization corporate background. You get used to that as an employee or as a manager of people. It's just the train that's moving along, and you onboard the train, and it all makes sense. But as soon as you try and step out of that, and books are very much this transitional piece of trying to, a lot of time we're introducing concepts or ideas or frameworks to that new audience, and to on the one hand not undervalue what you know and what you might see as the basics because the new group of people don't necessarily know that.

On the one hand, not undervaluing it, but on the other hand, not falling into the trap of just using insider terminology that turns people of and makes them feel like insiders. It's a super difficult challenge to try and tread that line or walk that line between the two. I think as you've experienced, it's making the best effort out of that with it coming from the best place for the version one, but then adapting once you start getting the real feedback and thinking I can see now what people are saying. If this isn't elaborated on, I didn't elaborate on it because it's just part of that common vernacular. It's something that everyone knows, in air quotes.

It's a real interesting position to be in now, 12 months down the track, and thinking about what the best opportunity is from this point forward to engage with those people.

Sam Altawil:
Stuart, I learned that, and I learned it a long time ago, and believe it or not, I learned that from law school. I learned it in trial skills, and there was a great trial lawyer that was teaching the trial skills, and he says, "Look, you have 12 average people in a jury. Don't use these," basically what he'd call $50 words. They sound great, they sound like legalese, they sound wonderful, but you have to convey your message to 12 average people, so you have to keep it simple.

I did pretty well on that because I can actually bring it down to everybody's understanding, because at the end of the day, you want them to understand the concept. Not understand how smart you are by saying these fancy words.

Stuart Bell:
Right, exactly.

Sam Altawil:
Again, one of the things that I even remember with the book, I tried to write it very direct, very simple, without going off into long stories and so on. Just to get to the point and try to make a simple language in the sense that's professional but simple enough that everybody understands. The same thing applies to my career, because when I'm talking in front of employees, I'm talking in front executives and so on, I want to convey my message. I do not want to just sound smart, and there's a huge difference.

This one attorney kept really pushing that on us. He says, "Don't use cop jargon or any of this stuff in there. Just say that the person get out of the vehicle instead of they exit the vehicle, things like that." Just really simple things. I know it's funny, but you think about it-

Stuart Bell:
It's true.

Sam Altawil:
It is true. They're saying exit the vehicle. You mean get out of the car?

Stuart Bell:
It's such a difficult-

Sam Altawil:
Simple as that.

Stuart Bell:
It's such a difficult trap to fall into. I can remember, so as I say, it's probably getting off of 10 years now when I came out of that corporate world. My background is corporate IT, we were doing a lot with the project transition stuff into the live environment. The whole language around that is very caveated and explicit. The expectation is that for every agreement that's there, and even not from a legal sense but just from an operating procedure sense, for every one that's written, 20 other people in a very similar position to you will all review it and sign off. There's a lot of for want of a better term, ass covering of well, it was in the document. If you come back to me six months later, it was there and everyone read it, and signed off on it.

To break away from that into over the last, certainly over the last five years from the book business, but even a couple of years before that, looking more at that communication piece with regular people. It's a very difficult habit to break to separate away from just that. Even just the terminology. Not trying to use $50 words for the sake of it, but just the-

Sam Altawil:
Exactly.

Stuart Bell:
... way in which people speak. This is now what we talk about in terms of the books and the way that the process is around writing it. The fact that we're so adamant about recording content freshly and not trying to reuse existing content, the fact that we pretty lightly edit to keep the tone of people's voice as much as possible in the words that end up on the page, the whole purpose of that is that we're not trying to recreate a manual or a textbook or a heavily edited New York Times bestseller. The thing that we're trying to communicate is someone's underlying message to another regular human being that is the start of a longer conversation.

That rapport building and the break into normal language is very heavily based in the process that we've got, and the reason we do it the way that we do it. I think that element the you've got, that you identified right from the start, of being able to talk to someone as if they were another intelligent human being but not assuming, not trying to show off, not trying to convince someone that they should work with you because you know all of these cud words. Instead, compel them that they want to work with you because you're there defending their corner, making them feel good and engaged about it.

That I think if everyone could take away that lesson would be worth the podcast, if we didn't talk about anything else.

Sam Altawil:
Exactly. Yep, exactly. You nailed it. You nailed it.

Stuart Bell:
That purpose, I guess let's touch on that briefly.

Sam Altawil:
Sure.

Stuart Bell:
We talk about the job of working on the book as being the start of the conversation and being the first step to moving towards that engagement piece. For you particularly, your ideal audience that are reading, and then the ideal next step that you'd want them to take. Do you want to talk briefly about what those is and then we can dive into that a little bit more?

Sam Altawil:
When I started writing this book, I had in mind first the people that are coming up in the field. I really want them to come up in the field in a powerful way, because I really don't think right now they're being ... they're being taken down this road, and the road exactly just like we spoke about before, about these different terminologies, and different things, and different concepts. What they're missing in that unfortunately is the people aspect. They're focused so much on processes and everything has to do with HR process, but they're missing the human in the human resource aspect.

It really is. I was hoping, and I'm hoping that a lot of people that are coming up in the field will read it. I've gotten a couple of reviews that people have, and really, wonderful feedback that I've gotten. Love to see more of that, because a lot of times, that way they're able to see the things in a different light. Other audience that I was hoping as well too is people on higher levels, CEOs, CFOs, anyone on the executive team, operational. They will see it as well, because then they would have some expectations, clear expectation. One of the things working with executives for years and years is that they don't know HR. They know what we tell them. A lot of times they get confused by all these terminologies, they get confused by these concepts. A lot of it, when I simplified things for them in a different way, then I get it. Then they're able to participate more, and not only that, but they have great ideas.

I remember one of the best ideas I've had for a process or a thing that we implemented, a program, which was employee appreciation committee. That did not come out of HR, that came out of the CEO, only because she started understanding why we need to recognize employees, why we need to do these things. Then I thought, yeah, absolutely, and that's because I had her engaged in HR and started understanding the basics as well.

The other side of it is, like I said before earlier, love the general public to read it. Those who read it who's an employee of any organization, whether you're an employee of government or you're employee of private sector. You've got to understand or at least want to, what is the foundation for all of this? Where it came from, and how does that apply to you? How does that apply to you from every day?

You know now why we do the things we do. What should you expect? Maybe your expectations are different now instead of just basically saying, "You know what? I need more money or I need better benefits." Maybe your expectations are a little different. By reading that, you're going to read it and say, "Okay, am I getting paid well? Do I have a safe place to work? Do I have great people that I work with and so on? But I'm still unhappy. Then why am I unhappy?"

They're able to at least identify things, and communicate that with their employer, with everybody else in a way that, because employers do want feedback from their employees. They really do. The ones who care about their organizations and want to see them great, they want to retain great employees, they do care.

Stuart Bell:
Yeah.

Sam Altawil:
That gives them another avenue as well.

Stuart Bell:
As you said, that retention piece is absolutely huge. I've worked in both organizations where the retention was unusually high and unusually low, and the difference in those organizations was night and day. Even if it's not from, even if the employers weren't necessarily doing it just from the perspective of the employees, you had the selfish view that the engaged, satisfied group of people that are working for you make a night and day difference to the outside of the business. Even now, it's a huge reason for employers wanting it.

Sam Altawil:
I once talked to an employee, and I said to her, she was basically in healthcare. I said to her, "You know you can get more at Kaiser. Why stay in this organization?" She gave me all the different reasons why she stayed with the organization, and not going for higher pay is an example. They're retaining employees, it isn't just the one solution to a problem. It is there's many different versions of it, but finding out really what they want is really the key. It's not just basically taking a chance and saying, "Okay, you know what? Let's just up our salaries because I think it's got to be pay." That's not always necessarily true.

Nobody's going to say no to an extra pay, but that doesn't mean it's going to retain them. There's a lot more to it than that, yeah.

Stuart Bell:
That is such a great point, because I think so oftentimes people think that just money is the answer, but very often it's not the case. We talk a lot to people about the kind of, we've got this idea of working with noncompeting, complementary businesses, as a way to promote the books. Obviously for the sake of the podcast, trying to keep everything focused on that, but this idea of you could pay for idols, pay for leads, pay to have your book in another location, but if there's a way of working with complementary noncompeting businesses where the overall success is far greater than just the initial dollar transaction of whatever it would be to pay to have your book in a bookstore.

If you worked with an organization that were looking to increase retention across the board and reposition the book as a guide, a cobranded guide that was created with the leadership team, an intro written by the leadership team why they thought that the employee engagement piece was important. The fact that they've talked to you about bringing this book in that helps everyone. The overall outcomes of that has nothing to do with the end. It's not a financial transaction in the making, it's a more synergistic transaction of everyone trying to create a greater good. As soon as people start thinking about that, it's a little bit more detailed than just the cash transaction, I think that's where the real opportunities open up. The same with employers then just thinking that increased salaries is the answer to all their problems. Definitely not the case. Well, I'm sure it is the case in a number of occasions, but definitely not the case across the board.

There's such a big opportunity outside of that just by thinking about it and orchestrating it a little bit more. I guess actually that bridges-

Sam Altawil:
Seems pretty smart.

Stuart Bell:
Yeah.

Sam Altawil:
That's the whole point.

Stuart Bell:
Yeah. It's more ... I don't know. I don't know whether it's the opportunity, it's definitely a pet peeve of mine, but the opportunity is so much greater than just that initial transaction. I was thinking that was the same, that bridges into some of the ways in which you're now using it. The book's created, it's available out there for people to get a copy of. Are you promoting it in any other channels? Are you working with any other people to have it get in front of the eyeballs that it can make the most difference to? What's been the experience over the last few months of getting it in front of people?

Sam Altawil:
I tried to, one of the things I did, I think I had another podcast bracing for this one, but it was with Voice America. That really reached a lot of listeners, and I was really shocked to see how many listeners wanted to read. In three weeks, they told me that we had over 1,000 listeners, and then in due time we were basically in the 20,000's worldwide. Really, when the host brought me in to discuss this thing, he really wanted to do it a little bit from the book, if you read the book, but also a little bit of just a general about employment, and just labor, and just things like that.

Well, realize that day that basically that topic is more than just HR, and is becoming more and more discussion. That really led to basically a really good outlet for the book, got a lot of exposure during that time. I tried a few times for example to do just the usual, did Amazon ads, and I utilized a lot of the basically social media, like LinkedIn, Facebook, and so on. They had their limitations and so on.

In reality, I think those are the things I've taken so far, and of course I'm doing this podcast as well, helping as much as I can. Whenever I get the chance to do something to actually promote it in a sense it's just to have a conversation about it, I'm always there to do it.

Stuart Bell:
A couple of, we've been working with a few people here who've followed up on this idea of taking this noncompeting complementary business idea to a few steps further down the path of looking at which organizations, almost being a little bit more orchestrated about the approach of interacting with people. If for example there are, I'm trying to think back to a time when I was living in London. I was there for 20 years or so, there's a lot of, because there's such a density of people there, there's lots of meet ups and organizations and chapters of various professional groups. All of the industry bodies tend to have headquarters there, so it was a great concentration of people with a lot of things going on, so there's lots of opportunities to have conversations in the right place at the right time.

But this idea of looking for opportunities, and even outreach to HR organizations within companies, so bigger organizations that are in the local area, reaching out to those guys and saying, "I've written this book. This is something that would be great to share with your organization because it really helps how employees can make the mos to their situation, and then by nature or by virtue of that, the organization does better." There's an opportunity to cobrand this book, to write an introduction or a cover letter, or I can come in to do a presentation, or a talk, and present it to them as the benefits to the organization, and then ultimately present it to the employees as the benefits to them.

Or if there's a training organization that looks after the HR professionals, have that orchestrated outreach to those groups, and look at ways that you could make that as easy as possible for them to include the book into what they're doing in the organization. The thought of that, we've got this idea of visible and invisible prospect. At the individual level, the individuals getting the copy of the book is somewhat invisible. You don't necessarily know who those people are, who you would resonate specifically. But the idea of visible prospects in the collections of people being together, that's a little bit more easy to identify and then actively go out and reach to.

I know that you're across in California, but I'm not quite sure how, whether you're up in the mountains or whether you're down in the city. Looking for those groups of people where you can position it as something that will benefit them, and then that has distribution because you're talking to the leader of a bigger group. Whether that's an organization and it's their employees, or a group leader, and it's their group members. Then we've seen a lot of people get some good traction with that approach.

Does any of that ring any bells or anything swing to mind talking about that type of thing?

Sam Altawil:
Well, it does, but I wish I would've done it. I mean, those are really good ideas. To be honest with you, it's kind of, when you're a working professional, you really don't think about it. When you're an author, you write the book, you want to get it out there, and the part that's been difficult, I'll be honest, is especially the promotion aspect of it all. I mean, that's not something you think about, that's not something you do.

I've learned a lot during this process, I really have, and some of the stuff you just mentioned here, it's like, well those are great ideas. Wonderful ideas. Have I done any of them? No.

Stuart Bell:
I was just going to say, it's like that old saying of the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago, the second best time is today, so don't worry. It's the second best time.

Sam Altawil:
Yeah, yeah. I agree with you. Yeah, it's kind of, when you're a beginning working professional, you want to get the book out, you're really so much focused on the content and everything else. The part about promotions I think is very difficult, but at the same time it's been a learning experience. One after another after another, the more I learned about this, the more ... Fortunately, it's not something that, when I wrote this book and the person who recommended me to do would not even answer. She wrote a book herself, and she said, "What is your intention about this book? For it to be just relevant for one year?" I said, "No. I'm hoping that this book be relevant for many years."

Stuart Bell:
Right.

Sam Altawil:
I didn't want to be just as like, okay, this is the newest thing, this is what's going on. If that was the case, I would write an article. What I wanted to do is make sure that this is something that 10 years from now, somebody will read this book and say, "Yeah, these concepts still apply today. These things still exist today," and sure enough, they do. For me, what I want to do with this, yes, it's a constant thing about getting the book out there, getting those things out there. Whether it's a year from now or last year, if I didn't do it last year, it's going to happen.

Yes, it was one of those things that I'm going to try to do as much as I can.

Stuart Bell:
Yeah. One of the things that we can talk about, I'm conscious of time's getting on, so I don't want to ... it will be an hour, or hour and a half, and I'll still be talking, so conscious of keeping you too long. One of the things we didn't talk about, and then maybe we'll kind of head towards wrapping up after this, but we talked about who the book's targeting, who benefits from it, the feedback that you've been getting.

Stuart Bell:
Personally from your perspective, what was the intention of the book? Obviously the HR professional book was it, to land more clients or increase your presence?

Sam Altawil:
Not at all. It was the intention was to educate. It was basically we were going, as we mentioned earlier, that we were going into a path where we make the same mistakes over and over, and we don't learn from the past, and we keep doing this. This is really to educate and recenter people to think in process, and think in their selves, "Okay, you know what? I need to rethink about what I'm doing." You just kind of go back to the certain ways of doing things, and try not to make mistakes and be efficient.

You know, the title is On the Edge of Effectiveness, and there was a reason for that. It's because all these organizations I've been to, they're just on the edge of being effective, and yet they fail. This is really mainly to educate. My work is different and I want it to have a voice in this HR world. When you really think about this in many people that actually publish who are professionals, that's what they do all day. That's what some academics deal with and they do a lot of contests, but I'm on the front lines of HR. I could see what's going on. I've been on the front lines for 25 years. In different industries, in different cultures, so I'm not bringing these ideas from an academic standpoint but from a practical standpoint.

Stuart Bell:
Yeah. They're on the front lines. I think one of the things too, without there being commercial intent behind it, that definitely gives it a sense of authenticity because people are reading, and it's purely a knowledge sharing exercise. You're not trying to guide or orchestrate people towards a buying decision at the end of it. That's the only problem with some books that we see where it's very ... obviously when we see it, we try and coach people out of that, but some people will come with the idea of it's very much just moving people towards a buying point, and all of the information is very superficial unless people actually buy the program.

As I say, that's definitely something that we try to coach out of people if we see it happening, but you're interestingly coming to it from the other end. There's no course to buy at the end of it, you're not trying to get people as clients. One of the things that might be interesting to do though is to a certain degree, try and still think about it in terms of this path of educating people over time. If there were a course at the end of it, that's easier to think about, to talk about seven or eight steps towards getting people to buy by delivering value over that period of time. With that not being the case for you, I think there's still definitely an opportunity to add to the presence, to add to the value that you can give by taking some of that outside of the pages of the book.

We were talking when we started about what should be included and what shouldn't be included as far as constraints and specificity goes, but certainly in terms of opportunity to share more information. If you had, I'm just trying to think of different places that are easy to create. If there was a YouTube channel with additional stuff or if audio is easy to do, so you could just record audio either in a podcast form or just on a website somewhere. But having these additional assets, having the color and the depth and the anecdotes and the case studies that back up all of the points in the book living outside of the book. Then, although there's no immediate commercial intent around it, there's absolute value I think in just enhancing and increasing the people's opportunity to hear more of your experience and your framework and your mindset around things outside of the pages.

Stuart Bell:
Yeah, I really think that's a great opportunity to-

Sam Altawil:
That is a great idea. That's a wonderful idea.

Stuart Bell:
I mean, one of the other things there is, and again, I know that I said we were going to wrap up, and 10 more ideas have popped into my head. But the idea of collecting names and email addresses, we're always talking about it in terms of lead generation on the business side, but just to be able to collect the details so that you can communicate with people from an interest point of view. Not that you're intent on selling them anything, but just to be able to share with them when new information comes out, kind of a newsletter. Even if it's not particularly regular, but that kind of newsletter type approach as opposed to a client type approach. That's having something that backs up the book more immediately that allows people to dive a bit deeper. Potentially encourages them to opt in, but even if you don't want to deal with the opt in side of things, just a place where you can point people towards to take their journey with Sam further. That's, yeah. Just because there's no commercial intent there.

Sam Altawil:
Wonderful.

Stuart Bell:
Wouldn't skip over that piece.

Sam Altawil:
Stuart, those are all wonderful ideas, actually, and believe it or not, I was writing some of this stuff down, so absolutely. Fantastic.

Stuart Bell:
Fantastic. But we're up on time for the show, but I've got a feeling that we're definitely going to check in with people in the future and see how version two is going, and how the journey is progressing as 2020 progresses. I definitely want to give people an opportunity to grab a copy of the book before we go. I'll make sure that the links and follow on activities are in the show notes. If people were to want a copy of the book, is Amazon the best place to go?

Sam Altawil:
It is, Amazon's the best place to go. That is correct.

Stuart Bell:
Perfect. Well, just for all the people who are listening and not looking at the website, the book again is called On the Edge of Effectiveness. Sam, Sam's surname as well, I'll spell that as well, because that might trip people up. It's Altawil, which is A-L-T-A-W-I-L. As I say, I'll make sure that we've got a link directly to the book on the podcast page, so that's obviously over at 90MinuteBooks.com/podcast, and all of the links will be there.

Stuart Bell:
Any words to wrap up on before we cut everyone loose?

Sam Altawil:
No, I just want to say thank you for the opportunity, I really appreciate it. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Stuart Bell:
Fantastic. Thanks, and me too, and I'm sure people have got a lot from this. This not having quite the same commercial intent that other episodes have had is a really interesting, authentic look at sharing that message, which is absolutely applicable to everyone. Really want to thank you for your time. Everyone that's listening, as I say, check out the show notes, and we'll have a link directly there to Sam's book, On the Edge of Effectiveness. With that, thanks again for your time, Sam, and we'll speak soon.

Sam Altawil:
Thank you.

Stuart Bell:
And there we are, we had another fantastic episode. I was excited going into this one having spoken with Sam beforehand. There was a lot of great information there. I think the ideas that we were coming up with, this kind of complementary noncompeting business idea, that is one of the key differences that a book makes. Whether you're doing this for commercial intent, hoping to have customers at the end of it, or just so you can get to share a message, the idea of having something that's written, that's valuable to an organization or group, and then being able to position that so that they can clearly see the value with limited additional work or effort, you're really orchestrating the journey for them that allows you to share your message. That really is the opportunity that differentiates someone that has a book versus someone that doesn't have book, because without it, it's difficult to get that kind of charged mutual opportunity to deliver something of value to a group of people that you might not necessarily have access to otherwise.

Stuart Bell:
I appreciate Sam's time. To get a copy of his book, like we were saying in the episode, head over to Amazon and search for On the Edge of Effectiveness by Sam Altawil. I'm going to put a link to that in the show notes, so that's episode 97. 90MinuteBooks.com/podcast and look for episode 97, and really whether you're thinking about a lead generation book, because we typically talk about, or a book just to spread a message, then reach out to us. We can walk you through the beginnings of the process, help you do it if you decide to work with us, and have your message out there engaging people and really sharing that knowledge by the summer.

With that, thank you again for listening, and I will catch you in the next one.