Discover the secrets behind two unique business bestsellers.
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John’s latest book, The Go-Giver Leader: A Little Story About What Matters Most in Business (with Bob Burg), was released this past March. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing John on the making of The Go-Giver Leader, his writing process, and storytelling.
Be sure to check out John’s website for more information about his books and writing.
GMP: Congratulations on the release of The Go-Giver Leader. When I read the book, I was surprised to learn that it takes place in the same universe as The Go-Giver, but involves different characters.
There is the sequel dilemma. I’ve never written a series character, like those featured in a mystery series or detective series. As a viewer, when I watch a sequel of a great movie, I almost anticipate that it will be terrible. There have been a lot of terrible sequels, but also a handful of truly great ones.
When Bob Burg and I began thinking about The Go-Giver Leader, one of the first questions we had to ask ourselves was: How do we capture the spirit of The Go-Giver and have continuity, but not have it feel like a tired retread of the same story?
GMP: How did The Go-Giver Leader come about? Did you want to tell a story about leadership, and it happened to take the form of a parable? Or did you want to write a story in the same universe as The Go-Giver, and the theme of leadership organically came from the story you wanted to tell?
Great question. In our situation, we had already committed to write a second parable. When The Go-Giver came out, it was clear within the first few months that the book was being well received.
What is interesting is that over the last several years, the sales have increased. It came out in 2008, and in 2009-2010, the sales began to taper off, which is typical. But in 2011 it started to pick up again and has continued to grow ever since. It’s really seemed to have touched a chord with a certain audience, which has been very gratifying.
The publishers then contracted for us to write two more books. One was a follow-up to The Go-Giver in non-parable form. We wrote Go-Givers Sell More, which is a collection of 31 short chapters on the five laws of stratospheric success. They are real-life stories that illustrate the principles.
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I have always been fascinated with leadership, and Bob has always been fascinated with influence and the question of how you influence positively and productively.
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Then we had another parable to write. We had no restriction—just a parable. We could write whatever we wanted to write. I have always been fascinated with leadership, and Bob has always been fascinated with influence and the question of how you influence positively and productively. Bob’s parents were exemplary leaders, and so were my parents. So the topic of leadership was already in our blood.
We originally wrote it under the title It’s Not About You. We wrote this story in Pindar’s universe, with a slight overlap of characters from the first book. [Editor’s note: Pindar is the mentor from The Go-Giver.] We didn’t know what to call the book. After it was written, someone came up with the title It’s Not About You. The great key of legendary leadership is to understand that it’s not about the leader. If I’m the leader, my role is to be of service to those I lead.
That didn’t turn out to be a good title. The cover of the book didn’t indicate that it was related to The Go-Giver and no one understood what the title meant. Its sales figures were not terrible, but it drew a small readership compared to The Go-Giver.
We had a book whose characters we loved, and it fit very well with The Go-Giver, but it languished for a few years. Ever since it came out, we knew we had misfired when we launched the book. We had always wanted to re-launch book, but that’s just not something that is done in the publishing world. The idea of taking the book back and going through the process all over again … that just doesn’t happen.
In the beginning of 2015, we thought, “What if we actually did this?” Our wonderful publisher agreed. We realized that what the book really was, and what the book was always meant to be, was The Go-Giver Leader. It’s probably about 10% new material, especially the last chapter. It has a new cover and a new title. We are so grateful that our publisher partnered with us to re-launch the book.
GMP: I appreciated your integrity in the publishing process, making it clear that it was a re-launch of a previously released book. It was obvious that you were making it clear to people.
One of the first things the publisher told us was that we were running a big risk by re-launching it. They warned us that no matter what we did or what disclaimers we might have, a lot of people might be angry because they would feel ripped off by buying a book that had already been released. We knew we could get a lot of negative reviews on Amazon.
We have a lot of good reviews of The Go-Giver on Amazon and didn’t want to jeopardize the new book by having negative reviews. The publisher, Portfolio, was great about the re-launch. But we know people tend to not follow directions or read signs. One of the first reviews on Amazon pointed this out. The review basically warned others that the content was great, but that it was the same book as one that was previously released.
Bob wrote to the guy who left the negative review, and they emailed back and forth. Bob told him, “We understand why you are frustrated. In fact, we want to refund the cost to anyone who is not happy with the book.” The guy was so happy with the exchange, he went bac and changed his 1-star review to a 5-star review. So far, that’s the only person on Amazon who has said he was unhappy with anything about the re-launch. We haven’t seen that flood of angry people thinking they’d been tricked.
GMP: One of the things I love about your books is that they are short. People buy a lot of books they don’t actually read. But you created the book in a way that creates natural momentum for the reader.
It’s funny you say that. I just finished writing the longest book I’ve ever written! (That’s a book about Special Operations snipers.) But yes, the brief length of the Go-Giver books is a definite plus. We hear a lot of people say, “I’m not a reader” or “I only read one book a year…” and then say, “… but I loved your book — and I read it in one or two sittings!”
It is really fun to put a useful perspective in a book that is compelling enough to engage people who typically don’t read much.
GMP: The Go-Giver Leader is the second parable book that you and Bob Burg have written. Why do you use this format for teaching, as opposed to a more traditional non-fiction format?
Stories are so compelling. The majority of people, by and large, don’t want a book to lecture them. There is a small group of people who want to absorb content in their field and explore the intricacies of their discipline, but they are the minority.
If you want to reach a lot of people and make a book digestible, use stories. There’s a reason that storytelling is such an ancient art. There’s a reason people are so captivated by stories.
If you want to make a book digestible, and you want more people to read your book, use stories. They’re drawn in by those three magic words: what happens next? They are emotionally involved in the characters and stories, and start to identify with them. They want to know what happens with this or that character. They vicariously live the adventure that the characters are living. They get sucked into the story in a way that you can’t get sucked into non-fiction. Story is a powerful way to engage the reader.
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If you want to make a book digestible, and you want more people to read your book, use stories. They’re drawn in by those three magic words: what happens next?
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The thing about a parable is that the story is so stripped down, and the characters are so vague. When you write a traditional novel, you want to describe the characters in as much detail as you can. The more color and detail you bring into the story, the more effective it tends to be.
Novelists have different styles—some are more descriptive, and some less. In general, in a novel you want to supply more detail. William Goldman, who wrote the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” says he immediately knew he would write it as a screenplay and not a novel. The reason he wasn’t going to write it as a novel is that he didn’t know anything about horses and really wasn’t interested in researching that. If he was going to make it into a novel, he was going to have to learn about horses. In a screenplay, the director will provide the details. But in a novel, the writer has to do that.
But that’s not how a parable works. In The Go-Giver, if you want to find out Joe’s last name, age, or hair color … I have no idea. There’s so much detail that’s left out. The characters are intentionally left vague. You want to have characters that are an “everyman”—they are stand-in characters. The less specific they are, the more easily anyone can identify with them. If we made Joe a 22-year-old with red hair, or a 35-year-old with brown hair, you might have a hard time engaging with him if you didn’t happen to have red hair, or weren’t in that age bracket.
A parable is a minimalist story. Here’s the great challenge: you want to create a minimalist story, yet you want to give it enough depth, authenticity, reality, and emotional charge so that it doesn’t feel two-dimensional. You want it to feel like a real story with real people.
It’s a paradox—keep the characters vague and keep it minimalist, and yet invest it with enough poignancy so that it feels real.
GMP: I have to admit that the twist in The Go-Giver Leader caught me by surprise. I didn’t see it coming. When you’re planning the story, do you sometimes have to plant ideas so so they’ll play out later in the story?
Yes, hopefully. We didn’t write either of the Go-Giver books in a totally linear fashion. There are some writers who start on page one and then write from there. Lee Child is like that; he writes the Jack Reacher series that way, without the slighest hint of an outline.
I tend to be an outliner. At the same time, for me there has to be a balance between having an outline, and then being able to change it as you go.
In the case of the original Go-Giver book, it was more linear. We started out with chapter 1, and no clear outline or plan where it would go from there. We didn’t have the ending or five laws worked out. We didn’t even start out with the idea that there would be five laws. With The Go-Giver Leader, we probably had a little more idea of where we were going from the start, but there were a lot of things about the story we didn’t know ahead of time.
In writing a story, there is a definitely a point in the writing where you find you want to go back and adjust certain things earlier in the story so it all makes sense.
GMP: Do you foresee future books set in the same universe as The Go-Giver and The Go-Giver Leader?
I would definitely not rule that out. We plan to revisit this.
GMP: Is there any possibility that these characters could play themselves out in some other format, such as a movie?
There has been talk of a film or television version of The Go-Giver since the first year it came out. So far that hasn’t materialized, but I wouldn’t rule it out. It would take a sensitive and skillful hand to render it in a dramatic treatment.
It’s a parable, so by definition, it’s vague. The depth and treatment you need for a dramatic format is not there in the book. But it could happen. I could see it.
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Many thanks to John David Mann for the opportunity to conduct this interview. Be sure to check out John’s website for more information about his books and writing.
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Photo: Getty
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