Johnny: Self Publishing podcast episode number 144.This episode of the Self Publishing podcast is brought to you by 99 designs, the online marketplace that helps you get outstanding book cover designs at an affordable price. Start your custom design today at 99designs.com/SPP, and enjoy a free power pack upgrade valued at 99 bucks.

Welcome to the Self Publishing podcast where if you want something done right you’ve got to do it yourself and now here are your hosts three gaffs who spend most of their time up in the trees Johnny, Sean, and Dave.

Johnny: Hey everyone and welcome to the Self Publishing podcast, the podcast that follows three full time authors as we attempt to change the face of indie publishing. Join us and our trailblazing guests as we shove aside boundaries freely experiment, and occasionally screw up. I’m Johnny B. Truant and my co hosts as always are Sean Platt and David Wright. Free styling it today I decided to see like do I know that intro well enough yet since we revamped it you know only like six months ago and the answer was yes I do.

Sean: It’s very…

Dave: On Better Off Undead.

Johnny: Well because I’m leaning, I’m doing– I’m operating the controls because that’s how pro we are.

Dave: He’s on the edge man.

Johnny: Yeah so if I sit back…

Sean: That is so…

Johnny: Normally, I’m normally like this.

Sean: You’re living dangerously.

Johnny: Wow you’ve never seen. I do that every single week.

Sean: No I think you were just hovering there longer and…

Dave: Sean can’t see the computer screen over his nose.

Jonny: He doesn’t know what he’s doing; he doesn’t know at all what he’s doing. Today will be an interesting crossing of worlds for me today just for me. Maybe for you guys too, Matt Gartland is going be our guest today, and Sean knows him as master networker guy who does some stuff with author landing pages. It’s really awesome and original founding member of Sterling and Stone, but I know him as Matt, the guy I met at BlogWorld and clicked with and talked about completely different things about, so this’ll be fun.

Sean: Yeah I don’t know want to tell the Sterling and Stone story yet because well save that juice for when he’s on, but Matt’s just like he’s just one of those guys that is impossible not to like. He’s a really hard worker and he’s just a really good guy and he knows a lot of people, and he’s smart and we actually have we have Matt to thank for…

Dave: Matt and I have that in common– impossible not to like.

Sean: We have Matt to thank for…

Johnny: For matt it’s about whether or not people like him, you find it impossible to like, that’s about you and your outward projection.

Sean: We have matt to thank for Monica Lionelle. A couple of years ago he taught her to check out the podcast and so a couple of years later, she’s our writer and she’s awesome. So I just found that out a couple of weeks ago, but that’s pretty awesome. You just you never know, I mean that’s, and that’s exactly what I was saying about– he’s just a really good networker. He just knows a lot of people and you never know when those intersections are going to come, and I’m very grateful for Monica.

Johnny: I feel like I almost want to tell a story that’s very pertinent to networking, but I don’t think I’m allowed to tell it yet. I think that that’s the next week thing. We just dropped something very cool on our platinum readers like seconds ago and its super-secret. That’s the insider club like they can’t talk about it because it’s our secret for all of us, but that there’s networking involved in that too, kind of is who you know and who you make yourself known to, not like who you knew pre-existing but that’s everything that I’ve done is Johnny 1.0, is who I am today, the fact that this podcast exists is all about personal connections, so that…

Sean: Yeah its funny when Johnny and I first started it was after we had– we were already rolling with the SPP completely and but we hadn’t written anything together, so Unicorn Western may have just been a joke from Dave at this point. We’re still just talking about like things that we may do in the future, and Johnny referred to me as a great networker or a natural networker or something of that to that effect and I disagreed with him.

Johnny: I don’t remember that at all. I must have gotten to know you better.

Sean: And I said no, I said I don’t feel like that’s accurate at all. I really-really don’t like networking. I don’t… what Dave?

Dave: People? Never mind.

Johnny: Wow, Dave weighing in everybody.

Sean: I’ve bought it twice and then he disappears, look at that.

Johnny: I know what he does.

Sean: Cowering in shame over that.

Johnny: So what was the end of that statement?

Sean: So yeah I never ever thought of myself that way, but I do know reasonable amount of people and I think that the best way to go about networking and I’m sure we’ll talk to Matt about this later is to not really network. It’s just to be yourself and be your most genuine self and you put yourself out there when you can and always offer help when you can.

Johnny: Networking with a capital N, I mean everybody reacts to it differently and it must work or they wouldn’t teach these things, but I find it really obnoxious and there are some things that are like signatures. You can tell when somebody is asking to know about you in a way that they clearly don’t give a shit and don’t know anything, but they aren’t like hey I’m curious about you. It’s more like Hey I’m curious about you, let me ingratiate you know and there’s this really false sort of thing that people do.

And when I went to my first public event, my first thing where I was meeting people was South west South West in like 2009 or something I don’t remember exactly when that was, and I hung out with a lot of cool people. And I think somebody at a camp said at the end something about networking or whatever. And all I did was hang out with people I didn’t have business cards, no-no-no I had some print up because just commons yelled at me and said you need to have business cards.

So I made up farcical business cards that had me being one of the authors of trust agents instead of Chris Brogan and but so I had those but it’s– I don’t think networking needs to be with a capital N, I think it’s more about who you know, and who you like and we’ve seen that over and over again. A good example is and this isn’t really the same thing, but we do work with Monica and Amy now and it’s because we hung out with them, like in person and we got to like them. It’s not that they impressed us with their acumen although they are impressive ladies, but it wasn’t like they gave us a Rolodex and said here is a resume, so I don’t know…

Sean: No it wasn’t like that at all and the thing is it takes– I mean people all come in different flavors right, so my friend Lori who we’ll talk about later because she was the other original third of Sterling and Stone. One of her sayings is your network is your net worth and for her like that, that’s totally true, that works.

Her Rolodex is insane but she and I are wired very differently and we travel together a lot, and we would go to two events or to masterminds and she would make sure she talked everyone in the room. She would make sure that that she had at least her ten minutes a rattle off with this person and rattle up with this person, and it was almost like a mission and for me I’m the opposite. When I going to room I figure whoever I talk to that’s the way it’s supposed to be and that’s great, and so you know it’s different.

And I think that you have to really get the most out of networking and to keep it from being a capital end situation. I think that it’s best if you are just yourself, if you know okay I’m an introvert and I’m only going to have three conversations this whole thing, but they are going to be great conversations and I’m going to have a relationship with these people after the event. I think that’s how you want to look at networking. It’s not– you can go there with like a checklist because then you do the things that Johnny was talking about where you are just asking questions because it’s a checklist.

Johnny: Tell me all about you. How can I help you? Who asks that question, how can I help you right away?

Sean: Right, right it’s just you just don’t– you want to be that guy at all, ever under any circumstances or that girl.

Johnny: So I do have. We did have two questions; do we want to discuss those that they were sent in, remember that?

Sean: Yeah we totally do.

Johnny: And I should also mention the– and I don’t know when we’re going to have cut off for this, but I’ll just mention briefly the colonist Summit. There are now five places left, if you’re interested in joining us the payment plans are now in full effect. You don’t have to pay in a lump sum and that’s sterlingandstone.net/colonist. So there’s that and there are five slots left, and all right so questions. These were two things that were sent in; people who couldn’t use the voicemail or couldn’t figure it out, or are they just merited more discussion on the show, so I guess I should just read this right?

Sean: Yeah.

Johnny: Yes in the absence of response I will indeed just read them. So the first one is from Yohan who says I am a film editor from South Africa with a keen interest in writing a television series and I watched your beats course on Udemy. I’m writing to you because I– well I don’t need to say why he’s writing to us, but I need to have– I just have a few questions, when do you do the single sentence rough story arch arc and simple synopsis only after the beats, so this is a process question about our beats process. So when you do that Sean since that’s your thing?

Sean: It totally depends on the project actually, sometimes I have the sentence and the sentence kind of helps me figure out where I’m going with the story, and I expanded from there, but I think with Axis it was actually the oppo