The Brilliant Michael Heppell

Our first podcast features an interview with the brilliant Michael Heppell.

Michael is a Sunday Times best-selling author of six books, international award-winning motivational speaker, broadcaster and all-round good guy.

Join us as we talk about how to get started in broadcasting, webinars, Lives and the like, how he's helping budding authors to get started writing their first book (he can help you too) and how he told a white lie to get his first ever book deal.

We also discuss the Edgers, the winning business leaders he interviewed for his latest book, The Edge, and what they are doing in the current pandemic to ensure they are winning.

You can find Michael on his website here www.michaelheppell.com/ and his How To Be Brilliant Facebook Group is here www.facebook.com/groups/HowToBeBrilliant/

If you're reading this and listening to the podcast before 11th May then join his pop-up Fabook Group, Write That Book, here: www.facebook.com/groups/WriteThatBookGroup/

Transcript

Paul Limb:   0:00
Hi, welcome to Business Extra – ActionCOACH Bolton’s podcast.  Today we’re joined by the brilliant Mr Michael Heppell.  Welcome Michael.

Michael Heppell:   0:08
Thank you very much for having me Paul. I'm excited.

Paul Limb:   0:11
We’ve listened to you on various webinars.  I even remember listening to you on the Chris Evans show so many years ago when you were talking about ‘Flip It’.  It’s just a real pleasure to have you here.

Michael Heppell:   0:22
It’s eleven years’ ago, I think.

Paul Limb:   0:00
Wow.

Michael Heppell:   0:00
Ten or eleven years ago, something like that, yeah. That was quite a day [laughs].

Paul Limb:   0:00
Yeah, I think it was probably the first time I remember hearing about you and one of your books.

Michael Heppell:   0:33
Do you know how that came about?  I should probably just jump straight into a random discussion about something that happened before Christmas ten or eleven years ago.  I wrote ‘Flip It’ and when it launched it did alright, but it wasn’t brilliant, it wasn’t a huge take-off. And then Chris Evans got in touch via his show and said “I want to have Michael on the show, would he be happy to come on and talk about his book ‘Flip It’.Well, when you’re an author and, you know, BBC Radio 2’s Chris Evans wants you to go on his show, you’re like, “Yep, no problem at all!”So I offered to go down.  He said “No, no, we’ll do it on the phone.  I quite like doing it on the phone.”  I said, “Are you sure? Because I’m happy to pop down”.  They were like, “We’ll do it on the phone, that’s great.”.So, the researchers, they talk to you first.  You don’t actually get to talk to Chris until it is live on the show and I was sat at home and I’m all ready, I’m all excited, I’m upstairs, I’m in my little office.  Christine’s downstairs.  She’s listening to the radio.  Came on straight after the news at 5 o’clock and it said “Welcome to the Chris Evans Show. This show is brought to you by my Christmas book recommendation.  It’s a book called ‘Flip It’.  It’s absolutely brilliant.  I recommend everybody should buy ten copies for their friends, for their family and I’m going to have the author on in about twenty minutes.”  And I remember going downstairs and mouthing to Christine “F-ing Hell!” [laughs].  And she was going, “Get back up and do a good job!”.  And he just raved and he absolutely sold the book and literally fifteen days later, it was the number one Sunday Times bestseller. And when people say, “Oh, I’ve got a best-selling book”, I always say “Well, I’ve got a Sunday Times number one bestseller.” You know, it’s kind of that little one-upmanship between authors and if any author knew how I got it, they would go, “Yeah, only because Chris Evans banged on about it.”  I’d have to go, “Of course it was!”  I don’t care how I got there! [laughs]

Paul Limb:   0:00
You must have been doing loads of stuff before that.  Do you see that as a sort of a change point in your life?

Michael Heppell:   2:28
I think writing ‘How To Be Brilliant’ was the big one – you know, that first book.  To get a book published is massive.  You know, you should never underestimate what it’s like to open that packet or that box, have that smell of new books and see your book with your name on it.  It’s unreal, absolutely unreal.  And the fact that a publisher would have the faith in you to want to publish your book, that’s also absolutely extraordinary, so that was the big one that ‘How To Be Brilliant’ was published and it did really well and that did really well very quickly.  That went to the top 10 business books after about three weeks after launch, so I’m thinking “that’s what happens when you write a book, it goes into the top 10 business books, stays there for two years and four months” and then I wrote my next book and it didn’t do anything.  The one after that did quite well, but not brilliantly, and the next one after that was ‘Flip It’.  So, it’s hard work, it’s hard work, but when it works, when it comes off, it’s the most rewarding thing ever.

Paul Limb:   3:29
I know you've got a Facebook group at the moment about writing books.   

Michael Heppell:   0:00
 Yeah

Paul Limb:   3:33
I know because I’ve joined it!  They say everybody’s got a book inside them.  I’ve got a book inside me and it’s really uncomfortable, I need to get it out there. 

Michael Heppell:   0:00
[laughs]

Paul Limb:   0:00
Any top tips, apart from joining your group in terms of getting people writing?

Michael Heppell:   3:46
Do you know what, Paul, it’s interesting that everyone has that expression and I wrote about it in my newsletter that everybody has a book inside them and it’s just getting it out.  The real worry is if somebody wants to put it back again! [laughs]

Paul Limb:   0:00
 [laughs]

Michael Heppell:   0:00
That’s what should really worry you.  You know what, the reason why we’re doing that group is we started a Facebook group called ‘How to be Brilliant’, it’s got 2000 members – it’s doing really well - huge engagement, loads of people sharing stuff and I contacted the one hundred most active people in the group and I said to them, “Look, what do you think we should do next?” and I gave a whole bunch of different ideas.  Writing a book was by far – not just by a little bit, by a mile - the thing that people wanted – how to do it.  Now I’ve been coaching people on how to write a book for years and I’ve had a great success rate – a really good success rate.  I get around about 60% of people who are coached get their books published which is massive and I realised I’ve actually got a formula to do that – there’s a system, there’s a process to do it and it starts with good writing – you’ve got to be good at writing – but there’s ways to learn how to do that and you can learn how to do it quite quickly.  There’s ways to format stuff so that people want to read it, you know, and I do this thing called ‘Writing so People Want to Read’ and there’s ways to promote your book so that a publisher will pick it up and even if they don’t, that you can still sell it yourself and it will massively increase your credibility – the intellectual property will then be instantly related to you because you wrote the book.  The credibility is through the roof.  It’s incredible.  So, we created this book – book group – and it’s called ‘Write That Book’ – because that’s was people are saying – come on, you’ve got to write that book – keep it simple – write that book.  I launched this morning and as I look now, 94 people have joined in the first three hours.  It’s incredible.  And what we’re going to do is we’re going to run a challenge and the challenge will be coaching people every day on a technique for writing and to help them get published and to understanding what’s your promise and how to write a great title and understanding content and that type of thing and we’re going to do a challenge every day and that’s going to start - May 11th it launches, but join before then.  Join before then.  So it’s facebook/groups/WriteThatBookGroup. Just look up ‘WriteThatBookGroup’ and you’ll find it.  And then at the end of this, we want people to have tools and techniques that they can use straight away, put into practice straight away.  But you know what’s going to do more than anything, Paul?  It’s going to make people accountable.  So, I think if you can get people excited about the idea of writing and then being part of a group where everybody is encouraging you to write, that’s how you’re going to get the book done. And later on, we can sort out grammar, and later on we can get you in touch with a proof reader, and later on we can work out how we’re going to market it and all that type of stuff, but right now get in the group and start thinking and creating your book. I’m so excited about it, I can’t tell you!

Paul Limb:   6:50
Yeah, I’m really looking forward to being part of that group as well because somebody said to me a few years ago, “Look, if you want to write a book, the best thing to do is just start writing”.

Michael Heppell:   0:00
Yeah.  And one of the challenges is I want people to write 500 words of shit! 

Paul Limb:   0:00
[laughs]

Michael Heppell:   6:59
Just write 500 words of absolute rubbish.  Your worst thing – go for it!Because if you can sit down and write 500 words of anything, then some good stuff’s going to be in there, whether you like it or not, there’s some good stuff. And then you go through it and say “OK, which are my 100 best words?”  People are going to get on the group now, but you find those 100 best words and you go “If I can write 100 great words, could I do that ten times?”  If I can do that, yeah, I can write 1000 words, so I’ve written a chapter: a little mini chapter there.  A thousand words is a mini chapter.  And if I did that two or three times, well that’s a good meaty chapter now: I’ve got some really good stuff.  There’s my first chapter done. That’s all you need to get the book deal.  Don’t write the book before you go and get the deal – it’s pointless.  Get the deal, then write the book.  Because then you’ll be writing with a publisher who will help you.  If you write the whole book and then go and go and get the deal, the publisher’s going to come back to you and say “Actually, can you do a bit more like this..?  I like the idea of it, but we publish ‘How To’ books, so can you make it a bit more ‘How To…’“.  You’ve got to go through the whole thing and do it again anyway, so I show people how to get the deal before they’ve written the book.  And then, I tell you what, when you’ve got a deal and a publisher, you’re going to write the book! [laughs]

Paul Limb:   0:00
Then you’re definitely being held accountable aren’t you?

Michael Heppell:   8:17
Especially when you’ve been paid in advance and you’ve signed the contract.  That’s a very good incentive.

Paul Limb:   8:21
It can be challenging enough just writing one book. I understand you are writing three books at the moment?

Michael Heppell:   8:28
I’m writing three books simultaneously – massive mistake.  I’m not following my own advice.  I came up with an idea for a book which I thought was brilliant, but it’s difficult getting a bite from a publisher, so I might do my first self-publish with this.  I’m just working on the concept at the moment and it’s called ‘The 40-Year Apprentice’ and the idea is that the first 40 years of your life are were all your apprenticeship – that was just to help you to get you where you are now - so the next 40 years of your life are going to be the best ever.  And what we can learn from that apprenticeship and what we can put into place.  When you think about it, the vast majority of people who read books are in their 40s plus anyway.  I think it’s a great concept.  I love the idea.  Publishers don’t get their heads round it.  They’re thinking..., my publisher Pearson who published five out of my six books said, “What if you’re under 40” I said, “Well, It’s not for you”.  I said, “People write books about how to do plant-based eating – they’re not for people who are carnivores and people who do ‘100 Meat Recipes’, it’s not people who are into plant-based eating.”  You can’t sell books to everybody.  But W H Smiths want to and Amazon want to, so that’s the first one.  The second one is a one that I came up with because, I woke up one morning and, this is so typical me, you know these people that are up at 5 o’clock and they’ve got to beat the day and my competitive advantage is “I’m in the office for six” and all that type of stuff.  I’m not that person at all.  Sometimes I’m lucky if I’m up by the crack of ten, you know.  [laughs’] I stay up late. I can stay up writing until three in the morning, no problem at all, but I’m not a morning person.  Anyway, I woke up this morning and I was like, I’ve got to get up and I thought, I’m going to have half an hour more. Then I went “Come on Michael, you’re better than that.”  Oh, and I thought “Your better than that”.  That’s a good title ‘You’re Better Than That’.  So, I came up with this idea about writing a book about being better - you always got that little bit more - you can do it – and having like a hundred ideas.  And I have this letter test group of people who I send stuff to and they’re wonderful because they’re so honest [laughs] which I also slightly hate. 

Paul Limb:   0:00
Brutally honest !

Michael Heppell:   0:00
Brutally honest, yes.  So, I sent out to the test group and they came back and, like, four out of five people said the same thing which is “Sounds like you’re being told off”. “Come on, your better than that”, that type of thing, so I changed it to ‘Why You’re Better Than You Think’ and actually, it’s our thinking that stops us from doing stuff, so it’s a hundred ideas why you’re better than you think and that one, I just write one every so often. That could take me two years to write, it doesn’t matter.  Those ideas pop into my head – why you’re better than you think at that.  Why you’re better than you think at presenting, at broadcasting, at creating content, designing things, building relationships, writing.  You’re better than you think at a lot of things, as long as you know how. So that’s the second idea.

Paul Limb:   12:02
You can’t beat a book that makes you laugh out loud.  There are very few, you know, funny books that make me laugh out loud.  I think the one that I always remember, and I was almost crying, I was on a train, I was almost crying with laughter was Terry Pratchett’s book – one of the ‘Discworld’ novels – and it was when he was talking about the dog that talks and the dog was just going ‘Woof’.

Michael Heppell:   0:00
[laughs]

Paul Limb:   0:00
I just burst out laughing on the train and people were looking and it was just so joyful to read a book like that that makes you laugh out loud.

Michael Heppell:   12:38
I love it. I love it when that happens.  You know, you see these people and they say… I think it might have been a Jim Rowan quote or a Bob Proctor quote, or something like that, and they said, “Which fiction books do you read?” and he goes, “I haven’t read all the fact yet.”  And I was like, oh you bore!  Bore off!  You know what? Read some fiction, chill out, escape, let your brain go somewhere a bit different and then read some fact.

Paul Limb:   13:05
Yeah.  Of course you need to do that.  I often talk to people about learning and, you know, as a business coach we’re talking about people, you’ve got to learn before you can earn.  And then somebody will come up to me and say “I’ve got a pile of ten business books that I’m reading at the moment” and it’s like I can’t read one, let alone ten!

Michael Heppell:   0:00
[laughs]

Paul Limb:   0:00
How you can you read ten?

Michael Heppell:   13:20
You know what, it’s the showing-off thing with books, though isn’t it?  I mean, right now, we can see each other on Zoom.  Obviously on the podcast, people won’t be able to see, but my background, you know, if you could describe what you could see, you’ll say “Michael’s sat there with hundreds of books around him.”  I’m in my library at my office, which is a library and I’ve got over a thousand books in here.  I’ve been doing probably three or four years now of Zoom calls and it was always lovely to have that in the background. Here we are in lockdown now and, you know what these people are being known as?  Bookshelf wankers!  

Paul Limb:   0:00
[laughs]

Michael Heppell:   0:00
People who come on to a Zoom call with their books behind them on the BBC or Sky or even in a Zoom meeting or whatever, and they’ve got all their books there. And people are like, “Bookshelf wanker!” [laughs].  So I’ve become a bookshelf wanker without even knowing it!

Paul Limb:   14:11
It’s one of the things when we moved into our … I’m in my spare room now, our small box room at home.  I call it my corner office because it’s on the corner of an end terrace, so I’ve got windows looking out in two directions, so I’ve got this sumptuous corner office and I thought, well I need to get a bookshelf in the back for when I’m doing these Zoom calls and like coaching and stuff, but I’m glad I didn’t now. [laughs]

Michael Heppell:   14:34
Smart move. Don’t do a virtual background, though.

Paul Limb:   14:37
I’ve got the important one there, though. 

Michael Heppell:   0:00
I can see you’ve got ‘How To Be Brilliant’ right there 10th anniversary edition.  That’s where I make the confession where I told a lie to get a book deal.

Paul Limb:   0:00
Tell us more about that.

Michael Heppell:   14:38
Well, do you know, I’d set a goal that I was going to get this book deal and I was quite excited about doing it and I met somebody and I gave them a set of audio tapes as a thank you – it’s a guy called David.  David’s surname’s gone! God, it’s terrible!  I’ll remember his name in a second.  I’m thinking David Brown, but it wasn’t David Brown. It was David DooDah, who was Director of People at Pearson and he said “Oh!”  He looks at this audio program and he went, “Is this a book?”  I said, “No”.  “Oh, it should be.  Let me introduce you to a publisher.”  So he introduced me to a lady called Rachel Stock and I met her at the Malmaison Hotel in Leeds and we started talking about this idea for ‘How To Be Brilliant’ and she said, “I love the idea.  I think it’s great.  I’ve had a look at your newsletters.  I’ve had a look at what you can do.  You can write. I’m excited about it.  I think we want to do it.”  I said, “Oh, brilliant, so when can it be published?”  and she went, “Well, I think we’re looking at probably April or May next year.”  And this was just before Easter – it was April.I said, “Over a year?”  And she went, “Yeah, yeah, yeah.  We’re pretty full at the moment.   You know, it takes a long time and we’ve got authors who are waiting to go through the process. We can only launch so many at a time.” and I was like “Ah, that’s a real shame.  I was hoping it could be published this year.”  And she was like, “Well, there’s no way.  Oh, actually unless the manuscript was already written because I’ve had one author who has dropped out as he’s not hit his target so he’s missed his slot so if it was written, then…”  and I went, “Yeah, it is” she went, ‘Oh you’ve not mention that.” I went, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s done it’s written, it’s all finished.”She was like, ”Why didn’t you say”  I was like, “Ah, I just didn’t think it would be of interest.”  She went, “Have you honestly got this written?” I was like, “Yeah.”“So could you get me the manuscript by Tuesday next week?”  I was like, “Yeah, no problem.” This was Thursday, Easter weekend coming up.  “Yeah, no problem at all.”  Anyway, I got in the car and I rang Christine and I was an hour and a half away to drive home and I said “Christine, cancel everything this weekend, we’re writing a book!”  And we wrote ‘How To Be Brilliant’ in four days.

Paul Limb:   0:00
Wow

Michael Heppell:   0:00
And hand delivered the manuscript and then years later I confessed.  It was when I was actually doing the 10th anniversary edition, I got in touch with Rachel, I said “Look, I’m going to put bit in about how I told a little lie. Hope you don’t mind.”

Paul Limb:   17:23
How long’s your average book? Your last book was ‘The Edge’?

Michael Heppell:   17:27
‘The Edge’, yeah, that was the four-year one and the reason why it took four years is because I interviewed 200 people about what makes them an Edger.  What gives them that edge.  The sub-title is ‘How The Best Get Better’, so it was always talking to people who were already really good at what they do and what do they do to get the edge and the interesting thing, Paul, is that I could probably could have talked to ten people because out of the 200, 195 of them were all doing the same things, which was good for me because it meant that I could say “Alright, here’s what Edgers do”, not “Here’s what this one person does, or this other person does” and kind of the craziest example is where one day I interviewed a guy called Danny Meyer who was the world’s greatest restauranteur.  He’s incredible and then the next day I interviewed a guy called General Sir Mike Jackson and General Sir Mike Jackson was head of the British Army.  And I looked at their answers – we’d have these sheets where we’d have a set of questions that we would ask - and they could almost swap jobs and still have given the same answers.  General Sir Mike Jackson could be a restauranteur. Danny Meyer could run an army because it’s their thinking.  That’s the thing - it’s their thinking.  That’s what I want to tap into.

Paul Limb:   18:41
Yeah.  I was listening to your webinar that you did for a group of ActionCOACH-es last Friday and you talking about having spoken to some of the Edgers about what they are doing right now in the current situation and what we’ve got and there were three or four really good points that came out of that.

Michael Heppell:   18:56
Do you know, I really enjoyed doing that ActionCOACH webinar.  It was brilliant.  So yeah, so I contacted a bunch of Edgers – about fifteen recently.  I just sent them an email and said, “Look, you’re an Edger and you’re in my book.  I’m thinking of doing another version of ‘The Edge’ later on and what are you focusing on right now?“ And there were sort of four themes that came out and the first one was that they were making decisions.  They weren’t hanging about, they were deciding.  And being prepared to change their minds if they needed to, but actually saying you know what we’re going to decide to do this - this is our new way of working or this is how we’re going to reintroduce things, this is what we’re going to invest in.  These are the people we’re going to recruit.  These are the people we’re going to lose.  They were making decisionsThe next thing was communication and for most of the ones who are leading businesses, it was daily communication.  Every. Single. Day.  Talking to everybody – suppliers, stakeholders, staff, customers, everybody.  Just talking all the time.The next thing was getting ready, so that when things do start to come back, they would be ready for whatever that looked like, and one of the best examples is we work with an amazing organisation called Vanarama and Vanarama do van and car leasing and they are so ready for whatever ‘ready’ looks like.  Whatever the new thing looks like.  I’ve never known anything like it - it’s incredible.And the other thing is investing.  So, investing money and investing time in new thinking and new ways of working and’ you know’ we’re very fortunate because every single one of my coaching clients during this whole process has said ”Yeah’ we want to keep going.” which is great. Also, everybody who had a book to do, a keynote or in-house training, we offered them refunds - not one of them asked for their money back.  They all said “No, we’ll just hold onto it - let’s just change the date and we’ll maybe do something in September or we’ll do something later on in the year.”  Not one of them asked for their money back.  I was like “That is just brilliant.”These are the organisations you want to work with because they understand how important it’s going to be to keep investing.  So, there was a bunch of things, but they were the four that jumped out that I shared with the people from ActionCOACH the other day.

Paul Limb:   21:06
Yeah, you know I’ve had similar things with our clients.  I’ve got a fantastic group of clients that we work with here at ActionCOACH Bolton and the one thing is they’re all forward facing, they’re all looking forwards, they’re all planning, they’re all… not just investing for those who have got cash reserves, they’re investing in themselves and the future and the team, but even if they don’t have the money, they’re investing in learning, you know, they’re doing what they can to get themselves ready for, as you say, what ‘ever’ is going to be.   I hate to use those words ‘the new normal’, because it seems to be, you know, everybody’s, using those.

Michael Heppell:   0:00
Cliché of the year isn’t it?

Paul Limb:   0:00
Yeah. That and ‘pivoting’

Michael Heppell:   21:40
Yeah, but you know the other thing, Paul, do you find that even if you learn the wrong thing by learning you have become a better person anyway?  There’s a guy called Jeffrey Gitomer and he talks about ‘Whiners, Winners and Watchers’.  And Whiners will always be Whiners.  You know, they’re just those people, they’ve got to complain about everything.  Right now, oh it’s kind of… they could say, “Welcome back to work, here’s a golden pig.” and they kind of go, “I’d rather have silver.”  They’re those type of people.

Paul Limb:   0:00
Yeah   

Michael Heppell:   0:00
And then you’ve got the Winners which is kind of the people we want to appeal to and they’re going to find a way they’re going to do stuff.  They’ll make things happen.

Paul Limb:   22:58
Yeah, definitely.  It’s really interesting.  Some of the stuff in ‘The Edge’ is brilliant.  I’d encourage everybody to get hold of a copy of ‘The Edge’ and read it. There’s some really good content in there. Some really good insights in there for everybody.  I know on the webinar as well, you talked about broadcasting and getting yourself out there.  Obviously, we’re doing this podcast now, we’re out on Facebook live.  I know you’ve just been accepted on LinkedIn - you’ve started doing LinkedIn Live as well.  Do you have some tips for people who are maybe looking at getting into the video and broadcasting area?

Michael Heppell:   23:33
Start.  Just do it.  I mean, seriously.  Think about this.  Can you imagine anybody ever doing a conference call again that isn’t done via Zoom or something like that?  The old days of where everybody dialled in?  You know, the only people who’ll be dialling in will be on the M6 - stuck.  And even then they’ll probably be going on their phones.  So, web stuff and video on web – if you think it’s big now, that is cliché of the year – The New Normal.Some people come across brilliantly, other people look terrible!  The old ‘up the nose’ shot.  People with the light behind them - no.  The unmade bed, dressing gown hanging on the corner of the door.  Think about it. My first bit of advice is:  imagine you are there live in the office with the client.  Or with your colleagues or wherever:  • How would you dress?  • How would you look? • What would you do? Second thing is - get a bit of kit.  Get a reasonable bit of kit.  It doesn’t have to be the most amazing stuff ever, but just, you know, some decent lights, a good camera.  If you can buy a good camera these days, by the way, it’s a miracle! [laughs].  There’s been a bit of a surge with people buying good cameras, but put your name down for one, even if it’s a four-week delivery.  Get a good Logitech one or something like that.And then I did a webinar called ‘How To Be Brilliant At Broadcasting’ and it’s there for people to watch as a watch again.  It’s on my YouTube channel.  So, there’s another thing.  I hardly ever use YouTube.  I did this one webinar, broadcast it and then did it live into YouTube.  I think at the moment maybe 700 people have watched it in the last three or four days.  It’s staggering!  I’ve got no clue about the marketing element of it.  There are people who are much, much better than me: much, much brighter than me who will tell you about marketing and using video, but as a medium to get your message across, as a medium to learn to be comfortable - great. And the big thing is, if you can, go live.  So if you’re on Facebook and you’ve got a Facebook group or a Facebook community, go live in there and Facebook will whack you right up to the top of the views. They’re going to show you to more people because you went live. Even if they weren’t watching you live, they’re going to get a chance to watch the repeats. Instagram - go live.  I was invited by LinkedIn – I kind of knew this was the thing, I’d seen other people do them, but I wasn’t sure how you quite did it and I got an email from LinkedIn on Saturday morning: “Dear Michael Heppell, I would like to invite you to be part of our LinkedIn Live community.”I was like, “Oh alright, OK, thank you. I’ll do that”.  Then I had a little look and somebody went, “You know there’s only about one in a thousand users can do Live.”  So I was like, “OK I’d better do some.”  So I’m going to do one every other day on LinkedIn and just talk about stuff and when you do a Live, you don’t have to be super tight.  It’s not like a training course, so you kind of go, “One second, I’m just going to look that up… I’ll just get that book from behind me…  What was the name of the person..?”  You know, you can kind of do all that type of stuff on a Live.  Nobody cares!

Paul Limb:   26:47
Yeah, Yeah.  One of the biggest pieces of advice from me is just be yourself.  You know, I’ve seen a lot of different people doing Facebook Lives.  I started probably about three weeks’ ago doing Facebook Lives and the worst thing you can do is try to be somebody else.  We’ve got another coach who’s a great friend of mine and he won’t mind me saying, he’s really up for it, he’s upbeat, he’s motivational and he talks about mastering the morning, every morning and he’s up there and ready for it and the first time I did a Facebook Live, I was trying to do the same thing – it’s just not me [laughs], you know.  So be yourself.

Michael Heppell:   27:23
Yeah.  Be yourself and because the thing is, when you’re yourself, you don’t have to remember to be anybody else. And just do stuff like say, “I don’t know” and don’t make up stuff.  Here’s a classic thing: “A lot of people have been asking me recently…”, you know, no they haven’t!  Nobody’s asked you recently about it.  That’s you making up some shit, so you can talk about something that’s of interest to you.  I think it’s like an Instagram meme isn’t it - “A lot of people have been asking me about my skincare regime.”  You know, I saw someone do a Live the other day and there went “A lot of people have been asking me how I started my business.”  No, they haven’t!  Nobody gives a chuff about how you started your business.  You did the same thing as everybody else when they started their business: you had an idea, you thought you’d go for it, you thought you were going to go bust six times and then a miracle happened and you’re still here.  That’s the story.  So What?  Unless you’re Shoe Dog, unless it’s the story of Nike, then nobody cares about your business.  So I do things now, I’ll just kind of go “So I’ve got nothing to talk about today, so I’ve had to make something up and what I thought I would do is just kind of think about, you know, what’s really entertained me in the last couple of days.”  And then suddenly something pops into your head and then you start talking about it and the next thing you know, your fifteen minutes in – great!  That’s all people care about, they just want a human – kind of watching.

Paul Limb:   28:47
Yeah.  I think the biggest concern, the biggest challenge for most people is coming up with content and I think it was you on the broadcasting webinar who said, “Just pick up your phone.  Have a look at your photographs”.

Michael Heppell:   28:58
All your photographs in your phone - you will find content immediately there.  There’s so much content in those photographs.  That’s how I write my newsletters.  People kind of go, “So how many newsletters do you send out a week?”  Well, I send one out to the main list and I have two other sub lists that I send stuff out to.  Then they go, “How do you think of the content?”  It’s easy.  Look at my phone.  Also, I have a thing, I go – I’ll not say the words because it will start to record, but I can either do it with [whispers] Alexa or I can also do with [whispers] Siri and just say it then, take a note, take a message and then suddenly up it pops and it’s there and I kind of go, “Oh, I need an idea for a newsletter.”  I go to my notes and there it is!  You know, oh, that was a good idea. Sometimes, though, I’ll say “Idea for Newsletter” it’s a bit like, you know, Alan Partridge - “Idea for news show.”

Paul Limb:   0:00
  Ah-Ha !

Michael Heppell:   0:00
[laughs] Ideas for newsletter.  And then I’ll say something and two weeks later I’ll look at it and “Idea for newsletter - pigeon round creased back.”

Paul Limb:   0:00
[laughs]

Michael Heppell:   0:00
“Pigeon round creased back, pigeon round creased back!” [laughs]  I haven’t got a chuffing clue what pigeon round creased back!  At the time it was brilliant.  Two weeks’ later, it’s gone.

Paul Limb:   30:09
I write random notes for myself and go back through my notes afterwards and I haven’t got the foggiest idea what they were about! [laughs]  I watch your webinar, write a load of notes down and then go back through them the day after.  I end up having to watch the webinar over again just to remind myself what the notes were.

Michael Heppell:   30:26
Yeah.  I have to mind map. If I was taking notes, all I’m doing is writing down quotes.  If I do a mind map, I write down learning.

Paul Limb:   30:33
What a brilliant idea.  What a great idea.  I used to do mind maps.  I don’t do them now. That’s my hint of the day now.  Excellent.

Michael Heppell:   30:40
Absolutely.  Get back into mind maps.

Paul Limb:   30:41
Yeah, definitely.

Michael Heppell:   0:00
Tony Buzan

Paul Limb:   30:42
Michael, we’re coming up towards the end of our time now.  It’s been absolutely brilliant talking to you.  I’ve really enjoyed it.If there’s one tip you can leave for our business owner community right now, what do you think one tip would be to help them move forwards with their business right now?

Michael Heppell:   30:59
I would say make decisions.  Don’t hang about.  You can’t wait for all the data, you can’t wait for the tech. Make some decisions even if you have to change your mind later.  Because people looking for certainty and anybody who is a leader, who is leading, who is making decisions, who is saying this is how it needs to be, are getting followers.  So, your customers want to be led.  Your staff want to be led.  And to do that, we have to create certainty and one of the best ways to create certainty is to make some decisions.

Paul Limb:   31:29
Brilliant. That takes us right back to ‘Flip It’ because there was a little story that you told in ‘Flip It’ when you were on the Chris Evans Show about the coin.  Let’s finish with that story.

Michael Heppell:   31:39
So basically, this is when you are in two minds about something and the classic thing is to toss a coin and what we suggest people do in ‘Flip It’ is that you decide, OK ‘A’ we’re going to do this ‘B’ were going to do that. ‘A’ will be heads, ‘B’ will be tails.You flick the coin and then you catch the coin and you don’t look at it or get somebody else to flick the coin and don’t look at it because when the coin is in the air you’ve already made your mind up.  You want it to land on heads or you want it to land on tails and that’s your intuition and your intuition is always right.

Paul Limb:   32:13
Amazing.  Michael, it’s been absolutely brilliant talking to you for the last half hour.  I would encourage everybody to visit Michael’s website: michaelheppell.com 

Michael Heppell:   32:21
michaelheppell.com or join the Facebook …  If you’re on the Facebook group, come and have a little look in there.  It’s ‘How To Be Brilliant’ is our main one - 2000 people in there.  It is the beacon of positivity. We’re recording this on a Tuesday.  We do a thing called Trade on Tuesday where people pitch their business. We’ve had people selling stuff, we have had people getting new customers.  It’s great.• On a Monday, we do Magic Monday.• Wellness Wednesday.• Thoughtful Thursday• Fix It FridayAnd every day we have something happening on there and if you want to write a book, then writethatbook group.  Join there and that is going to be absolutely awesome.  I’m so excited about that, I can’t tell you.

Paul Limb:   32:59
I’m really looking forward to that.Michael, it’s been an absolute pleasure.  Thank you for your time today, I really appreciate it.

Michael Heppell:   33:05
Thank you very much, Paul.