Show Notes

• A stint in academia
• Meeting John Maxwell
• “I’m John’s writer”
• The challenging world of ghostwriting
• The book writing process
• Embrace the grind
• Creating smaller, derivative books
• Lessons on leadership

Connect With Charlie Wetzel

✩ Website – https://www.charliewetzel.com/
✩ Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/wetzelcharlie
✩ X – https://x.com/charliewetzel
✩ Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/charliewetzel
✩ LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/charliewetzel

Summary

Charlie Wetzel is the long-time writing partner of leadership expert John C. Maxwell. Charlie has been John’s writing partner for more than 30 years, and they have worked together on 120 books. He describes the process he follows for writing books, and what he’s learned about leadership from working with John Maxwell.

Full Transcript

Brian  

Welcome to another episode of LifeExcellence with Brian Bartes. Join me as I talk with amazing athletes, entrepreneurs, authors, entertainers and others who have achieved excellence in their chosen field, so you can learn their tools, techniques and strategies for improving performance and achieving greater success. Charlie Wetzel is the longtime writing partner of the world’s most influential leadership expert, Dr. John C. Maxwell. Charlie has been John’s writing partner for more than 30 years, and they’ve worked together on 120 books. Their incredibly successful collaboration has reached 36 million people and produced six New York Times best sellers. In addition to his work with John Maxwell, Charlie’s other writing endeavors include the screenplay for the Crystal Heart award winning short film “The Candy Shop,” “The Marvel Studios Story” and a novella entitled “A Christmas Wish.” Charlie also enjoys teaching and coaching writers. He offers the online course “Answer the Call:  Developing the Writer Within You” to teach emerging authors how to write a book. Charlie and I met and have gotten to know each other through our mutual friend John Maxwell, and it’s an honor to have him on the show today. Welcome Charlie, and thanks for joining us on LifeExcellence.

Charlie  

Hey, thank you, Brian, thank you for having me.

Brian  

Charlie, I’m super excited, obviously, to learn about your writing career and your longtime partnership with John Maxwell but interestingly, your career actually started out not as a writer, but as a restaurant chef. I just wanted to ask you about that real quick before we get into the writing stuff. You grew up in New Orleans, which, of course, is one of the culinary meccas of the world. How did your passion for cooking develop, and how does it continue to influence your life today? Because I know it’s a big hobby for you, even though it’s no longer your profession.

Charlie  

Well, it’s funny, I didn’t really understand the importance of food and cooking in my life until my oldest sister – who’s 15 years older than me – told me when I was 18, hey, you’re really good with food and flavors, and you could probably go to culinary school to become a chef, and if you do, you can come back and teach us stuff. It never occurred to me that cooking could be a pathway for me, but it really shifted me into gear, and cooking became my obsession for about the next five years. I started collecting cookbooks, I read the food section in The Times-Picayune, the local paper in New Orleans. I read Bon Appetit, I read Food and Wine and I experimented in the kitchen every single day, and it just became more and more of a thing for me. When I was in college as an undergrad, I was torn between, okay, do I want to study English and maybe become an English teacher, or do I want to work as a restaurant chef? I bounced back and forth between those things, got my bachelor’s degree in English, went into the restaurants, bumped back to graduate school, got my Master’s in English, and then I just dove into the whole restaurant thing and worked my way up. My first job in the restaurant business was as a dishwasher when I was 17, and I bused tables, I waited tables, I worked as a prep cook, became a line cook. Then a chef in New Orleans took me under his wing for two years and that was really, I felt like, the finishing of my culinary education. So it still influences the way I think because I’m very pragmatic, there’s a thing in the restaurant business about saving steps. I learned it as a waiter, but you do the same thing as a chef, and I’m constantly thinking in terms of, okay, how can I make this in one trip? How can I be efficient, that sort of thing. I guess my brain is wired that way. The other thing is a good chef doesn’t waste anything in the kitchen. The chef I worked for in New Orleans, the only thing that got thrown away were potato peels and cucumber scraps. Everything else was used, stuff went in the stock pot. We used everything. So I still have the kind of that mindset, and I still play in the kitchen even these days.

Brian  

You have a YouTube channel that’s a cooking channel?

Charlie  

I do. It’s “Becoming a Cook.” So this discovery with food… the restaurant business is really, really hard. It’s really a grind. You work long hours, you work bad hours, you’re away from your family. I ultimately decided I did not want to spend my life in restaurant kitchens. I was single back then, and I thought someday I want to be married and not to a restaurant. So I got out of it, but I still have it in my blood, and I actually have written a culinary memoir, which I have not tried to get published, because after I wrote it, I realized it wasn’t good enough and it’s sitting on a shelf waiting for a third revision. But as I was writing that I really got the bug to try to teach some cooking, some basics. I’ve got three adult children, and a few years ago they were just getting out into the world, and I thought, cooking is kind of a lost art to their generation so I started this YouTube channel, Stephanie, and I did. She shoots it and edits it, I’m the talent – I love to say that – and I do the cooking. It’s just been a lark. It’s been fun. I haven’t shot a video in a little while. I’m itching to do it, but Stephanie has gotten tired of editing those videos, so I’m going to need to hire an editor to put those together for me.

Brian  

Well, that’s terrific. Obviously cooking is important, eating is important. My wife is a very good cook and chef and I enjoy eating what she makes. I’ve gotten away from cooking because of how good she is. But I definitely wanted to touch on that with you. You mentioned your formal education, your undergraduate and graduate degrees in English, and I know you taught English. I believe you were actually even a college dean at one point in your career. At that stage was academia the path that you thought you were on professionally? What did you envision that looking like for you after you left the restaurant business and went into higher education?

Charlie  

It was when I was working on my bachelor’s degree. I thought I wanted to go all the way to a PhD in English and teach at the college level. I got my master’s, and I realized that most of the universities – even though mine was considered a terminal master’s degree, which means I wrote a thesis, and it was supposed to be a finished degree – most programs wanted you to start over again in graduate school, which wasn’t very appealing to me. But with my English degree, I was able to teach at these small business colleges, and the first one I taught at was in New Orleans. The college isn’t there anymore, but I was still working in the restaurant business, and I was really getting a little burned out and I saw an ad for an English teacher. Those college English teaching jobs are hard to find, especially in New Orleans. There are two really big universities, plus a bunch of other smaller universities, a couple of HBCUs (Historically Black College/University), but it’s hard to break in. When I saw this ad, I went in and interviewed, they saw my background, they said, you worked as a chef? And I said, yeah. And they said, we’re opening a new hotel/restaurant curriculum, how’d you like to teach in that? And I said, sure,  I’ll do that and English, because they were starting the program. They said, well, we’ll make you the department chair. Now that sounds way more impressive than it really is. It really means that you are helping them hire other faculty members if they need it, and you are tracking the students and making sure that they are following the curriculum and helping them schedule their classes and that sort of thing. This college only had 800 students. There were 400 daytime students, 400 nighttime students. But I got to know all the students because I was their advisor. I was working on the courses, I was teaching the courses in their subject. And one of the things with these colleges, each quarter they had to develop the class schedule, and it was a diverse group of students. There were accounting students and computer science students, hotel, restaurant, tourism, paralegal studies, and they had to build this class schedule from scratch. We went through a round of this with the dean who was there. That dean got fired, and the new dean came in and she brought all the department heads together to do this process. It was really clear to me very quickly she didn’t know how to do it. After two meetings where nothing happened, I said, would you like me to facilitate this? She said, yeah, that’d be good. So I did that for both the day and the evening schedules. And after doing that a few times and being a department chair, when she got fired, they looked for me to become one of the deans. I was the dean of the night division, but I still facilitated that schedule creation process.

Brian  

Oh, that’s cool. And so you were in academia; at what point did you meet John Maxwell? I’ve known John for a long time. I’ve known you for a while, and have certainly been aware of your writing partnership, but I haven’t heard the story of how you two met and started working together.

Charlie  

I lived in San Diego, I had just moved there, and my sister lives there, and she was going to a church – my sister had not been to a church in 2025, years – and I thought, well, I’ll go attend the church with her as an encouragement to her. I grew up in a church of 35 people in attendance. There were eight people in the choir, and two of those people could sing, it had a pipe organ, just a small, small church. So I walk into this church, and it’s got a thousand seat auditorium, every seat is full the first day I went. It had basically a full orchestra, and out onto the stage walks John Maxwell, whom I had never heard of. So I started attending that church, became a member of the church, got into leadership on a really, really low level, leading small groups and that sort of thing. Met my wife there. She and I got married, and she was the administrative assistant to the executive pastor. When John Maxwell mentioned in a staff meeting that he was looking for a researcher, she told me, hey, John Maxwell is looking for a researcher, and I was a dean of a college in San Diego at this time. I thought, well, I don’t know if I’d like to sit in a library every day, but I love this church. It’s the first time my faith made sense to me. Being engaged in this process I thought I could probably work for John Maxwell. That could be interesting. So I applied for the job and Steph and I weren’t even married yet when I applied for the job. Months and months and months went by, and then time went by. John saw me at a reception and said, what are you doing these days? I said, well, I’m at the college, but I’ve given notice. He said, well, make an appointment just to come see me. And a few days later, he hired me.

Brian  

That’s a great story. That was Skyline Church. (Charlie: That was Skyline in 1994.) So what took you to San Diego was the dean position? Did you move for a new position in academia?

Charlie  

No, sadly, I actually followed a woman to California, and by the time I got there, she had changed her mind. But I felt like that was God’s way of getting me where I needed to go, even though [cross-talk, inaudible] were not good, God turned that into something.

Brian  

That worked out well for you meeting Stephanie, and it’s great to hear the story, by the way, because it really connects some of the dots with Stephanie. I didn’t realize that she had worked for John and that that was the connection for you. So how did you go from researcher to writing?

Charlie  

Well, it’s funny, John called it researcher, but when I started – it’s so funny – he said, okay, go talk to the president of the company. He’ll tell you where your office is, and tell him to give you the 100 Lessons on Leadership. And I’m like, okay, so I get assigned to my office and I get a tape kit – cassette tapes, 100 cassette tapes – and it was the first 100 Enjoy Life Club lessons. So from day one, I was popping those into the tape player in my car, because we had tape players then, as you remember, I’m sure, and I’m listening to all this stuff. But the next thing that happened – I mean, probably within days – was John came to me and he said, okay, I’ve got this manuscript, the person who worked before as researcher said she submitted it to the publisher. The publisher wasn’t happy with it. They sent it back. See what you can do with it. I’ll see you in six weeks, because I’m going on the road speaking. I’ll see you when I get back. So he handed me this manuscript, and that was my first big assignment that summer. That manuscript was “Developing the Leaders Around You,” John’s second big leadership book. So I became a writer right out of the gate. I worked on that manuscript, and it was funny, as I went through it the first chapter was pretty good. I didn’t really need to do much with that, but the second chapter was pretty rocky, so I started working on rewriting that. I can’t remember if it was when I was in the second chapter or the third chapter, I was looking through this office that I had, and there were file drawers. I started looking in these file drawers. And in a file drawer were outlines to every one of the chapters of this book, of this manuscript I was working on. John is a meticulous outliner. He’s very, very disciplined. He meticulously outlines his speaking, and he had done the same kind of outline for each chapter of this book. So I thought, well, the heck with this manuscript. From then on, I kept what I had already worked on, but for the rest of the book, I worked from the outlines, and worked on that book and flushed it out. The last chapter we had to rethink, but the rest of it, I mean, was really, really well thought out. When I got that finished I gave it to John, I said, what do you think? He said, well, let’s see what the editor thinks. So we sent it off to the publisher and back then, first publisher we worked with was this guy named Bruce Nygren, a veteran, and he said, I think it’s good. John said, well, then I think it’s good. I think if Bruce had said, this is really bad, John, it doesn’t work, I would have worked for John for those two months, and then I’d have been on the road. But he was happy with that. The editor was happy with it. I actually worked on two additional books that first year.

Brian  

Wow. Well, it’s interesting the process that you described, how you – after the first couple chapters – just went from the outline, rather than trying to rewrite. And do you… I find that easier, a lot of the time, to start from scratch, especially if you’re looking at something that somebody else has written and trying to rework that. Sometimes it’s easier just to start fresh with the thought and use your own words in your own writing. Do you find that as well? 

Charlie  

Yeah, I do. I find that writing and editing are two really different skills. I’m actually not a very good editor, simply because if the writer didn’t take the approach that I would have taken, then I want to rewrite the dog gone thing. A good editor works with what the author had written, and keeps the voice and does really minimal changes. The great thing with John is that he’s handing me, generally, the raw material of his thinking, and his thinking is great, and I’m worried about the wordsmithing. Because John thinks of everything the way a communicator, a verbal communicator, stage communicator would and contextually, that comes from a framework of reading the audience or reading the room. John’s a master of that. You’ve seen him in action, he has a feel for the room and knows essentially what people are thinking and feeling. John told me one time, we were talking about some venue where something happened. He said, oh yeah, I saw that. He said, it’s very strange, when I’m speaking I’m aware of everything that’s happening in the room. It’s really quite a remarkable gift, but when you’re sitting at a desk and writing, you have to imagine the audience that is going to be reading this in a year, five years, ten years from now, and try to develop that connection and rapport in anticipation of the future, rather than doing it with a live audience. The really great communicators like John, they spend the beginning of their time connecting with the audience, and they don’t really get into their content until the connection has been made. I’ve watched this with really good people. If they’re not making the connection, they just don’t go to the material. They work the room until they get the rapport that they need. And with writing you don’t have any feedback in the moment.

Brian  

Sure, that’s a really interesting observation. Obviously both of those are very different skills, but you’ve partnered to take advantage of both your skill sets. Charlie, I think most people are familiar with the term ghost writer, and I hope it’s okay to use that term, at least for the start of our conversation. I don’t know if you use that term to describe what you do, but I personally don’t think it begins to capture the essence of your partnership with John. How do you describe it? And what’s the distinction between ghost writing and the collaborative relationship you have with John?

Charlie  

I’ve always called myself John’s writer. Oh, I’m John’s writer. This is funny, I’ve never had a title really with John in the 30 years I worked with him. But when the John Maxwell team, his certification process, was promoting an event called “A Day About Books” John was going to speak at it, Mike Hyatt was going to speak at it and they asked me to do a small session too. Well, they had to come up with, what am I? John called me his book writing partner. So it’s like, okay, after 25 years, or whatever it was, I now have a title. [Inaudible.]

Brian  

[Laughter] A really fancy one too. 

Charlie  

Yeah, well, John teaches, you don’t need a position to leave, right? [Laughter.]

Brian  

That’s right. Amen.

Charlie  

Ghost writer has so many different connotations, and it’s a really broad range of of relationships. There are ghost writing agencies. A person can call an agency in New York, and if they’ve got a couple hundred thousand dollars they can say, I want a book written on this. That’s pretty much the line and that amount of money is pretty much their level of participation. I don’t think that happens very often, but it’s possible for a lot of people. A ghost writer is someone who has to extract the information from the author or from the celebrity. A lot of ghost written books are basically extensive interviews that the writer does with the celebrity or the author, and then they spend a lot of time editing and rearranging those interviews or writing something from those interviews. That’s why sometimes you see “as told to.” In the nomenclature of the industry, it’s “as told to” or “with” or “and” typically are the things. Early on, when I started working for John, the publisher made it pretty clear they did not want another person’s name on his books. Stephanie and I had a lot of discussions about this early on and she was bothered by that. What it came down to to me… and part of this came from the context. I came from the context of a person who was in John’s church, who had volunteered, who had led small groups and that sort of thing. And I thought I don’t really expect my name to be on the bulletin. I don’t expect it my name to be in a list of people behind the scenes working, it’s just, we’re all in this together. I have a similar sense of calling to John in our relationship and writing. But I thought there are people who feel like it’s dishonest to not disclose that somebody works with them. So I had a conversation, it was probably in the first year or two, where I said, hey, John, how would you feel about putting my name in the acknowledgments? And he said, well, yeah, of course, I’d do that. If you backtrack; I don’t remember which book that first would have happened in, I’d have to go back and look through. It’s possible it could have even been in the first one, but I don’t think so. But somewhere early in the process, if you go to the acknowledgments page you’ll see that I’m listed in there, and that’s been our deal since then so that anybody who’s interested can find me. But the publisher is happy, because there’s not an “and” or a “with” next to John’s name. Now I will say this, I’ve done a couple of other books with Kevin Myers. Those have my name on them. John’s the only person for whom I’ll do a book that way. I don’t really have an interest in doing a lot of other collaborative writing with anybody else. I feel like John’s the person I sense a calling to for that, and for the most part, for the rest of the stuff, I’d rather work on projects on my own.

Brian  

Obviously we’re having this conversation, and John has been very open about his relationship with you. For certainly as long as I’ve known you, and I think even before we met, he’s gone out of his way to acknowledge you for the work that you do, for the role that you bring to the partnership, and also praised you for that. As I said earlier, those the skill sets that you bring to the partnership are different skill sets. Both are super important, obviously, and I think probably some people in your role would maybe early on, have a reaction to not being on the cover, especially since you’ve sold millions of books together and multiple New York Times best sellers. I think a writer who allows ego to play into it more than you do – I mean, I don’t see that at all with you – I could see where somebody would maybe want to get a little more recognition.

Charlie  

To defend the people in the industry who do something similar to what I do, I’m fortunate. It’s a blessing of God, but it’s also a choice. I’ve worked with John for 30 years. There was a season… when I finished working on “The 21 Laws of Leadership” I felt like God whispered in my ear that I was done with my apprenticeship. I didn’t know what that meant, but to some it could have meant, okay, I’m going to go strike off on my own. I didn’t feel like that was right for me. But in fairness, for the people who ghost write and collaboratively write with people most the time, their client is a one book author, so they are always looking for their next client, and they really need the recognition publicly in order to get their next paycheck. That can be a very challenging world, to constantly be working on a book and looking for your next client. When I was trying to decide, many, many years ago, okay, do I stay the course, or do I try to go off on my own? It’s like, well, there’s pressure of being in the relationship I’m in with John because we average four books a year with the small derivative books and the gift books and workbooks, all different things I’ve done over a year. That’s a lot of books. So you can have the pressure of that, or you can have the pressure of, okay, I’m looking for my next gig constantly. There are people for whom it is an ego thing but I think there are a lot of writers for whom it’s a practical thing; I need people to know I’m out here because this is how I make my living, and I’m always looking for my next client.

Brian  

That’s a good point. Charlie, after writing so many books and doing it for so long, I’m guessing you have a cookie cutter process, so to speak, for your book projects. Can you share with us a little bit about what that looks like, from, say, the original idea for a new book, to research and content development and then through the actual writing of the book that you do?

Charlie  

Sure. With John, it’s interesting. Sometimes he comes with just a concept, sometimes he comes with a complete table of contents, it really depends. With “The 21 Laws,” which I refer back to that because that’s the book that really I feel like we made our mark. It was John’s first New York Times bestseller. I felt like it was the book where we kind of figured out our style for the long haul. It’s John’s most popular book. It’s sold the most of any of his other books. The concept for that book actually came from his editor at the time, Victor Oliver. There was a little book called “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing,” little short paperback. And he said, I think you should do something like this on leadership. John was intrigued by the idea. He pulled together a group of us – me and two other gentlemen who had worked on his staff at Skyline, good thinkers, good teachers – and we batted around what a law of leadership is. Everybody came up with a list, and we worked on those, and we spent six months just deciding what the laws were, how many there were, and on the wording of the laws. We spend as much time on that part of it as we typically do on writing a whole book. But if you look at “The 50 Laws of Growth,” I think John woke up with that outline, got up one morning and wrote that outline, the chapter titles. Typically, John has some kind of an idea… started with some kind of a list of ideas or concepts or chapter titles and we worked that for a long time. This is something that I found in the stuff that I’ve done with clients. I mean, a lot of people talk to me about their books even before I was doing any kind of coaching. Stephanie used to do editing and book doctoring, and we found that most of the time, people wanted their book edited, but the problems were at the concept level, they were at the early construction and thinking level. One of the things I’ve learned with John is you’ve got to get that ironed down in the beginning, otherwise you’re always trying to fix something that’s broken. You really need to think through the concept at the 30,000 foot level, really work it out, make sure it’s solid. Make sure you’ve got a good concept, title, thesis. In my course, “Answer the Call” I teach these things. I break it down, the process that I follow with John… the process that I break down and teach are a little bit different. John’s very intuitive, and he had already written, I think, six books by the time he and I got together, including “The Developing Leader Within You,” that was out there, which is a solid book. The other books, John jokes about his first book “Think on These Things,” how terrible it was and how they’re three page chapters; it’s 128 pages. I think it’s 33 chapters and it’s really… they’re like many sermon outlines in a lot of ways. But John’s very intuitive, and he is great with an outline, whether it is the contents page of a book or the outline of a chapter. I get from him things that are really polished, well thought, and if John is working like seven points in a chapter, when he really works them, they shine because he does a lot of word play, or he does a hook, or he has some kind of an entry point that really grabs people. When I’m working with clients who are not John’s skill level, they need more of a road map. But it starts with a concept, really working that concept, you’ve really got to, I mean, it even backs up to that. I challenge people to figure out what else is out in the marketplace. Because if they want to publish something with a publisher, they’re going to have to write a book proposal, and one of the things they’re going to ask is, okay, what else is out there, and why is your book better or different? Because for them, it’s a business proposition. I’m trying to get people to do that. I’m trying to get people to work on a really good title. People get fixated on a title that’s not that good, and your title is your number one marketing piece. So you need to really work that. You need to figure out what your thesis is. You got to figure out what is the premise of your book. All these different pieces, you figure these things out, and then you start working on your chapter outline. I tell people to stay with that contents page outlined for as long as they need to, until it’s really solid. Because I’ve also – you’ve probably done this too – you’ve read a book. You buy a book. It’s a great concept. You read the first two chapters, and you realize they don’t have anything else. Everything else is filler. That maybe shouldn’t have been a book, maybe it should have been a podcast, maybe it should have been a keynote or…

Brian  

Or an article.

Charlie  

Yeah, they either need to go, okay, it’s not a big enough idea or okay, let me really drill down and develop this idea so much that you want all ten chapters, really a lot of the pre-work. On the research side, since you mentioned that, John has a young woman who does research for him, I do a lot of research. Stephanie, in the past, has done research. My book, “The Marvel Studio Story,” was all research. I think I’ve got like 450 citations in the back of that. (Brian:  Wow. ) And with that – because that’s a chronological book, it tells a story – I started out building a timeline from the very first days of before the Marvel Comics existed with the guy who started the company back in the pulp magazine days, all the way through to the movies, and had all my references in that to build that timeline. With most books… that’s a really cumbersome process, by the way, if you’re doing something that’s a big story, that’s covering 90 or 100 years, that was almost.

Brian  

Like history of the world. That would be a voluminous project. [Laughter.] A long timeline.

Charlie  

But if you can build your chapter, ipso, if you’ve got your concept, you know what your thesis is so you know where you’re trying to go. You know what the premise is, so you know what you’re trying to deliver to your readers, you come up with a killer title. If you can build your contents outline, then you’ve got a road map. Then from there, you approach each chapter almost the way you did the contents page. You’re building the chapter as a stand alone entity within the context of that bigger picture. That’s really the methodology. And then you get into the writing process. You’ve got to embrace the grind. Because for me, writing is a grind. I almost didn’t get my master’s degree because I didn’t want to write my thesis. I did my coursework in three semesters; I took five years to finish my thesis because writing was hard for me and I didn’t like it. You really have to go, okay, I’m going to sit in the chair and that’s my superpower, staying in the chair. This is my office that I’m talking from, back at my desk there I stay in the chair and I embrace the grind. I’m there every day, and I’m like, okay, let me get some more words down. For some people, that’s the hardest part, staying with it, because it can be a lonely thing, it can be a tedious thing. And early on for me, it was just a challenging thing.

Brian  

It’s such a basic part of the craft. I know a few very prolific authors, guys like John, and Brian Tracy, people who have written not one book or two books, but lots of books. Stephen King, in his book on writing, writes about this. When, invariably, a prolific writer or author is asked – they have people coming up to them all the time, and they say, I want to write a book, what do I do – the answer is always the same:  you write. It’s not the answer that they want to hear. They want a red pill to take, or blue pill, or something that will expedite the process, or to wave a magic wand, but it really does come down to that. You call it the grind, but really just sitting down and writing. Everything else that you talked about was very helpful, and I appreciate you sharing that. I think, for people listening to this podcast or watching the show on YouTube, especially who are thinking about writing a book, or in the process of writing the book, that that’s a really sound structure for getting from idea to – not all the way through the publishing process – but certainly from idea to a finished manuscript.

Charlie  

You’re right. I mean, if you don’t embrace the grind, you won’t finish the book. But if you don’t do the pre-work and the planning, I really describe it as getting lost in the wilderness. I picture getting the idea for the book as getting a glimpse of the mountain top. You see the mountain in the distance, and you go, oh, that’s it. That’s what I want to do. But you have to travel to get there. Most people have to go through the wilderness to get to the mountain, and that’s where they get lost and that’s in that planning process. We had a client who decided that she… she took a master’s course, discovered she liked writing, decided to write a book, and she spent two years writing her book. Then she asked Stephanie and me to take a look at it, and she was a friend, so I don’t do that. I don’t look at people’s manuscripts anymore. Generally because I find it frustrating. But she presented, gave us a manuscript, and her concept set up different expectations from what her book delivered, her book felt like two different concepts that had been mashed together and didn’t really work. I felt really bad telling her that, but it was the truth. We spent a day with her, helping her re-ideate her book, and she went back and she had to rewrite it. But if she had come to me on the front end, it would have saved her a year, because she just leapt into the writing process. And because she’s highly disciplined -she’s a marathon runner, has run in all the major marathons, highly disciplined – she got it done, but it wasn’t the book she wanted it to be. Now the good news is she’s already rewritten the whole thing, and she’s getting ready to submit it to publishers, because she’s got that discipline. You’ve got to put in the time on the front end. So anybody watching the podcast, if you want to write a book, I say you can do it. Please do, but don’t just sit down and start writing it long hand or writing the text of the thing. Figure it out first. The time you spend on the front end, if it’s weeks or months, it’s worth it on the back end, because it’ll save you months or years. 

Brian  

It’s like sharpening the saw, right? (Charlie:  Yes, for sure.) Trying to go along with your wilderness metaphor.

Charlie  

Yeah, thank you. [Laughter.]

Brian  

It’s the best I can do. Charlie, getting back to the work that you do with John. John often mentions that he has… from the stage he says he has ideas for multiple books at any given time. It seems like the number is always around somewhere between five and ten, and the actual number is probably a lot more than that. Do you keep a list of future projects, and what drives the prioritization of those projects that you work on together?

Charlie  

I used to track his ideas and keep a bit of a list, but what we ended up doing was never anywhere close to my list. I stopped years ago. John used to sign multi-book contracts. That was a pretty common occurrence for him. Before we went to New York – because typically, we’d go to New York to meet with the publisher – John always sat down and brainstormed a half a dozen book ideas, sometimes more. He did that because we always had his next book – the one that we’re getting ready to write – that led the way. But he always wanted the publishers to know that he had more ideas than even for signing a three book deal, or a four book deal, or a five book, or whatever it was; he had more ideas than they had books in the contract. The thing that you probably heard, that I heard last November, was he said he has 13 book ideas. That was his latest number. Now, John is 77. If we write a book a year, that puts him at 90. I don’t know, that seems like a lot. The last that I talked to Mark Cole, he mentioned two book ideas that John is actively working on. There’s a book idea that may be the next book in the pipeline… well, I’m finishing up, I’m doing the finishing touches on ” How to Get a Return on Failure,” which is a book that John started a couple of years ago. He said, stop, we’re going to do “High Road Leadership.” So we did “High Road Leadership.” And then he said, okay, now we’re going to do “Jesus The High Road Leader,” So we did “Jesus The High Road Leader.” Meanwhile, I worked on some smaller books, like the “Charismatic Leader,” which is coming out in March, but I’m doing the finishing touches on “How to Get a Return on Failure” that will probably be published in the summer, late summer, early fall. There’s another book that I I can’t really give you any hints of what [it is], but we had a meeting on that last week talking about it. So we’ve got to get some ducks in a row if that one’s going to be possible, but that would probably be the next big book. Then we’ve got some small books planned, besides “The Charismatic Leader.” In another year, probably in the spring, will be “The Resilient Leader.” So I work on some of these small projects while John’s ideating the big new ones, because these smaller books actually are derived from existing books that I edit and I give a little bit of a different spin on to target it to a felt need, which is a self-aware leader. 

Brian  

Are you doing those? When you’re working on a bigger book, or maybe you have a little bit of time, do you go back and find a concept that really resonated with you?

Charlie  

I do. The traditional publishers, the big publishers, John’s worked with Hachette and and Harper Collins, which are, they’re part of what they call the Big Five – the five biggest publishers in the world. They love derivative books. They love to rethink a book that already exists and and present it to the public. They’re constantly doing that, whether it’s a workbook or a gift book or something like that. One of the early ones that they put out was taken from “Today Matters” called “Make Today Count.” They put that book out; that was Hachette. And the other book, the second book we worked on with Hachette, was called “Thinking for a Change.” I actually talked to John’s agent. I said, look, if they want to do these smaller books, “Thinking for a Change” could be re-titled and edited down to be called, “How Successful People Think.” Well, the publisher loved that idea. I suggested where we make the cuts, and we took a book that was probably 65,000 or 70,000 words, and cut it down to say 50,000 words. It’s a small book. That book has outsold the original that it came from because, I think partly, people like smaller books. So I’m always thinking; they come to us constantly. I know John’s material better than anybody except for John, and I kind of pay attention to what’s going on in the world. A few years back, I was hearing from some of the executive coaches that self-awareness was a really, really big deal and a really big problem, especially at the C-suite. They were working with these people, and they said they are not self-aware; the higher they go, the less self-aware they are, which was a surprise to me. I thought you don’t get really far without being self-aware. And like, no, no, no. So I was churning this, we did a book called “Leadership Gold” and I felt like the public never really got that book. It wasn’t as popular as some of John’s other books. I mean, it still sold, I think it’s probably still sold more than 100,000 copies, which is great in the book world. But I thought, people have missed it. I started thinking about that book, and I thought I could take several of the chapters in this book, and I can give them a little bit of an angle about self-awareness. So I went through the book and I looked at that, the book had 26 chapters, I think. I went through and I’ve pulled 12 of them, and I created this, “The Self-aware Leader.” This book has been really popular because it’s hitting a felt need. I feel the same thing. I’ve thought about a book of John’s called “25 Ways to Win with People,” and for several years I’ve thought that book is really a how-to on how to develop charisma. John’s whole thing with charisma is, charisma is the difference between a charismatic person and somebody who’s not. The uncharismatic person walks into the room and says, here I am. The charismatic person walks in the room and goes, there you are, yes, I’m so glad to see you. The whole thing is how can you emphasize, learn who other people are, connect with them and make it really about them and not about yourself. So I rethought that book, went from 25 down to 21 because there were like, four or five of them that I went, that’s really not about this and then thought, what’s a leadership angle on that subject matter? Really targeted more to a leader than just a person who’s trying to win with people. That’s the book that’s coming out in March, “The Charismatic Leader.”

Brian  

Well, that’s really tremendous value that you’re adding to the process, not only partnering with John on the books that he wants to write, but then coming back around. Really the value proposition isn’t just for John anymore, and it’s not just for the readers of the original book. It’s for maybe a new audience that didn’t get a chance to read “Leadership Gold,” and they see another, a different, related book. What that shows too is how important title is. (Charlie:  Yes.) “Leadership Gold” we know it’s about leadership. Gold is something that’s valuable. So we know there’s some value around leadership. But when you took that and then created another book from that, it was a much more specific niche book that I think really spoke to at least a segment of the target market for the original “Leadership Gold.” 

Charlie  

Yeah, it’s interesting. You know John, when John comes up with an idea for a book, sometimes the idea comes from something that connected with people. When he speaks [about] how to get a return on failure, he used that phrase and the room lit up, and he thought, oh, I need to write that as a book. So that was an impetus for him. But there are a lot of times he has a concept that comes out of his own experience and his heart for change and growth and helping people, but it’s really driven by his vision. These other little books, as you said, they’re really driven more by the felt needs of people out there who are experiencing different things. I try to make these things as accessible as possible. It’s like the “One on One” series:  “Leadership One on One,” “Attitude One on One,” “Personal Growth One on One.” I can’t remember… I think we ended up doing eight of them. I thought, okay, it’s a small book, a quick read. Somebody could pick it up in an airport and read it on a flight, or if they wanted to, they could read a chapter before they go to bed or a chapter in the morning. It’s really a light, easy read, and we’re really distilling it down to the principles to make it highly accessible and highly digestible and pretty fast. Because I think people would rather read short than long these days; we try to stay away from really long. We’ve written a couple of books that are really long, but we try to stay away from that now, because I don’t think people want to spend the time reading a book that’s 400 pages.

Brian  

Well, I think you’re right about that, and if you offer both you can hit both segments because, as you know, there are people who will consume everything they find that John has written or that you’ve written and has John’s name on it, whether those are longer books or shorter books. But you’re right. We’re busy today. We’re absorbed in lots of things, were pulled in many different directions. And so if we can find something that’s easier to digest, maybe on a flight or a weekend away, and we can read a book fairly quickly and benefit from it, then I think there’s certainly a place for that on bookshelves and in bookstores. Charlie, you’ve been fortunate to be in close proximity to someone who has invested most of his adult life studying leadership, John Maxwell. What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned about leadership, or maybe even more general life lessons that you’ve learned in your three decades working with John?

Charlie  

Well, I certainly have learned that anybody can learn to lead better. I do not consider myself to be a natural leader. My early days in the restaurant business when I was a chef and I had to start leading people, I was horrible. I did not like asking other people to do things, so typically, I either did them myself or I barked orders because I was uncomfortable. There are people I worked with in the restaurant business that if I could find them today, I would apologize, because I was really pretty awful. It wasn’t until I was the dean of the college that I really started to learn how to lead people. That’s where I did my my first hiring, understood that really my role was to make their job easier, because I had been a teacher, and I hated – it’s so funny – I hated administrative work as a teacher, despised it, and then I became the dean, and I thought my job is to do administrative work so they don’t have to. I actually embraced it and liked it when it was my job, and not an annoyance to me as it was for a teacher. But when I went to Skyline, I learned to lead in the church, and took that back into the business world and the education world and applied it so I became more aware of the landscape. Leadership became a value. I had no natural interest in learning leadership. I wanted to be more efficient. I wanted to be more professional. I’m really a person who focuses on his craft. That was true when I was a cook, it’s true as a writer; I feel like that’s where I do it. The first time I heard John saying, everything rises and falls on leadership, my initial reaction was, well, not everything, come on. Everything doesn’t rise and fall on leadership. Then it was like, well, why would I even want to lead? Well, I’ve learned to lead. So certainly, that’s a huge thing, and not only have I learned to lead, but I can lead, and in the right situation, I do. I don’t feel the need to. If something is well led, I am happy to follow. If something is poorly led, it drives me absolutely insane and I want to take over. [Chuckles.] It’s one of those things, but I don’t feel…

Brian  

Or someone to take over and you look around and there’s nobody there, and so you step into that, certainly you have the skill set at this point to lead.

Charlie  

I feel like my… I see my best skill set in the leadership lane is strategic thinking. I’m not naturally a people person, and that deficit is why I started off as just a terrible leader. It’s taken me years to develop people skills. I actually sold cars for almost a year. That’s where I learned to relate to people. That’s where I learned to ask questions, and it really changed who I was. It was a job I hated in a difficult time in my life. It was after I moved to California, and my life kind of fell apart. I sold cars for almost a year, but I developed so many skills. It’s maybe the most valuable job I had in my life because of what it taught me. If I had not done that for that year, I never would have worked for John, because I wouldn’t have been competent enough in my people skills for that. And then the dean of the college, of the second college I was at, I was applying all the leadership skills I was learning at church in that job, and became a better leader than the people who were leading me, because I had the skill set being taught – not directly by John most of the time – it was by the people John taught. Tim Elmore was one of those people, I learned a lot from him, whom John mentored. So I learned a lot of that. The other thing is, John really sharpened my thinking skills and my communication skills. I really have an appreciation for a communicators hook and titles and angles and that sort of thing, and communication, whether it’s written or verbal. John’s just such a good thinker. You’ve got to learn to be a good thinker just to hang with him. You got to be able to track with him, otherwise you’re just not going to make it. So that really, really helped me a lot too.

Brian  

That’s all great. I’m just smiling a little bit because I know that if you can’t keep up with John, you’ll get left in the dust. And that’s – and I mean this – a credit to you and the skill set that you bring to the table. And obviously you have a tremendously successful partnership and you’ve more than held your weight and kept up with him. I think you make him better and it sounds like he’s made you a little bit better over time. (Charlie:  Oh, for sure.) What a great partnership. Charlie, as you know, our show is called LifeExcellence, and I’m curious, what does excellence mean to you?

Charlie  

It means doing things to a really high standard. For me, that’s that craftsmanship thing. My mother was an artist, a visual artist, and she kind of looked down on craft; that’s not art, that’s craft. To me, craftsmanship is really the high standard that I try to shoot for. I don’t consider myself an artist. I think there are writers out there who are artists. I think the best that I can do is hone my craft and do it to the absolute highest standard that I’m capable of and following that standard as much as I can in my life. Really, I probably carry it in too many areas of my life. John would say stay in your lane and and try to be excellent in your lane. But I really try to bring that standard into to all the areas of my life if I can, because I feel like that’s just the right way to do things. Recovering perfectionist, I guess.

Brian  

I completely agree with that. Our company, LifeExcellence, means excellence in every area of life, and so I do think it’s important; we only have one life to live, we may as well try to be excellent. In your craft, in your vocation, in your relationships and your health and fitness and faith and financially, and in every every area of life, and that’s certainly what I ascribe to and and I know you do too. Finally, Charlie, where can our listeners and viewers go to learn more about you and more about your “Answer the Call” online writing course?

Charlie  

Go to CharlieWetzel.com, you can find that there, and it gives a good description of what the course is about, and how it’s broken down, and all the different pieces of it. There’s a little bio of me and Stephanie and some testimonials. So that’s the best place. If people want to read “The Marvel Studio Story” that’s out there too. It’s been around for a while. It was a fun thing to write, and I would encourage them also to look for “The Candy Shop,” a little 30 minute short that I wrote the screenplay for, it was done by Whitestone Motion Pictures. It stars Doug Jones, he’s kind of a cult favorite. He’s plays Saru on Star Trek. He was in “Pan’s Labyrinth,” and played Ape Sapien in the “Hell Boy” movie. He’s usually in heavy makeup, but that was a fun project, and I think people can find it for free on Vimeo, and it may be also be on Amazon Prime. So those are things, and I encourage people to check out the course if you’re interested in writing a non-fiction book. It really is a road map. It’s kind of paint-by-numbers in terms of the planning process. Stephanie and I are really excited about that as well.

Brian  

Awesome. Thanks for sharing that information, and we’ll definitely include that in our show notes. By the way, Charlie, thanks so much for being on the show today. It’s one wonderful to see you, as always, and I really am grateful for our conversation today. Thank you.

Charlie  

Thank you for having me. I had a wonderful time.

Brian  

I’m glad me too. Thanks for tuning in to LifeExcellence. Please support the show by subscribing, sharing it with others, posting about today’s show with professional writer Charlie Wetzel on social media and leaving a rating and review. You can also learn more about me at BrianBartes.com. Until next time, dream big dreams and make each day your masterpiece.