Published: I Took the Red Pill
The Story Behind Seeker’s Mindset
"You always say it'll be fun! You never think about how much work something is going to be."
My wife has said this to me more than once. One of the more memorable occasions (that she reminds me about often) was back in 1999, when I wanted to launch an audiovisual company. Fast forward 25 years, and I've heard that refrain many times. Most recently, it came when I said, "I want to write a book."
She's right. I often don't think about how much work it will take to accomplish a goal. And as I tell her, that's by design. If I stopped to tally up how much effort it would take to get where I want to go, I'd probably never start.
My book, Seeker's Mindset, was a case in point. Don't get me wrong, I knew writing a book would be a mountain to climb. But my imagined route was naïve. In my mind, the process would go something like this: Spend a shit ton of hours sitting in a chair, alone in a room, laptop on my lap. (That's a tall order for a guy who spent his career in client meetings and pacing his office on the phone.) Get beat up by an editor. Regroup. Rewrite. Rinse and repeat. Finish the manuscript in a couple of years. Pitch it to publishers, hear “No” somewhere between 50 and 100 times, and eventually find the “Yes.”
A Red Pill Moment
At first, my imagined route held up. I spent a lot of hours in that chair with my laptop. And every editorial review made me feel like I was back in school, sitting across from a teacher while she graded my paper. My editor was excellent. She did exactly what she was supposed to do: squeeze the best out of me and my work. But I’ll admit, at one point I told her, "It's a good thing I'm writing a chapter on resilience."
Of course, the reality turned out to be different. In The Matrix, Neo is offered a choice: take the blue pill and go on living the life he's always known, or take the red pill and step into a new reality. The blue pill was my imagined route: query letters, rejections, and a publisher at the end. The red pill was the do-it-yourself route: independent publishing.
I took the red pill.
My wife and I had launched several businesses together and had the technical skills to do the publishing work ourselves. We had also spent our careers navigating the complexity and delays of large organizations, and we knew traditional publishing could add a year or more after the “Yes.” I was writing a book about change. In a world changing this fast, putting the timeline in someone else's hands felt like a risk I didn't need to take.
Done Again
When I owned the audiovisual company and someone on my team told me a project was done, I always asked, "Is it done-done?" Done-done meant no punch list, no go-backs, no "done, except…" Done-done.
The same concept applies to writing a book. Early in the process, I would announce, "It's done!" It didn't take long for that proclamation to become "Okay, it's done again."
When I "finished" the manuscript (it's not a book until it has a cover), it was time to fact-check it and cite my sources. After three hundred citations and a couple of weeks, the manuscript went to the copyeditor. As it happens, there's a little guidebook for how books should be produced called The Chicago Manual of Style. Think dictionary-thick. Copyeditors are the gurus of that world. Once she returned the manuscript, you guessed it: more editing.
Then it was off to the proofreaders. Yep, more editing.
During this time, we were also navigating the business side of publishing: setting up distributor relationships, designing the cover, launching the book and author websites, gathering advance reviews, obtaining International Standard Book Numbers (ISBNs), securing a Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) and a Publisher's Cataloging-in-Publication (PCIP) block, choosing keywords and subject categories, and assembling the metadata that booksellers, libraries, and marketing all depend on. I could go on, but you get the point. Fun, right?
Finally, I sent the manuscript to the graphic designer for formatting. Done. But not done-done. Book layout has its own set of very specific standards, and to my astonishment, getting everything to sit properly on the page took one more round of editing.
Done-Done
As I write this, I am pleased to say Seeker's Mindset is done-done. Published.
I have taken on many challenging projects over my career. Some were intimidating, overwhelming, arduous, and at times bordering on terrifying. I won't try to rank them. I'll simply say that writing and publishing a book brings all of that. And the writing is unique in its isolation. The whole environment is a room, a chair, a keyboard, and your own thoughts.
Self-confidence powers the work: the belief that your ideas are worth sorting out, recording, and sharing. Yet some days that conviction fails to show up for duty. As in any marathon, doubt can run ahead of you. In those moments, you realize you aren't creating in isolation at all. There is a team of people who believe in you and your ideas. Their belief backstops your confidence and pushes you to press on. It reminds you that the countless hours and seemingly endless rewrites are a worthy investment of both time and self.
That belief came from many directions. My editors pushed the work further than I could have taken it alone. Advance readers made time for an early copy, all 400 pages of it in PDF, and offered their words of support. Friends kept asking how the book was going, then actually listened to the answer, sometimes for longer than they'd bargained for.
And then there's Denise: my wife, my friend, my business partner, and my enabler. She has been a rock through every business we've launched, and that same steady encouragement was there from the moment I said, "I want to write a book." When my confidence buckled or took the day off, hers didn't. Her fingerprints are on many pages of Seeker's Mindset.
So yes, she's right. I never think about how much work it takes to pursue a dream. But I've never had to do that work alone. And with a team that believes in the vision, I'll say it again: it'll be fun.
Over the years, many people have told me, "You think differently." I'll let you be the judge. But if a different perspective is something you've been seeking or would enjoy, maybe it's time to try a Seeker's Mindset.
