EP52 | It's Back

welcome back to the brave leader podcast i am your host david mcqueen and i have been away for a while and today is a special episode because it's been one full year since the book the brave leader more courage, less fear, better decisions for inclusive leadership was launched into the world. It's been a journey for me. It's one that has taken me across the UK. I launched in London and in Manchester, Birmingham and Dublin and in other private spaces meeting incredible leaders, having thought-provoking conversations from the book and seeing firsthand how the brave mindset is resonating with so many people across different sectors, organizations in the corporate, public and civic sectors.

This episode is all about reflection. It's a reflection on the process, the lessons what I want to do differently and what's next. And of course, a massive thank you to every single person who has been part of this journey. So let's get into it.

i want to talk about how the brave leader went from concept to reality so for me writing the brave leader wasn't about sharing just about sharing leadership principles it was about creating something practical something leaders could use to make better decisions in their organizations and in their teams as well as making sure that they are being a better individual or looking at self-leadership as well as what they do outside of self. It was painful. My mentor told me that my first draft was crap.

I went through some real countless amount of drafts straight through to the final edits and in partnership with Practical Inspiration, I'll give a massive shout out to Alison and the team at Practical Inspiration, who were my publisher on this book. You really helped me as we went through all those edits. And even when those were times where I doubted myself and wondered whether the book would be able to do anything, seeing the book finally in people's hands, that was amazing.

It has been a process of growth, of discipline and of learning. And as I said, launching the book was an experience in and of itself. We kicked off the things in London. My dad, my brother, my wife, my lovely nieces and a lot of close friends came to me as my good friend hosted us at the Halifax Bank in Oxford Street.

And then I took it up to Manchester and Birmingham and had amazing support from friends there and even went to Dublin, went to Google Dublin and had a really fantastic session there as well. Each city brought its own energy, its own conversations, and reinforced the fact that leadership challenges may look different on the surface, but the core struggles remain the same. The hunger for bold, resilient, agile, visionary, and ethical leadership is everywhere. And that why I still keen to take the brave leader into the wider world so that people can read about it in corporations in charities in communities in civic centres in families in business book clubs all across the UK and to audiences around the world, not just the UK, who will have me.

So if you run a business book club or if you're an organisation that would love me to come and be your speaker who will challenge your thinking around inclusive leadership and what it really means, feel free to hit me up. So I want to talk about the lessons learned, the good, the tough and the unexpected. I want to talk about what the last year has taught me about writing, publishing and leading the conversation around brave leadership. Here are some of the biggest lessons I've taken away from this year.

Number one, your work isn't done when you publish the book. Writing is just the beginning. Launching and sustaining the momentum is the real challenge and it is tiring. you need to be energized and I've learned that books just don't sell themselves they need champions conversations and ongoing engagement I have put out videos and social media clips and reels and memes and so much to my wider network in order to be able to get that done and get it out there the work isn't done once you publish the book in fact once you publish the book that's when the work actually really begins the second thing that was a big lesson for me is that leaders want more than a book they want a toolkit many individuals read the book saw the principles and they reached out asking for more practical applications of the brave leadership model and that's why i'm working not only on having an audiobook but also having a brave leader playbook which is a downloadable e-guide or electronic guide designed for organizations and individuals to use the principles in team discussions leadership development sessions and even in strategic planning and a third big lesson for me is that the best conversations happen after the book is read so whether it was at speaking events or some podcast interviews that i did and i'm still looking for those if people want me to come on and speak about the book there or book club discussions the real magic happens when leaders start applying the ideas and sharing their experiences and that can be quite challenging and that's why i'm also considering creating some structured book club prompts, questions and exercises that help teams and leadership groups get the most out of the brave leader.

So that leads me to the next point. What would I do differently? If I could go back, would I change anything? I never live in regret.

I think it's important to look back and learn lessons and see what you would do differently, but I have no regrets. But here are some things I would do differently. I would build a stronger launch strategy. The events were incredible, but if I had to do it again, I'd have built an even bigger pre-launch campaign, a dedicated book page on my own website, done more live Q&As, created more structured content around the book's key themes and released some more products around that as well.

I would have had more digital content up front. I waited a bit before rolling out the video content and some of the other digital pieces before I launched the book. and next time I think I would integrate that in from day one for example I didn't have an audiobook I didn record the audiobook because I was so focused on thinking about just getting the print book out that I didn even really think about if I had released the audio book what effect would that have and given that audio books especially on audible sell two to one to print I would have definitely gone way past the target that I had set myself quite earlier and and one last lesson that I've learned from that is that um having gone through the whole process I I definitely think I'm going to self-publish my next book uh working with practical inspiration who are absolutely brilliant and they have the patience of the saints to deal with me.

I've learned a lot about the publishing industry, learned around typesetting and editing and formats and the way that you can build this book and how you can get your ISBN number and how you can release this stuff. But now that I've explored and really seen those options, I'm an entrepreneur. I like to do things slightly differently and do them for myself. And so I've definitely explored more options around what that self-publishing looks like and especially when it comes to the control over distribution and digital format so I think that's one of the big things that I've learned and I know that the next book I write I'm definitely going to publish self-publish myself so what's next for the brave leader so as I said we're one year in and we're just getting started It's beautiful that people have reached out.

I invested into having this process. I paid my publishing company in order for them to be able to provide all their services of coaching, the editorial, the printing, the ISBN distribution, all that kind of stuff. And that was absolutely amazing because what it did for me, it opened up a lot of doors around speaking. I got to go to a lot of places to speak about this as well.

And that was really exciting. But this is what's next for me. So an audio book version of The Brave Leaders coming out. I'm going into the studio and I'm going to be recording it and there may be some extra bits actually there will be some extra bits that are going to be in the audiobook that weren't in the print book so that shall be fascinating and it will be interesting to see those people who buy the audiobook as well as the print book but I'll be recording it because I know that no one else will be able to tell the story in the way that I want to say it I will also be doing a downloadable playbook for the organizations I've spoken about that just before if you've read the book you know that The Brave Leader isn't just a theory.

It's practical. It's about systemic change. It's ensuring that this change can be done, but it's not going to be easy. So that's why I've been designing a companion playbook that teams, individuals, and organizations can use to apply the principles directly to their challenges.

Again, as I said, I really want to expand into global book clubs. I'm looking to take the conversation beyond the UK. I want to be able to travel to the Middle East, to Africa, to Australia, to Asia, to North and South America, and just be able to continue to have these conversations about decision making about problem solving about contextualizing the inclusive leadership so if you run a leadership or business book club anywhere in the world and you want to explore the brave leader with me let's make it happen virtually or even better I'm happy to fly out if we can get arrangements around me being in said country to speak and run workshops and masterclasses around brave leadership and again as I say while we're here the next season of the Brave Leader podcast has been, I started to record and rather than just having it weekly I gonna release it in pods I not gonna tell you the one the next one Because I just want to focus on the book for now But there will be more case studies There will be more of a narrative format I'm not just doing interviews.

There will definitely be doing some deep dives. But there will be some guest insights. But my biggest announcement is. That even though I said I'd never write another book.

I'm actually planning my next leadership book. So the one thing I realised. Is that people don't just learn from frameworks. They learn from stories.

They love narrative. They love to understand context. And that's why my next leadership book is going to be a business novel. It's going to be a deep dive into leadership, but through storytelling and narrative, something you can read, reflect on and see yourself in.

And again, as I said, this time I'm going to be self-publishing. I'm really kind of like exploring what that looks like. I've bought my domain for this site. I'm thinking about the merchandise.

I'm thinking about the guerrilla marketing campaign. I'm thinking about that launch and all the elements that can really tie into it. and so I'm really leaning into my network and I'm really learning more about book design to distribution looking at algorithms outside of Amazon because Amazon is not the only fruit in the garden there are going to be some amazing ways of being able to distribute the book so I'm looking into those as well and it's a new challenge but one that I am really excited about and I'll be building on the principles and everything I've learned from the brave leader and trust me in the new book there'll be a lot of the elements of the brave leader coming through but I also want to make sure that I do it my way so please stay tuned for updates so some final thoughts I just want to say a massive thank you for all those who helped in the journey so every single person who has read the brave leader who has shared it recommended it debated its ideas and applied its principles you are the reason this works really matters and even those who will go online and who the book is not for and to be honest with you I don't go and I don't really read the comments but sometimes people will feedback even if it's not for you that's absolutely fine the the the importance is that you actually got it in your hand and you read it and you if it whether it applied to you or not was that at least a seed was sown in your mind to my team to my wife to my daughters Rihanna and Lauren to all of my friends and everyone who supported me, my mentors, my man dem, my groups, my women dem.

Thank you for believing in this book and believing in me. And finally to you, the listeners of the Brave Leader podcast, thank you for tuning in, engaging and pushing the conversation forward. And even though I haven't been around for a while, because I really wanted to get a real sense of the direction that I was going in this, I really appreciate the fact that you are able to download and subscribe.