From Brain Pancakes To Bestseller

[INTRODUCTION]

"Cristina Amigoni: And also the fact that you're trying to, as the writer, when you review your writing, when you get beyond that like, "Here's everything I want to say," and you're reviewing it and trying to get into that empathy space of like, "Now, I have to read it and take it in as somebody that has never heard this before." 

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human, where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives. 

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that's with our families, co-workers, or even ourselves. 

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni. 

Alex Cullimore: And this is Alex Cullimore. 

Cristina Amigoni & Alex Cullimore: Let’s dive in. 

“Authenticity means freedom.”

“Authenticity means going with your gut.”

“Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself, not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.”

“Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.”

“It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.”

“Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.”

“It's transparency, relatability. No frills, no makeup, just being.”

[INTERVIEW]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to another episode of Uncover the Human. This is an only-hosts episode. We've got just Cristina and I here today. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. And our brains are somewhere else, but our faces seem to be here. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, it is. It is a back to a Friday recording. And unlike just usual Friday brain, this week has been particularly busy. We actually just had our book launch week. So that has been at least at the time of this recording. Although you guys are probably a couple weeks in the future. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, as we record this, our book launched yesterday. And we had our book launch event with – I still don't know how many people showed up. There were two full screens of Zoom squares. That's how I know how many people showed up. 

Alex Cullimore: It was wild to see everybody there. It was really exciting. So, huge thank you to everybody who joined us for that. And a huge thank you to everybody who's been downloading the book, because we just found out overnight that we became bestsellers in the organizational behavior category. So, that is incredibly exciting. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Very exciting. Yes, organizational behavior, workplace behavior is another bestseller. Number 2 in leadership. Also, huge. Number 4 in all of business categories. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Number 2 in personal success. Number 4 in all of business. 

Cristina Amigoni: Not what we expected. 

Alex Cullimore: No. No. But one of the best surprises. So this is The Authenticity Upgrade: Rebooting Leadership for Real Humans. That is our book. And if you want to, you can download it on Amazon in any of its many formats. But it was a journey to deliver this book. And it is incredibly exciting to see this out in the world. That is also why our brains are pancaked.

Cristina Amigoni: That is a good way to – now I want pancakes. I haven't had lunch yet. Now my brain is on pancakes. It's a pancake about pancakes. This is going to go well. 

Alex Cullimore: One of the things that people asked in the book launch that I thought was a good question was what are some of the surprises that you had in going through the process of writing the book? And what were some of the hurdles that came up? And one of them was what were you surprised to learn as you wrote it? And that I think is an interesting question. Because, theoretically, you're writing a book from your point of expertise some of the things that you know. And yet, putting this into an organized format and combining all the things that we've learned did come up with a few surprises, I think, as we were going through it. 

For me, I think it became one of those things where you start to learn just by having to think it through. It's like the benefits of doing things like journaling and meditating. You spend time paying attention to the thoughts that you already have. And when you have to put them into a communicable form, not like a communicable disease, but a communicated form. I don't know if that's the right term. Pancakes. But when you put it into those forms, you actually have to think about it differently. It activates a different detection of your brain. And you have to think about something differently. Even though you've thought about it a thousand times, "This is what we do for work. This is what we do to help organizations." And yet, it's still different when you approach it anew. And that was kind of exciting. 

Cristina Amigoni: It was. Yes. Having to switch how we want to communicate the concepts that we've talked about a billion times on podcasts. We've talked about in workshops, in training, in consulting, in all sorts of other ways of communicating with people. Standing in front of a room or sitting down at a table with a bunch of people. It's very different than writing it in a book because it's not a conversation. And so it's much easier to have that conversation for some people. 

For me, I think it's a lot easier to have that conversation where you say something and you kind of see how people react. And then you shift how you say it based on the reaction. And so it becomes a dialogue when you're explaining some of these concepts in a live form one way or another. 

In a written form, besides the fact that you're now switching how you communicate, because writing is very different than speaking, in how you do that. But also, it's not a conversation anymore. And so one of the things that I found myself thinking about as I was going through the process of the writing, and then revising, and editing was where are people going to lose attention? Are people going to understand this? Where are they going to feel when they read this? And at which point may it be too long, too deep, too dense, too tangenty that people are like, "Yeah, I've lost you." 

So now that even phantom conversation that a book has with a person's brain that's reading it now doesn't exist anymore. And so you're trying to constantly – I found myself trying to constantly try to make it a conversation or think about how would this go if this were a conversation. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. It's interesting. You think of writing as like a process of putting down just the right words at the right time. But it's really just an endless exercise in empathy. But it's kind of, I guess, in empathy. When you're doing that live in a room, you can tell when people suddenly are confused by what you're saying. You see those raised eyebrows, or you see those question marks, or you see the people who get really lit up and excited about that. You can lean into that and you get all that immediate live feedback. 

And doing this in written form is making sure that you try and put yourself in the audience's shoes over and over again. And so you have to end up reading it out loud to yourself, and hear how it sounds, and see what it – it's very different. It's all empathy but without the immediate feedback. And so it's your best guess at what empathetically will work for people. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Indeed. And also the fact that you're trying to, as the writer, when you review your writing, when you get beyond it, like, "Here's everything I want to say," and you're reviewing it and trying to get into that empathy space of like, "Now, I have to read it and take it in as if somebody that has never heard this before and has not read, and it's not in my brain." 

And so as a writer, I found it pretty challenging to try and do both because it's like, "Well, I know this, and the sentence makes sense to me. But this sentence makes sense to me because it's part of a much larger context." And so, how would it feel for somebody that doesn't know what's happening in chapter 10 and they're reading chapter 1? And so, it's a lot more challenging that I guess I thought it was going to be challenging. But it's definitely not an easy process. 

Alex Cullimore: It's almost harder because it's something that we've spent so much time thinking about. Exactly, that point that you brought up. Because the context in our heads is much larger now. Now that helps in live conversation because you can pull what context you need because you start to see what people might be missing, and you have a lot that you can fill in. 

But yes, a book, and it's fresh, and it's different. When you don't know what people are reacting to. We kept having to trim chapters back because we were putting too much information in. But then if you trim it back too much, it's now too little. And to that end, actually, I do want to take a quick moment to thank the team that was behind helping make this happen. We had an incredible book coach, Kristin Malek, who helped us get this across the finish line, organize how this is all happening, line edit for us. She's a bit of a workhorse getting through so many things that helped us get this to reality. 

And of course, our internal team. We had Nicole Handy on the workbook who made that an incredible, very usable, very pretty document that accompanies the book so people can do all the reflection work and hopefully continue to help learn. And she also kept us very organized, along with Aaron Wilson, who kept us organized the entire time. Had the book project planned helped us line up all of the backend things that had to happen with the book that were beyond just the writing. And then came in at the end and still did a whole bunch of editing with our other compatriot, Abbay Robinson, who we could not have done any of this without. She has an eagle eye for editing. And that was endlessly helpful as we wrapped up and got this done just on the deadline. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, seriously, just on the deadline. Yeah, it's incredible the amount of work that had to happen that happened beyond just writing. The writing, it was probably 30% of it. And then the amount of work around having a book that's actually out there and people can find it. And it makes sense, and it's correct in grammar and spelling. And it has a companion, and all of those things. It's definitely a lot more work than I probably anticipated. 

I think as we were focused on the writing, I was like, "Okay, let's get the book writing." And then I remember the first time Aaron showed his project plan, even my heart sank. Because the writing part was maybe like 5% of it, and it was like, "Oh shit." There's all this stuff to do. That the book actually exists outside of our heads and outside of our hard drives. And so having that help, it would never have happened. I mean, there's no way. Or it would have happened, but it would have taken us three years of kicking, and screaming, and pulling ourselves. 

Alex Cullimore: It still took some kicking and screaming. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Still took kicking and screaming. But it would have taken a lot longer and it would have been a lot more painful. And yes, I think one of my, I guess, moments of most shocked was when, as one of our tasks, we needed to review the workbook that Nicole had been putting together all along. As we were finishing the book and writing the book, she was taking the parts that had questions, and activities, and ways for reflections. And where we kept referring, seeing the workbook that you can download to help you through all of this, because it's a very interactive book. You could just read it and be done, but a lot of it is to put some of the stuff into action and do the reflection. 

And when I finally, at the last, very last, 11th hour, got to reviewing the workbook, two days past the deadline that I was supposed to review the workbook. It was definitely last minute. I opened up the Canva file and it was 67 pages. And I remember all the energy just draining from myself, because I had no idea. 

I started reviewing page by page, and reading every single word, and looking at the format, and trying to make sure that everything flowed and everything. And I'm, "Why does this keep going? I've done 10 pages, and I'm not seeing the end anytime soon." I glanced down and I see that I'm on page 10 of 68, and I was like, "How? How did this happen?" And I had no idea was happening because I was focused on all the other things or some of the other things. 

Alex Cullimore: And for those of you that are now too terrified to download the workbook, it's mostly just because there's a lot of fillable space. It turns out there are only so many points of questions, and there's a lot of space for reflection, which is the point. We want to give you a lot of places to write all these things down. But that does end up expanding the number of pages after. 

And luckily, it was really just mostly dense to get through things like the table of contents and formatting in the beginning. But yes, I had the exact same thing. I was like, "Oh, I finally have some time." I got all the chapters off to our editor. To have a little bit of breather room, look at the workbook, I was like, "60 what?"

Cristina Amigoni: Wait, what? 

Alex Cullimore: Oh, no. 

Cristina Amigoni: But yes, 90% of it is space for the reflections. And it's editable, so that people can do it electronically. And it's that. It's not a second book. 

Alex Cullimore: You're not going to cross I's entirely. 

Cristina Amigoni: And as I was reviewing it, I was changing some of the format of every single box to align them with margins and all of that. That's also why it felt overwhelming for me, because I was like, "Wait, I have 58 more pages of aligning boxes?" 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. 

Cristina Amigoni: Which then Nicole took and did that too. She was like, "Just leave the boxes. Make sure it all makes sense." I'm like, "Okay, I can leave the boxes." 

Alex Cullimore: Well, that reminds me the one last person I forgot to mention. Mamir, our graphic designer who helped with the cover. Mamir Baraki, who came up with the cover design, the back cover. And has an incredible turnaround time for those. And now gave us just a beautiful looking cover. I'm very excited about it. So, thank you Mamir. And thank you to our entire team. It was so much to get into this and so much promotion in the last month to get the word out. And it's been an incredible reception in only a day. Very glad that that all – it's the other scary part about writing a book. You do all of this work and everything, and nothing goes live. And then suddenly, everything's live all at once. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, that was scary, clicking all the submit buttons, but we got there. 

Cristina Amigoni: It was very scary. Yes, it was scary to click the submit buttons. I still can't believe how many people showed up at the launch. I was hoping for maybe three more or maybe seven. So, it'd be more outsiders than insiders. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. I thought we'd be in the 15-person range because it's just we're asking for people's time in the middle of the day. And we had at least 50 cycle through throughout the whole event, and possibly more. I haven't actually looked at the Zoom logs, but just absolutely overwhelming to see all of these faces many, many wonderful people we've gotten to know over the years. And some new faces, too. It was great. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. And it was not a one-way conversation, which is really made it even more special. We didn't want it to be a one-way conversation, where we talk about the book for an hour and a half and everybody falls asleep. And so seeing how people just chimed in and provided insights and provided shared experiences they've had with us outside of even the book itself, and how they know us. It was really incredible. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah, it was really just almost hard to take all at once in person. It was so overwhelming. Another huge thank you to everybody who showed up for that. That was very special for us and very overwhelming. 

Cristina Amigoni: Definitely overwhelming. Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: That being said, what else surprised you in this process? What did you learn? 

Cristina Amigoni: What did I learn? What surprised you? 

Alex Cullimore: A couple of things. First of all, the content itself. We always talk about how you have to do self-leadership. You have to understand yourself to be able to work with others. And conceptually, I've understood that. And I've helped teach things in the self-range, and then in the relationship range, and then in the group range. And having to put all this together into one book I think drove home for me just how interrelated those are and how important it is to have that self-basis. Because sometimes you get talking about one or you get talking about the other. You start to talk about how to improve relationships instead of some of your internal blocks. 

And sometimes when we're putting them all at once and doing all of these things together, it helps drive home just how important that self is. And when we started to have to define what we really believe is the power of authenticity, it was amazing to see how much people resonated with that in the book launch and how many people have understood that as like the benefit of authenticity is that you get all of the energy that you can in life when you're being authentic. Because you're not spending energy trying to be something you're not. And so you get this huge benefit as long as you can know what authentic is to you and lean into that. And that is the basis for your ability to have leadership in groups, for your ability to influence group dynamics, to have stronger, deeper relationships, because you can actually be yourself. And these are all things we've talked about before. And I think it just ended up. It still surprised me a little bit just how important that self-portion is when we're really putting all the thoughts down. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, that was definitely a big one. I think it's one of those things that I knew. But until we had to write it down, it was definitely hard to stop writing about the self and move on. There were a lot of moments of like, "And that's for the next book." At some point, we're going to have to move on from the self and address the other pieces. 

There were definitely a lot of other moments throughout that we had to kind of table for the next book, or this was going to be a ridiculously long book. And we didn't want that. We wanted to be manageable. And also, I just forgot. I didn't take my lion's mane this morning. 

Alex Cullimore: Of all days. 

Cristina Amigoni: Of all days. I know. I've been tripling the dose to like be able to have a functioning brain. And so this morning, I forgot. And then I looked at it, I'm like, "Maybe I should take a break and let my brain rest instead of being hyper-wired." Clearly, working really well. 

I think one of the thoughts that I had was also how it was surprising and not about the self. Because when we think about both coaching and therapy, when somebody decides to get a coach or decides to get into therapy and find somebody to talk to, a lot of the times we think it's because of the external stuff, "I want a better relationship with these people," or, "I want these outcomes in my career," or, "I want this to happen," or, "I want my kids you know to do this." It's very external. It's like I'm here, and everything else around me is not working. So, let's get coaching, or let's go to therapy so that we can fix everything around me. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Could somebody help fix my environment? 

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. So that I get the results I want and I get the career I want. But it's really about the career, and the results, and the house, and the relationship, and – 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. If those were good, I'd be great. 

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly, you know? And my team, and the job, and whatever it is. But it's about fixing the external almost, like that the motivation is, "Whatever is happening, it doesn't work for me." And in both good coaching and good therapy, the experts that we work with when we hire them really couldn't give a crap about the external stuff. It's like from the first second, it's like, "Okay, let's focus on you. Because if you want all these things to work, we need to focus on you. I really don't care what your relationship with your husband is. I don't care what your relationship with your kids are or are not doing. I don't care what your boss is doing. I don't care what your team is saying. We're going to focus on you the whole time." 

Alex Cullimore: It's horrifying. That's the beautiful part about therapy. But you end up talking about all these externals. And a really good therapist, really good coach is understanding what that says about you. Is really doing the listening to understand like, "Ah, I see this pattern. I see when you run into situations like this, you're feeling particularly strongly when these things come up." And we are just experiencing things so much from inside our own perspective that we assume that's how it is. If the external was better, things would be better, things would be better. And so much actual change is really just inside our heads. 

There are, of course, external circumstances that do need to be changed. And it's not to say that those are never important. It's just to say that you can't change those. And sometimes it's really hard to even address those until you've allowed yourself the space to address them. Because sometimes there's some other reason that you don't believe you can address that thing. And that you need to address that. It surprised me a little bit. It's something we've helped many people with. But we've done it in all these like bits and pieces, and you don't necessarily see the through line until you have to write it all down. And then it's all in front of you. And speaking of that, the other thing that surprised me throughout the process was just how much gremlin work I ended up going through in this. There was just – by God. 

Cristina Amigoni: Every time the edits came back, it was like, "Okay, I am not worthless. I can get through this." 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. You had the edits back, and you're like – there was one chapter where Kristin was like, "Look, I tried really hard. I can't. This is not readable at this form." And I was like, "Okay, well, I will just run my ego over with a car and just –" 

Cristina Amigoni: And I'm pretty sure it was a chapter where we're like, "Oh, that's the easy one. Done." 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. And then I reread it, and I could not get through the edits. And I was like, "What am I doing?" And that was like just – there's these crushing moments of like, "Holy crap, what horrific Frankenstein have I tried to birth here that should never have been created?" And then, thankfully, we rewrote that one entirely. Had a big restructuring. But that was late enough in the process that the other side of the gremlin work is that you start to see some of the progress that you go through. Rewriting that chapter was much easier than some of the original rewrites, just because we weren't as much in the groove of writing that much. And I wasn't expecting quite how much I was going to have to face myself down to go and get this out into the world. How much I was going to be like, "Oh god, oh god, this is not good enough. I can't share this." 

Even just internally to be like, "Can you please review this so that we can continue the editing process?" It was still sometimes just an enormous amount of, "Oh god, this isn't good enough. There's no way. This is the stupidest thing I've ever written." I didn't expect that. I enjoyed the first couple of chapters. And it was fun to get some of the edits and start to see how this was going to come together. And then, middle of the book, good god, really hit a bunch of those. 

Cristina Amigoni: Fascinating. I get that. And also, I had different gremlins. The gremlins I was facing around the cowriting, I think the gremlins I was facing. And I'm sure I would have faced different ones if I were writing this alone. But around the cowriting, where were in the pieces where I knew something was written well, and it was exactly what needed to be said, but it wasn't how I would say it. And I had to let that go. And there was a lot of those moments where, like, "This is good. this is something I would read and get a lot out of, but it's not how I would say it. And my name is on it." 

And so finding that balance of wanting to change everything in my voice and letting go of, "I don't need to change everything into my voice. That's not the point of this." There can be my voice in some places and Alex's voice in other places. And as long as it's not super clear where the voice changes and their contrasting ways of explaining things, or repetitions, or things that are glaringly disruptive in the flow of reading, let it go. 

Alex Cullimore: I find that difficult every time I edit anybody's work on anything. Yeah, if people are looking at asking for help on a blog or something, I have so much harder time not being like, "Well, I mean, I would say it this way." But that's not the important part. It's how they would say it, and whether it makes sense. That definitely is difficult. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. And especially when I think it was Aaron and Abbay at some point were saying – I was in a meeting with them, and they said like, "Oh, it's very clear when it's your voice and when it's Alex's voice." I'm like, "No, it's not supposed to be that clear." They're like, "But in a good way." I'm like, "Okay." 

Alex Cullimore: And I'm not sure how to take that. I hadn't heard that one. That would have been a whole different panic. 

Cristina Amigoni: I think there was something they were pointing out. And I'm like, "I've highlighted a word that was repeated over and over." Which, actually, that's the first thing I notice when writing something that I haven't written, especially. I'm sure I do it in my own writing. But somebody else is writing. And when a word is repeated over and over and over, I highlight. And you know that. Because I highlight them all. I'm like, "Can we use the source somewhere here? We repeated this word 10 times in three lines." 

Jeff used to hate that. When I was the first reader of his books, he used to hate that. Because I did the same thing. And I'm like, "Change the word, please." And I can't remember which word it was that Aaron asked. I'm like, "Is it you or Alex that uses that?" I'm like, "Oh, it's not me." I'm like, "I don't think I ever even use that word when I talk." I definitely not use it in writing. 

Alex Cullimore: Boy. 

Cristina Amigoni: So, now you're going to have to go figure out what that word is. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. I don't have the energy to figure that one out. I'm just going to let that one go. 

Cristina Amigoni: It's probably been fixed in all the revisions of editing and changing the writing up. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Yes. So, I'm guessing there's many things that changed by. Yes. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Yeah, many things were altered. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was interesting, because even Kristin told us that she was pretty nervous about having two authors in one book. That she had experienced it in the past, and it didn't always work out well. Because both authors wanted – I'm assuming, both authors wanted their voice. And so the collaboration became difficult. 

But I remember at the beginning when she asked, like, "How are you guys going to do this?" We're like, "No idea. We're going to start and see how it goes." Which is a lot of how we approach a lot of things. It's a lot of we're going to start and see how it goes. 

Alex Cullimore: It's worked out all right so far. We haven't had a reason to change that strategy. 

Cristina Amigoni: No. I know. It's nerve-wracking for the rest of our team that wants details, and we're like, "We don't need them." 

Alex Cullimore: Like, "We'll figure it out. It seems like. But how?" Oh man. Yeah, we definitely terrify people to think with that. But after a while, you just get comfortable with just guessing. Like, "Yeah, I will make up for it." 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah. But the rest of our team is getting better at just letting it go. As long as they're not involved, they're like, "As long as it's not me having to figure it out as we move along, I'm fine. The two of you can handle it." Like, "Yes, we can." We freak out about it right before we start. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. Yeah, it was a new experience all around. And I think that when we do it again – because there's too many other book ideas we already have. When we do it again, I think there's so many lessons we will have learned that will make this a lot easier. I'm eternally grateful for how well this has been received in the first one, because that was a very encouraging way to continue and get some boost into the next things that we'll be doing. 

But man, there were definitely moments that it was much more of a lift than I expected. And to the point of being internal, it all comes from self, that was where the real pain came is it's not the amount of work that has to be done, it's how you end up approaching that work. And whether that's whether you feel like you can face it down. And so many of these things were also just new that we haven't done before. Where we were running a whole lot of automated campaigns and emails and stuff, and trying to get more active with LinkedIn, and more specific about how we use LinkedIn, where it's been much more free form for us. And all of those are just mental lifts to learn. 

And when you don't know how big or how much effort that's going to take, it can very much seem like that's going to be way more effort than it actually ends up being. And so facing down of things like the project plan and facing down of things like the tasks are going to have to be done seem and impossible when you start, especially when it's stuff that you haven't really done before or not in the same way, and you don't quite know just how much effort that's going to be. It was a good experience. And I think I've learned a lot about what effort that is going to be and would definitely do some things differently, but that was all like a lot of what felt like first-time guesswork going through it. 

Cristina Amigoni: For sure. Yes. And some decisions I made early on that I probably shouldn't have made, like changing our mailing list tool in the middle of it, thinking it was going to go well and be smoothly. That was not a good idea. Maybe wait for after a book launch before we change things. 

Alex Cullimore: Yes. And for those of you listening that accidentally got spammed by me the other day, apologies. I did accidentally send a duplicate email to some people. Not all of you, but some of you. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. So, definitely some lessons learned. Yesterday was a bad technology day. I got all sorts of weird stuff from things that we didn't do, and it was not related to the book. I had a payment that's supposed to be a three-month payment. And after the first month, I got an email saying like, "We've canceled your subscription." I'm like, "No."

Alex Cullimore: "Why?" 

Cristina Amigoni: I didn't touch anything. I don't even know how I would cancel if I wanted to. That was not me. So, it was me and the coach I'm working with trying to figure out. And she was like, "I don't know why this happened." I'm like, "I don't know why it happened." So, all issues yesterday were just ghosts in technology. 

Alex Cullimore: It was a weird one yesterday. My OneDrive randomly quit. I had to take a cat into the cat shelter just for an X-ray. We have a foster cat right now. So, I was taking her in for an X-ray at like 8:00 in the morning, and my phone couldn't figure out where I was. Because there's usually so much traffic, I asked Google like what the best way back is. It had no idea where I was. My location services died. The car couldn't play. I don't know what happened. And we were on the phone with somebody this morning whose microwave broke. So maybe Stranger Things is happening. And there's just all kinds of electronic disruptions. We're all about to find out about the upside down. I don't know. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Some more data centers going down. 

Alex Cullimore: That's probably the actual reality. Yeah, data center overload of power. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Definitely lots of lessons learned. And as anything else that's new, the second time around, it's usually easier because of the lessons learned. Thankfully, Nicole has already captured a bunch and has already scheduled a time when we're going to go through lessons learned. Because I'm sure there's a few painful moments for the rest of the team that they do not want to repeat. 

Alex Cullimore: And they are also asking for details on that. And I was ready to just to go wing it and ask people what they thought. So here we are. 

Cristina Amigoni: I even forget why we're coming together on Tuesday. Like, "Oh, I know we're celebrating. What else are we doing on Tuesday?" But we've got stuff to do. So, yeah, it's incredible. It's quite the journey. A lot of self-promotion that both of us have done in the last few weeks to – again, this is not about book sales. I mean, the book is free for the first couple of days. 

Alex Cullimore: Right now, at least. 

Cristina Amigoni: This is not a financial gain. Or it's not even for the accolades of number ones and ranking, because that changes every 30 minutes. It's a blink of an eye ranking, to be honest. It's really more about – it's playing the game, where the game needs you to be ranked and needs you to have all the self-promotion so that people know it exists. And we want people to know it exists. That's our goal. We wrote the book, the experience was the journey, the experience was the measure of success. And now it's like it's there, and it would be nice if people knew it existed. 

Alex Cullimore: It's believing in why you're doing it enough, believing that people should have this information, believing that this is important to have out there. And it's different to have out there, something new that people can get something from. It's believing that enough to be willing to play the things that we haven't traditionally done so much of like self-promotion and this. 

Yeah, we don't even talk about much plugging on this podcast of ourselves. We, of course, want our guests to be able to do that, but we don't talk much about how to find us specifically. And it's been an interesting – I think a good journey in that one. That was definitely some gremlin work, too, about like, "Oh god, I got to put myself out there." And it's scary, and it's not easy. But we've had a very kind perception, thankfully. Not just in sales, but in people just engaging and being willing to support the process and help us out with various pieces. It's been great, and it was a lot. 

It ended up as almost everything in life much less scary in reality than in your head. But yes, I agree, it's not going to be a financial gain for us. It's about believing this enough to go play the game to be played to get it out there as far as we can take it. We'll do the work to do that, because I think it's absolutely worth the read and exciting to have out there. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. And if somebody who decides to read it can take one thing out of it, that's great. That's awesome. 

Alex Cullimore: We've given you 400 things in a workbook. Hopefully, any of those will stick. 

Cristina Amigoni: There's 68 pages worth of things to do. Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: Well, thank you guys so much for listening. If you want to check out the book, it is The Authenticity Upgrade: Rebooting Leadership for Real Humans. It's been a very fun process, difficult process to get it all up, but we are very excited to share it with everybody. We hope you get something out of it. Please feel free to leave a review, reach out to us, let us know what you think. We'd love to hear any feedback, anything that we can do to continue to improve it. It's a very exciting time to go dive in. 

Cristina Amigoni: Indeed. Yes, reviews are important, too. Again, playing the game. It's not about us getting told how great we are. It's about other people finding it. It's how the algorithms work. 

Alex Cullimore: Yeah. Amazon will start boosting it if we get more reviews. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yeah, the more reviews, more people find it. Yes. 

Alex Cullimore: Please, if you have the time and the energy, we would love it. We really appreciate it. And reach out with any thoughts or questions. We'd love to hear what you think. Yes. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes. Thank you. 

Alex Cullimore: Thank you.

Thanks so much for listening to Uncover the Human. We are Siamo. That is the company that sponsors and created this podcast. And if you like to reach out to us further, reach out with any questions or to be on the podcast, please reach out to podcast@wearesiamo.com. Or you can find us on Instagram. Our handle is We Are Siamo. Or you can go to wearesiamo.com and check us out there. Or I suppose, Cristina, you and I have LinkedIn as well. People could find us anywhere. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, we do have LinkedIn. Yes. Yeah. And we'd like to thank Abbay Robinson for producing our podcast and making sure that they actually reach all of you, and Rachel Sherwood for the wonderful score. 

Alex Cullimore: Thank you guys so much for listening. Tune in next. 

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you.

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