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Meet
Brendon Burchard, the author
of Life's Golden Ticket and a
prominent life coach, leadership speaker and change management
consultant. To learn more about Brendon, click
here.
For more commentary from or information about Brendon, visit his blog on Amazon.com.
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What was your main inspiration for writing Life's Golden Ticket?
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What were some of the challenges or surprises in writing this book
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If you could live in another time and place, where and when would that be?
What was your main inspiration for writing
Life's Golden Ticket?
The
idea for Life’s Golden Ticket came to me ten
years ago after surviving a dramatic car accident in
a third-world country. To this day, I vividly
remember the moment I physically pulled myself free
from the twisted metal of the wreckage—because it
was also the moment I emerged from the emotional
depression that had recently destroyed my life. I
remember standing on the crumpled hood of the car,
looking down at my bloodied body, then up to the
heavens. That was it. That was the moment. That was
when I realized that I had received a “golden
ticket”—a second chance at life, and an invitation
to experience the world through a new pair of eyes…a
world that was more abundant, colorful, and
awe-inspiring than I could have ever imagined. In
that moment I felt as if the gates of possibility
were opened up to me, as if I had been given
permission to create a whole new life, a life of my
own choosing.
It took me nearly a decade to finally write
Life’s Golden Ticket because, frankly, I didn’t
know how to write it. I knew I wanted to create a
reading experience that helped other people reach
that moment I did so long ago: a moment in which
they sensed the gates to possibility swinging open
for them, a moment they felt like they could start
over again and create the life they had always
wanted. But how could I create a moment like that
for others? I didn’t figure that answer out until
last year. I invite you to read Life’s Golden
Ticket and tell me if I got it right.
I knew I wanted to write a book that taught the message I received standing atop the crumpled car hood after my accident. But how could I take people on a similar journey of personal transformation? To answer that question, I knew I had to become intimately familiar with all things psychology and self-help. So, between the months after my car accident in May 1996 to the month I finally sat down and wrote the book, November 2004, I read every psychology and self-help book or article I could get my hands on. I went to dozens and dozens of seminars and listened to every tape from every guru I could get. I also put myself in leadership positions that challenged me to coach people and help them find their highest potential. During those eight years, I graduated from The University of Montana with a BA in political science and a MA in communication studies, and I began work as a change management consultant at Accenture, the world’s largest consulting company. In 2003, while on leave from Accenture to write, I created a framework for helping people change based on my own personal journey after the car accident and the experiences I had while coaching people to transform their personal and professional lives. That framework would eventually become the psychological backbone of Life’s Golden Ticket.
In January 2004 I made a resolution to write Life’s Golden Ticket by the end of the year. I also made a destined decision: I wasn’t going to just write another self-help book. I felt that so many books in the genre were practically photocopies of one another—state a principle or piece of advice, illustrate it with a few real or imagined examples, repeat. I wanted to write a book that was innovative, something that combined the soul-touching story-telling of The Alchemist or The Celestine Prophecy with the sage strategies found in Unlimited Power or Life Strategies. My goal was to make Life’s Golden Ticket half parable, half action plan, beginning each chapter with an ongoing story about a character undergoing a dramatic transformation and ending each chapter with strategies the reader could use to change their own lives. This story-strategy framework, I thought, would make a self-help book truly engaging and empowering.
I started with the story section first. What story could I tell, though, that would truly take readers on a psychological journey leading to lasting change? For years I had been playing with the lessons and metaphor I took away from the accident – a golden ticket – and I had already came up with the idea of an adventure through an amusement park. To flesh out the idea, I spent a weekend of brainstorming every thing I associated with an amusement park—the rides, the carnies, the food, the crowds, the energy—and started trying to match park metaphors with the key lessons in my framework for change. Suddenly, I had ideas for using the bumper boats to explain how people sometimes spin in their lives and the hall of mirrors to explain what a contorted view most of us have of ourselves. It didn’t take long for me to come up with a table of contents. All I needed was a story to weave together all the metaphors and lessons. The story’s basic premise had been in my mind for years and once I started writing it I became very excited about its potential. I then made the big mistake of sharing the idea with others.
Few people thought it was a good idea for me to take on fiction—after all, I had never written fiction before. In fact, I rarely read fiction at all. As I began sharing my idea, most people were very skeptical, and one New York Times bestselling author actually told me not to write the book in the story-strategy format—urging me to steer clear of fiction. The famed author’s thought was that getting fiction published was nearly impossible for a first-time author, and that I had best stick to what was already a compelling nonfiction story of survival from my car wreck. Adding to that, many people told me that another famous author had already written a best-selling book that took place in an amusement park. Unfortunately, I listened. Over the summer of 2004 I struggled to write a very strategic non-fiction book about life transformation.
Eventually, after a few more detours, I returned to my original vision and tried to jump back in the fiction. I was making little progress writing on the weekends in San Francisco, though, so I took leave from Accenture and went home to Montana to write. It was now October 2004 and I was committed to finishing the book by the end of the year. I was also determined to write the story-strategy format.
I fleshed out a book proposal in late October and early November, 2004, and I began writing the parable that would become Life’s Golden Ticket. I finished the story – to my amazement – in just 18 days, finishing the first week of December, 2004. What happened in those 18 days still stuns me. While I had a table of contents to follow—I knew the exact metaphors of the park I wanted to play off of and the exact psychological journey I wanted to take the character on—I had no idea how it would come together. It turns out I had little to worry about. I equate writing Life’s Golden Ticket to watching a movie: the whole story played out in my mind and I faithfully recorded it. This isn’t to say I didn’t go through the standard writer’s block and obsessions over tone, syntax, character development and the like, but it did come naturally and steadily. In 18 days I wrote the entire story and in another 22 days I had written the strategies to go along with each chapter of the story. I wouldn’t discover until much later that 40 days carries with it powerful spiritual and religious overtones. Like my own, I decided to make the character’s journey in the book last forty days.
I shared the story section of the book with a few of my best friends in a cabin in Montana during our annual New Year’s trip. It was from their reaction that I knew I was onto something much, much more powerful than I’d ever imagined.
I spent January 2005 until March honing the proposal and editing the book (mostly the strategy sections—the story was nearly untouched from the way it was originally written). In April I met my agent, Scott Hoffman, and in the months between September to December 2005 we were turned down by nearly a dozen publishers. I began seriously thinking about self-publishing the book. In late-December, one year after writing the story, I decided instead to break the book up by cutting the strategic portion and letting the story stand on its own in our pitches to publishers. Finally, in late January 2006, almost exactly one month to the day before my 29th birthday, HarperSanFrancisco made an offer. It would take two months to get all the paperwork completed and signed.
Exactly one day after receiving the final editorial letter from Harper (which confirmed for me that they shared my vision and that the book would be published relatively unchanged), I celebrated the 10th anniversary of my car accident. Almost eleven years to the day of when I received my own golden ticket, Life's Golden Ticket went on sale. I’ll likely publish the strategies I wrote in those magical 40 days as a companion book someday soon.
What
were some of the challenges or surprises in writing
this book?
There were three challenges and one big surprise.
The first challenge was that I had no experience
writing fiction and everyone outside of my family
and friends seemed keen on reminding me of that
fact. Keeping motivated to follow one’s dreams is no
easy task in today’s society of skeptics. The second
challenge was time. When I finally decided I was
ready to write the book, almost eight years after my
accident, I was working full-time as a corporate
change management consultant. A 60-hour work week is
not conducive to writing. The final hurdle was a
problem with “place.” I was trying to write the book
in San Francisco, which despite its Mecca status for
writers, was not working for me.
To address these three challenges, I decided I
needed to completely disconnect from the world I
knew and immerse myself in writing the book. So,
even though I knew I would go broke and miss a few
promotions, I took several months of leave from my
job and went back to Montana, where I grew up. I
locked myself in my parents’ house and wrote in my
cramped childhood bedroom on a small, foldable,
three-legged sewing machine table.
I’ve always been someone who worked hard and worked
fast. But what happened in Montana still remains
surprising to me. After a few tangents from my
original vision, I scrapped the story I had been
working on and started anew. I then wrote the story
in Life’s Golden Ticket in just 18 days. In another
22 days I had written the life strategies that go
along with the parable’s lessons, which I intend to
release as a companion guide someday. In 40 days I
wrote over 400 pages. I had spent years waiting to
share the message I was given after my accident,
more years researching how people change, and even
more years preparing mentally and financially to
write the book. I never could have imagined that all
that preparation would help the words cascade so quickly and
creatively onto the page.
No. My first book was The Student Leadership Guide, a book that helps students envision a compelling future, enlist support, embody leadership principles, empower others, evaluate their ethics and progress, and encourage those around them. I would say that Life’s Golden Ticket is my first piece of "real" writing. The Student Leadership Guide was a little academic for my tastes. It was written as part of my graduate study requirements so it was heavily researched and methodically written. Life’s Golden Ticket, on the other hand, was part of my payback to the universe, an assignment from someone or something bigger than me that required me to share a very specific message. It was also heavily researched—I spent eight years researching how people change—but as a work of fiction, it was a much more creative writing journey. I believe Life’s Golden Ticket is the book I was called and destined to write. I don’t say that with some kind of new-age flightiness, but for practical reasons. I survived a car wreck that I should not have been able to walk away from, at least according to the laws of physics. I was left alive to share a message. Life’s Golden Ticket is that message.
What's your favorite book of all time?
First choice is the Bible. I still haven’t finished it – not ever even close – but it inspires me to be a better man and causes me to dream of unpaved roads leading to somewhere magical and beyond our comprehension. The second is a small book of poetry my brother David wrote and self-published for our family. He’s a much better writer than I am. His words dance, yet they are laden with a heavy heart and a grounded spirituality. He’s made me a more thoughtful person and writer. Other favorites include The Alchemist, The Power of One, The Celestine Prophesy, The Greatest Miracle in the World, Awaken the Giant Within, Hope for the Flowers, Self Matters, The Seven Principles for Making Work, Difficult Conversations, and How Good People Make Tough Decisions.
In a sea of memories, one cannot scoop a single pearl up without losing thought on those that slip between the fingers.
If you
could live in another time and place, where and when
would that be?
You have to understand I am a person who nearly
crashed – literally – into death’s doorway. Somehow
I escaped. Somehow I am here. And I am thankful. I
would not trade this miraculous moment, nor the
next, for any moment preceding it. To do so would be
to cheat the gift we’ve all been given: t h i s v e
r y m o m e n t.
I'm editing the strategic companion book for Life's Golden Ticket as we speak. I'm also writing a business parable in the tradition of Life's Golden Ticket. Other than that, I'm consumed with speaking and conducting Life's Golden Ticket seminars.
Is there going to be a movie? Who would you want to play the main character?
I don't know if there will be a movie made from the book yet. I'm guessing that it will happen someday. I didn't write the book with any actors in mind. Now that I've been asked this question many times and have had some time to think about it, I'd likely prefer someone like Johnny Depp. And not just because he's played a pirate and there happens to be a pirate ride in Life's Golden Ticket. I think Depp is brilliant and I love his movies directed by Tim Burton. Other favorite actors include Matt Damon (loved Goodwill Hunting), Nicholas Cage (loved The Family Man), and Tom Hanks (loved everything he's been in).
What advice do you have for other writers?
You don't become a writer until you write. So, I say stop worrying about whether or not you'll get published, or if you can get an agent, or if you can afford to take time off, and just start writing at minimum one page a day. Just write. Daily. Then, when your book is done, get an agent. The rest will take care of itself if you keep believing, remain persistent, and continue to build your writing skills, speaking ability, and author platform (how many people you can reach with news about your works).
Copyright 2007 Life's Golden Ticket Enterprises.
Life's Golden Ticket is a registered trademark owned
by the author.
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