Welcome to New Material. Join Herbert Lui and Hamza Khan as they dive headfirst into the raw, messy, and electrifying creative process animating this show. From ghostwriting for tech giants and celebrity thought leaders to stepping into the spotlight as authors and speakers, the dynamic duo unpacks their journey of moving from ‘behind the scenes’ to ‘center stage.’ In this unfiltered conversation, they share candid insights into the thrill—and nerves—of launching new material into the world, the art of collaboration, and how speaking your truth can break down the thin veil between invisibility and impact. If you’ve ever felt like a ghostwriter in your own life, this episode’s for you. Step through the membrane. It’s time to materialize.
Episode 1 summary:
In our first episode, Herbert and Hamza unpack what it means to step out from behind the scenes and bring your voice front and center. As two creatives who’ve spent years ghostwriting for others, they get real about the evolution from crafting ideas in the shadows to launching this show and exploring creativity through every lens imaginable. From creative block to confidence-building, the duo break down the personal and professional shifts that take any creative process from invisible to impactful. Whether you’re starting your own project or just curious about how the creative process unfolds, this episode will give you a behind-the-scenes look at the journey.
In this episode:
- Meet The Virgos: Why your anxious hosts are doing this.
- Getting Real: Moving from ghostwriting for others to claiming your own creative space.
- The Power of Ghostwriting: Economics, ego, and stepping out of the shadows.
- The Thin Line of Confidence: How competence turns to confidence and how that pushes creative boundaries.
- Remembering The Wins: Building a list of top moments to fuel future creativity.
- The Spark of NEW MATERIAL: Why this isn’t just a show—it’s a window into how ideas are born
Transcript:
Editor’s note: This transcript was automatically generated by AI, and we have not edited below this sentence.
Herbert Lui 00:10
Okay. Here we are. Today is the It’s a big day, Hamza, isn’t it?
Hamza Khan 00:16
It is a big day. And, man, I am nervous, and I don’t get nervous before any interviews, podcasts. I get nervous before keynotes, but I am. I’m shit scared right now. I’m gonna keep it 100 with you and the community of listeners and viewers who were lovingly going to refer to as materialists until further notice, we might delete that later. But dude, I’m terrified. Why are you nervous? I’m so curious to know.
Herbert Lui 00:47
So yes, you can read it on my face. Maybe we had talked about it before. I am super nervous as well. Okay, well, we can talk. We can unpack the nerves. I think for me, we’ve, we’ve, it’s been practiced. I think it’s also like, this is the first serious one we’re doing, and so let’s really do it, though. I think we’ve got a minute now of us kind of preambleing. Let’s get into it. Let’s get into introduce ourselves for people who don’t know you. If there’s a listener here who doesn’t know you. Who are you?
Hamza Khan 01:22
Thank you. My name is Hamza Khan. The correct way to pronounce that is Hamza with a heavy H and a u, like humming a song. So Hamza and then Khan from the epiglottis. And interesting fact is that in Arabic, my Indian parents had to give me an Arabic name Hamza in Arabic loosely translates to Lion and Khan translates to Herbert. Wait for it, King.
Herbert Lui 01:47
You’re kidding. Whoa.
Hamza Khan 01:49
No, not at all. I know, and except it turns out that they named me, though, after a villain from a 70s Bollywood movie. Who the hell does that like? Who? Who looks at it, who looks at a newborn and thinks, you know what it’s giving Darth Vader, it’s giving Baron Harkonnen. I don’t know, but thank you, Mom and Dad, dude, I’m an author, educator and entrepreneur. I’m a multi hyphenate, but in my heart, first and foremost, I am a creative. I am a writer, and that is what is so beautiful about this project that we are embarking on right now. As I get to jam with my boy, I get to jam with a fellow creative, a fellow writer, a fellow page Walker and explorer. So that’s me. Man, now tell us about you
Herbert Lui 02:34
for sure. Man, oh, that lion king intro was something. My name is Herbert. My name is Herbert. Loi Hamza Khan came up with the genius idea of how to pronounce my last name correctly. It’s spelled l, u, i. So people generally say Louis or things like that, but it’s actually you pronounce it like l, u, H, dash y, that’s it. Loi, so it’s l, u, H, dash y, Loy. Amazing, amazing. So we have Khan, we have LOI. Did I say that, right? Hamza, did I get that, right?
Hamza Khan 03:12
Dude, you got it, man, the shareback connection is strong.
Herbert Lui 03:19
Oh, man. And so you are now listening to our podcast. It’s called the new material podcast, yes, and we are so excited to present this to you. This is the podcast where we are going to dive into creativity, productivity and through the lens of hip hop culture, through the lens of business, I just realized also that I, like, introduced a pod again. Before I introduce myself, I was like, here’s my name, and then let’s just introduce the pod. So it’s a little discombobulated here. That’s the pod. And to close up, my intro, I am an author of a book called Creative doing I’m the Director of Marketing at a company called Fgx right now. Helps a lot of companies with their global IT shipping. You got servers. We help you move them and and that’s those are. That’s like, the two main things I’m focused on right now. And that’s how I describe my work. Yeah, man, I love teaching. I love talking to people and helping them unblock their creativity and speaking on that topic. So that’s me. And
Hamza Khan 04:28
what’s so cool about this is how this podcast, how this show, how this project came together, was so organic, and I was reflecting on it this morning on a walk with Bailey to a local neighborhood. I was gonna say cafeteria, but a cafe, which I guess cafe, is short for cafeteria. I don’t know. I should look up the etymology of that. You’re gonna you’re gonna hear the word etymology a lot on this podcast. Herbert and I are word nerds. We like to unpack and reverse engineer the language that we use. We are firm believers that the act of writing is the act of thinking, which we’re going to talk about today. We’re. But on the way there, I was thinking, how did this come together? Like, how did you and I, with our insanely busy schedules, decide to make this a priority every week, every Saturday. For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been recording demos, which we are very excited to share someday as we part after we parse through them and remove any potential cancellable material, because there is a lot, dude, you got to hear some of the earlier episodes. In fact, I’m not going to get into it. Let’s just save that for the Patreon. Save that for like, the materialist club. But like, what you’re going to witness in real time with Herbert and I through the new material show is unfiltered access into the creative process. You’re going to watch two people who pride themselves on polished creative output come together in a essentially multi week, hopefully, you know, forever creative jam session, and build on this very sort of nervous, discompoted, to use Herbert’s word, disjointed, messy process. It’s going to be a beautiful thing. And we’re going to look back at episode one, we’re going to watch it, we’re going to listen to it, and be like, Wow, dude, we have come such a long way. I just know how you and I think I just know the type of output that you and I pride ourselves on. This is how you start. And it started with Herbert and I reconnecting because we both moved to New York, and we’re like, man, we’ve been here for a long time. We’ve never actually hung out. We’ve never talked. I mean, we talk all the time, through email, through text and like, through the through the ether of the internet, but we said, let’s just meet up. And we met up a couple of, I’m gonna say, months ago, and we were at the Soho House, and we were having the greatest conversation, like no time had elapsed since we last connected in Toronto, and there was a mutual feeling that, like, we should have recorded that, because that was a lot of fun. We covered a lot of ground, tons of belly laughs. And it’s also, like, super introspective and actionable, because we both walked away from that inspired for our respective projects. And then I think it was Herbert you said, Let’s just record that next time. Like, let’s just not make this hypothetical. And we recorded it. And I remember that you and I, we exchanged the audio file, and we said, let’s see if this passes the walking through New York test. Let’s listen to this. And it did, like I was laughing out loud, like, like a, like a, like a mad person to themselves. And here we are now, I think seven weeks later, we’ve just been recording these demos. And last week, we were like, Hey, man, I think we’re here. We’re at 70% let’s just launch. I
Herbert Lui 07:27
love that. It’s 100% true. I remember, you know, recording these has been such a delight, and I couldn’t agree more. I feel like it’s like we’re lifting the curtain a little bit and saying and taking you behind the scenes, if you’re listening to this and and you’re gonna see the universe through, well, you’re gonna see our respective universes and through our perspective. And we are gonna do our best to deliver both very educational, insightful stuff, but also in a very entertaining way. And oh gosh, we got a topic for you today. Usually. I mean, before we dive in, do you want to quickly catch us up on how you’ve been like, what you’ve been saying this week? How you Yes, you’ve been doing this
Hamza Khan 08:14
is good and again, materialist. Thank you for listening to us stumble our way through this intro, which has taken a lot more time than we would have liked to, you know, but, but again, we’re learning
Herbert Lui 08:25
we can also cut it. That’s the thing. We can edit the hell out of this episode.
Hamza Khan 08:28
This is true. Let’s, let’s, let’s consider that possibility. Okay, so how have I been? I’ve been good, man. I always find that September, because we’re recording this now in the middle of September, September is such a rush, dude, because the lull of the summer is over. Everyone’s back to work, and everyone’s feeling that creative, productive energy, and I feel like it just cascades. And I found a journal entry to myself the other day, and sometimes my journal entries are just like, one one bar, and this, this was just one line, and it said emails are other people’s to do lists. And I was like, Wow, man, like my inbox is just full of other people’s to do lists, and I trying to be a productive, respectful, peak performing person, professional, if you will. I’ve just found myself constantly engaged in helping other people with their projects. And so like, I look forward to these recordings on Saturday because it’s one of the rare opportunities where I got to work on something that is truly for myself, that is truly free. I mean, look at the way I’m dressed right now. I’m in my natural my natural habitat. I’m wearing, I’m wearing a hoodie. I’m wearing a like a Disney Nike hat, dry fit. Shout out to shout out to Walt Disney. You know, this lighting makes me look like I’m a streamer. It’s, it’s just it. This is me like and how I present myself is, is what people see online, and that’s still me, but this is, like, the most raw, authentic version of me. All of this is to say, long winded way of saying, I’ve been good, but it’s been a lot in terms of academic and professional output, and I’m. I’m white knuckling it, dude, I’m white knuckling it. Oh,
Herbert Lui 10:03
I feel that. And I think that’s very relatable for people listening to this. It’s, it’s super interesting, man, hearing you say that about emails and the inbox being other people’s to do lists or other agendas as well. It’s like, it’s challenging, because we live in a world where it’s it’s nice to be independent, in a way, and I think that’s like a thing people strive for or like even fantasize about. But the reality of things is also, we’re often very interdependent, right? You’re sending out emails, I’m sending out emails, they’re sending out emails to us, right? And we are all kind of relying on each other, because nobody knows, no one person knows how to make a pencil anymore, right? You are. It takes like 10 different people, 10 different companies, to make assemble one pencil. And if you were to make have one person assemble a pencil, it might cost 1000 bucks. Gotta fly here. They gotta do this. You know, totally hypothetical example. I did not I mean that just in generally saying, yeah, they all specialize at certain things. And so I feel that completely. And sometimes, yeah, it totally pains me to be like, Oh, I’m gonna, like, work on someone else’s thing this morning, or I’m gonna spend, like, my best hours of the day working on this. But sometimes it’s also just like, hey, you know what? This is what I got to do, because that person’s also helping me, and they got some skill that I need in order to get the thing done. And so, yeah, it just made me think about that. I definitely thought, I think, like in my earlier years, I’d be like, ah, like, I gotta do my own thing 100% first three hours of the day. And now I’m a lot looser with that now I’m like, You know what this person needs this thing done? I’m gonna go do that. I’m gonna go support them, and they’re gonna go, so support me when, when I need it. So that’s that collaboration, you know, collaboration,
Hamza Khan 11:52
collaboration, part of the aging millennial epiphany series, as we untether ourselves from like, the sort of toxic, hustle culture that was prevalent in our ascent, if you will. Oh my gosh, we’re now appreciating the need for interdependence and collaboration so much so that last night, we were celebrating Bailey’s birthday, and we went to this local Piano Bar in Hell’s Kitchen where I’m living, called so and so is inside the Romer hotel. And they had this incredible show called polite society, where they had a convener, a host, a facilitator. You know, I’m resisting calling her a Sherpa, because she was a white woman, and so we’ll unpack the Sherpa stuff in a bit. She brought together, like this very eclectic group of friends who were artists, and they brought in, like, these Broadway caliber singers. They were actually off Broadway, and it was their night off. And so it was just such a cool thing to watch them in, you know, play and have fun. And it was just such a beautiful show. But I remember there was one rendition of a song. I can’t remember the title, but the refrain was, it’s, it’s, man, it’s so good. Like something to something to the effect of like, it is a pleasure, a privilege, to be a person who needs other people. And it was a celebration of collaboration and interdependence. And I really need to find that song, and we’ll add it to the show notes, but it was about people who need people. And I’m ashamed that I don’t actually know that song, but I’m going to commit it to memory, and I’m going to memorize that song another story for another time. You’re going to learn a lot about us in this process and how I’m actually, like, thinking out loud. This is the process of generating new material, right? New
Herbert Lui 13:25
material, baby. Hums, are you a Virgo?
Hamza Khan 13:27
I’m such a Virgo, dude. What about yourself? Man, yeah, I’m
Herbert Lui 13:32
a Virgo too.
Hamza Khan 13:33
Oh man. This is gonna be a disaster. This is gonna be like, empathy overload and just second guessing and stumping our way through things. But this is all part of the creative process. But let me, let me tie that knot together, or let me just put a bow on that that song made me really appreciate, like, the fundamental idea that is at the heart of a company or a group or a collaborative effort, and what it is essentially any organization, even this collaboration on a podcast is multiple artisans coming together to produce something that they could not independently produce. Like that, to me, is the raw definition of collaboration. An artisan by themselves could produce a podcast. I could do this version of a podcast by myself, it would not be as good. Herbert, you could do this podcast by yourself. It would not be as good, but us coming together is hopefully going to double the pleasure for both of us and the materialists, and half the pain. And your pencil example is a beautiful one. Sure I could buy a Hatori Hanzo, equivalent of a pencil that is made by one artisan in Japan, but ain’t nobody want to buy $1,000 pencil. I need my pencils mass produced, and I need them fast. I need them shipped through prime and so, like I’ve already described, a supply chain that spans multiple companies, and that is the that’s the thing I think, that people are, I hope the materialists really come to appreciate when you and I, Chad, it’s that we take these creative ideas that we see through the lens of art, but we can apply. Them to business. We can apply them to economics. We can apply them to history. It’s a very multidisciplinary show, and that that is, honestly the the relationship that you and I share, which is what, what was the genesis for bringing in a microphone, two microphones and cameras in the first place, which is like, Man, this was a lot of fun. I personally want to revisit these conversations. And so this becomes like a way for us to curate and index this body of knowledge, and I have no idea where it’s gonna go. I mean, that’s a lie. I have some idea of where it’s gonna go, yeah, yeah. But the gems that will be generated through this process and the knowledge that will be crystallized is something that I’m really excited about, for
Herbert Lui 15:37
sure. Me too, man. Me too. I love that. I think I couldn’t have said it better myself. And on that note, let’s dive into it, man. I think we had some intention, for sure, with this episode. We, you know, you came up with a clever title, kids see ghost writers. And I mean, I would love to dive into actually, it’s a it’s a perfect, how would I say this? It’s a perfect first episode because it’s so related to the the concept of new material as well. Yeah. And you know, the the inspiration, a huge part of the inspiration for new material was really actually a story that you told me, and a perspective you shared about how you know you and I, we have this, this common element early in our careers, which is ghostwriting. You’ve done ghost writing for some of the world’s biggest speakers, right? I’ve done ghost writing for some of the world’s biggest tech companies and leaders there, and we are now in the stage of our career where we’re stepping into the spotlight. And we are now like the talent. And so we are, you know, we’re, you know, metaphorically, going from being ghosts to being people. And that is the word for that I Googled. This was called materialization. It’s the process of something invisible becoming material. And I would love to, you know, I would love to start there for people, if you’re listening to this and you have no idea what ghost writing is, you know, maybe you heard it through the Drake and Meek thing. You might have heard of it through LinkedIn or Business Insider saying you can make 10s of 1000s of dollars ghost writing for CEOs. Now we’re gonna, we’re gonna quickly tell you exactly what ghostwriting is. I want to kick it over to you, Hamza. I want to kick it to you first and hear your thoughts on what ghostwriting is, and maybe share some of your experiences or some famous ghostwriters you follow and and that have inspired you, yeah,
Hamza Khan 17:41
dude. And first of all, let me just say how clutch it is that you came up with new material as a title at the last minute because we were veering off irreversible path, man, what this podcast, what the show was initially going to be called, I think would have given us a very short runway. So thank you for that. I love the I love how, how flexible the concept of new material is, and it’ll it just allows for us to, again, treat this like a creative jam session. I eagerly look forward to bringing new material to you and presenting it to you and the materialists, and actually like explaining the thought process behind what it is that I’m writing, speaking about designing all of that. What is a ghost writer, though. Okay, so let’s, let’s play with this idea of the ghost, of the spirit, of the effervescent of of that that exists before the materialization a ghostwriter. And if I could just reduce this definition down to its simplest component parts, is somebody who produces content. And when I say ghost writing, let’s just use this broadly, not just for speeches and songs, but even for, you know, like, like white papers or reports. For instance, somebody who produces work for another person, another entity, but is not credited. And that is the operational difference. When they don’t receive credit for what they produce. That’s what makes them a ghostwriter and not a co writer. So for example, behind me, you can’t see it, but I’ve got two books. So Herbert is a published author. I’m a published author as well. You can see the credits in the burnout gamble and in leadership reinvented, there are editors, there are copy editors, substantial editors, there are researchers, but there’s no CO writers. I didn’t actually write the book with anybody else. I wrote 100% of the words, but I did have a research team. I did have people who fed me stats, who compiled concepts and grouped things together for me, and they all have credit. But nobody gave me a sentence, nobody gave me a series of words, nobody gave me a paragraph or anything that I passed off as my own writing. If I did that, though, they would be considered ghostwriters, because they’re immaterial. They don’t exist. You don’t know that they exist, but their spirit is animating my content. So that, to me, is what ghostwriting is. Ghostwriting is providing somebody else another end. With your words, with your content, and they pass it off as their own. And it’s different from theft, but I think it’s in the same unethical gray area theft would be, you know, plagiarism, like just stealing somebody’s ideas outright, but ghost writing is like, and I use the term involuntary or sorry, voluntary, very loosely, because I think that there’s like, another conversation about, like, the economic conditions that would produce the desperation necessary to be a ghostwriter. And we should definitely unpack that dude, given our unique intersectionality, for sure, that’s what ghostwriting is like. Like Quentin Miller, for example, ghost wrote for Drake. I think that’s well known now, and Drake is doing this mental gymnastics, saying that, no, he was a co writer, and then Quentin Miller was on damage control. But the truth is, man, like we know, that people have provided Drake with reference tracks that he then took. And it’s kind of murky if Drake just repeated the bars, bar for bar, or if he added his own spin to it, but some of the stuff that was revealed in that whole Drake Meek interaction, it’s pretty damning, if you will. Like, if you listen to some of those reference tracks, I’m like, Yeah, Drake, you didn’t really change much, dude, like you just, in fact, like, verbatim, you sang on top of this.
Herbert Lui 21:13
I think the part that really, really stood out to me was the part about economics and the part about who needs to be a ghostwriter versus who gets to be ghostwritten for who hires the ghostwriter? I think that’s really interesting, man, and I think it’s like the choice. Sometimes you got to do stuff for money. That’s work. And I think that’s where a lot of people listening will be able to relate to this. And I think that’s where both of our stories have something in common as well.
Hamza Khan 21:42
I remember, like, so in our household, there’s always, like, two shows that are going on in the background at all times. And like, from my side, it’s usually the Sopranos. I’ve got a problem. I think I’ve marathon. I think the sopranos are just like, always on in the background. And that’s weird. I got to unpack that with my therapist and my wife, Bailey, for her, it’s been over the years like the Kardashians have been going on in the background. And now it’s like transition to, like the Real Housewives series and all that. But I remember there was one moment where I would just pay attention very subconsciously to what was happening in the Kardashian world. And I remember that like Kylie and the other sister, Kendall, Kendall Jenner,
Herbert Lui 22:21
Kylie and Ken think, yeah,
Hamza Khan 22:22
are the same. Are the same people? I have no idea, dude, that’s how the
Herbert Lui 22:26
K’s and the J’s, like, and the just, it’s confused. It’s a little confusing. I’m gonna be I just
Hamza Khan 22:31
know the one that was dating Travis Scott and the one that’s now dating DEVIN BOOKER. So, like, maybe that’s where I left off. And forgive me, if I’m showing my aging millennialism over here for not being up to date with what’s I haven’t kept up with the Kardashians anyways, I remember there was like, one whole season where they were collaborating on or an episode where they were collaborating on a book, and I, like, paid attention. I was like, oh shit. Like, these chicks are about to write books. I’m like, oh man. I like, I’ve read their captions that they’re not even decent caption writers. Are they gonna write books? And then they were like, doing book tours, and they were doing book signings. And I’m like, what the like, what is going on here? Man, like, how did the Kardashians start writing books and now the book is going to become a best seller? And I started looking into it. I’m like, oh, man, there’s no way these people sat down and actually engaged in the process that Herbert and I engage in, which is sticky notes all over the wall, us pulling out our hair, getting index cards, dude, our partners
Herbert Lui 23:25
just we leave the room, and we’re like, ah, and our partners have to deal with it.
Hamza Khan 23:30
It is such a messy, ugly process to write a book. And sure enough, as I dive into it, I’m like, Oh my God, there’s a team of ghost writers that have contributed to this book that now Kylie and Kendall are going to take credit for, and that is the essence of ghost writing. I would much rather they did what 50 cent did, like 50 cents new book. He explicitly says, like, I have written or contributed to some of this, but there’s another person who is a co writer here. That’s the way you go about it. And change the classification. And coming back to the Drake example, I wish Drake just came out and said, I am a band. I am part of a group called Drake. And part of this band includes people like Quentin Miller. But the mistake that I think Drake made, and I’m saying this as a die hard Drake fan, a groupie like ovo, till the day I D, i e, I recognize fully that The Zeitgeist has moved on. I’m still hanging on to that life raft. Wow.
Herbert Lui 24:21
You can say this way out of Toronto. You can’t take Toronto out of the boy. You know, there was
Hamza Khan 24:26
a moment a couple of weeks ago where we were at a party. It was me, Bailey and two other friends, and in the middle of this party, like we’re jamming on this rooftop, and everything’s everything’s dope, and they start playing. They not like us, dude, my demeanor change. I stood still, and I saw Bailey moving a little bit. I grab Bailey. I’m like, No, don’t you move. Stand in solidarity. We refuse to dance to this, wow, this heresy over here, right? Wow, that’s But anyways, the point that I wanted to make was, like, you know, someone like a nos, someone like a Kendrick, someone like a J they equate being an MC, being a. Rapper with writing your own material and many of their songs, many of their messages, speak to that Pusha T is another perfect example of that. Pusha T says, you know, to be a rapper, you have to write your own stuff. And I think the mistake that Drake made was positioning himself and trying to assert himself as a rapper, as an emcee, while also having ghost writers. That being said, though, you know, hip hop is in shambles right now because the rules are changing and it’s being disclosed more and more that all of your favorite MCs perhaps, have had ghostwriters. And so I think this distinction is very essential. What separates a co writer from a ghostwriter from a collaborator? I think we have to be very specific here. But I think what Herbert and I are talking about, what you and I are talking about, dude, is we have been in the position where we have traded our words for money, and people have taken credit for our words, and they’re out there in the world, and we’ve signed these very binding NDAs that will not allow us to say for whom we’ve written for, for which companies and which entities and which speakers and which authors we have written for, but the economics have resulted in downward pressure that led us to earlier in our career. You know, essentially sell our souls. That’s we’re part of it. I haven’t sold it fully, but I’ve definitely sold part of it. Well,
Herbert Lui 26:18
I feel like I 100% agree. I think any artist who takes their work seriously also knows that it’s pretty much impossible to do your work without leaving a bit of yourself in it. And that’s what resonates with me. You kind of hit it on the nose there you do sell your soul a little bit because, you know, any, anyone can put the words together. Everyone types emails, whatever, right? But in order to make something good, in order to make something worth, somebody paying you for and buying from you and believing hey, these ideas, I trust Hamza. I trust Herbert to make me look good and to make me look smart, you we got to give a bit of ourselves over to the work that enables them to do that. I feel like that’s true in branding in general, too, by the way. I think that’s why fashion creative directors all have their names associated with the houses, right? They put they put a lot of themselves into the work, into the brand, into the clothing, into the ideas. And that’s very much the case with ghost writing as well. I’ll say that my experiences with ghost writing, you know, also came from an economic need. It was like, hey, like, this is a this is a good business opportunity for me. I think the final, the first iterations of ghost writing were just very much like you know me at my first job at a mobile app studio, and I was on the marketing team. I remember I was actually started when I was a a senior at Western and I would take a two and a half hour train ride on Friday mornings, I’d wake up at like 5am I would get into Toronto at like 9am or 830 I would and then I would just be talking to people all day, recording the notes from the conversation and then turning them into blog posts and some I remember one time I got in trouble when, like, a VP was reviewing, like another VPS work, and I was the one that got in trouble because they’re like, we can’t talk about it like this. And I was like, whoa. Like, I got the notes like, this is, this is between you guys. And so that’s what happened. But it’s fun. You know, I’m deviating a little bit. I say that all just to say that my experience with ghost writing is a little more on the technical side as a writer, because I still had, you know, my process for that just involved other people’s ideas. It involved interviewing people. It involved taking their ideas. And I think that there’s, there’s a little bit less of like. It wasn’t as painful for me to do that. I felt still very much like a craftsperson, but it’s like, you’re working with other people’s ideas. But you know, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta punch ’em up a little bit. You gotta make ’em stronger. You gotta cut this out. You gotta keep that in, right like, and then you gotta show other people, and then they’re gonna criticize it and you gotta, like, refine it and stuff, right? And you know, that was very much, even towards the end of my ghost writing, that was still very much the process, especially as I started going to more technical into the more technical aspect, working with companies on their employer branding, it was still very much me talking to software engineers or CTOs or VPs of engineering and talking about to them about things that I had no idea about as well. So it turned out to be a really nice learning process for me. However, it is still very much it involved me or whoever I hired to eventually hired to write it. It very much involves still giving up a piece of ourselves in order to make something really good that the engineer it would have taken them, like six months to write what we could write in like two weeks. Which
Hamza Khan 30:12
is, which is the real power of the creative and collaborative process. And I would argue that they’re one in the same because, you know, the process involves a production of something, and if anything is being produced, there is an element of creativity that goes into it, even in industries that you typically wouldn’t associate with creativity, like, let’s just take accounting, for example. So let me look at my own accountants. I My accountants are a company called Martin Kaplan. Shout out to Brian, shout out to Marty. Right. They have a junior accountant who works on some of my files. Her name is Poonam, and so what Poonam does is she works on my files, and then she gives them to Brian, and then Brian does his work, signs off on it, it goes to Marty. Marty does the final approval on it, and then I get an invoice. I get a report. I get all of my files from Martin Kaplan. But throughout the entire process, I know that there are multiple people involved, and they all get credit. They’re all on the email chains, they’re all on the website, so on and so forth. What this process could look like is if there was an accountant. Let’s just assume I was doing work with only Marty, and my understanding was that Marty was doing 100% of the work, but on the low he was subcontracting without telling me, and passing off Brian and Mark and Putnam’s work as his own. When it becomes ghostwriting is when there is an intent to deceive the consumer of the work into believing that you had no help. That’s what I think, makes it ghostwriting right? You have to pass it off as yours. You have to pass it off as your own. So let’s use the same cast of characters. If there was an accounting conference and Marty went up and delivered a rousing keynote address, the understanding is to the audience. The implicit understanding is that these are Marty’s ideas, but if 100% or even, like even 10% of it was written by Poonam, and Poonam never got any credit for it, technically, Marty used a ghostwriter, for sure, unless, though, what would change that is if he went on stage and he said, I just want to thank the people who helped me put this together for you. Here they are in the audience. Here they are on the slide, so on and so forth. That’s when they become collaborators, co creators, co writers, whatever the case may be. But am I? Am I? Am I picking nits here? Like, am I getting too technical? But you tell me, Herbert, like, what? What is that? What is the line between a collaborator, a co creator, and a ghost writer?
Herbert Lui 32:30
I think that’s a good delineation to make. Man, I feel like it’s, if people don’t know you were there, you’re a ghost, right? Like, that’s, that’s kind of the sense, maybe, okay, it’s like, well, we live in this imagined reality where, yes, like, you could technically just pass the work off as your own. So I do like what you did there, which is basically, hey, do you have to pretend that nobody else worked on this thing, and are you properly giving credit to the people who did there’s, by the way, we use the word nefarious. I don’t know if that’s always the case. Sure. I think there’s a lot of reasons business and otherwise that you would want to pass the work off as your own. For example, in theory, if the ideas were 100% yours, and you kind of just worked with a scribe right to turn this into something, and then an editor, you know, do you really need to throw it out there that this person edited your thing? And then, you know, like, there’s a question? I would say, yes. I would say, what’s the harm? But I would also say someone might look at that and start asking questions, right? And they can also poach your editor. That’s the other thing, right, that the talent, I think, I think that’s always the case with creating whenever there’s a situation where someone is creating opacity, they’re they’re hiding something, and they’re hiding something for a reason. They’re protecting the talent so that the talent doesn’t get poached. Maybe they’re also protecting their bottom line so the talent doesn’t get, you know, a better offer, right? There’s a lot of these things. And they’re also protecting their own reputation by trying to say, Hey, I’m smart, like I, you know, I’m an, I’m a leading thinker, and it’s just me, and trust me, right? And that’s, that’s kind of the thing that maybe it’s not nefarious, but your it’s in your business interest, and it’s in your personal interest, maybe your ego as well, a little bit, let’s be honest, to hide that, and it’s very frustrating for the person working on it, dude, it
Hamza Khan 34:37
is so frustrating. And this is why I’m affording myself a lot of grace here, because this is episode number one, and I’m fully aware, as I’m speaking to you, as we’re thinking about this like this is not our best work, not even close to our best work, dude, we’re just it’s a free, associative, explorative process. But I would challenge anybody who’s familiar. With Herbert’s writing and my writing to tell us that the same brains that are orating to you right now are not the same ones that wrote the words and are writing the words that you have come to appreciate. It’s the same thing. There’s there’s actually not a lot of difference in terms of, like, the complexity of the sentence structure, the sort of deviation from the main point the sub points, like the logic, is still very much present. You can it’s not hard to make the connection between how it is that we’re speaking and how it is that we’re writing. And I think that our efficacy as speakers is largely due to our efficacy and tenacity as writers. And that’s not what I saw with Kylie and Kendall. I mean, if you’ve watched any episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, you know that, however it is, that their book is structured, how prosaic it is is not a reflection of who they actually are. And I am a big believer that the process of writing is the process of thinking. And so to your point, about like, the opacity somebody who’s trying to create the illusion that they’re a lot smarter than they are, and who’s trying to, you know, pass off, pass off the work of somebody else on behalf of a company. That’s where it gets murky for me. At the same time, though, I will say, like having just watched the fall guy, which is a fantastic movie, man, I really appreciated that movie with Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling. Oh,
Herbert Lui 36:21
yes. Oh, I just watched, I watched that. Yes. Okay,
Hamza Khan 36:25
perfect example, right? So, like, super meta movie, it’s just breaking the fourth wall consistently, and it’s all about, you know, the people who are behind the scenes, the stunt people. And, like, a big, a big subplot of this is that they digitize Ryan Gosling, and then, like Aaron Taylor Johnson’s character, takes credit for his work, right in the context of the movie, that’s acknowledged, like everybody knows that this is happening, it’s reflected in the credits, where I would feel deceived as a viewer of watching any movie is if, like I was watching a body double, but we just superimposed, you know, Jason Momoa has faced the entire time, and the movie said starring Jason Momoa, I would have problem with that, because it’s like it wasn’t actually starring him, his likeness, his face, is superimposed on this digital body. That, to me, is the equivalent of like filmmaking, ghost writing, ghost filming, or ghost acting, whatever the case may be. And it gets even murkier when we’re talking about, like, just how much AI is now involved in the synthesizing of ideas. I mean, dude, straight up, straight up. I’m just gonna say this out there, chat GPT is a co writer, like 100% chat GPT, and I go back and forth on a daily basis. I’m always running things by chat GPT. I’m like, Hey, read this. Help me edit this for grammar, syntax and spelling. You know, how would you improve this? You know, these are my my sort of brand values. This is my voice. It’s eloquent, it’s elaborate, so on and so forth. Is this falling short of me? And it’s, you know, it’s like a nice sparring partner. But do I acknowledge chat GPT in my writing? Do I give it co writing credits? Do I add it to my LinkedIn posts? It’s all kind of murky for me, dude, but I like that where we’re arriving is, if there is some intent to deceive, and that has been just bringing it back to our story. That has definitely been a part of my narrative, and it’s been a part of your narrative. I have contributed to entities and to people who passed off my work as their own, and it was a knowing relationship, like I knew they were doing it, and I reluctantly gave them permission to do it. So that made me a ghostwriter, for
Herbert Lui 38:28
sure. So let’s get into it. Okay, that made you a ghostwriter. Why did you what what made you want to ghostwrite, or what made you need to ghostwrite? Ooh, man, I’m
Hamza Khan 38:43
going to keep my answers succinct here. Number one, economics, I needed the money.
Herbert Lui 38:48
It’s good money. It’s good money, very
Hamza Khan 38:50
good money. It’s very good money. If, if you get to a point where you are reliable and you have consistent work, you could be doing this for the rest of your life. People are making ridiculous amounts of money ghost writing right now. And it’s not just writing for other, you know, authors. It’s not just writing for other speechwriters. It’s just, uh, you know, it’s essentially copywriting without credit. So number one was economics. Number two, closely related, was, I didn’t feel like I had any business being the face, being the brand, being the artist. I lacked the confidence. I didn’t think, right, dude, I didn’t, I didn’t. I
Herbert Lui 39:31
keep going. I
Hamza Khan 39:32
had the star power, man. I spent most of my career behind a computer helping other people. Complete nerd, complete square. Oh, it’s still surreal to me that I get to enjoy the career that I have right now. Every time I step up on stage, there’s always a moment of disassociation where I’m like, oh, whoa. Okay, hold on buddy. Like, switch gears here. Like you. You have an obligation now to dazzle, to perform, to enthrall. But I didn’t believe I had that in me. I didn’t believe. I was destined for my thought that my career, up until maybe seven years ago, was being behind the scenes, so economics, and closely related to that was a lack of confidence. What was it for you? What compelled you to be a ghostwriter?
Herbert Lui 40:13
Oh my gosh. Hold on before I get into that, that sorry was huge. That was so good. I like, I didn’t yell or anything. I was like, you know, if we released this video of me on my MacBook Air that’s super grainy, you will see I had a physical response to that. That was so dude insightful and on the nose, because it was very much the case where a person who’s ghostwriting a they might not like the attention, so okay, that’s totally fine, right? If you don’t want to put your name on something, but you might not. You might just not think you’re worthy of being more than a ghostwriter, and worthy of being in front of the scene, right? Worthy of stepping up. You might not think you can handle the pressure. There’s all sorts of reasons and and I think that that resonated with me so much. And I think if you know, if you’re listening, I’m not talking to you the listener. You know, if you’re listening to me, you’re listening to Hamza talk about ghost writing and stepping up and really like feeling like you deserve it, like you do. You know, if you’ve been ghost writing for people, and you’re like, I want out of this. I really think I’m ready to to be the client. I’m ready to write for myself. I’m ready to put my own name on it. 100% you should do it. You should do it in as small a way as you can. If you just have, you know, five minutes a day to get started. Do it, because it’s totally you deserve it. And when you start doing it, then you also start realizing that you do deserve it, and you’re capable of it, and you very much can. And so to get into my answer, kind of, you know, I very much related to the the first part the economics was very much, you know, oh, I came out of school and I couldn’t believe how much money there was in ghost writing and how clear the business need was as well. I thought it was a really good, great way for me to meet new people, for me to also learn about the industry of technology. I pretty much only ghost wrote for for tech entrepreneurs or leaders or managers or things like that. So it’s, it was a way for me to add value to an industry that I was still very much learning how to navigate and, like, very modestly, trying to, you know, earn my stripes, right? I was like, Hey, this is all new to me. I’m still super young. I have this skill that’s modestly seems to be that modestly seems to be valuable to a marketing org or a communications org. Let’s, let’s try to, let’s try to learn tech, and let’s try to build a business off of this thing. And let’s try to, let’s try to make some money, right? It’s good business. And so that was very much what drew me into ghost writing. I think I basically used ghost writing to cross subsidize all of my non ghostwriting, like all of the writing for me, because writing as a journalist or as a blogger, or anything like that. Like I worked as a staff writer at Lifehacker in the mid 2010s just before the whole Gawker lawsuit happened. Wow. And man. The It was insane trying to make it as a ghost as a regular non ghost writer at the time, I had my name on all the articles, but the, you know, I had to write like, three posts a day, and then I had to write like, two longer, 1000 word posts every week, thumbs up. I did not want my name on those articles. This is the funny aspect of of writing. I, like, you know, life hacker wrote about every single idea under the moon already and and so all of my pitches were getting rejected. Oh, we already covered a related thing, and so all of these obscure ideas that I had to pitch were like the ones I got accepted. I’ve written about, you know, about things that I just don’t want to be it’s not it’s nothing unscrupulous. It’s just like I would write my biggest banger for life hacker was a post about how to remove your earwax. And to this day, don’t use Q tips. By the way, do not use Q tips. Mineral oil. I interviewed a doctor. They’re like, mineral oil and and to this day, that’s like, my biggest banger post for life. Hacker, like, my editors couldn’t believe it. They’re like, Oh my gosh. And I was like, Oh my gosh. Am I gonna die that earwax guy, like, I can’t this. Can’t be this. Can’t be it.
Hamza Khan 44:39
Are you credited for this post? By the way, I am credited for unfortunately. Okay, so wait, so you didn’t ghost, you didn’t ghost write this like, No, but I’m trying to
Herbert Lui 44:47
I was a writer there, but I think my point of I was trying to emphasize, and I got lost along the way, was the money was horrible, and the output you needed to do was so high. And so I. Like, Wait, ghost writing, you can do one article and make maybe, like, a whole week’s worth of money, like, no exaggeration, if you worked in media. And so to me, I was like, this is a no brainer. I should definitely, you know, I studied business, but it doesn’t take a business degree to know, hey, this is, like, a much more lucrative opportunity. And, and so, yeah, man, it was, it was, that was why and how I, I stayed in ghost writing for a long time as well. And why, some, if you’re listening to this, it’s actually a reason, I think that you might want to consider, you might want, you might find yourself in a position where you want to consider it, because it’s a really good business opportunity, but it’s just emotionally challenging.
Hamza Khan 45:45
It there’s definitely the emotions become more challenging as you start to realize that, as you start to step into your power, I should say yeah, because there is something liberating, and you just remind me of another reason why I stayed in ghostwriting for as long as I did. Once you develop competency in ghostwriting, you find that it’s actually quite easy and it’s liberating too. Like, I have no problem. I can like, dude, if I had to ghost write for you, my productivity would be insane. I’d be able to generate posts all day, every day, like, while I’m while I’m cooking, I could be just, like, literally cooking, and then, like, also just be dictating some words for you, because the stakes aren’t high. I’m not attaching it to my name, and I know that my standards, I mean, you’re a bad example. Because, dude, if I had to ghost write for you, I would actually, like, take that super seriously. But if I had to ghost write for like, let me just pick some some let’s pick Mayor Eric Adams, right. You know, no disrespect to Mayor Eric Adams, but I don’t think the, I don’t think the New Yorkers are expecting, you know, author level eloquence from him. So I would have no problem writing scripts for Mayor Eric Adams, although an argument should be made that they should hire us. Eric Adams office should hire us to write for him, because some of his stuff is just like, man, you could really benefit from some writing it, for sure. But the point is, like, the stakes are a lot lower, but now when it comes to writing my own stuff, man, I I have been so slow to get this next two book projects off the ground, because I will write a draft and I’ll be like, I’m writing, I’m like, writing two books simultaneously, and I’m just like, oh, man, this is not good. And so, like, You’ve encouraged me to think about this. Like, if I had to ghost write for Hamza Khan, how would I do that? I love that. Maybe that might be an easier way for me to start just flowing a little bit, you know, more fluidly with with the writing process. But, yeah, like, Why? Why is it so easy for me to ghost write for somebody else, but so hard for me to write for myself? It’s just because there’s the stakes are higher. I have to present these ideas as my own, and I have to stand on them. I have to live, you know, I have to live with them. And so, you know, I don’t know where I’m going with this, but, but thank you for reminding me that, like, in addition to the economics and the insecurity. There’s also this element of ease that comes into ghost writing. It can be easy, it can be very lucrative, but you can get trapped in that. Because if you’re thinking about ghost writing using the definition that we’ve advanced in this show, it is subcontracting into obscurity. Because the obscurity is the big part of this. You are relegated to a non credited person. You are a ghost. You are a non entity. You don’t exist. But when you step into your power, once you, once you start to once you start to write, and you you’re like, Hey, man, I’m good at this. And you start to become aware that if you can write, you can also speak. If you can write, you can also teach. If you can write, you can also build. I mean, writing is the first step towards creation. It is, it is a spontaneous act. Putting something out of your brain onto paper or onto a blank page is a spiritual act. I don’t care what anyone says. I’m telling you as a writer, anytime I write anything, it is a spiritual act, because I’m generating something material from an immaterial plane. I’m pulling something from the friggin ether. I was going to drop an F bomb, and I’m like, let’s not do that for our first not an episode. One, not an episode one, man, we got to get through the apple gatekeepers, right? But that’s, that’s what I mean. Like, anytime you write Herbert, it, it, the word did not exist until you wrote it. It’s Immaculate Conception. And so once you become aware of your power as a writer, then you are now flirting with the idea constantly that maybe you should be the one presenting the ideas and not the person that you’re ghostwriting for.
Herbert Lui 49:36
Dude, 100% man. And when you were talking just now, it reminded this phrase came to mind when you’re ghost writing. You’re not getting paid to write. You’re getting paid to be a ghost. You know what I’m saying? You’re really it hurt because you’re getting paid the premium is not because you’re a great writer. The premium is. Is you’re getting paid to not get recognized for your writing. You’re getting paid for somebody else to reckon to get recognized. I actually do like that. Dot that switch just totally flipped for me when you were talking about that. I don’t know why, but like, like, this is the collaborative process, by the way. Holy mackerel. Like, I’m like that. I think that, for me was the really big insight that I got from that. And if you’re so here’s the thing, and I think here’s how you can tell if ghost writing is a good like permanent career fit for you, or if it’s just a temporary thing, if you are okay with with loving writing and with not getting recognized like you don’t like the attention, you don’t want the accountability, you don’t want the heat. This is a great role for you. If you do want to get recognized for your work and you want to take credit for it, I think that ghost writing is a temporary thing for you, and you got to be willing to step up into the next stage of the career, which is becoming the talent, becoming the person who is being ghost written for, and you are ghostwriting for yourself, or maybe eventually you hire your own ghost writers. So, yeah, man, that was that really, like clicked for me just now.
Hamza Khan 51:18
Yeah, man, dude, when you, when you said that, like you’re not you’re not getting paid, you’re getting paid a premium, not for your words, but to remain a ghost that actually like it. I my stomach went into knots because I’m like, Ah, dude, I I made some really at the time, they were very smart decisions. But in hindsight, I’m like, I’m disappointed in myself for for accepting that deal. Like I’m actually disappointed that a younger, more vulnerable and insecure version of Hamza said yes to ghost writing for people that are out there right now, at the time of this recording, passing off my ideas as their own. And it hurts me every time I see it. Oh, the pain has diminished to the point where it doesn’t register nearly as sharply as it did, but the pain is still there. Like, I’m like, there’s people out there right now who they don’t I think just to say that they have the career that I want is not true, because I have the career that I want right now, but they have certain angles on ideas that are so uniquely mine. And what did I do that for? I did that for $6,000 $6,000 like it wasn’t worth it, man, because they have been able to flip that $6,000 exchange into millions. I’m not even kidding. Millions of dollars have been generated from that one idea that was purchased at a fire sale for 6000 but now I’m I’m thinking out loud, sorry, dude, it’s like, yeah, is it? There’s a way to integrate this, right? So a good example is on Season One of ideas into action, which, by the way, you were part of season one, and season two, which is crazy, and season three, you’re gonna, oh, I would love to let me send the age signal. It’s gonna be a studio and everything. We’re going back to basics. But yeah, one of the guests that I had was Pollyanna Reed, and Pollyanna Reid’s identity. And shout out to Pollyanna. She acknowledges upfront part of her branding, her presentation to the world is that she is a ghostwriter to executives. She writes books and press releases and speeches for executives, and she’ll never tell you who they are, but the fact that, like she can walk both worlds, she’s a personality in and of herself. She is the talent by day and a ghostwriter by night. And that’s really interesting, because I have it in me, even though I’m feeling this visceral reaction, I have it in me to still shut down the operation of Hamza and go back into that world, if need be. I don’t want to go back into that world, but I know I have that hip pocket skill if, God forbid, for whatever reason, I decide I don’t want to be talent anymore. I don’t want to write my own books, I don’t want to speak I don’t want to be on shows and whatnot. I just want to be obscure, live on a little vineyard in Italy and just go strike for the rest of my life. I think I could do it. I really think I have that in me. I would have to flick a lot of switches. I would have to tell myself a lot of different things in order to accept that, but I know I have the ability to do it, and I would be really good at it too.
Herbert Lui 54:09
Yeah, so would you do I think so. Man, I wonder if one way to think about that too, you said you’ve ghost room for people. They’ve turned those ideas into millions. And to me, I wonder if that’s helped, actually bolster your confidence a lot, because, you know, hey, I was a source for this idea. So now it’s just a matter of like, I know my ideas are good, I just need to do the business side of things, and I need to present them in a way that can, that I can flip this into the million dollar opportunity. And you would not have known that without ghostwriting, right? I think that there would always kind of be a bit of a mystery there, but you have evidence now that’s like, Hey, this is I’m capable of something like this. If I did this for them, I got another like, you know. Know, three, 510, years experience. There’s no way these ideas are getting worse. They’re getting better. So you can totally do it,
Hamza Khan 55:06
dude. And speaking of history, like there’s mystery in the history, the weekend will never come out and say it, but he alludes to it all the time that he ghost wrote for Drake, for sure, magic, Jordan will never admit it, but they I think it’s pretty clear. Like you listen to magic Jordan stuff, and if you understand you know lyrics, if you understand sentence structure, if you understand writing, the way that Herbert and I understand it, it’s pretty clear. Like, if you a gun to my head has has magic Jordan, ghost written for Drake, has the weekend ghost written for Drake, gun to my head, yes. 100% gonna say yes, right. 100% and they arrived at, and let’s not use magic Jordan, because they’re still signed to ovo the weekend, arrived at that conclusion. He’s like, Hey, man, like this guy, this guy has my career. I can be this person. If the only thing that’s separating us is the X Factor. It’s, you know, the confidence to stand on stage. I should do this. I should do this myself. And so maybe Quentin Miller arrived at that conclusion when they were working on, if you’re reading this, it’s too late, because I think, like, six of the best tracks on that album were apparently ghostwritten, and they’re changing, you know, they’re retconning that whole, that whole production process, to say he was a co writer. But, like, it’s pretty evident that he was a ghostwriter there, especially when you listen to the sample tracks. What tracks, why didn’t Quentin Miller step up and say, in the same way that the weekend did, that I can be this person? Because if you like this album for the lyrics, if you like this album for the raw aggression that Drake is communicating, but are clearly words that I have written, why can’t I pass them off as my own? And I think that’s the calculus that every ghostwriter has to make. That’s the the precipice that you arrive at as a ghostwriter. To your point Herbert, is if some if I can do this, and all the other person is doing is just reciting and presenting my words, that’s a small chasm to cross. Honestly, I’m telling you, as somebody who has made that transition from writing into speaking, the transition was as simple as this, speak, bang. That’s literally the only difference between a ghostwriter and a presenter. Of the idea is speak, that’s it, right? That’s all you have to do. All you literally have to do as a ghostwriter is just speak and now say you’re not a ghostwriter anymore.
Herbert Lui 57:21
Hold on a sec. Hold on a sec. That’s super interesting. I think that, you know, this is, I would love to take the discussion there. I mean, in this, in this segment. And by the way, this podcast did have segments. In case you’re listening to this, you’re like, Whoa. Where’s this going? We didn’t, we didn’t announce it, but we have segments, and I think in this segment, you know, you’re talking about speaking, and you’re talking about a bit about taking risk on too, right? Because, because you’re not the Ghoster anymore, you’re like the person you know you you don’t get paid to write this stuff. You get paid for selling it, right? So, and if you don’t sell, you don’t make money. So even if you wrote something great, if you can’t sell it, it’s not working. So you’re talking about, look, the simple switch is this, which is, speak, I would love to get a little more fidelity or color into what that journey looks like for you. Why don’t you talk to someone who’s listening to this? They’re like, look, I’m considering ghost writing, but I would love to skip that. And I would love to skip that. And I would just love to go straight into speaking, because I know you, and I’ve I’m, like, familiar with the journey and this, the strategic shift is simple, which is speak, but the tactical shift, there’s a lot of tactical shifts you had to make, and a lot of you know, a lot of work you put in. I don’t want the listener, if you’re listening this, I don’t want you to think that Hamza, just like just like, magically appeared from the ether, like, as this dazzling speaker you see before you’re doing keynotes to the fortune five hundreds and this tailored suits. You know, this guy really put in the work. You know what I’m saying. So Hamza, why don’t you, you know? Why don’t you let let the listener know, like, hey, like, you know what was, what did that journey look like when you’re like, okay, cool. I’m gonna transition out of ghost writing into speaking, and then I can do the same after as well. Yeah,
Hamza Khan 59:09
dude. And thank you for that, man. Like, it’ll come as no surprise to people who know us, like, I’m a huge fan of Herbert ley like, and I remain that I tell Billy all the time, like, You’re my favorite writer, dude. And so like to get that compliment from you is is truly special. I aspire to your level of synthesizing of complex ideas and the presentation of ideas with such conciseness and brevity, man, it’s, it’s, it’s truly a gift that you have. And so thank you for that, it’s real honor. I wanted to start this off by just like flexing a little bit like, dude,
Herbert Lui 59:48
let’s not get flex. Man, humble now, dude,
Hamza Khan 59:52
the pen game is strong. Like, please don’t get twisted, man. Like, all of this could disappear tomorrow. I could lose any. Everything, as a speaker, as an entrepreneur, as an educator, but the thing that you cannot take away from me is that when I commit pen to paper, I’m nice, and I know I’m nice, like, Dude, I can put together a phenomenal sentence. And so here’s the thing, if I had to reverse engineer that it started off by just loving the craft of writing and then developing that. Like I started off as a writer because I was a good writer. I was a good thinker because I was a good thinker. I was a good creator, a good doer. And so like, imagine that sort of like foundation being built, starting with starting with writing, then going into thinking, then going into creating. So write, think, create. And I began my career as a creator, as a creative working behind the scenes, managing creative teams, managing creative projects, producing things for other people, designs, videos, websites, so on and so forth. Eventually, I became the orchestrator of that. I started to pull together all of these different creative outputs and lead people and lead organizations to do this en masse. What that then resulted in is competence, and with enough competence, you generate confidence. So here’s the thing, dude, let ’em cook. I have competence because I am a builder. I’m a creator. I do things myself. And so the competence lends itself to confidence. And what the spark was that led to speaking was other people recognizing that there was competence and wanting to know how I did something. Thus begins the journey that brought Herbert and I into each other’s orbit. We are actionable writers. We are able to synthesize insights into actions and teach people how to do things. You literally taught people the best way to get rid of earwax. I mean, like, that’s that dude, you know what I mean. So we never bring up the earwax ever again. It is that it is now part of the materialist universe I dropped
Herbert Lui 1:01:57
in the first episode. It’s my old fault. Really listen, man, look, the book’s
Hamza Khan 1:02:01
right behind me. Man, Musashi, right? If you know the way broadly, you will see it in all things, how you do one thing is how you do all things. I imagine that if I were to look at that post that you wrote, which I’m gonna find right after this, I will be able to reverse engineer the exact same structure that’s in creative doing. Like, I’m sure it’s the same thing over and over again. But sorry, let me just share the process real quick. I went from being asked, How did I do something, to then teaching people how to do that thing. But because I had such deep confidence, I could teach people how to do it in the most granular way, and I think that is what they came to appreciate. And it started off by me doing a two minute presentation where I just, like, held a piece of paper in front of my face that I had written instructions on, and I read that to people just like that. I’m like, so if you want to create a good campaign on Twitter, here are the steps you should take. That’s how my career in speaking started. And then my boss was like, hey, the next time you do this, no paper. Okay, the next time you do this, instead of two minutes, four minutes, next time you do this, instead of five people in a room, there’s going to be an entire department of 10 people. There has just been such a gradual build up to the speaking career that I enjoy today. And I’m so glad you said that, because I’m about to embark on this crazy speaking schedule over the next couple of months, and I’m overwhelmed, because some of these stages are huge, some of these clients, I can’t even believe that I have them, and I am now getting caught up in my own anxieties and insecurities and fears about this process. But thank you for this conversation. It’s coming at the perfect time where I have to remember that no matter what, the thing that people can’t take away from me is that I actually know what I’m talking about. I’m not passing off other people’s ideas as my own. These are my ideas. I wrote them and I wrote them based on experiences that I have, and so this is just such a natural extension of this journey. Man, I thank you for giving me a chance to really, you know, make those connections. I love
Herbert Lui 1:04:00
that. Man, I
Hamza Khan 1:04:00
materialized. Dude, I materialized. The ghost just showed up. Man, that’s so cool. You know what? F**k it. I’m just dropping an F bomb over there. Thank you. Man, like this, this, this, this episode. Wow, I have full, full body shivers here. That’s how you know that this is slapping right now.
Herbert Lui 1:04:19
Yeah, it’s a good episode.
Hamza Khan 1:04:22
It’s happening for me in real time. So like materialist, just listen for a second before recording this, I was extremely scared of the week that I have ahead of me where it’s like three massive keynotes and honest, honest to God, right before logging on here, I was like, I don’t know if I’m if I deserve this career. I don’t know if I’m worthy of being in front of these audiences. Why would they pick me? One of these clients is one of the big five banks in Canada. What could I possibly teach a bunch of leaders? But dude, thank you. This this creative jam session over here, I’m telling you, in real time, reminded me that I. When I go up there and when I’m speaking to them, I’m not passing off other people’s ideas. I’m passing off my own ideas, and I know they work. I just have to travel down that path and just remind myself that, like, Dude, you built this, you did this, you worked with other people, you collaborated, but ultimately, you know how to do this. Like if somebody sat you down and quizzed you on the logic and the efficacy of your ideas, you’d be able to reverse and engineer it with precision back down to their component parts. Damn Herbert. Man, in addition to, in addition to ghostwriting, consider, consider executive coaching.
Herbert Lui 1:05:40
I just might, man. I mean, I love it. I think that, like, thank you. I appreciate, I appreciate all that. I think I’m so glad to hear it. First of all, it’s very related. I’ll take a side note real quick, which is one of these exercises I’m going to put into my next book. And I researched it and found it from a book called The Confident mind. So no no ghosting here, no deception, okay, the confident mind. But the idea is, take an inventory of your top 10 memories in a certain in a specific kind of domain. So in this case, if you’re like feeling nervous before the speaking, you just come up with your top 10 speeches of all time, which you have a great body of work to draw from, right? So there’s no and there’s no problem in drawing from that, and now you have this list where every time you experience the doubt, you can quickly pull the list down and be, oh, yeah, like, I did this stuff before, and it’s just so easy to forget. You know, for me, it could be if I’m applying to marketing jobs or if I’m gonna start a new business, like, there’s, there’s different things I would put on each of these lists. But the ultimate thing I think to remember is, hey, you’ve done something like this before. And by the way, even if it’s not, even if it’s something new, even if, let’s say I’m building an app or something, I would be like, Well, I’ve done 10 things that were like this before. So I can, here’s how I can transfer those skills and memories and experiences into this new thing. And that’s definitely going into the new book that I’m writing. But for me, I think that’s really, it’s like a really powerful thing that you can call upon. It’s like a nice artifact that, you know, in case we don’t get to jam, which we will, but, you know, you can just quickly pull it out of your pocket and go, Oh yeah, okay, cool. I’m good, you know, like I forgot who I was for a second, and now I remember who I am.
Hamza Khan 1:07:19
This is such a timely reminder for me, because there’s a body of work. And the whole thing about the body of work, to use a term that you used just a couple moments ago, it’s a series of artifacts. That’s what it is. These things exist. They’re real. They have materialized. They have come from the ether, and they now exist in a way that is accessible. And for creatives who might not have their work, living on a Spotify, for instance, or living on a website, I think this exercise that you just described that’s going to make its way into your new book, Herbert, is a very effective one. It’s to just write down 25 other instances of a thing, and why 25 that’s a very, very specific number. I’m very curious to know based on the book that you read in your own thinking. Why? Why that many like? Why not 2426
Herbert Lui 1:08:09
Yeah, the number was 1025. Is good too, if you got, if you got a big body, but I think 10 is perfect. Could even be less, could be five, could be three. I don’t think the magic is in the number, but I do think the magic is in there’s this saying in creative work that I don’t really like, but I kind of accepted before, which is, you’re only as good as your last piece of work, yeah. So maybe in sales, it’s like you’re only as good as your last sale, or, you know, in writing, you’re only as good as your last article or your last campaign or whatever, right? And I don’t believe that anymore. I just think that nice. So I think that more and more, you’re way bigger than that. First of all, you’re not you’re not even you and your work are two different things. First of all, right, every person in their work are two different things. And second of all, we’re all constantly showing up, and we like to pretend that, hey, we can control the results of how this thing is going to turn out. But more often than not, I think if we’re being honest with ourselves, there’s just so much that’s out of our control that we can control what we put into it. We can control showing up and how we show up and being prepared, and how we treat each other. What we cannot control necessarily, is how the thing turns out, and that’s totally okay, because sometimes it’s going to turn out great. Sometimes it’s going to be a great thing that that doesn’t turn out so great, meaning a great thing that just doesn’t fit the right opportunity, or a great thing that just missed the timing a little bit, or a great thing that the client just didn’t really like or doesn’t need for their particular problem, and that’s totally okay too, because you know you need to be as a as a person, professionally creating, professionally speaking, professionally writing, professionally ghost writing, who knows you need to be able to keep coming back and getting back up and putting your. Self out on like, out, exposing yourself to risk again, basically exposing yourself to the fact that, hey, this might not work. That’s where the most interesting things are anyway, you know? So I think that’s where, that’s where having an inventory of those top 10 memories comes in. Is like, Hey, I’ve made good stuff before. Yeah, I’m gonna make some bad stuff. That’s okay, yeah, but let’s just keep reminding myself. Reminding myself of the good stuff, because the bad stuff always somehow has a way of staying up here and kind of like haunting us. I don’t know if it’s because we’re Virgos, but it’s like a top the top 10 good things you’ve done is always a nice reminder, dude. Wow,
Hamza Khan 1:10:35
you, you have cleared some cobwebs here, not just for the speaking, but just for overall creative output, even specific to this pod, right? So as we’re recording this, I can’t help it. It’s just the way my mind works. There’s like, a simultaneous track that’s like, second guessing everything I’m saying, every micro expression, and it’s just the imposter is just like, on my back, gnawing at my ear, being like, hey man. Like, wrap up this point faster. Or like, say this, or like, you know, transition here, transition there. But the truth is, even if this episode is really when, when this episode is released, and let’s say we only have like, one listener, one download, the key is to just continue, keep on producing more 100% and we should definitely talk about this in future installments, like some of the some of the greatest artists of all time. Perfect example, Pablo Picasso, right? So much of his work was critically panned at the time of its release, people were saying all the time, oh, he’s fell off. He’s lost his touch. Blah, blah, blah. Here we are posthumously. All his work is just continuously, only appreciating in value. Another example is Stanley Kubrick, right? When 2000 Won A Space Odyssey dropped critically and commercially panned. Now consider probably the greatest movie of all time, depending on who you ask, but it’s definitely up there on the AFI top 100 list. It’s in most people’s top 10, so on and so forth. We have to just continue to remain tenacious and develop the body of work and develop the data and the competency simultaneously necessary to look back at those artifacts and say, Hey, this is what’s doing. Well, we know we can do this. Here’s how we can iterate and pivot so on and so forth. And I don’t know why. I mean, I’ll unpack that over time, but I am becoming increasingly aware that I have been insecure about my own speaking because maybe I have not been approaching it with the same intentionality as I do with my writing. I’m always in a state of awe and gratitude and wonder when it comes to speaking, but I think it would, it would benefit me to actually give it the same intensity that I give writing, and actually do the exercise that you just described, and actually, right after this, write down the top 10, up to 25 best speaking engagements that I’ve had, and there’s way more than 10. There’s way more than 25 and for me, what that does a number as substantial as that is a reminder that I can do it. I think it was Floyd Mayweather who said that he practices incessantly before a fight, so that by the time he steps into the ring he knows, he knows that he can do it in his sleep. He can do it subconsciously. I think he talked about like 70 sparring sessions before an actual boxing match. Oh my goodness. He’s like, because when I go into the ring, it’s like, I know I’ve done this 70 to 100 times. So like, I don’t have to, I don’t have to go through the motions of the doubt anymore, that even if I feel the doubt slightly creeping in, he just has to give himself that number and be like, No, you’ve done this 7070 times. You’ve done this 100 times. That’s so interesting, man, that’s so interesting. I
Herbert Lui 1:13:24
love that. I love that. And so for me, that might be what I would say to to now I’m, you know, if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking about the ghost writing thing, let’s say maybe you’re making a career pivot. It could be really any career pivot, but let’s say you’re going from ghost writing into writing into writing or speaking or consulting of some sort, I would, I would highly, highly suggest, you know, Hamza is totally right. It’s like, hey, just, just make the shift right? The shift is simple. You’re gonna have a lot of details you have to figure out along the way. And that’s totally how it was for for me, it was for him as well. And, and so I think that just putting in that practice, securing those first three opportunities to speak Hamza, you said it was like a two minute presentation at like at work, right? It sounds Oh, yeah. And, and so something as big as hum as your speaking career could come out of a very modest, small start. I think it’s just really important to always keep that in mind. And as you keep practicing, not only do you develop Hamza, you you called it you couldn’t even have said it better it was, you know, I mean, I couldn’t say it better than you said it.
Hamza Khan 1:14:41
Sorry, I’m just you could write it better than I could. I think it was confidence through competence, right? Like, I
Herbert Lui 1:14:45
think that’s competence exactly, and and you took the words right out my mouth. I think you build this level of competence that you can fall back on, and you have that foundation there. And then, when you got that, all it takes is just remembering it. Yeah, it’s like, just remembering it. And then you can, you know, when you remember it, then you’re like, oh yeah, that’s right, I have this to fall back on. And no matter what happens, I know that I’m good at this. And so you can keep showing up and doing that and and so it’s just finding those first few opportunities. And, like, really, you know, prioritization, like, it’s not prioritizing until it hurts and you got to give some other stuff up, yeah. But once you get those first three, first five, first 10 opportunities, you’re really well on your way. And then you just got to keep doing it and telling people that you’ve been doing it, yeah? And then cool things are going to start happening. Dude,
Hamza Khan 1:15:35
that is beautiful. You’re helping me to, like, visualize the world of work in a totally different way now, like, I’m now seeing anybody who is good at anything as just one or up to three steps away from doing this in a totally different way. Like, if you’re listening to this right now, and you are a competent Junior accountant, and you’re able to put together a, you know, I don’t know, like, I’m thinking about all the outputs that my account has put together for me. You know, you file, you file taxes, and you know, you can, you can get this done in in an hour for a client. I mean, if you can do this yourself, you could, you could start your own firm. I know that sounds like a stretch for some people, but it’s like, yeah, the person that you’re working for right now did exactly what you did. Like they, they were a junior accountant that was able to put together tax returns for a client, and then they pulled together other artisans and created this thing called a company. So if you’re stuck in a in an accounting position right now listening to this, like, hey, like, if you can do basic accounting, you can do advanced accounting. If you can do advanced accounting, you can run a accounting firm. If you can run an accounting firm, you could run an accounting conglomerate. I mean, like, the line that separates competence from more competence is actually very thin. It’s non existent. And so, like, I’m now visualizing this like the barrier that separates the ghost, the immaterial ghost from the material world is actually a very thin membrane. And if you are there, if you are pressing up against the edges of reality as a spirit, as a specter, just know that you can just push your hand just with a little bit more force, and you can penetrate that veil that separates the world of the invisible, relegated ghost writer, into the best selling author, into the speaker, into the CEO and founder,
Herbert Lui 1:17:31
right? For sure, and all of those things, by the way, I totally agree. It’s just that they also take practice, right? It’s like, you know, doing running a 10 person company is very different than independently managing yourself. For example, you’ve gotta, you gotta go through those reps. You gotta do like, 100,000 status meetings, you know, like, I’m not, you know, I’m, I’m definitely exaggerating. Everyone’s doing 100,000 status meetings. But, you know, doing the status meetings, recruiting, being able to let go of people when they’re not ready to, you know, when they’re not ready to work, or they’re not living up to performance, delivering the work, selling the work, selling the oh my goodness, you can deliver the work, but you got to sell it, yeah. And I think that practice and selling it, marketing it, doing all of those things, is, is when you’ll either do that, or you will find someone who helps you do that. And that kind of, actually, weirdly enough, comes full circle to the whole pencil situation. Is like, if you have to practice all that yourself, it’s going to take a while, so you want to find someone who’s practiced it themselves, and their skills are really good, and they’re really, you know, you have a really good working relationship, or some chemistry, and then there you go, right? So, but the key is to constantly keep an eye out for this talent. You have to identify maybe 100 people in order to find one good one, you know, but you’re constantly practicing your your sense of taste in talent, and also your sense of taste in who you want to work with, or how you identify skilled people who knows what they’re talking about, who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, who’s pretending to know what they’re talking about. So you know, all of that, just to say huge respect to the craft of business as well, and the craft of entrepreneurship, wow, it’s, it’s so it’s like, it’s extremely liberating. It’s also one of the most sim it sounds so simple, and you do it and you’re like, Yo, this is like, it’s, it’s difficult in the difficulty is in the all of the details, you know. And so I, I’m so this is an energizing conversation, yeah, dude, I’m really happy for it. I’m
Hamza Khan 1:19:31
just gonna put this, put this idea out there for us to explore, right? I’ve, yeah, yes, yes to everything, man, like this. This has just been so cool and perfectly timed conversation. I’ve often heard CEOs, other executives and entrepreneurs, describe business as a sport, and this idea of like business athletes. I wonder if you and I can introduce a new paradigm into the mix, which is like a business artisan, a business creative, a business artist. Um. So I think that that metaphor is more apt than an athlete. I think an athlete is just, I’m not saying that there’s not, there’s nothing creative about athletics, but I think this idea of like iteration, about conception, about about practice, I think I think there the Venn diagram overlaps, certainly. But I wonder if there’s something to explore over here with regards to treating your work, treating any collaborative process as an artist would treat their work something to think about
Herbert Lui 1:20:27
for sure. Man, that’s super interesting. I think there’s definitely it’s it’s a nice having an extra metaphor is like having an extra tool in the belt. You know, it’s always nice to be able to shift perspectives and to know when to apply which perspective, and I do love developing that perspective and that metaphor a little more with you. That’d be cool, like we can do that in the next episode. We can do that in one down the line, but I think that’s you know, you’re gonna hear it here. If you’re listening to this, you’re gonna hear it here first. You’re gonna hear us developing in real time. I I’m so curious to listen to this and like, hear how we started at the beginning. I feel like we really found our groove somewhere. Like, you know, it depends how we edit this for if you’re listening to this, but you know, it’s like day and night right now. I’m like, Wow. I feel like so much looser, I know, and I feel like this was we really this was a cool podcast, man, this is a really good episode. I’m excited for it. How do you feel about it? What do you
Hamza Khan 1:21:27
think Same here? Man, and I love the idea of this being an artifact. In fact, I’m tempted to not edit this heavily. I’m tempted to just put this out there in its raw form, bathroom breaks and everything, for the sole reason of showcasing to us that there is a gradual progression, that we will be able to look at Episode 100 and do a comparison and contrast, and it will just validate our ideas about the creative process. And I think it’ll be beautiful to see that our philosophies with regards to writing and speaking are also true for creating a media product, if you will. But I think it’ll also be liberating for the audience too. It’ll give it’ll give materialists access to the creative process, to see two creatives who pride themselves on polished output engaging with something so raw, so discompopulated. I think we’re going to give people, hopefully, permission to just push through that membrane, to push through that veil a little bit and know that the line that separates idea into action, Idea Into You know, I just had to sneak it in there.
Herbert Lui 1:22:35
Of course, very free coming soon. That’s
Hamza Khan 1:22:38
it. It’s a very thin line, because and thank you for bringing this into perspective, man, I don’t celebrate this enough. How did this career journey start that I’m on right now with speaking, somebody asked me to teach four people how to do something. That’s how this started. And I have taken that call to action, and I’ve stretched into this, and the way that you have, for all of your your multifarious portfolio of work, and mine as well. So this is, this has been a really cool reflection, man. I I think we have now a moral obligation to see this show to its logical conclusion, to actually stretch this and see how far it can go. And I’m confident that, like, the groove that we were able to hit maybe about like 15 to 20 minutes into this pod, we’re gonna be able to access it a lot quicker. And I think we’ll be a lot more structured, a lot more precise, and this is gonna go where it’s gonna go, dude,
Herbert Lui 1:23:36
yeah, man, oh, love that. Let’s close on that, man, I think that this was, this was a great episode if you’re listening to this. Thank you for listening. Hey, we are. We are so excited to kick this off, and it’s only gonna get better, although I’m really happy with this one, too. Hamza, any final words, any closing thoughts, anything else you want to add?
Hamza Khan 1:23:58
Yeah, we use the phrase a lot in this pod, like if you’re listening to this, and I think that, given that we’ve touched on the Drake Quentin Miller situation, let me just add some words of confidence to you that very own theme if you’re listening to this, it’s not too late.
Herbert Lui 1:24:12
Ooh. Love that. Love that. Here we go. New material. Episode One. You heard it first, catch you next time. Please stay tuned. Thank you for listening as always, and have a super great day. Take care.