Steve Susi joins Travis Stoliker to talk about Brand Currency — the 2019 book that grew out of his years as an executive creative director at Amazon — and where its four currencies stand now that AI has rewritten the rules.

Steve traces the thesis back to a standing ovation in Tokyo, where he realized "there's something universal here... What matters most to all people? Money, information, loyalty, and time," and thought, "So let me write a book."

He talks about the book's unexpected second life: it launched just before COVID, "actually sold pretty well," drew fan mail he never anticipated, and got picked up for Korean translation — proof that "we're not so different around the world."

Then the conversation turns to the question every author is now asking. Steve uses AI every day as a thought partner, but is adamant it "is simply not going to write my book," because "without... enterprise-level instruction, it does not come with encoded discernment, judgment, or taste."

He explains why "Taste is the New Oil," how AI "didn't add a fifth currency — it just compressed the original four into a moment," and why, even in a world of instant answers, "you're going to see flesh tone and fingerprints on things more than you ever have."

He closes on why the physical book endures: when someone "sees a bookcase full of books, it says, I've invested in this piece of physical matter because it really matters... it's going to be hard to kill. We love touching things."

For more information on Steve Susi, visit https://scribemedia.com/authors/steve-susi

For more information on Brand Currency: A Former Amazon Exec on Money, Information, Loyalty, and Time, visit https://scribemedia.com/published-books/brand-currency

Five years after his first Author Hour appearance, Chris Belchamber returns to talk with Travis Stoliker about what has and hasn't changed since he wrote Invest Like the Best — and what he's learned watching the market since.

Chris walks through the case for compounding over chasing returns, tells the story of turning down a seat at Long-Term Capital Management in the 1990s, and lays out why he believes gold, not passive equity indexing, has quietly outperformed the S&P 500 since 2000.

He also gets candid about Bitcoin, the state of the fiat currency system, and why he believes the average investor is dramatically underserved by the financial industry.

Along the way, Chris reflects on what writing Invest Like the Best gave him that he didn't expect: a "lighthouse" that draws in exactly the right clients, and a level of clarity about his own thinking that's only grown more valuable with time.

For more information on Chris Belchamber, visit https://scribemedia.com/authors/chris-belchamber

For more information on Invest Like the Best: The Low-Risk Road to High Returns, visit https://scribemedia.com/published-books/invest-like-the-best

David Burkus joins Eric Jorgenson to talk about Best Team Ever: The Surprising Science of High-Performing Teams — his fifth book, and the first he published professionally after four traditional deals.

David lays out the math he gives every author weighing the two paths: still write the proposal, and if the traditional offer comes in between $75,000 and $100,000, take the money — but if it’s “20, 25 grand,” that’s not enough to deal with the hassles of signing away your IP.

He explains why a traditional proposal is written “for an audience of one,” how his publisher’s push to make his networking book a career book earned him exactly two speaking gigs in the book’s entire history, and why the timeline sealed it: guided author in June 2022, on Amazon everywhere by May 2023.

Then he opens up the speaking machine itself — lanes and problems, the caveman test that named Best Team Ever, micro videos that get found, the bureau secret of bringing agents in on deals you already have — and the production system behind five books: six months of research in piles on the floor, 500 to 750 words a day, and “when you write nonfiction, there’s no such thing as writer’s block. There’s just you haven’t researched it enough.”

Plus the LinkedIn message from a Lithuanian event planner that turned a book into a homecoming.

For more information on David Burkus, visit https://scribemedia.com/authors/david-burkus

For more information on Best Team Ever: The Surprising Science of High-Performing Teams, visit https://scribemedia.com/published-books/best-team-ever