Who Do You Think You Are?

About Who Do You Think You Are?

The Difficulty is a podcast about creativity, meaning, and the hard choices that shape a life. Each week, writer and publisher Chad Prevost works through the questions underneath the creative process and the examined life—how we make work that matters, sit with life's difficulties instead of rushing past them, and keep going. Expect arguments, reflections, and the occasional witness to something worth seeing. Slower, more contemplative episodes land on Saturdays. It's also the voice of Crossroads Publishing Group, a press built on a single idea: books are occasions for community. If you're a creative, a thinker, a maker, or anyone navigating the difficulty of doing meaningful work—pull up a chair. chadprevost.substack.com (https://chadprevost.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Dr. Chad Prevost

Category

education · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

13 Jan 2020

Latest episode

12 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

1 of 404 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   12 Oct 2026

   Stop Chasing and Start Building with Justin Jones-Fosu

   At 33, Justin Jones-Fosu pulled his car over to the side of the road and wept about a father who was never around. For years he’d lived by a rule that sounds a lot like fairness: if I didn’t cause it, I shouldn’t have to carry it. This conversation is about what he did next. Justin runs a firm called Work Meaningful, and his new book is Stop Chasing, Start Creating. It’s a fable. The tortoise and the hare, retold inside a modern company, with a tortoise named Tano who keeps a notebook called Almost Said for everything he swallowed in meetings. I’d argue the notebook alone is worth the price. We talk about: * why he put the truest story of his life inside a tortoise instead of a memoir * what it looks like to step off a race you’re winning * the difference between working for impact and working for applause * how you tell quitting from being finished * whether meaning is found or made And you gotta hear the part about the research he did leading up to the publication of this book, and how he convinced his publisher to push it to the top of the list. One more thing: we’re reading A lot of the people who listen to this show have a book they’ve been carrying around. Maybe it’s finished and sitting in a drawer. Maybe it’s half a manuscript and a pile of notes. So we’re opening a door. From October 13 through December 15, Crossroads is holding the Soundings Reading Period. We’re reading books of the inner life, from any tradition or none. If your manuscript is finished, send the whole thing. If it isn’t, send a simple proposal: a one-page overview, an outline, a sample chapter or two. It costs $25, and I’ll tell you what that buys. I read it myself, and within 21 days you get a one-page letter from me that says where your book stands: Ready, Nearly, or Not Yet. If I’m late, you get your $25 back. It’s not a deposit on anything, and nobody’s going to call you afterward to sell you something. It’s all on one page: crossroadspublishing.group/submit (https://crossroadspublishing.group/submit/). And if it’s not you, I’d guess you know the person it is. The book: Stop Chasing, Start Creating (https://amzn.to/3W5vdaJ) by Justin Jones-Fosu, wherever books are sold or just click the link. Don’t forget to leave him a review! Follow The Difficulty: Subscribe at chadprevost.substack.com (https://chadprevost.substack.com), or listen on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-difficulty/id1485907203) or Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/0nFw22p3Y3I8UAVZcyKfYc).The Difficulty is produced by Crossroads Publishing Group, a message-and-meaning press. More at crossroadspublishing.group (https://crossroadspublishing.group/submit/) and chadprevost.com (https://chadprevost.com). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com (https://chadprevost.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   7 Oct 2026

   What If No One Comes

   There has never been an easier time to publish a book, so why are more people than ever afraid to write theirs? Are the two things related? Two fears keep a good book unpublished: that it’s hard, and that you’ll put it out there and no one will come. Chad takes both apart, with a reality check on what the traditional path actually costs in years, what’s changed, why promotion is the part everyone fears and how it builds on itself (one relationship, one event, one printing of 500 at a time), the honest case for the “calling card” book, and James Hollis’s three-word cure. And announcing the Soundings Reading Period, October 13 to December 15, 2026. Nonfiction of the inner life, any tradition. $25, and a one-page letter from the publisher within 21 days: Ready, Nearly, or Not Yet. Late, and the $25 comes back. crossroadspublishing.group/submit (https://crossroadspublishing.group/submit/) Mentioned: James Nestor, Breath; David Whyte; James Hollis; IF/THEN Books. Next episode: Justin Jones-Fosu on Stop Chasing, Start Creating. Timestamps: 0:00 Why publishing feels scary · 3:30 The traditional path, honestly · 7:30 It’s all available now · 10:30 The real fear is the marketing · 12:30 What I learned doing it myself · 16:30 Promotion builds its own momentum · 20:30 The calling-card book · 27:30 The new challenge is visibility · 31:30 The Soundings Reading Period · 35:30 Next time Follow The Difficulty: Subscribe at chadprevost.substack.com (https://chadprevost.substack.com), or listen on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-difficulty/id1485907203) or Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/0nFw22p3Y3I8UAVZcyKfYc). The Difficulty is produced by Crossroads Publishing Group (https://crossroadspublishing.group/), a message-and-meaning press. More at chadprevost.com (https://chadprevost.com). Everything’s on one page: crossroadspublishing.group/submit (https://crossroadspublishing.group/submit/). If you know someone with a book they’ve resigned themselves to never putting out there, send them that. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com (https://chadprevost.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   14 Sept 2026

   Four Million Books Published Last Year: What It Actually Costs to Publish One

   Last year 4.2 million books were published in the United States with an ISBN. Three and a half million of them were self-published. Traditional publishers put out 642,000. So for every book that came through the old machine, more than five came through the side door, and this year almost a third of new titles on Amazon’s platform arrive with a disclosure that a machine wrote some of it. I’m not here to tell you the sky is falling. I run a press and I’m betting my working life on people wanting books. But if you’re sitting on a manuscript and wondering what it costs to put it into the world, you’re asking in a year when the shelf got very crowded very fast. So this episode is the arithmetic, line by line: editing, cover, typesetting, audio, ISBNs, the roughly eighteen thousand dollars you can spend before anyone knows your book exists. And then the question underneath the numbers, which is what you’re actually buying when you work with a publisher, and whether you need one at all. The difficulty in life is the choice. In this episode: * Why 4.2 million ISBNs in a year is not the end of the world, and what it does change * The printer-and-ink problem: what “free to publish” leaves out * The three-year Amazon picture: catalog, sellers, and revenue growing at very different speeds * The line-by-line cost of a sixty-thousand-word nonfiction book, from developmental edit to ISBNs * Why print-on-demand hardcovers cost a self-publisher more than they cost a big house, and what to do about it * Audio: what it takes to record, edit, and upload your own audiobook, and why Crossroads is baking it in for the founding cohort * What a publisher is actually selling: representation, selection, and a partner in the room * The nonprofit-press volume play, the vanity-press TV commercial, and the difference between a book and a zine * Three questions before you decide: do you already have readers, could you hire every service separately, and do you want to run the account yourself * Why I’m in this at all If you’re an author with a fine nonfiction book and you’re wondering where to take it, send a submission inquiry through the press site and let’s have a conversation about whether this is a fit, for you and for us. Deciding against it is a real answer, and I’d rather you decide clearly than sign up for something you didn’t want. If you know a writer who’s sitting on a manuscript and doing this arithmetic right now, forward them this episode. That helps more than anything I can do on my own. Subscribe at chadprevost.substack.com (https://chadprevost.substack.com), or listen on Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-difficulty/id1485907203) or Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/0nFw22p3Y3I8UAVZcyKfYc). The Difficulty is produced by Crossroads Publishing Group (https://crossroadspublishing.group/), a message-and-meaning press. Show page: crossroadspublishing.group/the-difficulty (https://crossroadspublishing.group/the-difficulty/). More at chadprevost.com (https://chadprevost.com). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chadprevost.substack.com (https://chadprevost.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

Inside a recent episode

Building Trust and Integrity: A Leadership Journey with Jim Carlough

Published 8 Oct 2025 · Transcript excerpt

[…] So without us going all the way into all sick, can you just... sort of like name those six pillars and we'll angle our way into one or two as, as, um, as we kind of organically feel led. Can, can we do that? We can absolutely do that. And, and I actually, we trying to squeeze all six in is impossible. Okay. And, and so this is common. This is common. Oh, gotcha. So they are integrity, compassion, empathy, And there's a difference between compassion and empathy, stability, focus, and humor. Hmm. That's great. Everyone will always want to ask right away about humor, but I'm going to tell you, hold on that one for a second. […]

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