232: Published by Chandler Bolt

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1. 00:00:00 All right, Mike. Welcome back. We are going to talk about what it takes to publish a book or at least what one person's thoughts are on what it takes to publish a book, but before we do that, we need to start with follow up.
2. 00:00:15 You sent me a link earlier. I was excited about this link. I've actually checked it four or five times between the last recording and now because I'm like, when is this coming out? When is this coming out?
3. 00:00:25 Will you tell us about the link you sent me?
4. 00:00:28 Yeah, well, actually I sent you two links. Excuse the self promotion here for just a minute, folks, but I did mention the personal retreat planner last episode, and I'm thrilled to announce that that is actually live.
5. 00:00:41 So it is on the New Year's site, and I worked with Jesse from New Year, the same person who does the focused wall calendars and built my analog planner, exactly the way that I wanted to follow my personal retreat process.
6. 00:00:55 There's an example personal retreat at the beginning, and then a blank personal retreat so you could do that and set your quarterly intentions, then weekly and daily planning pages for 90 days so you can execute on those plans plus a bunch of blank pages at the back.
7. 00:01:09 There's a video which walks through the whole thing on the website, so the link will be in the show notes if you want to check that out there, $29 a piece.
8. 00:01:18 And then if you subscribe and you get four of them at a time, so basically like a year's worth, you can say 15%, so it ends up being under $100 for a year's worth of planners.
9. 00:01:28 And this is just something that I wanted to exist in the world, so I started talking to Jesse about it and he's like, "Yeah, let's build it."
10. 00:01:33 Well, and it looks really good. I watched the video, the video's clean, like I like the video, so overall I think you're going to need to get it out there and let people know about it and I think they're going to buy it up.
11. 00:01:46 Yeah, I'm very excited about this and my intention, I haven't really talked to Jesse about this, but he makes them by hand, so if we don't sell a bunch, it's okay.
12. 00:01:57 We've got the format now and it's not dated, so you can use them whenever and I fully intend to buy one recorder myself, so even if nobody else buys them, it's something I wanted to exist in the world.
13. 00:02:13 I brought it with me to CX and people seem to like it, so if you want one of your own, you can go to the New Year site and the link will be in the show notes.
14. 00:02:21 Another thing that I did, this is tied to a YouTube video, which is not out as we're recording this, but it will be available by the time this goes live.
15. 00:02:32 I recorded this 25-minute reading masterclass video, it started off as here's how I built my personal book notes library in Obsidian using the basis core plugin, and then it turned into everything of my philosophy behind how I read books, the mind notes, mind maps, how I bring everything over.
16. 00:02:54 From beginning to end, the entire process is documented, it's like 25-30 minutes, and I created an Obsidian vault, which is just the 217 book notes that I have with the Obsidian base set up, so you get the card view with the rating and the author and the date and the number of pages.
17. 00:03:14 In each one of those notes, there's the metadata at the top, which is what the Obsidian basis uses, there's my three-sentence summary, there's my mind map, and then there's a text-based version of all of my notes.
18. 00:03:26 The only thing worth calling out here is that I have removed the linked notes from those notes, if that makes sense, because those links that you would add for, you have the notes from the book, and then they mention the fallacy effect, and you put double brackets around the fallacy effect, now you've got a note called the fallacy effect that you can link to.
19. 00:03:48 I took those out because I feel like those connections are way more valuable when you make them yourself, so all the raw materials are there, and then you could basically just go through and put double brackets around the stuff that you want to link together, and then you can go into those notes and look at the unlinked mentions and click to add them where else you want them from the book notes library.
20. 00:04:06 I had no idea what to charge for this thing, so I made it pay what you want. I don't have a URL as we, well I have a checkout URL, the product exists, but I don't have a clean URL that I can share in the show notes.
21. 00:04:22 I will figure that out, and I will include it by the time this goes live, but yeah, it's pay what you want, so the suggested price I think is like $20, because that's $0.10 a book note, less than that, but you don't have to actually put anything in there, you can just put in your email address and get it for free.
22. 00:04:40 So yeah, I'm gonna start sharing these with the world, and if you want to get my whole book notes library, now you can.
23. 00:04:49 I think this will be a good asset for people as they think about the different books and whether they want to read different books and then your perspective on it.
24. 00:04:57 I know I personally like reading something, getting my own notes, and then comparing it to what somebody else got out of it.
25. 00:05:05 This is why just to let everybody in, everybody know, this is why we do the show is because I like to read books and I get to talk to Mike about it, and then he has a different perspective, and I have a different perspective, and then we kind of hash it out, and then I feel, and I think differently
26. 00:05:19 about the book, after our conversation, then sometimes I do going into it, and I think this is another, but less personal way, but it's also that way that allows you to relate to a broader community, which I think is really cool, so good work on that.
27. 00:05:34 Well, I've had a couple people ask me to create a product with all my book notes, and I've been dragging my feet on it honestly for years, and then when I was putting out this YouTube video, this was the natural call to action at the end.
28. 00:05:49 And then I only mention it here because this is literally a podcast about books and most of the books that are in there we've covered on the show.
29. 00:05:56 So if you want all those, you can go download them. And then, you know, because I've been saying I've been really busy the last several episodes, I have one more thing that is actually launching before this episode goes live that I've been working hard on.
30. 00:06:09 Actually, I've been working on this project for years.
31. 00:06:12 I had been working with my friend Chris Bailey to help him bring a video course to life called overcoming procrastination. Help remind us who Chris Bailey is just in case there's anybody out there who's not sure of who Chris Bailey is.
32. 00:06:23 Yeah, so Chris Bailey has written several books. He gave a TED talk, and the TED organization, their little bio for him, is the most productive man you'd ever hope to meet.
33. 00:06:34 And his first book was a productivity project and basically just doing all of the experiments for all the productivity advice figuring out what works what doesn't.
34. 00:06:42 And then he wrote a couple other books hyper focus which I think was probably my favorite and then how to calm your mind he's working on another one regarding intention, but this overcoming procrastination this is his first attempt at a video course.
35. 00:06:56 So I walked through all that the text set up with them help them dial in his studio and then he recorded all the video and I've been doing all the editing as we're recording this is kind of crunch time we're getting everything uploaded getting all the stuff set up in the circle
36. 00:07:12 space for the course is going to be some live Q and A's with a plus version.
37. 00:07:16 And yeah, by the time this this goes live, I'm sure he'll have the link on his website Chris Bailey calm, but there's 60 videos in this course.
38. 00:07:26 There's a couple different PDFs, a couple different frameworks that he's introduced, which I think are just absolutely amazing and very excited to see this finally get out into the world.
39. 00:07:39 I'm sure Chris is too, but it's looking really nice and since I've worked on it so much. I wanted to mention it here. What's rough timeline month, two, three, six, like, what did you say a date? I don't remember if you said a date or not.
40. 00:07:51 September 16 is the official launch date. So it will be out by the time this goes live. It's not available right now. So if you're joining us for the live recording, for example, which is actually one more thing we should have to the outline here.
41. 00:08:04 We're going to experiment with doing the live recordings publicly. We had them behind a paywall, but not for many people are we're able to join them.
42. 00:08:12 And so we think maybe that's not a real valuable part of the membership for folks and it would actually be more valuable if more people showed up.
43. 00:08:20 So we're going to try to schedule these ahead of time and hopefully get a bunch of people to show up live and talk to us about these books that we're going to read.
44. 00:08:28 So awesome. Well, good deal. You're I mean, you've been doing a lot. Let's move into the follow up from the last book. All right. So I'll start off off. Get your workspace organized.
45. 00:08:39 Mike, I'm never going to do this. I'm never going to be able to do this. Like, I just can't.
46. 00:08:46 It gets better and then it gets worse. It ebbs and flows. Sometimes I kind of do it. Okay. And then sometimes I don't. And then anytime anything gets busy.
47. 00:08:57 That's the first thing to go. The absolute first thing to go is like papers just start popping up everywhere and I leave pens laying around and, you know, it just becomes chaos factory.
48. 00:09:08 So this one, as I like to do on my red yellow green scale, this one's a big red, like big, big, big, big red. And I don't see it getting any better anytime soon.
49. 00:09:20 So it's a big red on that one. The next one I had was how can I single handle more tasks, like rearrange schedule, reprioritize.
50. 00:09:28 I did not have a chance to think about this one at all. This one's going to take me more work to really think about the caveat to that would be.
51. 00:09:38 I have thought I shouldn't say I didn't think about it at all. I guess the one area I did think about it was in email.
52. 00:09:44 It's like, how do I, if I'm going to take, if I'm going to look at this email, I'm going to take care of it now, or I'm not really going to care about it.
53. 00:09:52 And that mindset helped me out a little bit. Now, there's those ones that sit in the messy middle where it's like, okay, I actually need to put more brain space into this.
54. 00:10:00 And this is where I don't have a good system for for that. It's like, I know I can flag him. I know I can star him. I know I can put him in a to read, you know, kind of folder to respond folder.
55. 00:10:10 None of that seems to work for me. So I'm trying to figure out what that what that looks like. But I've been better at like, oh, this is going to take me 30 seconds when I just fire off the thing.
56. 00:10:19 So that's in my mind, a single handle kind of a situation. I looked at it. I responded. It's gone. It's off my, it's off my brain.
57. 00:10:26 But those are my, I only had two. You had quite a few more. So get after it.
58. 00:10:34 Do we have to talk about any or all of them or none of them? And we could just move on. I'm good. You, the world just so there.
59. 00:10:42 There's this thing that people will do in Toastmasters for table topics where they give you the topic once you get to the front of the room.
60. 00:10:50 One of the pro tactics is to acknowledge the topic and then just talk about whatever the heck you want.
61. 00:10:57 I'm trying to fight the urge to do that. That's awesome.
62. 00:11:00 So I had one for never complete something without adding it to my list. I did this successfully until this week and then the last minute things for the course launch were coming hot and heavy and I could not keep up.
63. 00:11:16 So I need to reboot that one.
64. 00:11:20 What one skill if I developed and did it in an excellent fashion would have the greatest positive impact on my career.
65. 00:11:27 I think I have an answer to this and I think it's copywriting.
66. 00:11:32 If I increased my ability to write copy that helps with all of the social experimentation stuff that I'm doing, like the public messaging, it helps with all the sales page stuff.
67. 00:11:46 Because one of the things that I'm really good at is making things. One of the things I'm really bad at is talking about them because I always feel salesy.
68. 00:11:56 And I know that you just got to get over that but I feel like one of the reasons I feel that way is because I just am not very skilled at talking about the things that I've made in the right way.
69. 00:12:08 It kind of bugs me when I see people who will go on social media and it's like trademark big week and then they share 12 different updates about this one little thing that they did.
70. 00:12:19 Like you really milked that. You got a lot of mileage out of that thing that you did but what I recognize is they're better marketers than I am.
71. 00:12:30 So I've got a couple books that my ION, like they're on my bookshelf in my anti-library, haven't read them yet.
72. 00:12:39 So I don't know when I'll be able to take action on that but that's my thought there.
73. 00:12:45 Work all the time that you work. This one I think I did pretty well. The problem is that I have been working a lot.
74. 00:12:53 Basically, the pattern lately has been work until about 11 o'clock at night, fall into bed exhausted, sleep until about 730, wake up and immediately start over.
75. 00:13:10 With a few periodic breaks for podcasts and soccer games.
76. 00:13:15 So just to revisit your personal retreat planning video, I'm going to tell you that's not on your ideal week.
77. 00:13:21 That's not the outline of your ideal week.
78. 00:13:25 Hey, sometimes you got to do what you got to do and this is the season I find myself in.
79. 00:13:29 So, yeah, there's a lot of stuff that just kind of has come to a head in the last couple weeks.
80. 00:13:34 Like I mentioned, the Chris Bailey video course, I've literally been working on that for two years.
81. 00:13:40 So, I didn't know it was going to be two years. I couldn't have picked a published date for that.
82. 00:13:48 All the pieces had to come together and it just happens to be right now, not ideal timing for me but is what it is and it's almost done.
83. 00:13:57 I don't know. Identify the limiting factor in my business, definitely me.
84. 00:14:04 I think the biggest thing is I need to create some better processes and some better documentation.
85. 00:14:13 I have some people who are helping me with stuff.
86. 00:14:15 I have someone who helps me with YouTube videos.
87. 00:14:17 I have someone who helps me with the community management and I've done a fairly decent job of delegating pieces of this
88. 00:14:26 but there are still things where, you know, if I just spent an entire day thinking about all of the questions
89. 00:14:34 that I have been asked and then just like creating a documentation so that I don't need to be asked about them again.
90. 00:14:39 I know that would have a huge impact and I just haven't had the time to even think about that stuff.
91. 00:14:45 So, we'll get there.
92. 00:14:47 And then the last one, become an optimist or the revised version based on Corey's feedback.
93. 00:14:52 What would an optimist think?
94. 00:14:54 So, there, I have a very real example of this being a successful action item because I think it was last Tuesday
95. 00:15:05 I was trying to record focused and David and I were having some weird issue with somebody's internet,
96. 00:15:11 either mine or his. We both did speed tests. It both looked fine.
97. 00:15:15 But any time he would start talking, I would hear a couple words and then it would go blank for like 30 seconds.
98. 00:15:20 Impossible to have a conversation that way, right?
99. 00:15:23 So, we spent all day trying to get that episode out the door.
100. 00:15:28 Like, we originally scheduled it for 9.30 a.m. We couldn't get it to work.
101. 00:15:32 Then he recorded Mac power users and that actually worked and then we picked up in the afternoon.
102. 00:15:36 It didn't work. I had to go to soccer practice. We got that out like 10.30 at night.
103. 00:15:40 He was leaving for vacation the next day.
104. 00:15:42 Like, an entire day devoted to finally getting this podcast out at the very last minute.
105. 00:15:49 You know, when I should have been in bed.
106. 00:15:52 And I was like, first I was pretty frustrated by that.
107. 00:15:56 But then I realized that one of the benefits of that is that I figured out how to actually record podcasts at my other desk.
108. 00:16:05 So, there's a different interface. It's a roadcaster video that I use over there.
109. 00:16:09 And we tried everything, you know, to try to get it to work. So, I'll switch desks.
110. 00:16:14 You know, and then we realized I hadn't set that one up for like the mix minus sort of a thing.
111. 00:16:19 So, I figured out how to record on that desk without having the person's audio get pipe back in.
112. 00:16:26 Because it's a little bit tricky when it tries to combine everything into that one, you know, one USB channel basically.
113. 00:16:32 But at least I learned something. So, I had, I was thinking about that, you know, that exact phrase popped into my head.
114. 00:16:38 You know, what would the optimist think here? Well, at least you learned how to use your roadcaster video a little bit better.
115. 00:16:46 Yep. And you and David bonded over the shared struggle, right? I tell my...
116. 00:16:52 It's true. You know, it was the feedback episode that, as we record this, is the most recent episode, that episode actually turned out really good.
117. 00:17:00 So, yeah, not a big deal in the big scheme of things, but that day, it was a big deal.
118. 00:17:08 Yeah, I'd have been super frustrated by that too.
119. 00:17:10 All right. So, are you ready to start talking about publishing?
120. 00:17:14 Let's do it.
121. 00:17:16 All right, folks. We're going to talk about Chandler Bolt's book published, the proven path from blank page to 10,000 copies sold.
122. 00:17:24 This book was originally published in 2016. It was re-released in 2021.
123. 00:17:30 So, we read the 2021 version of it.
124. 00:17:33 And in this book, we're going to talk about essentially like a lot of the aspects of, you know, publishing a book, but not just publishing the book from getting started writing it, from mind mapping to the movie to an outline.
125. 00:17:48 And Chandler's going to take you through this entire big process. The book is 27 chapters long.
126. 00:17:56 It's divided into seven sections.
127. 00:17:59 And, I mean, it covers a lot of stuff. At least that's what I thought as we were working through it.
128. 00:18:05 So, as I started reading it, I thought, okay, this is a little bit different than what I thought it was going to be.
129. 00:18:11 But then the other thing that I think you need to know right off the bat about this book, if you're considering reading this book, he considers himself an author panor.
130. 00:18:22 I think that's how you say that word. I was trying to practice that word, which means he's written it in a way that is very different than some of the other books you'll read.
131. 00:18:33 Like, for instance, he, I can't remember if he gives the book away or if he gives the audiobook away, but like, he gives versions of the book away, right?
132. 00:18:41 Like, I mean, he just freely just gives it away. Does he want you to buy it? Sure. If you'll buy it, that's great.
133. 00:18:46 But like, here's a, here's, you know, the audiobook version of it, or here's the other book version of it, or the Kindle, like, you know, kind of version of it.
134. 00:18:56 So it's kind of just like very, it's a very different mindset to it. And then you quickly realize that this is tied to self-publishing.
135. 00:19:06 Is it self-publishing.com? I think is what it is? Yep. Yeah. So, so his other work or his, his other, you know, side of his business is selfpublishing.com.
136. 00:19:15 And these two things go hand in hand. And if you try to read this book without connecting it to selfpublishing.com, one, you can't do that because he references it all through the book.
137. 00:19:25 And two, I think it's kind of doing you and the book a disservice, right? Because Chandler meant these two things to go together.
138. 00:19:32 Like, they are part of his strategy. They're part of his marketing for the book and the reason why you wrote the book and all these other things.
139. 00:19:38 So I don't say that to say, to say anything about it. We'll talk about that in style and rating. But at the, I'm saying, as you, as you prep for the book, it's going to give you a really, really big, broad perspective on self-publishing.
140. 00:19:53 And it's going to, and then a little bit about traditional publishing, I'd say. And then it's also very, very tied to selfpublishing.com.
141. 00:20:01 So that's my kind of overview for it. Mike, what do you, what do you have to start us off with?
142. 00:20:07 It's definitely a business card for selfpublishing.com. But it is the best version of that that you can possibly imagine.
143. 00:20:17 So it is not just a lead magnet so that he gets more potential clients. He gives a lot of value in this book.
144. 00:20:27 This is the blueprint for how to create this sort of thing effectively.
145. 00:20:33 So you probably have a picture in your head of somebody who has done this quickly and cheaply and they haven't given you a whole lot of substance and you feel like you got ripped off even though you just entered your email address.
146. 00:20:45 That's not this, but I can't, you said blueprint. That's a great word. My, the one that came to my head was this is like the reference for self-publishing.
147. 00:20:54 Like if I'm going to self-publish a book, or if I know somebody that wants to, I'm going to hand them, chain their bolts, book, and I'm going to say you should probably at least skim through this and figure out what aspects of it's going to help you.
148. 00:21:04 Yeah, I wish I had read this before I self-published my book as we talked about in the pro show.
149. 00:21:11 So if, if you're okay with it, let's go ahead and get, get rolling right into chapter one, but then let me tell the listeners, we're actually not going to do this chapter by chapter because there's 27 chapters.
150. 00:21:23 We're going to do it section by section. So the first section will be the introduction, which is just chapter one.
151. 00:21:28 Then there are seven actual sections that will lead us through to the end of the book. So we'll start with, with the intro and then we'll roll right into into the first section.
152. 00:21:38 So the intro is basically the motivator of why you should care about books and why you're thinking about books. And, you know, it's titled, you know, it's one chapter, but it's set of books change lives.
153. 00:21:49 And basically he's describing this idea of, I want you to think about why you want to do the, why you want to write the book and kind of some of the details around that, around that book.
154. 00:22:03 And, and I think it's a really good way to start off, start off a book about publishing, right? It kind of sets the stage. It says, here's where I am. Here's where, where you are. And then he establishes here.
155. 00:22:13 And I think the key thing that comes out of the, the introduction for me or chapter one for me is these eight milestones to go from blank page to published author and he has a, a figure, like a diagram that's like a mountain.
156. 00:22:22 And he walks you, it's like a, it's like a map leading up the mountain. And, you know, he kind of gives you the idea of these eight, these eight phases or these eight stages to get from the blank page to the published author.
157. 00:22:33 So I thought he set the stage pretty well and, and I felt, you know, I felt good with the, with the intro.
158. 00:22:39 The, the big takeaway from the introduction for me is that when you publish a book, it impacts three groups of people. The first one is readers. The second one is friends and family.
159. 00:22:53 And then the third one is one person whose life is radically changed. And as I mentioned in the pro show, we were talking about my experience previously when I had self published.
160. 00:23:03 It was not a financial success. You can't find that book anymore. I took it down. But the one thing that came from that was that email that I got from somebody who told me that my book was the thing that they needed at that point in their life and they were
161. 00:23:19 considering leaving their family committing suicide. Like they wanted to end it. And reading my book was the thing that allowed them to keep going. And that alone is worth it. Right. If you can impact somebody's life in such a drastic way.
162. 00:23:37 That's amazing. And that is exactly what my that's tied to my life theme, you know, want to help people multiply their time and tell them the bigger dent in the universe. And sometimes you look at that and you measure it in terms of quantity.
163. 00:23:49 But really, you know, what he calls out here is that sometimes it's qualitatively that you, you impact people and you can't really see how big of an impact that that has because it's just one person, but it could really be a significant difference.
164. 00:24:02 And that's really, I think, one of the people you should be considering when you are trying to write this book. If you had that in mind, I think what it does is it causes you to go deeper into some of these things and you would normally otherwise go.
165. 00:24:15 Like you don't leave any stone unturned if you really think that you have the possibility of helping somebody in that, that great a way. Does that make sense?
166. 00:24:25 It makes sense. All right, we move right into the first section and the first section is made up of three chapters looking for why self publishing versus traditional publishing and the published author's mindset and then what to what to write about.
167. 00:24:40 So he starts off with this idea is if you need to think about why you want to write the book and he outlines four different reasons why people would write a book.
168. 00:24:48 So there's, it's a passion project. There's a shared experience. You want to be a full time author and then you want business growth. And those are the four big level items that he calls out.
169. 00:24:58 When you get to the full time author one, he actually breaks that down into another series of things and that would be.
170. 00:25:05 So the full time author, basically, you just want to write books for a living, the freelance author, so earning part of your living from the royalties.
171. 00:25:13 The author, which I have to read this one because this one always messes with me. I can't remember it using your book to start or grow a business, mostly generating revenue through customers for the business.
172. 00:25:24 And then also making money on royalties on site and then the speaking author. And what I think is is cool about this is I've kind of known these categories existed.
173. 00:25:33 But it was cool to see them like clearly spelled out like, Oh, yeah. And now you like think back on books and you're like, Oh, that person was trying to be a full time author.
174. 00:25:41 Oh, that person was just a speaking author. Like this book is just a calling card to like say come hire me to speak. His is the author printer.
175. 00:25:49 And it's like, it, it frames the way you read books and it makes you smarter about the way, the way you read books because you understand why, why people want to read the books.
176. 00:25:57 So that's chapter two, chapter three, as I said, is called self publishing versus traditional publishing. As you might imagine, it's the details around self publishing, traditional publishing, why you would want to do one, why you would want to do another.
177. 00:26:09 The pros and cons, the things that you think. So he kind of like myths talks about myths that you think. So we talked about this a little bit earlier where traditional publishing isn't going to market for you, even though you think they might.
178. 00:26:21 And then you get into that last one, which is what to write about. And he actually kind of helps you think through these, these different ideas of what to write about.
179. 00:26:30 There's a whole lot more in those first four chapters, but I'll stop because I've been going for a little while. So Mike, what do you have? Yeah, I want to, I want to talk about the different publishing options here because I have a little bit of experience
180. 00:26:43 and connections in the traditional publishing world. Just friends with a couple of people who have traditionally published books.
181. 00:26:50 Before mentioned Chris Bailey, for example, with the video course. So I kind of have a little bit of a, I don't know, it's not like it's a big secret or anything, but I can kind of see some of this stuff play out.
182. 00:27:06 And I think you can read Chandler Bolt's book and you can view how he describes these different options and think, Oh, well, he's just got an axe to grind with traditional publishers.
183. 00:27:19 But I actually don't think that anything that he says here is wrong. I don't think so either.
184. 00:27:23 Yeah, so traditional publishing is that they take the biggest cut of the royalties. They have the most connections. So if you need a really good copy editor, you know, they'll hook you up.
185. 00:27:32 That's where the value for that comes hybrid publishing. You get better royalty rates and more flexibility, but there are a lot of people out there who are hybrid publishers and they are kind of scam artists.
186. 00:27:43 So you got to be careful who you're hooking up with and then self publishing that offers the biggest royalties even gives a specific range three to seven times more than traditional publishing, but that's going to require you to do the most work.
187. 00:27:57 I think that the information that he shares here. Well, obviously, I think he's putting his finger on the scale a little bit for self publishing, hence self publishing.com.
188. 00:28:09 I don't think any of it is. I don't think any of the descriptions or the criticisms are unfair here.
189. 00:28:16 And I feel like when you read that section of the book, you really walk away and not like, well, okay, so he gave me some information. Obviously, I need to self publish.
190. 00:28:28 It's just a question of whether I'm going to work with self publishing.com. It's more like, you know, that's really something for me to think about. It feels like a very fair, just here's all the facts that you need to consider as you're trying to make this decision.
191. 00:28:40 Yeah, I got it. The way I'll word it is, he is very much a proponent of self publishing. And that makes sense because that's the business he runs in addition to writing.
192. 00:28:51 But I didn't think that it was like a, you know, for lack of a better way to put it, you're dumb if you don't self publish. Like, I didn't get that impression.
193. 00:28:59 It was more a matter of, Hey, here's what you need to know about these different publishing things. I lean towards self publishing because that's the business that I run and I've seen it impact people's lives.
194. 00:29:09 And that was more of the take on it. Like, I didn't for once feel like he was being too strong or too aggressive at all. Like, I thought it was appropriate the way he pitched that chapter.
195. 00:29:23 Yeah, and then I also think there's some really great stuff in chapter four of what to write about. He's got two rules for one writing. You can't add it while you're right. Seems simple, but I fall into that all the time.
196. 00:29:35 Number two, you can't write more than one book at a time. Again, seems simple, but also I understand how that could completely trip you up. And then the thing that was maybe the most valuable for me was how to choose which book to write first, because we talked about this.
197. 00:29:51 I think a little bit last time, which book can I write the fastest, which idea will result in a finished book and which idea makes you the happiest.
198. 00:30:01 And when I ask myself those questions, I think the first two specifically heavily lean towards the personal retreat stuff. The only one where there is maybe a question is the third one, because I've kicked around the idea of writing a book about the life theme concept.
199. 00:30:19 Then there's the creativity flywheel, the PKM stack like I have all these different frameworks, but I don't have the clarity on those. So those are definitely not the ones to answer the first two questions.
200. 00:30:30 So really the genius of this, I think, is asking all three of these questions, because as I did that, it was like, oh, obviously, yeah, this is the one.
201. 00:30:39 And I think one of the things that I'm still processing as I read the book is the book is information dense in terms of he gives you a lot of different things in like, not lists, but kind of lists in like, here's four things to think about.
202. 00:30:56 One example of it coming up with a book idea. This isn't the, this isn't what the right, the what to write about section in chapter four. You know, he gives you these four questions.
203. 00:31:04 What do you get paid for? What's your area of expertise? What, what are you most passionate about? Is there a topic or genre, you know, a lot about? What do people come to you for advice for?
204. 00:31:14 What is the broken record thing that happens all the time in your business? And it's like, there's just a lot of those.
205. 00:31:20 They're like plastered throughout the entire book. And I found myself going, okay, this is good, but I can't hold all this right now. Okay, this is good, but I can't hold all this right now.
206. 00:31:30 And that's why I think of it as a reference book that really what I, what I think I'm going to use this book for is if and when I do sit down to write the book that I want to publish, I go back to section one.
207. 00:31:43 I reread section one, and then I do the things that he has pushed you to do. He's, you know, go do this thing, go this idea generation, go do this, you know, activity or whatever it is.
208. 00:31:53 He is unashamed. I don't know if that's the right phrase. So correct me if I'm wrong on that. But he will push you to self publishing calm every chance he gets to push you to self publishing calm.
209. 00:32:07 We've got this resource, we've got that resource, we've got this resource, go to self publishing calm slash whatever. I mean, Mike, he probably did it what like 50 times 100 like I don't even know a lot.
210. 00:32:20 But they are all specific resources that you can use to implement what he is telling you to do. It's not. Oh, remember, I told you, I have this free toolkit that you can download.
211. 00:32:31 So just go to this one URL and he's not giving you that over and over and over again. He's giving you something valuable every time he mentions it.
212. 00:32:38 The crazy thing is I got to through this and I was thinking like, well, hold on, why would I go? Like, why would I pay self publishing calm? It seems like he's given me so much valuable information. And I know like there's they add value on top of that because we get to it later.
213. 00:32:53 But just know that going into it. Like, if you're, if you're going to read this book, he very much is, I think it comes from a he's very much a, we want you to be able to write your book and write it well.
214. 00:33:04 And we've created all these resources. And oh, by the way, we're running a business and we're going to try to make money at the same time. So I, it didn't rub me as wrong as I think it could have or as long as it might rub some other people.
215. 00:33:16 I'm good on. Well, I am on Chandler Bolt's email list. So I can tell you the thing that they are selling currently is an author's mastermind.
216. 00:33:25 So it's kind of interesting. The book is basically all of the information that you would need. If you are a self motivated person who is going to follow the plan, you don't need anything else than this book.
217. 00:33:39 However, the other places where people are going to get stuck in the motivation and getting around a group of people who are actually going to help you do the thing.
218. 00:33:48 So I think it's pretty brilliant where they basically given you the how in the book, but there's other options available if you still are having trouble taking the consistent action and doing the thing.
219. 00:33:59 That's the ideal business model in my opinion.
220. 00:34:02 Before before we move to the second section, do you remember the price of the mastermind roughly? No, I don't. In fact, I don't even think I clicked on it. I just saw, Oh, hey, Chandler Bolt, I got an email from me.
221. 00:34:13 We're talking about his book today. I got all those emails too, but I didn't click through to him just because of time and life. But I was, I'm curious at what that mastermind would cost.
222. 00:34:21 All right, if you're good, well, let's move on to the second section.
223. 00:34:24 Yeah, so the second section, by the way, this is the more writing method and the M in more stands for mind mapping.
224. 00:34:34 There were multiple things in this book that I was like, Mike is going to love this book. At least he's going to love the concept. I don't know if he's going to love the whole book, but he's going to love the concept.
225. 00:34:44 So this is interesting because mind mapping typically people will think of this as like a right brain thinking versus outlining his left brain thinking and that's not actually true.
226. 00:34:56 And he actually talks about chapter five is the magic of my mapping chapter six is outlining your book. So these are two different processes and I've actually said that these are two different ways of looking at the information and it's not.
227. 00:35:06 What's your natural bent? You should be using both of these tools. That being said, you know, one chapter on mind mapping. I think that doesn't give me a whole lot of new information.
228. 00:35:19 Well, but you're not his audience. Like, let's be real about this. You are not his audience for chapter through chapter five.
229. 00:35:26 Yeah, I do think that calling out mind mapping as a specific part of the process is pretty awesome.
230. 00:35:32 And I think there's lots of other places you can go to get more information and help in terms of creating an effective, effective mind map.
231. 00:35:41 But the key is you've got, and I think he actually advocates that you do this just on a piece of paper to which I'm not sure I recommend.
232. 00:35:51 Analog tools are great. And that's probably the place to start. But once you get a feel for it, there's a lot of advantages with digital tools. My favorite is my node. It's kind of the perfect balance between simplicity and beauty and functionality.
233. 00:36:07 It's really, really good and available on all Apple platforms. It's actually part set up too. So he talks about preparing for your mind mapping session, filling out your mind map, and then just keep going without a filter.
234. 00:36:21 I think that's grossly oversimplifying the process. But the goal is just to capture everything that comes to mind. So I definitely think that's the place to start.
235. 00:36:30 So that's the M in the Moore method. The O is then outlined. So then we take that in what I thought was crazy about when he starts talking about the O. And this is chapter six. So this section is five, six, and seven. So chapters five, six, and seven.
236. 00:36:44 One thing is crazy is, did you hear how long the outline he made was?
237. 00:36:48 There's like 21 pages. I was like, man, that is that is a beefy outline, right? Like, like the example he gave was, I could see it. Yeah. So, but it, it's good because you're taking that mind map and you're adding more structure to it.
238. 00:36:59 You're finding themes. You're then organizing those themes. You're making a list for each section. And the goal is to get your chapters out of that, I would say.
239. 00:37:08 So you're trying to take that outline and you're trying to turn it from completely unstructured mind map into a structured or a more structured outline, which I think is a really good way.
240. 00:37:19 I can tell you having written a dissertation, which is basically like a mini book. This is a very effective method because you start with all these ideas and then you've done your research around these things and you have all this stuff jumbled in your head.
241. 00:37:34 And you have to turn it into something that has structure. And annoyingly, you have to turn it into something that has like this one structure that everybody's looking for. Like, this is the structure of your dissertation.
242. 00:37:45 And this, this approach is really, really great. So that's outlining. Like, I don't need to, I don't need to spend any more time on it for me. I don't know if you have anything else to add without lining.
243. 00:37:54 Well, I would just say that I don't think outlining is a completely separate step. Like one of the things I love about MindNote is it actually gives you the mind map and the outline together if you want it.
244. 00:38:07 So the objectives that he has with outlining, I think actually I would accomplish a lot of that inside of the mind map itself. But I think flipping back and forth between those modes helps you look at the information a little bit differently.
245. 00:38:21 So, and then the, the chapter seven, the, the R is the 30 day rough draft challenge. I think this is the, the thing that you, you and I are going to do at some point. Yes. Yes.
246. 00:38:39 Yeah. I'm not sure. Maybe we make a public like bookworm challenge out of it. I don't know. But I think it's, it's interesting to, to see how he has actually created the 30 day rough draft as part of the process.
247. 00:38:58 It's not, oh, if you really have things together, you can do this in 30 days. It's like, no, when you get to this part, you just crank it out in 30 days.
248. 00:39:06 But, but he relies on the fact that you've done that 21 page outline that really, really, which this is where I said I've had experience with this and it really, really works.
249. 00:39:16 If that outline has detail, and then you just add a little more detail, and then you just add a little more detail, when you get to the rough draft phase, all you're doing is turning it into sentences.
250. 00:39:28 Like sentences and paragraphs and then section headers and chapters and it really makes the writing process flow as opposed to what most people do.
251. 00:39:39 And I think he calls this out in the book somewhere where most people do is they open up a blank page and they say, okay, I'm going to start typing right now.
252. 00:39:45 And I have to get into the right format and all that stuff. And he's like, no, put all your ideas down, organize those ideas, or add more detail, add more detail, add more detail, start writing sentences, start writing paragraphs.
253. 00:39:57 And if you do that, I don't doubt for a second, the 30 day rough draft becomes much more tangible.
254. 00:40:04 Like it actually becomes much more doable where some people would say, like, okay, but if you don't do the two things before, the mind mapping and the outlining, I think that 30 day rough draft is a really, really hard goal to hit.
255. 00:40:16 I think it's, I wouldn't say like, undoable, but you have to be super disciplined and a clear thinker in order to hit that 30 day rough draft.
256. 00:40:24 So here's the thing I think we need to add to this if we do the 30 day challenge, which he did not address is this 30 day rough draft challenge.
257. 00:40:32 You cannot use AI for this.
258. 00:40:34 Because I feel like that really isn't addressed in the book.
259. 00:40:40 And I feel like that's the place where people are going to go when they get into this step of the process and then the words aren't coming as quickly as they want.
260. 00:40:49 And they're going to start looking for an easy button. Don't do that. It's going to make your book just like all the other AI slop that's out there.
261. 00:40:58 And I would say that it's not in this book because AI wasn't even in the revised version.
262. 00:41:04 It was 2021 and open AI didn't really, really launch the thing we know of as right now until 2023, I think is when it came out.
263. 00:41:13 So that makes sense why it wasn't in here, but that's his next revision in my mind. As he thinks about revising this book, he's got to add a section about generative AI and writing, how it impacts your writing.
264. 00:41:24 And that's not to say you can't use it in the process, but you don't use it for the writing of the rough draft.
265. 00:41:31 Agreed.
266. 00:41:32 So folks, I mean, we're, we're not able to cover all the stuff he gets, you know, he talks about in here. So like he talks about the four P's of a best selling book person pain promise price.
267. 00:41:43 Like there are so many nuggets is the lack of the best way I can describe it. Like there's so many nuggets that you're like, Oh, I actually see how that makes sense.
268. 00:41:52 I really see how that makes sense that it makes it hard for us to do it justice as we're talking about it. So hopefully we give you a good enough overview that if you're the kind of person who's like, yeah.
269. 00:42:01 I want to think about writing a book where, regardless of your way that you want to publish it, you'll go, Oh, okay, I'll go check that book out and see, see if it adds value to me. And even if you only open up the section that you care about, you know, give it, give it a shot and see how much it adds value.
270. 00:42:17 All right. So, yeah, he's going now.
271. 00:42:20 And Mike, I'm blanking on the E and more. I think it's edit, but I don't remember.
272. 00:42:27 I don't know. That's probably where section three comes in. Yeah, because that's from rough draft to finish manuscript. Okay, because I didn't want to, I didn't want to move on to section three if there was an E within the other two, but I didn't think there was.
273. 00:42:39 So section three is from rough director manuscript. There's two chapters, crisis of meaning, which is basically, Hey, let's talk about editors and how editors play in this process so you're going from rough draft to something more.
274. 00:42:58 After nine, you mean? Oh, sorry, chapter nine. Did I say four? Forget me. So chapter nine. So this crisis is a meaning thing. He gets into this, which I've heard and we've talked about before that like your imperfect rough draft is better than your unfinished
275. 00:43:14 rough draft. And that's a big hurdle. And you're trying to shoot for this perfection idea. But come on, like, that's not what we're trying to go here. And then he dovetails that right into the.
276. 00:43:25 There are people out there and there are professionals. And I think Mike, this is another area where I was like, Oh, Mike's going to love this where I think this is where he references Dan Sullivan and the if there's somebody out there.
277. 00:43:37 You know, that solved this problem for you. Go figure out how they did it or that solved the same problem. Go figure out how they did it and find the who.
278. 00:43:44 And he would say that this is where the editor comes in. They are good at this. They are professionals at this. And then he gives you very tangible things around how much it should cost and, you know, you could pay this much money or you could pay this much money and
279. 00:43:59 it we're in 2021 timeframe. So who knows how prices have changed since then. But at the same time, I've not seen other people give ballpark numbers like you have to do like deep research on the internet and go into the forums.
280. 00:44:14 And here he at least gives you some ballpark numbers, 400 to $1,200 for for a half decent editor. It depends on the length of your book. It depends on the style of your book.
281. 00:44:23 And I just, I liked that that information. Even if it doesn't hold up long term, I like that he at least gives it to you and says, here's a ballpark number and, you know, go out there and start talking to people.
282. 00:44:36 Yep. Agreed. I think the he makes a really compelling case for working with an editor, obviously. And there's the thing that really stood out to me though was chapter eight, the crisis of meaning he gives a very underrated piece of advice here, I think, which is the best way to self edit is to do a verbal read through.
283. 00:44:58 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I discovered this a couple months ago because I saw Sahil Bloom was doing this with his newsletter where he would record a podcast version of it and then he would put it at the top of the post.
284. 00:45:13 So I've actually done that with my practical PKM newsletter that goes out every Monday. I also publish it to my ghost website and I read through the article after it's finished and add the podcast to the top so you can play it inside of the page.
285. 00:45:31 It also has a URL. You can subscribe to it and listen to it that way. But I have found so many typos that I missed while reading it that I discovered when speaking it to the point now where when I am working on a video script for YouTube video.
286. 00:45:52 I script the whole thing so I'm writing it and I'm actually reading it out loud as I'm writing it a lot of times people probably think I'm crazy, because I, I don't catch stuff when I'm writing it but when I am saying the words that appear on the screen I noticed all the mistakes that I make.
287. 00:46:11 So this is really brilliant. I think any kind of text that you're going to publish it helps you to just say it out loud. The other one it helps me with is it really helps me with phrasing of things where I get into trouble as I speak a little more informally than I have to write a lot of
288. 00:46:29 times so I want to say it in the informal way and I'm like no Cory you have to write that in the formal way. You have to think of the audience this is going to and how hard they're going to judge you when you say it like you talk to your friends and your family so
289. 00:46:44 I'm ready to move to the next section of Lost Tracker where we are so 123 we're in section four. Section four would be book production and then pre launch prep. Now Mike this is where the book takes a turn for me.
290. 00:46:59 Book book production. I mean, like I get this. The whole pre launch prep thing was like somebody removed the wool from my eyes of like, hey, there's a whole other side to this book thing that you haven't even thought about like that like there.
291. 00:47:17 This machine that's churning and it's not just about writing the book. It's not just about producing the book. It's not just about figuring out how to deliver it to the people. There's this whole other machine.
292. 00:47:30 And he hits it here. He hits it in section four. And then all of section five is which is called how to launch your book is about this idea of launching and marketing and all of these things and
293. 00:47:44 I still don't think I know how I feel about these sections of the book. We'll get there as we go but I just wanted to give that disclaimer of like, and here's what I mean when I say I don't know how I feel about it.
294. 00:47:55 I kind of don't like it.
295. 00:47:57 I get it intellectually that this is what needs to happen for a book to be successful.
296. 00:48:03 And I'm like, really, like, he describes the person, he's like, can I just write the book? Like, I just want to write the book. Can I just write the book? And he's like, sure, you can.
297. 00:48:14 But if you want people to read the book, or if you want to make money off the book, or if you want to, or if you want to, and I'm like, oh, thank on it, like, I'm actually going to have to do this.
298. 00:48:24 I am his exhibit A for that advice. No, when I, not just with the book that I wrote, but I remember the first product that I released on my own.
299. 00:48:38 It was the faith-based productivity stuff and I went into a hole and worked on it and spent months making it. And like, this is great.
300. 00:48:50 I released it to the world. The production quality was was fantastic. The material I felt like was really, really good. And I sold 10 copies. Like, nobody wanted it.
301. 00:49:01 I was crushing. And I saw basically I made that mistake. And what I realize now, and I think maybe influences the way that I read this book is that's not necessarily a bad thing to think about that stuff.
302. 00:49:19 And so I get it why most people don't want to think about this stuff. They want to just make their art and they want the world to just throw money at them and say, oh, this is amazing. Thank you for mustering the courage to do this.
303. 00:49:31 That's not how it works at all. And that's not a bad thing. This is not an evil side of the business. It's just something that you need to understand.
304. 00:49:42 Exactly. And he pitches it from the "remember your why." So he ties back into that "remember your why." You wanted to impact people's lives.
305. 00:49:51 Well, if they don't know about your book, then you can't impact their lives. If you haven't done the pre-work to actually get the word out there, it's not going to rank high enough.
306. 00:50:02 And Amazon's not going to put it in the list that needs to be put in. They're not going to show it in front of people's faces, etc, etc, etc.
307. 00:50:09 So this is where, I mean, to say it's the meat of the book, I don't think is unrealistic because it's six chapters, seven chapters. It's seven chapters.
308. 00:50:20 So coming up with your best-selling book title, designing your best-selling book cover, how to format your book and get ready to publish, I think he should have separated these two.
309. 00:50:30 So here's my first, like, real critique of the book. I think he should have separated this into actual book production, which was 10, 11, and 12.
310. 00:50:38 And then the next one should have been pre-launch prep, which would have been 13 through, which is the psychology of marketing, sharing your author journey, using a launch team to help sell more books and spread your message and building an audience, right?
311. 00:50:51 I think it would have just been cleaner in his style. I don't know why he smushed them together. Do you have a feel for that?
312. 00:51:00 Well, I think I'm going to push back a little bit. I think that these actually should be together because I don't think you can go through the artistic production of the cover and the title and the packaging, basically, of the book.
313. 00:51:17 And then be like, okay, so here's this thing. And now I'm going to figure out how to market it. You have to be thinking about the marketing when you are designing the cover, when you are picking the title.
314. 00:51:30 And there is no greater evidence of this to me than making so many YouTube videos because they will tell you that 80% of the views that you're going to get are going to come from the packaging, the title and the thumbnail.
315. 00:51:46 That's absolutely correct. And then if you take it a step further, it's the hook. You know, for a long time, I made really great videos of great information.
316. 00:51:53 And I found that you can't just take those videos and throw them up on YouTube because there's so many other options for people have.
317. 00:52:00 And I think that's where the fact that this is combined together and the information that he shares here, this is actually exponentially more important today than it was when he wrote it.
318. 00:52:10 Because you have to fight through more noise than you ever have in order to stand out. And if you can't write a good title, if you can't create a good hook, if you can't create a cover image that is very easy to read and people rock it right away, you're not going to sell anything.
319. 00:52:30 Yeah, I think this is where he would have helped me out because you're right. I think you're right. When you think about it from a timeline perspective, that first more phase.
320. 00:52:40 When you get through the editing and now you actually have the written copy that's fairly good, right? Like, it's ready to go into production.
321. 00:52:48 These next two things need to start at the same time. And that's the way he talks about it in the book is, is your pre launch work and your production work need to kind of go hand in hand.
322. 00:52:58 As you prepare, as you prepare for the launch. And this is where I think, so Chandler, if you're listening, right, or if you ever listen to this later on down the road, I think his mountain figure.
323. 00:53:09 He could do a combined figure where he shows that on the mountain. Like the whole, he's got the whole like phases or the milestones on there.
324. 00:53:18 And then when you go up the mountain to milestone six, milestone six and cover design and formatting and there's those two milestones in there. He could, he could start to talk about launch and pre launch.
325. 00:53:30 And then when you actually get to launch these other launch activities, I think it's a, it's a picky detail, but at the same time that would help my visually oriented brain kind of kind of wrap its head around the stuff more.
326. 00:53:43 Yeah, that's, that's fair. That's fair. I think the thing to keep in mind. I don't know where I got this number, but I thought I read somewhere that his goal is to help you get to the point where you sold 10,000 copies. Am I just making that out?
327. 00:53:59 No, it's in the title of the book. So yes.
328. 00:54:02 Okay, so mine just says proven path from blank page to published author on the, the cover that I have in my mind map file. But yeah, so that that 10,000 number, that's the key. Like if you just want to have a book that you can point to on your bookshelf and I wrote that you can disregard
329. 00:54:19 everything, but the, the first couple chapters in this section. But if you're beginning with that as the end point, like that's where you're going to try to go the sooner that you think about this marketing stuff, the, the better you're going to better off you're going to be because it needs to be in the bones of the book.
330. 00:54:37 No, it has to be in the DNA from the very beginning. It can't be tacked on at the end. Yeah, I agree. All right, so let's run through a little bit more of these. We've got seven chapters here.
331. 00:54:49 Yeah, I said the first ones were about really getting the book ready. So he hits formatting. He is hitting cover design and hitting title. He gives like really good. He has these sections in there. They're called best selling author tips.
332. 00:55:02 So he gives these little like very actionable things. And then like we said before, he has these guides or templates that he works you through from self publishing.com.
333. 00:55:11 I think for me, the psychology side, and then the author journey and the launch team, those things were the more valuable parts of the section to me because I hadn't really ever thought of those before and they were changing what I'll call like my worldview around publishing.
334. 00:55:30 Whereas the other ones were much more like mechanical. They were do this, don't do this. This is a good title. This is a good book cover design. Here it is and like boom, like just kind of thrown it out there.
335. 00:55:40 But this the psychology of marketing and the building a buzz and launch team and then building an audience through an email list. These are the things that you've probably thought about a little bit more than I have because you are running a creator business.
336. 00:55:55 I'm not running a creator business. So I think about, oh, well, how do I build a launch team? Like I've seen people do this. I've signed up. I've been part of launch teams.
337. 00:56:05 I get why I did it from my side. And now he's like thinking about like why the value of the launch team is and then what got me on this on this mic is you kind of have to like poke them.
338. 00:56:17 And you're like, hey, we're getting close. Help me out. Like read this copy and give me a review. Like I really need those reviews on day one. And it's like, like that hurts me like the idea of doing that.
339. 00:56:28 And I know they signed up. I know they want to help you. He talks about that that like they're in. But like that, there's something in my gut that says, I don't want to bother you. Like, I don't want to be annoying.
340. 00:56:39 Like I really would love if you would do a review, but like I don't want to be annoying kind of a thing. Okay. So this to validate what he's saying here, you absolutely have to do this.
341. 00:56:51 And I had to do a different version of this when I launched like HQ, when I launched the library, you know, it doesn't have to be me sending a text message or me sending an email saying, please go do this.
342. 00:57:05 There are other ways that you can make this easier. Like I use send you when I was doing life HQ. And I think you're actually recorded a video like right in the web interface, right?
343. 00:57:14 Let's pause here. I had no issues doing that. It wasn't like I didn't even think about it. Mike. Like it was like, Oh, no, like this is cool. Like life HQ is awesome. And I want Mike to know that I think it's awesome.
344. 00:57:24 And I want other people to know that it's awesome. So there was no like hesitation in my brain about pulling my phone up, recording that quick video and shooting it off to you.
345. 00:57:33 But for me, be on the other side of it. I just don't like it.
346. 00:57:38 Yeah, I don't think you well, there's probably some people who just don't care at all and can send those emails without a sort of hit to their conscience.
347. 00:57:47 But I think most normal people are going to feel a little bit bad making that that ask. That's okay. You still got to do it. And really, if you do it in a nice way, you know, you kind of just, if you can do it in a way where if you're able to do this, it would really help
348. 00:58:02 me out. But there's also like you're a jerk if you don't do this. There's there's a line there. I think in terms of the expectations like you signed up for this. You need to leave me a review now.
349. 00:58:12 Yeah. That that sort of tone can come across in the messaging if you're not careful. But I also think it's pretty easy to avoid.
350. 00:58:19 Yeah. Okay. All right. So maybe I'm just a little too, a little too sensitive to it and I need to get thicker skin when it comes to this. But folks, if you haven't been able to tell, I am not a marketer.
351. 00:58:30 Well, you just got to, you just got to do it. I think it's not even so much, you know, a marketing thing. I think there's different aspects of this where once you do it, it's not so bad.
352. 00:58:38 Like sales is another thing where I hear from people all the time. It's like, I don't want to be salesy. I'm not a sales person. I'm like, well, you're married, aren't you? So you've sold yourself at least once.
353. 00:58:48 And most people have gotten a job. So you've sold yourself in the job interview and there's a bunch of ways that you've done that.
354. 00:58:54 Oh, it's not what I meant. It's the same thing. It's just how you think about it. It is. The last one I'll say, and this is one where I thought you would connect again with what he's saying. And I've heard a lot of this stuff through you, is this idea of the email list that like right now, you know, this idea of having an email list and being able to directly
355. 00:59:13 communicate with your current customers, those who are interested, those who might become your future customers or whatever that is, he doubles down on this. And I was like, oh, Mike's probably going to really resonate with this and also see the value and what he's saying here.
356. 00:59:30 Yeah, you definitely want to build your own email list. There's so much that's happening in the social media landscape. But however many followers you have, however many subscribers you have really means nothing.
357. 00:59:43 It's all about the algorithm in terms of who actually sees your stuff. So I feel like the best way to use social media right now is sort of test things because you don't need to have a huge following. If you write something that's really good and helps a lot of people, then it's going to blow up.
358. 00:59:58 And on the other side of that, if you want to be able to reach everybody with a specific message, especially as it pertains to the thing is available or I'd like you to take this action. The only way to do that is with an email list.
359. 01:00:12 Got it.
360. 01:00:14 Okay, so ready to move to section five.
361. 01:00:18 Let's do it.
362. 01:00:19 So section five is how to launch your book. It's got four chapters in it. The fundamentals of a bestseller, the MVP launch, the traditional launch, and then the road to your first or next 100 reviews.
363. 01:00:32 So the first chapter there is exactly what it sounds like. He's going to walk through these different fundamentals. I'm a quick look at my notes says there were six of them.
364. 01:00:43 If I'm looking at this correctly. So, you know, he's got quite a few different fundamentals. So something like, you know, get more than 100 reviews.
365. 01:00:52 I've got the seven fundamentals of a bestseller. Is that what you're talking about? There's seven. There's seven. There's my seventh one.
366. 01:00:59 So publish in all formats. Get 100 reviews or get more than 100 reviews. Your book description that converts people or your book cover that converts people into actually buying.
367. 01:01:08 So that is the nature of that chapter. Again, it's, it's very like actionable. This is what I've learned by helping, you know, thousands of people publish a book and seeing what, what has worked and what hasn't.
368. 01:01:21 Then he goes into these two different ideas for your launch strategy. And one is the MVP launch and one is the, the traditional launch. So the MVP launch, it's most commonly used launch strategy.
369. 01:01:33 It's for first time authors, an author without a following to basically build a following and author with aspirations beyond book sales, such as generated leads for your business or whatever it is. And he describes this launch triangle.
370. 01:01:48 So the launch triangle has a launch team. It's then has reviews and then it has promotions. So he's going to say this MVP launch needs these three pieces team reviews and promotions.
371. 01:02:00 And that's how you're going to to kind of get this book out there and get it, get it into the hands of people.
372. 01:02:07 I think that's an interesting thing. Like I, it makes sense to me. But what I love and the point I want to make in this is it's very easy to follow.
373. 01:02:17 Like if I want to do the MVP strategy, I know how to do it now. Like I write a checklist and I go, okay, Chandler said to do this. He said to do this. He said to do this.
374. 01:02:27 And I'm not saying like blindly don't think about it and just do whatever Chandler said, but it's like, it's so clear and easy to follow that like it makes it doable.
375. 01:02:38 It takes that like stress of, I don't know how to launch a book to like, Oh, just follow these steps and you're going to be and he even says it a couple of times in there.
376. 01:02:46 If you do these steps, you're going to be better than 99% of the people who, you know, who author a book who make it to the author phase of the book.
377. 01:02:54 So I really like that about his writing style and what he's produced here.
378. 01:02:59 The one thing I want to call out from this comes from the last chapter, chapter 20, where getting your first one star review is a rite of passage.
379. 01:03:10 Because I've experienced this, it's those negative reviews that tend to stick with you. Not all of the glowing reviews about how great the thing is.
380. 01:03:18 It's the one person who has a unfair criticism that you can't respond to that you turn over and over and over again in your brain.
381. 01:03:29 So I like the way that he just kind of reframes that and is like, that's part of the process.
382. 01:03:34 And we actually celebrate the fact that you got your first one star review means that you made something that's worth criticizing for some of these trolls.
383. 01:03:42 And you got enough reviews. That was the point that stood out to me. You've got enough reviews that somebody reviewed negatively.
384. 01:03:50 That's a win. You go get them and they have a party for them, so I love that.
385. 01:03:56 Yeah, and I think it is possible, obviously, that you just wrote a really bad book.
386. 01:04:01 You do want to be careful of all you're getting is negative reviews. Maybe you missed something.
387. 01:04:07 But most people are going to be kind. Most people will give you the benefit of the doubt.
388. 01:04:14 And no matter how much you pour into whatever you're making, there's always going to be somebody.
389. 01:04:20 Some of the YouTube videos that I've done, I do everything I can to be completely transparent.
390. 01:04:26 Like, I'm not, you know, trying to sell this thing. I've got this thing, life HQ, if you want this.
391. 01:04:32 But here's everything. I'm going to show you how to do it all yourself, right?
392. 01:04:35 It's been so much time detailing every little part of the process, so you don't have to buy anything, right?
393. 01:04:42 There's still going to be people who are going to dislike that video.
394. 01:04:44 I was just trying to sell me something. No.
395. 01:04:48 This is for those folks who just, if you don't want to do the work, here it is.
396. 01:04:52 Like, I've already canned it for you and there's...
397. 01:04:55 Exactly, exactly. But some people, you know, that's just who they are. And you got to accept that.
398. 01:05:02 All right, so then we get into the traditional launch. And I think it's interesting to talk about these two.
399. 01:05:06 You've got this MVP one where you've got, you know, these different things that you're doing on your own.
400. 01:05:12 And then the traditional one looks like for people who have published books.
401. 01:05:16 They've worked with a major publisher. They're public speakers. They're consultants.
402. 01:05:20 Essentially, it's for like people who aren't me, right? Like, that's what I read and what I read.
403. 01:05:25 This is like, hey, if you're famous, you can do a traditional book launch.
404. 01:05:28 And this is what most people see. So what do you do? You go on TV, you go on podcast, you go, and you run your circles, right?
405. 01:05:34 And all I could think about in my head, right, is like, and this is what Ryan Holliday does, right?
406. 01:05:40 Like, he just, I'm going to put out a new book. Okay, like, let's have him on the 19 different media outlet.
407. 01:05:46 You know, things talking about his new book. But like, there's a reason why they can do this and the reason why it works.
408. 01:05:53 But it's also, there's a reason why if that's your goal, you know, I would say Chandler Bolt saying that might not be the best goal for a new unpublished person or somebody without a huge following.
409. 01:06:05 You may want to take this other approach. And I think he, he steers you that way, not in an inappropriate way in a realistic.
410. 01:06:13 Come on, like, let's be real about this. Like, you're not getting on major television networks and these gigantic podcasts.
411. 01:06:20 You're probably going to be have to do some of this, you know, MVP or guerrilla style marketing MVP, by the way, is minimum viable product marketing.
412. 01:06:28 So, yeah, I like the fact that he called out the four main best sellers list, the New York Times being editorial and basically you have no control over that one.
413. 01:06:37 And then Wall Street Journal USA Today and Amazon all being merit based. And even those, you know, some of those are more feasible than others.
414. 01:06:45 And so, it's interesting the way that he frames it because I guess the belief I had going into reading this book was you really need to work with a traditional publisher if you want to show up on any of this.
415. 01:07:02 And I was familiar with New York Times and Wall Street Journal, basically. And Amazon, I guess, I kind of knew existed, but never really made the connection. That was actually a list that you could target with your book launch for some reason.
416. 01:07:14 So this is kind of interesting. It's like, these are the lists and there's going to be different ones that are going to be appropriate for different people in terms of their launch goals and pick the one that you can hit basically.
417. 01:07:28 Well, the thing I love and the reason why I chuckled when you said about it is I had a bad taste in my mouth. So when he started talking about this, I really appreciated his perspective on it, because he does call out the people who are like, "Oh, yeah, and then there are those people who, like, put their book in underwater basket weaving."
418. 01:07:43 Which is basically like anybody, you know, like, you put it in the most obscure category that you can ever find in the world. So you're then a best seller on Amazon and it's like, everybody knows you're not a best seller.
419. 01:07:54 Like really everybody knows it. It's just you found the category that nobody else, you know, could wrote a book in this year. So I thought that was great. But then I like his strategy.
420. 01:08:04 Like he gives you like a really good strategy. He's like, find one that you can hit and that you have like a chance of rising up in and then find one that's more of a stretch.
421. 01:08:14 And your goal is to try to do two of those. And then he tells you that you can actually add a bunch more in Amazon, which most people don't know.
422. 01:08:21 So this ties directly to his reviews. And he talks about reviews a lot in the rest of the book that these reviews are essential and they're critical and they help you kind of like stay up on top of the scales.
423. 01:08:34 I think this is, I know reviews exist everywhere, but I think this is really driven by Amazon. And it's really driven by online and digital copies of it.
424. 01:08:46 I don't think this applies as much for like the paper copy of the book, but I think it's very, very valuable and it's very valid and it's more a matter of how do you get the boost that you need when you're publishing or when it's kind of showed to people and reviews are essential.
425. 01:09:03 So that's kind of how he ends this section.
426. 01:09:06 Yeah, I don't know that I really want to play the reviews game. I get why it's important if this is going to be the tempo of your business, but it's not for me. The email list is at this time, I feel it's completely appropriate to do a complete side note that says, if you like the book, we're in podcast
427. 01:09:25 code like we don't ever like do you realize we don't ever ask people to go review the podcast? Like we don't know. So, yeah, that's because I never read those reviews.
428. 01:09:37 I did at the beginning when I started doing bookworm and I started doing focused. I was watching the reviews and there were some really nasty ones and I was like, I can't.
429. 01:09:50 This is going to be bad for my mental health. If I just keep going reading these.
430. 01:09:53 Yeah, I would, I would much rather you go tell somebody about this really cool podcast that you listen to and like see if you can get like word amount like I would rather you do that, but hey, you do you, you can do whatever.
431. 01:10:04 So here's the thing though. It's not just, you know, it's not just me. It's not just bookworm is not just focused. Like every podcast has those reviews and it's just not worth going and looking at them because somebody's having a bad day and they decided to take it out on you in the last
432. 01:10:22 episode that you recorded and that stuff can stick with you for a long time. So I just stopped looking.
433. 01:10:28 Got it. So let's get to the last section. Selling books after launch. And in this one, there are five chapters. Sorry, this isn't the last one. This is the next the last one.
434. 01:10:37 So selling your book after launch. There's five chapters in this one. Mike, I'm going to be very, very honest with you. We're 160 something pages into the book at this point.
435. 01:10:45 And I am starting to go. I am nowhere near selling a book like Chandler. I appreciate this, but you've been hitting me with like really good stuff for the last hundred and fifty hundred and sixty pages.
436. 01:11:01 I'm not ready to think about what I do after I launch the book because, you know, and this is where maybe his picture of the mountain, right? Like kind of, kind of does a disservice as I'm thinking, like, I got a lot of mountain to climb. Like, I got a whole lot of mountain.
437. 01:11:16 So this, so don't even worry about this section, basically. But I think this is important once you have your book. You want to get to the point where you have 10,000 people who have read it. That is a bit of a stretch for just about anybody. And so you do have to put in the work in order for that to happen.
438. 01:11:38 Now, at CEX, I saw Jay Klaus and Justin Moore recording this podcast across the lobby, but there's a very good episode of the Creator Science podcast where Jay and Justin, who our friends are talking about Justin's book because Justin published sponsor magnet, which actually we should both read and apply for bookworm probably.
439. 01:12:06 It's like sponsor ships and ads and things. But basically, Justin self published through tilt, I think, and I actually have three copies of his book because I bought one before it came out.
440. 01:12:21 And then there was somewhere, I was somewhere and I got a free copy because it was part of a conference I attended or something and then at craft and commerce.
441. 01:12:33 He brought a bunch of books and put them on the chairs before one of the sessions so everybody who was there got one.
442. 01:12:40 And I don't think that was guerrilla, by the way, I think they had an agreement there. But on that episode, he talks to Jay about all of the things that he is doing in order to sell more copies of his book.
443. 01:12:52 And he talked about how he is even doing custom versions of the book for events that have like 2000 attendees. They're going to have a separate version of the book that's tailored to that organization and to that event.
444. 01:13:08 And everybody who signs up for it gets a copy, you know, stuff like that, which I think is interesting if you're not doing the traditionally published route.
445. 01:13:16 And that's where I see a lot of the advice that he's sharing in this section. It's that sort of stuff.
446. 01:13:23 That being said, I'm not sure that the things that he listed here are the right things for right now.
447. 01:13:32 I think these are great.
448. 01:13:35 I think that advice that he shares here is really good.
449. 01:13:38 And you should kind of understand where he's coming from when he's giving you this advice, but then you should be thinking about how do I apply this in my industry right now, because it might be a little bit different.
450. 01:13:52 There's good advice here about, you know, getting speaking appearances and things like that, but really the question you should always be asking is how do I get this book into more people's hands.
451. 01:14:05 All right, so hitting these five chapters, I've launched now what the one year launch for more ways to sell books after your launch book booking author appearances to sell more books and grow your business and then growing your business using using a book bonus.
452. 01:14:19 The last thing I want to call out here, again, there are good tactics in all of this. If you're at that stage, this is where I realize like, yes, this is a reference book for me, like this is 100% a reference book for me.
453. 01:14:32 I need to like not pay as much attention to this because I'm going to overload my brain, but know that it's here and come back to it.
454. 01:14:38 The chapter 25, his bonus chapter is basically like, this is what I'm doing.
455. 01:14:45 Right, like that's the this is what I'm doing. I'm I wrote a book.
456. 01:14:49 I'm using this book to grow myself publishing dot com business and this is what I'm doing.
457. 01:14:53 And he doesn't like, I don't think he shies away from it, but it's like, hey, this is exactly what I'm doing. And here you go, like here are the details.
458. 01:15:01 We get into now the very last section.
459. 01:15:04 One more thing before we get there, chapter 25, where he talks about treat it like a hobby and it will pay like a hobby.
460. 01:15:13 So you do have to come back to this at some point. You do have to tackle the hard things here.
461. 01:15:18 But then also, I'm kind of curious because that chapter specifically growing your business using a book.
462. 01:15:24 I think maybe you can cannibalize your business with a book also.
463. 01:15:29 I haven't spoken to him directly about this, but I feel like I've heard.
464. 01:15:34 Tiago Forte talk about different places, how he's happy with the success of the building a second brain book, but I know that he mentioned that it has cannibalized sales of the cohort as well.
465. 01:15:48 So one of the things that he calls out in this chapter, which I think is important to think about is sort of the value ladder.
466. 01:15:55 You know, teach me how to do it. Show me how to do it. Do it for me.
467. 01:15:58 I think you have to consider how the book fits in with all of the other business assets that you have in order for it to really do what you want it to do.
468. 01:16:09 You can't just view it as a thing in isolation.
469. 01:16:12 Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. I hadn't hadn't thought about it and I didn't know that about, you know, Tiago and how it's impacted his his career.
470. 01:16:28 You're implementation plan. These were strange to me. This was very different. I thought than the rest of the book. The make him proud is very much a personal story that Chandler gives.
471. 01:16:44 It's a dramatic personal story about being on a cruise ship with an individual and that individual ends up dying and then basically Chandler's like, "Okay, I've got a mission now." And that mission is to help share knowledge and kind of honor this individual.
472. 01:17:03 So that's why it's titled make him proud. I understand what he's doing. Like, I understand the nature of the context. It didn't really resonate that much with me. It felt a little bit kind of out in left field.
473. 01:17:14 And then 27, which is your implementation plan. This is the only part of the book. This is the only time I felt like he might have pushed a little too hard because essentially your implementation plan is, "Hey, come to self-publishing.com and be part of the team."
474. 01:17:32 Like, come on. Come on. It's time. Come to selfpublishing.com, which I get. He's doing his thing. He has told you he's an authorpreneur. He has told you that he has written a book to grow his business. Here it is. Come on. Come join the team.
475. 01:17:49 And that's the only time in the entire book I've kind of gone. That was a pretty hard sell. That was a pretty big push.
476. 01:17:56 Yeah, agreed. I don't really fault him for that, to be honest. But I agree with everything that you said here. The story is very tragic and emotional. But it's also something that is a little bit hard to relate to.
477. 01:18:13 I haven't been on a whole lot of cruises. I agree with you. You can hear us. I didn't relate to it that much. I get where we're at. But I felt like it was something he needed to put on paper.
478. 01:18:32 Here it is. There you go. Maybe as I'm trying to motivate, I don't know if it landed that well with me. Yeah, agreed. All right. So that wraps it up. Do you have anything about the bonus material or anything like that? I didn't have anything on that.
479. 01:18:49 Nope. Okay. So now we move into action items. And Mike, I'm struggling with action items on this. I really think that the action item I have for this would be to talk to you and figure out which we kind of did a little bit.
480. 01:19:07 But to talk to you in more detail and say, "Hey, Mike, are we serious about this thing?" He talks about it at one point in the book about having an accountability accountability.
481. 01:19:18 And he actually uses that phrase, which I've never heard anybody else use the phrase accountability before, which is somebody else that you're in the author journey with that you can come alongside and do this with.
482. 01:19:29 And I thought, "Okay, Mike, are we going to be accountability and are we going to do this thing in whatever we're going to do?" So I actually think my action item, the only one I have is to, at some point, I'm not even going to say it's before our next recording, at some point, you and I need to revisit
483. 01:19:49 what are we going to do? Are we going to do anything? And does it make sense for us to actually take on the 30-day challenge? I think that a quick action item that would follow that, depending on our conversation, would be Plan the 30-day challenge.
484. 01:20:01 Like, when are we doing it? What are the 30 days? And let's plan the 30-day challenge. So those are really the only things I'm getting out of this book from what I'm committing to right now. How about you?
485. 01:20:12 I agree. I mean, the action item is either you write a book or you decide it's not the right time. I am 100% committed to writing this book. And as I mentioned in the last episode, I want to do it for the end of the year.
486. 01:20:29 A little bit hesitant to commit to that before the next recording, but I think we can for sure figure out the timeframe. So, yeah, that's the same thing for me. We need to figure out when we're going to write it.
487. 01:20:47 All right. So there you go. You heard it. You heard it from us. Let's go to style and rating. My book. So I'll start from a style standpoint. I thought he, you know, I thought the way he wrote was very relatable.
488. 01:21:03 I thought he didn't fluff anything up unnecessarily. I thought he communicated well. The outlines of the different ideas that he was throwing out there were were well done. I think the visuals made sense the way he added them.
489. 01:21:18 Some of them hit better for me than others. Like some of them, I was just like, okay, you probably didn't need to do a visual there. Other ones, I was like, oh, yeah, that actually, that actually added a ton of value.
490. 01:21:28 I already talked to you about in the, what is it, the fourth section of the book? I think we could have split that up. And I think it would have been a cleaner, cleaner thing.
491. 01:21:38 Even though I get your point, like I understand what your point was, Mike, I still think it probably would have resonated a little bit cleaner with me having split that up and not having it be seven, seven chapters in that in that section.
492. 01:21:50 The stuff at the end, I won't belittle it again. You probably just could have gotten rid of chapter 26 and 27. And it could have just turned into the thank you for reading my book. And oh, by the way, come to self publishing.com if you want, if you want more help.
493. 01:22:07 And that would have, that would have been better for me if he'd have done that. That being said, I don't think any of those things detract from the immense value that this book is.
494. 01:22:22 That said, I must caveat it with, if you don't care about publishing a book, this is a terrible book for you to read. Like, don't, I mean, if you don't want to learn about publishing, if you don't care about writing a book, if you don't care about any of this stuff.
495. 01:22:37 Just be like, okay, good. I don't have to read that book and it's gone. And I'm never going to think about it again. And, and be okay with that. Be happy. Because if this book is written for people who are interested in thinking about publishing a book and in particular interested in self publishing a book.
496. 01:22:53 We happen to be in that space, you and I. So for me, I'm going to rank this a five star book. I think this is an incredible book. I think it's fantastic. I would read it again. I want to keep it as a reference for when I start to thinking about reading it again.
497. 01:23:08 I don't think I'll read it from start to finish again. I don't think it's necessary. I don't think I have to do that. But if you don't care, and like you don't want to self publish a book, this is probably a zero star book for you. So understand that like I'm ranking it a five star.
498. 01:23:23 But you could easily look at it. Read the first, or just read the titles of the chapters and be like, nope, I'm out. And the answer is yes, you are absolutely correct. So five star book for me Mike.
499. 01:23:34 Yeah, this was one that when you picked it, I was like, hmm, this is either going to be exactly what people need, or they're not going to be interested in it at all.
500. 01:23:44 And I think that is, that is true, which I think for the type of book that he's trying to teach you how to write. That's sort of the feeling you want to give people is either, oh, this is exactly what I need.
501. 01:24:03 Or this isn't really for me. And I'm kind of curious how many people in the bookworm audience are interested in this because my gut says that there are more people who believe that they have a book in them and they want to write it.
502. 01:24:21 Then they then actually like share that desire. So, can I redeem something? Can I redeem something for us? Sure. Even if you are the person who's like, I don't ever care. I don't want to write a book, but you read a lot of books.
503. 01:24:36 I think I do think this book helped me understand publishing better. So like there are redeeming a slight to maybe you go from zero to one. Okay, cool. I'm done. You're right.
504. 01:24:45 No, no, it's, it's not a, not a one star book. That's, that's not what I was saying. But I think it, that means it's not a five star book for me because I don't think it's as broadly applicable.
505. 01:24:55 And I don't know that there's anything in here for me personally. Now, I have been all in with the independent creator stuff for the last couple of years. And even before that I was doing stuff on the side.
506. 01:25:09 So, I have probably way more research and experience into this, this area than the average person. So, I think putting myself in someone like you, you know, there's shoes where you want to write a book.
507. 01:25:26 And you weren't at the content entrepreneur expo and you didn't talk to all of the people that I talked to. This is the something like this is the things like, Oh, this shows you the path forward.
508. 01:25:39 Having been to CX and talk to these people. This is, you know, one option out of many.
509. 01:25:46 And there are probably other versions of this exact book from many of the people that I, I met there.
510. 01:25:54 I think it's really well done. I think it points you in the right direction. I think the information that he shares is great. Definitely gave me some more details that I didn't have previously and helped me piece together the puzzle a little bit more fully, I think.
511. 01:26:10 But I don't think I can rate this five stars. I will rate it four stars. I do think it's really good. There's not much fluff in here. And if you're looking for something that's going to help you overcome that friction where I want to write something, but I really don't even know where to start.
512. 01:26:26 Now, this is a great option. And I wish that I had read this prior to self publishing my first book. I wish this had existed at that point. It would have helped me out a ton.
513. 01:26:41 But I just, it's a very specific niche, you know, that is either for you or not for you. And even with that, I think it's either for you at this stage of your life or it's, or it's not. You know, I think there are people who maybe want to write a book and it's very possible that, you know, this just isn't the right
514. 01:26:59 time. Don't bother with this one. Then you just save it. Like you mentioned, come back to it when you're ready. But for the person who is ready. It's a, there's a lot of good stuff in here. Good. All right, Mike, let's put published on the shelf. What's next for us.
515. 01:27:16 Next is a book called Time Anxiety by Chris Gillabow. Chris Gillabow is the person behind the World Domination Summit, I believe, which now is no longer a thing in Portland, Oregon. It was this cool, cool conference that people used to go to.
516. 01:27:34 I never got to go sadly. But he also has written a lot of other books, including the $100 startup, I think is the one maybe he's most known for. But I think this is an interesting idea coming off of the heels of Eat That Frog, which is basically just be more productive and get your work done.
517. 01:27:58 Yeah. I'm hoping this is going to be, I haven't started it yet, but I'm hoping this is going to be a little bit of anti-time management book from somebody who still is, I would say, pretty prolific in terms of their productivity, but maybe will give us some different ways to think about how we manage our time and tasks.
518. 01:28:17 Awesome. I'm looking forward to this one. After that, we're going to, I'm going to have a side conversation with Mike right now, so Mike, get ready for it. Mike, you mentioned sponsor magnet. Should we bump sponsor magnet up in a replace of the other one we were talking about?
519. 01:28:36 I'm foreign. I read the description of sponsor magnet and I like it. I'm in. Okay. Yeah, let's do it. Justin is a really cool guy. So a story about Justin Moore. I met him at Craft in Commerce a couple years ago. It seems to be where I meet most of the creators that I meet.
520. 01:28:57 But he has this, this brand, uh, Creator Wizard. Okay. And he has like these cohorts where he teaches people and now even a conference where he helps you land these, these sponsorship deals.
521. 01:29:10 And I met him for the first time at Craft in Commerce right after I had gone independent. I knew who he was and I had talked to like interacted with him a couple times online. Met him at like the opening party and was just a super, super nice guy.
522. 01:29:27 And then he actually speaks at Craft in Commerce and he shares from the main stage, this very emotional story about how he was in this agency and it wasn't going well and they were in all sorts of debt.
523. 01:29:42 You know, and it was a really tough time and how he worked through it basically. And so I got to talk to him after the talk and I was like, dude, that was exactly what I needed to hear like that's exactly what I'm going through.
524. 01:29:55 And he just, he's one of those people where he, in like the five, ten minutes after that, that talk, you know, we're in the main hall still. There's a bunch of people milling around.
525. 01:30:06 But he and I have this really deep conversation where it feels like we are the only two people in the room and all the other 400 people that are there are like watching us.
526. 01:30:17 You know, that that's just the kind of person that he is. He's a really, really nice guy. So I have no problem shining a spotlight on his book.
527. 01:30:27 Well, and it came out in January. So it's, it's new. It's still fairly new. And it just seems really interesting from, you know, what we talk about in terms of business practices and self help.
528. 01:30:37 So it's sponsor magnet, how to attract price and execute your dream brand partnerships. And I think thinking about partnerships in general is, is a fun topic to talk about.
529. 01:30:47 So let's go ahead and make a, make a little bit of a switch and let's go to Justin Moore's sponsor magnet.
530. 01:30:55 Alrighty.
531. 01:30:56 Do you have any gap books between now and our next recording?
532. 01:31:00 That is a great question. Not off the top of my head. I still need to finish how to think like a Roman Emperor.
533. 01:31:10 It is confirmed. We will be talking to Donald J. Robertson on focus at some point. So we need to have some context for when the conversation happens.
534. 01:31:20 That's great. I do not have any. I'm not going to take on any. I am doing like a little mini course throughout the week.
535. 01:31:30 So any kind of my gap books right now are going to be associated with that course, but I do like a lot of gap reading. It's just, they're not books. So don't expect any gap books for me for nine months.
536. 01:31:41 I mean, I don't know how long it's going to be unless I have to read it for, for that, that little mini course that I'm doing. So no, I do not have any gap books.
537. 01:31:50 For those of you who are pro show members, thank you so much for, for helping us for keeping the lights on for sponsoring the, or helping to put the, put the show together.
538. 01:32:01 For those of you who are interested in the pro show today, we actually talked about writing. We talked about books we've written our process through that.
539. 01:32:09 What we want to do, we tried to make it relevant to, to the, to the book that we read for this week. If you're interested in becoming a pro show member, it's $7 a month.
540. 01:32:19 You would go to patreon.com/bookwormfm. You get some other perks associated with that. You get a longer ad free pro show as you get the pro show included into that.
541. 01:32:28 It's released as quickly as we can after recording the show. So you get a bootleg version of it released really quickly.
542. 01:32:36 There's the live stream was part of it, but now we're going to, we're going to pull that out and we're going to make it part of just kind of the normal show operations, but then we're going to do a wallpaper, or you get access to the wallpaper as well.
543. 01:32:47 So if you're interested in helping sponsor the show, if you're interested in helping support the show, we'd love to do that patreon.com/bookwormfm.
544. 01:32:55 And I would be interested in hearing what other ideas people would have for things that they would like to see included in the membership we've kicked around the idea of doing bonus episodes and things like that.
545. 01:33:05 So reach out on the socials and let me know.
546. 01:33:11 I think the easiest way to do that, the easiest way to reach out to us would be on Instagram.
547. 01:33:16 Just send us a message on Instagram. The other place, I'm trying to remember Mike if we have what we have on the website for reaching out to us.
548. 01:33:27 There might be an email there, but yeah, just get ahold of me, or like you said, the Instagram feed, I think is probably the best way to point people there, but we're going to be rethinking some of the stuff that's in there.
549. 01:33:39 So now would be a good time if you've got some things that you'd like to see, we'd love to hear your suggestions.
550. 01:33:45 We'd also love to hear your suggestions for books that you would want us to cover.
551. 01:33:49 Before we had a listener suggestion, all ready to go until I changed his mind of sponsor magnet. Don't worry. Don't worry. Listen, or you doesn't know that we were going to pick their book.
552. 01:33:58 It's coming. It's coming later down the road.
553. 01:34:02 Yeah, but there will be a link in the show notes. If you want to recommend a book, please just take a moment to to add the book and the author there, and we will consider it for a future show.
554. 01:34:15 If you're reading along with us, pick up Time Anxiety by Chris Gillibo, and we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.