Today on the Book More Show, we're actually releasing a Book More Show!

The reality of recording a podcast, or writing a book for that matter, is that it's not our day job. Our job is to help you write books, so once something interrupts the flow, it's so easy for the pattern to break and a week, a month, a year pass by.

We hear it all the time with clients coming back two years later to finally start the book they thought they'd get done in a few weeks, and looking at the date of the last show, it happened to us with the podcast.

So... we've acknowledged time got away from us, we know we have important ideas to share with you, we enjoy doing it (we're even publishing shows every week for others!!), so time to get back on the horse. This is an episode we recorded a few months ago & next week, we'll be back with a new one.

We're getting the band back together!

Questions/Feedback: Send us an email

(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome to the Book More Show. My name is Stuart Bell and today we are well. Today we are actually going to release an episode. It's been a while.

Betsey: Stuart.

Stuart: Betsey, how are you? Very good thanks. How's it going?

Betsey: Very good, very good.

Stuart: I think today would be a good day for podcast.

Betsey: How about that?

Stuart: Let's do it Sounds like a plan.

Betsey: Alright, what do you want to talk about?

Stuart: So it is the week before Thanksgiving, which means that 2022 is disturbingly close, so I thought it would be a prompt for you with touching base, checking in the lay of land and making some suggestions for next year.

Betsey: Sounds like it. It definitely sounds like a plan. I can't believe that 2021 has flown by. I mean 2020, I feel like the last few years have just been a complete blur. What's?

Stuart: sacrificed 2020 as a write-off 2021 is basically a bit more organised.

Betsey: That was a trick. I think that was really a trick. I don't know that we're any further. No, I think we are. That's not true. I mean, I think people are, they're back and they're there. They had a lot of time to plan and sit and think about strategies for the upcoming years. So I think our aim was being a lot of people do some new things. Everybody got a little more creative in how they do business and that kind of thing. A lot of people are interested in books.

Stuart: So that's been pretty fortunate. Looking at being creative that time that passed by, I know people who can't talk to me they can't have to play the guitar or learn to paint or do something like that and looking back thinking, oh, that would have been a good opportunity to do something like that.

Betsey: That would have been great. I didn't do that. I didn't take up a new hobby or anything.

Stuart: Realising it. Maybe talent was the thing that was holding me back. Oh, that's the problem.

Betsey: That's the problem. You know finding my daughter who loves music. She's 25. She loves music. She's had a guitar. She had guitar lessons as a child. She took piano, she did the choir. She asked me the other day to buy her a banjo for Christmas.

Stuart: I said what?

Betsey: Oh, let's not do that. We're just not going to waste the money because we've been down the road with the instruments.

Stuart: Banjo is far more hipster than the guitar, see.

Betsey: Right, exactly, but it's. I mean, she has talent and I just don't think that is one of them playing a musical instrument. So I'm going to skip right over that and buy one of the instruments Move on to the next one, exactly so yeah.

Stuart: Okay. So I think that what we're seeing. So, like you were saying, we've been. We've had a number of clients all the way through the last couple of years. In fact, interestingly enough, we've probably had a bit of a peak earlier in the in 2020 that we did in 2021. As people, as things get back to normal and the day-to-day pressures of running the business come back into play and kind of adjusting to a slightly different, normal set of assumptions than there was in the year before. I think this year has gone back to normal in that sense. But what is super interesting is thinking about the opportunities for 2022. So, as we get in closer and closer, the thought that people are going to be picking up where they left off to a certain degree. Now, whatever, the current situation is probably going to be the way it's going to be for the next period of time.

Betsey: Yeah, hey. We haven't spoken in two years. So look what I've been doing. This is what this is what I did. There's some great information. Here is my book. I mean that's pretty impressive, I mean, when you think about it. Wow, didn't learn to play the banjo or the guitar, but this person wrote a book and that is. You know, that's impressive. That's a great way to get that conversation started.

Stuart: And that's a great point, because the nature of the book itself, the type of the book itself, is less important than the fact that the book exists, both from the opportunity to start the conversation and the opportunity for positioning things in a different way and and reminding people that you were there and we were having a conversation or you were thinking about taking a step. The content of it is less important than the fact that exists, but the content of it. There's a couple of different, different mindsets you can have going into or different approaches you can take. So it could either be writing exactly the same book that you might have written a couple of years ago and now it's just getting it done. Nothing that's happened in the last couple of years has changed what the content would be, or it could be that fundamentally, something's changed. So you need to write the book about the new way of thinking about your particular subject, because things aren't the same anymore. Something's actually changed. Or it could be the perception of something's changed, so why it's important now, or how this can be used in this current climate where we find ourselves today the concept of how. It's how your thing, which actually hasn't changed, but the way people think about it or use it has changed. So for all three of those groups, I think, no matter where you are in terms of thinking about how am I going to create this? What is this thing that I'm going to create?

For all three of those groups, the timing element the fact that now is a transitional period of time because we're going into a new year, so that's historically that's transitional. Anyway, people are thinking about planning for the year ahead more than perhaps they do in May that kind of conversation to crop up in people's minds so much but also on the coming out of the pandemic and whatever changes your customers had to make for that, and the fact that there's a kind of a marketplace opportunity where maybe other people aren't quite thinking about these marketing activities yet. They're still firefighting in the business or trying to come to terms with what was changed. So the now of writing something so that you have it available is much more important than perhaps two years ago or, honestly, even a year ago, because a year ago, unless something had very much changed and you were trying to communicate what's different, so like a very timely book, then writing something that was standard that was the way it's always been might just have got less traction, because everyone was thinking about what's different and what's new, not so much about what's the same.

Betsey: Yeah, very true yeah.

Stuart: I forgot how I broke my voice.

Betsey: I have my water and my coffee going at the same time. Yeah, so let's go from there. On that whole getting started, I think what people ask me a lot is what do I do? How do I get this out there? How do I make it all happen? People really don't have a knowledge on the steps.

Stuart: I know I should do it, but what do I need to do to get it?

Betsey: done. Oh, all the lots of shoulds that I should have done in five years ago, kind of thing.

Stuart: I know and it's funny as now I was talking to someone in the podcasting space last week talking about the clients coming on board and they had maybe an expectation that they would come on board fast. It would be a short turnaround from that initial conversation to becoming a client and that really wasn't being the case. And I was using our example of we talked to people I mean three, four, five, six years ago. We had first conversations with them and then they're coming back to do it now and just as we started off, I mean we were saying that 2021 kind of evaporated pretty fast and that was on the back of 2020, which also kind of in one, on one hand, took forever and, on the other hand, disappeared in the blink of an eye.

It's the same with dealing with clients. Unless you've got a very kind of transactional business or there's a deadline where they need to do something now, any other business where it's discretionary, it doesn't have to be done. It would be nice to have, but not a must have a year just disappears. And thinking about the leads that you're generating in terms of that kind of five year conversion not the one year conversion really makes a fundamental difference in both how effective you think of an individual campaign, how effective it is that you've done this lead generation work, but also the way that you stay in touch with people after that initial activity. So I think if you're too into the spectrum. So the one that we talk about a lot is Facebook ads promoting a book and then they download a copy of the book and there's a follow up sequence and auto responder that runs through.

Betsey: I think about when I first started and we were doing Facebook ads and coming from my background in education, where I was in environment where people absolutely that we had a wait list and people wanted to just get in our school and that sort of thing. So, coming from that, where I didn't do we added zero advertising. I didn't, it was all it was word of mouth, which is the best way to get something out there. But we would do now, we would do these Facebook ads here on this side of this business and and I would just be sitting Okay, where are they like? Why aren't they coming up?

Stuart: That's the first of all, and that difference between a business that's got very limited supply You've got only so many places in the classes that you can fill and there's a huge demand, because it's seen as like a qualitative difference of a high-performing school versus school that has other issues and there's a very specific externally mandated deadline. Their kid is starting school on September, the first Somewhere, whether it's there or not so all of those three things.

Betsey: Yeah, that's the funny thing, because that's what we have a client who came on board in 2018 maybe that maybe being a 2019 and he started his book and we finished the first version of it and then he just stopped because his business was doing things. And then he came back and and he has said, even though he's super, super excited to share with you today, he was excited about, oh my gosh, he's following on Amazon, he's following up his print book and it was him that was holding up the process because life just took over and but you know, he has said well, there's, you know, so many. These last couple of years there's been some missed opportunities, not to have an opportunity to put it out. There's been one last thing I've had to to reach out to my client for, and that's the main thing, isn't it?

Stuart: I mean, it's not so much that whether you get your book written or not to whether you do it with us or not, I'll do it by yourself. It's not so much that the cocks ticking on that, but it's the opportunity to Reach out to the customers, knowing that Day one it's like the compounding idea. It's not so much that day one, two or three, if it doubles, doubles, doubles those days aren't very interesting. But then when you get up to days 364, 365, if we're still doubling every day, it's the numbers at the end that are dramatically big. So, having this out there and missing one opportunity to have it as a way to start the conversation, or two opportunities, or three, it's the idea that these leads are building into a pool and every lead that you don't get to put in there, it's one at the end and potentially a multiple of one at the end that is missing out.

Yeah, yeah, I Guess at this point, if anyone's getting to this point in the podcast, though, they've don't know, cool, I don't know ready to go on creating something, so Probably not this. Yeah, we need to convince, although maybe is this audience that we need to convince to pull the trigger now because we send the podcast out to thousands more people and we have customers. So yeah, if you are listening.

Betsey: You shared with somebody the other day, had listened to all the podcasts and and so I think about that. I wonder, like, how many of our clients have been on that list? And that's, it's another tool is another tool that we send out to people that way to engage with people? And we've been, we have, we did, we have slapped in 20, 21 just with this aspect, but it's just a little bit of information. It's easy information for people to gather, but it's always it's interesting to me to hear people say, oh, listen to the podcast and then they will come on board, because I honestly don't always think about this as a tool. That Might be something that's rude. Someone.

Stuart: I talk so much if forget that other people listening to this one. Well, on that, then. So that. So the question you asked before. People have a conversation and have a kind of unclear next step in mind, so I'll talk as if people are working with us, because that's the easier context. But if you're not, if you're trying to do this by yourself, they're just substitute you out, traveling the blanks in a bit that I'll talk about. That we do, and you'll have to do that yourself, but the framework is still the same for everyone.

The traditional book would tick because the traditional book is the product you're selling them, the book. That's the reason for writing it in this context. That's not what we're talking about at all. You're selling the idea of there's a fix to a problem. That's out there. We're closing the gap on understanding. Now Obviously not Seriously suggesting having no content in the book. That's ridiculous. But it just to break that break that hang up that people have of separating the Job of work of this, which is to start a conversation with someone that leads to helping them resolve something, versus the book as a product, a traditional book, where it's actually the words on the page that are the thing that you're selling.

Betsey: So bite-sized that's a great little term there. Bite-sized because that's one thing that people, I think, struggle with making sure, even though the book is there, not as an important factor, but when you talk about the content there, people always say well, how do I know I'm not giving too much away? How do I know if I give a tax column? Everything I know for everything and they're not going to call me.

Stuart: That idea of giving it all away is so crazy.

Betsey: We're not going to write that book.

Stuart: No one's going to write that book and no one's going to want to read that book either. It's so funny for a couple of reasons. One is this idea that a bite-sized book is like the minimum effective dose of starting the conversation, and this is what we're trying to achieve. So separating out the book as a product from the book as a tool to start a conversation and the conversation as a product. I'm willing to accept that's not what everyone thinks and it's a way, it's a thought technology that we have that is hugely beneficial from a marketing campaign perspective and building your business. So that's why we never talk about ourselves as a publishing company. We're a marketing company and books are the tools that we use to achieve that marketing goal. So I'm quite willing to accept that for a lot of people, that thought technology is something new I mean, it's not rocket science, but it's not necessarily what people are thinking about but this idea of I have to write everything and get it into this huge book and but then I'm concerned about giving it all away In 2021, anyone that thinks that they're giving away everything, when literally, they're probably having this thought whilst looking at a phone that's connected to the internet, and then there's the entirety of the internet out there.

Betsey: Like you know who wants to read your five or six hundred page book, so I never want to read your two hundred page book. I mean really you know it's not it's.

Stuart: It's a starting of the conversation, unless you've got an audience who are now I'm trying, to devil's advocate, to justify when it would make sense. But I mean, there's potential I can't even I'm struggling to even come up with when you're looking at a marketing tool, the lead tool.

Betsey: There's. No, there's not. Now, if you are looking at someone who's a public author self help or yeah, those books tend to be a little bit bigger you're giving them a lot more information. But again, any of that information, most of that information, I can, I can put it right here in my little handy dandy phone and and pull it all out, but you know, so that's the thing.

Stuart: Yeah, that's the thing. Those examples you gave. Where makes sense is where the book is the product. So where the book is the product, then you have to make the book worth, whatever the cover price is. But honestly, anyone who's well I can't imagine anyone who's listening here is thinking of the book as being a product and making money from the book. Everyone's. The book is the introduction to the conversation. So this idea of giving it all away and being concerned about that is just it's shooting you in the foot because you're comparing your thing. It's not an apples to apples comparison. You're trying to compare your thing that you're trying to create to a, an author who has either got a huge academic career, who has got a huge amount of publicity, who has already written a large number of books already on Amazon, where you where books like that are selling for 12, 15, $20. And if there's no way, you just can't compare. You can't compare with that, so it's not even worth trying. And your brain trying to compare it to that is just shooting you in the foot because it's just not a comparison.

Betsey: So they're selling that book and they want to make the money out of that book versus what you as the business owner are. You're just trying to use that as to make the money from the foundation. So build your clientele that way, and I think that's one thing.

Stuart: So within that and within that then. So the trick is to think about okay, well, what is the most effective thing to do? So all of this knowledge that's out there I know that I'm not going to share all of it, because not that it's magical, provides you information that I'm going to give away but just it's not practical to do and it's not effective to do either. It would be a complete waste of time to spend two years trying to get all of this information into this book because no one's going to read it all or it's just not as effective as using that information in different ways. So by thinking about okay, the job of working the book is to start the conversation and lead people, help them identify themselves to my world, and then my world can share more information with them, and that additional information can be some of the additional stuff that isn't included in the book, but within the book itself. We need to make sure that we need beneficial constraints. It's one of the book blueprint scorecard mindsets. We need beneficial constraints to make sure that we're likely to get this thing finished. So those constraints could be scope constraints in terms of the subject, or time constraints in terms of when we need to get it done, or effort constraints, which is a little bit different, more difficult to measure, but I've got 10 units of effort a week that I can put into this, and if it demands any more than that, then I'm just not gonna get it done. So those beneficial constraints the whole reason they're beneficial is because it's the thing that gets us to get it out the door.

To be honest, if we have, it was only a very quick kind of proofread of it, because that wasn't the job of work. The job of work was get the conversation going and lead people towards presenting them with the offer of some of the other email mastery stuff, so it didn't need to be. It's almost an example of one of the ones that could have been blank. I mean obviously not quite, but the content really wasn't the main thing. So very easy to create, very on point, because it shares a couple of great ideas for email funnels. So it's really leading people towards thinking that. But one of the main marketing channels to get people to even be aware of it was the email mastery ad that we ran in Success Magazine. So that was just one of the and actually I'll put that. I'll put that ad in the show notes. So on the podcast, follow the link on the podcast player or head over to 90minutebookscom forward slash podcast and check out the notes for this episode. I'll put that ad in there because the ad was talking. It was an explainer or an article that was written about the nine word email and this definition of the nine word email and what it is and who it's beneficial for. So there was an article that talked about useful information in 300 words or so. Then there was the option, the lead. The next step is to grab a free copy of this book that talks about the seven or eight other strategies, and then from the book it leads towards the email mastery program, which has got a whole host of additional information. And then monthly calls, q&a calls with Dean to talk about email campaigns. So when you think about that, in this, whatever your business, is the very small introduction step, the fact, the thing that people are gonna see first. So, whether it was an ad or an article or a comment or a form post or a video, whatever, it is the very small piece the logically leads to the next bigger piece, the opt-in, this kind of minimum viable commitment step. The commitment is you need a name and email address from them. So what is it that you can give them that's valuable enough, just for the cost of the name and email address, and then that provides more additional valuable information within that same kind of the same problem that you're trying to solve. And then there's a call to action at the end of that that leads them into the next minimum viable commitment step. So it's all this staged approach and it all comes back to this idea of we're looking to build an asset of contact with people who have expressed an interest. So the seven billion people on the planet, it's the 700 who are the most likely to convert. I don't know when they're gonna convert, I'm not in their head. I can't force them to convert, but what I wanna do is provide them some value that leads them towards giving up their email address. They get some on the list where I can deliver even more value so that at some point in the future, when they're ready, I'm just constantly presenting options where they can take the next step adding value, adding information, building the rapport. There was a slide. I'll see if I can get that in the show notes as well.

There's a slide in the companion to the Blueprint school card for this idea of a minimum viable commitment step. What is it based on the relationship that you have with someone? What is the extent of the thing that you can ask for? So there's this idea of the kind of x-axis at the bottom being rapport how much of a relationship you've got with people and then the y-axis up the side being the scale of the ask, the kind of commitment that you want from them, and the line, the line on the chart separating the two is this kind of threshold of commitment.

Betsey: Yeah, I think that is. I was processing all of that as you're going along, but it I hope people listen to that the whole process that goes through, and think about what's out there and how they get to someone, how they can connect with someone. And again, it's not an SO day one, it could be day 365 that it happens and I'm going to go back and probably listen to what you just said again.

Stuart: And write that down. Check out the transcript.

Betsey: I'm going to grab that transcript and look yeah.

Stuart: But that's the thing. If anyone's struggling with thinking I've had a book on the list today for a while, but it seems like such a big project that I'll get to it later then really thinking about those two things one, the book isn't the product, so forget about all of the fact that the customers, potential customers, receive us. On the other end, the fact that they are swept up by all of the, the persuasion elements of a book, the fact that a book carries some credibility with it, there's a authority that goes with an author, all of those things are fantastic and secondary benefits of having a book. But as the deliverer, as the person creating it, don't allow yourself to get caught up in the same nonsense, the fact that there's a psychological trick to a book that works on clients in the nicest possible way, then don't fall for that yourself. It doesn't have to be. You can achieve 85%, 90% of the benefits at 10% or 15% of the overhead. So yeah, so the first thing is don't get caught up in this thing that the book is a product. Forget about traditional publishing. You can benefit from some of the same elements of it, but don't get caught up with the same problems.

Betsey: Very good. Yeah, I think this is good to be back and doing it. It is.

Stuart: Yeah, it has been too long.

Betsey: Yes, but it's good. It's a good reminder for us, but also for the people listening, how the process works and how you should be doing it. And if you look at it in a sense that I've got to write this human book and tell everybody everything I know, then that to me I would just go back to bed because that's extremely overwhelming to think about that and that's the whole idea and she's three years ago it's funny, yeah, and that's just it, and I think that's what happens.

Stuart: That is probably a good place to wrap, then, for this one, and then we'll save some the minimum effective podcast.

Betsey: There we go. Yeah, I don't want to overwhelm people harp on too much about the same things this time, yeah.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's plenty more and well, and that's a great example actually. So we've talked about how to begin the process and think about it so that you really get moving before the end of this year to get ready for next year, because there's a timely opportunity in the year end, so it makes now a better time to get this done than later. But, just as we were talking about with the books, there's many more elements that at some point you need to know not necessarily today, but you need to know. So we should give people a place to find out more information.

Betsey: Very good, you can always reach out at support at 90minutebookscom and you can come up on the call if you want to talk about it as well.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. Yeah, any questions?

Betsey: reach out to us. We're always happy to help.

Stuart: Yeah. And then the last one, I guess, is we're thinking about this as we go along with the last one would be just get started. I mean the absolutely the quickest and fastest way to get this done is just us do it for you and guide you through the process and help you with all of the pain in the neck, production steps and covers and pulling it all together. So head over to 90minutebookscom for all of the packages that we've got over there Definitely by far the quickest way of doing it.

Betsey: Yeah, there you go.

Stuart: This has been good, good to record some words with you again and looking forward to the next one.

Betsey: All right, love again. Thank you.