High-Trust Business Podcast

Tim and Pat Ash went from divorce papers and bankruptcy to creating a debt elimination system that's helped hundreds of clients break free from the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle.

Tim's a divorce attorney with 30+ years of experience. Pat was a marketing executive at AT&T. When Pat's career ended and they realized they hadn't saved for retirement, their marriage nearly collapsed. They filed bankruptcy for a fresh start.

That's when they discovered something most people don't know about whole life insurance. You can use it as a wealth-building chassis to eliminate debt while building savings at the same time. Unlike the Dave Ramsey approach where you're left with nothing after paying off debt, their system leaves you with money to use.

They wrote "Debt B Gone" to share their framework through story rather than just telling people what to do. It's designed to plant seeds for conversations with people who've never heard of using insurance this way.

Show notes: https://mrstuartbell.com/podcasts/htb/134-debt-b-gone-with-tim-and-pat-ash/

About Tim and Pat Ash: Website | LinkedIn

Your Book Is Closer Than You Think — You already say everything that needs to be in your book. 90-Minute Books turns it into a done-for-you lead generation tool. Get the Free Book

Today on the Book More Show, we're talking with Brannon Poe, Founder of Poe Group Advisors, a US and Canadian firm specializing in helping owners optimize, buy or sell accounting practices.

Brannon has authored three books with us, and today we get to talk not only about his approach but also about how each of his books supports a different part of the conversation he has with potential clients.

This is a business with very long nurture times, and it's not unusual for it to take years for someone to become a client, so Brannon talks about the opportunities his books create to stay in touch with people and add value, no matter how the conversation goes.

This is a great call with someone who has mastered a book's potential to start a conversation, and it really highlights the many ways the assets he has in his books can be maximized.

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

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Bookmore show. It's Stuart Bell here, and today we've got a great guest, Brannon. Brannon, welcome to the podcast, thank you. Thank you, stuart, glad to be here, great to have you. I was saying in last week's show I talked to someone here that I've spoken to before, which is a little unusual. Usually I've spoken to people at least in a call or a quick on boarding call. Brannon, yours in a slightly different situation again, because I feel like I know you because we've got some mutual connections in the background. You're on your third book now, so as a name I've obviously seen it passing through the system a lot, but it's I feel like I know you more because we've got third party connections, both through Dean and another friend of ours, dave. So it's great to make a connection. For the sake of the audience who haven't yet had the introduction, tell us a bit more about what you guys do and a bit of your background.

Brannon: Yeah, I'm a CPA and I started my career with Xinjiang and quickly realized that Publix was not for me and I started selling CPA firms in the year 2003. So we've been on it for about 20 years and that's what we do. We sell firms in the US and in Canada, and in 2020, we launched a up, an online workshop called Accounting Practice Academy, and that's when we started our first book with you guys, and Academy has really helped. We help accountants who own a practice, help them do much better and get their hours down and get their profits up.

Stuart: And is that always with the intention of selling them Eventually, or are some people in the program just to exponentially grow what they've got?

Brannon: It's interesting. I've always been curious about you know, I've been coached myself and I'm a believer in business coaching and I had this sort of vision for launching a program for accountants many years ago, and it's very difficult to get a platform off the ground in person the things that the coach has done and some of these other networks. It's really pretty remarkable because it's hard to get people to travel and get that thing started, so a lot of times what you have to do is you start privately and then you can build it up once you have a following, and I just wanted to launch something that would help accountants. I felt like we had a lot of knowledge. We actually wrote our first book in 2010 and I wrote it old, hard way, the old fashion, and that was the first sort of where we put our knowledge into, and I never intended it to be a get ready for a sale program.

And then I got accused of that. Like when we launched it said you're doing this to feed your brokerage business and honestly that wasn't the intent, but that has been the effect. So it has been a good feeder because a lot of times people when they're thinking about selling, that's when they really think, okay, I need to get my business in shape for a sale. So we have all sorts of people in. We have people who are selling, we have younger people who just want to build a good foundation.

Stuart: You mentioned, the people often have the thought of making some improvements or the catalyst for taking that step is an external trigger of thinking about selling, or I'm guessing that some people have had an external event that kind of wakes them up and snaps them out of it a little bit. Those two groups of people the younger guys who are just looking to exponentially grow but they're really in it, and the people who are thinking, okay, this is maybe I need to do something, ready to sell the get self, and very similar people to be coached. And there's suggestions that are being made because underlying gets the same things that need to happen whether you're looking to grow and stay in it or grow it to get out of it. I'm guessing the fundamentals are the same but the approach might be different.

Brannon: Yeah, Our program is very much about fundamentals and mindsets. Those are to be more universal and they apply to young people, older people, doesn't matter where you are, they're fundamentals.

Stuart: And.

Brannon: I think the only difference is like sometimes there's more energy and excitement in the younger crowd because they've never. Some of these mindsets are very new to them and for some of the more experienced CPAs that are going through the program they're reminders, and but they still need the reminder.

Stuart: And I guess there must be a frustration to a certain degree, and the more experienced group have. This is something that I should have known years ago. That can be a frustration in that. Yeah.

Brannon: I've had a couple of people say the only thing I regret about taking this is that it didn't take it 10 years ago.

Stuart: Yeah, Is that old and out of. The best time to plant a tree was 100 years ago. The second best time is today and without a time machine, just crack on in today's of the day to yeah, exactly yeah. My wife years ago as a in between she's a teacher. So in between some jobs she was helping people with like home organizing, getting things squared away like an English Marie Curie type not Marie Curie, that was completely different Marie.

But she really did that for a short period of time and enjoyed the actual work of it. But what made it and immediately go back into teaching was she said that it was turned into only 10% of the fundamentals of organization and getting things sorted out and then 90% was marriage guidance. I'm just all the psychological elements of why people weren't doing the obvious steps. There's a slightly more professional environment so you're probably not doing so much marriage guidance but I imagine a lot of it is more around the mind. There's an animat of it which is definitely associated with the mindsets and the psychology and not necessarily with the knots and bolts or numbers of the CPA practice.

Brannon: We did a lot of studying when we're creating the, what we did a lot of studying about change, human change how do you create change in people? And that's an interesting like. That's a whole topic of its own. That's extremely interesting, and we all know our own. I think people have their own goals to changing, and so one of the things that we really focus on in the workshop is honing in on what those are for people. We call it FTIs failure to amend so we get people to become very aware of where they've had problems changing in the past and also aware of where they've succeeded. Okay, here's that. If I want to change, this has worked for me in the past. Maybe it's how you lost weight or how you started a next program, and those are the same things that apply to changing your business.

Stuart: It's interesting to see because my background is IT, project management and the very kind of should frame or was.

This is going back a few years now, but there was a very structured framework around the work that we did and a lot of that coming out of projects was the kind of post-mortem at the end of every projects to try and get that lessons learned, and it's definitely the case that as an exercise wasn't utilized as much as it could have been.

The theory around it is that every project going forward then looks at the lessons learned, not only to avoid problems but also pick up on best practices. But it's something that I don't think I've ever seen anyone else talk about outside of those management disciplines and the idea of taking that extra time to look at where those successes and failures were and think about taking that moment to think about the thinking of what was successful and what wasn't. That, I think, is a it's a difficult to sell in coaching programs to say that one of the main what a main thing that you're going to get out of this is the fact that it's a period of time away from the day to day just to think about the thinking of this. But the benefits of that. It's really quite an intangible it's. I don't know if you've experienced the same or you get that same feedback from your members.

Brannon: Yeah, we we've been a little bit surprised at how people have taken action. Like, we built this hoping and thinking that, okay, that this is going to work, because we did do a lot of individual things prior to building a program. That's a group model and it was. But we were blown away that people are taking action in such a big fashion and we thought that's going to be the hardest thing to have to do.

We can give all the great ideas and their business, because most of the people that come into our program are very busy. They're actually over scheduled and so it's very tempting for them just to fall back into their old habits, and so we were aware of that. Going in, it's like how do we keep people to make moves here? How do we get to make the change? Take all these great ideas and put them into action, and I feel like we built the right amount of accountability. Accountability is a big component of it and also with the awareness and making the idea simple and not over complicating things If it's complicated, people are just not gonna.

Stuart: Practical implication of understanding all of a complex model is difficult enough. But when you add that, particularly, as you say, if people are over scheduled and that's one of the main reasons why they raise an ad and say, hey, I need some, I need to do something different Dump in a whole load of extra complicated stuff, the likelihoods with the best will and the likelihood of that being done is slim. So breaking it down into bite-sized chunks, that kind of bridges nicely into kind of the book conversation, because we often have this. I think I said it in last week's show as well. I was saying that we have a lot of conversations with people who are coming with ideas, but the ideas are coming from that 10 years of experience perspective.

I need to tell people this level of information where really the majority of books, where we're trying to engage with people, is at this level. It's the 101 introduction. They're just starting their journey, so don't over complicate it by delivering the 202 level of knowledge. It's starting at that position. So for you guys in the program, was it intentional or a happy coincidence to really I don't want to say strip back, but really think about the simple implementation steps?

Brannon: Absolutely. We wanted to make this very simple, very bite-sized. There were a lot of programs, when we looked at our competition, that were and I think this is, you know, this is an interesting thing about professionals in a lot of different professions. I see it in law, for sure, and in accounting, and there's, like you mentioned, it's this hey, I've got to show my knowledge. I've got to that more is more like if I write a, if I?

write a 2000 page book or if I come up with a super complicated, people are going to value that more somehow. And it's the opposite, because people need something actionable. They don't, they won't. They don't need to know how much. They need to know what you know. That will actually move the needle for them.

Stuart: Yeah, and yeah, they start in their journey. That's the exact thing to bear in mind. That it's they're starting their journey. It's great to have additional things later, but it's the wrong place to have it at the beginning part of that conversation. Whether the conversation is just sales discovery call at the very early part or importing into the early days, it's.

I made that mistake last. At the end of last year, someone invited me to dial into a webinar to give a quick presentation on some book things and I just finished the school card book that goes through the eight book mindsets. So I was probably overly proud of that. It is super valuable, but it's not a. It's not the first part of the conversation. It's the second or third part of the conversation. The invitation that I got was to really talk to a group of people who hadn't necessarily thought about writing a book at all and trying to deliver in a short period of time these eight mindsets, which is super useful, but not if you're going from. I've never even thought about writing a book. What's the benefit? So completely the little postmortem that I did myself afterwards completely judge the the right level and not that I was intentionally trying to show how much like overwhelm with how much we know, but just trying to deliver too much of the wrong value or the right value, but at the wrong time.

Brannon: So it is really a balancing act it is, and you've got to keep people engaged, and so there's got to be entertainment value. We hired a coach to help us build the program from the perspective of just engagement, like human engagement, because a lot of our programs are video, there's a video component, and so we wanted to keep people engaged. And one of the things I'll never forget she told me that our coach was think about a Hollywood movie, like you turn into a side Miami. When there's crime scene investigators, investigation movies, what's the first thing that happens in the first? Yeah, the drama in the dead body.

Dead body there's always dead body right away and she's you got to have that. You need that in your, in your videos is what's your dead body in the first minute?

Stuart: it's you got to capture people do you know what it's such an interesting thing. We've had a lot of conversations in the last few days and this could be a whole other conversation. Maybe we do another podcast at some point in the future, diving into this little bit. So I've had so many conversations the last couple of weeks or couple of months talking about the chat, gpt type, revelation moment and abundance 360 is on at the moment. So we've been dialing into those live streams this idea of of content being much more easily generated through ai. But I think the point can't be done is this idea of engagement. So a base level of content is going to go from here to here, because it's easier for people to create that generation of relevant stuff just gets done.

But when you think about it in terms of your program, let's say, for example, we're three years down the track generating video modules that go along with your core agenda, that might get easier from an ai perspective, but that idea of delivering the engaging content that's not necessarily going to be there and not there in the way that that is into your brand, to you, your way of doing things. So for you to have gone through those steps to think about, okay, we're going to make some content that is engaging, that keeps people, gives them a hook to get tuned into, to raise that energy level, and then it's tailored to our program, so we've got some personality and perspective on top of it. That's going to be such a difference maker because the baseline is being raised, like everyone not everyone, but more people are going to be able to go from zero to something, to be able to go from something to something better. That's going to be a challenge and it looks like that was quite a big thing that you addressed in the setup.

Brannon: Yeah, it was something we were very aware of, because people can only read so much at one time, people can only listen for so long at one time, so you have to bring in and you have to engage them and sometimes leave some space in there and there's a science to it.

Stuart: For sure, and that idea of leaving the space around the logical steps as someone is coming in from not knowing who you are at all to having some introduction that gets them to a landing page or something or a podcast or something that allows them the opportunity to raise their hand through those first three points to the call to action.

That minimum viable step of what text it is such a go from nothing to something is the 80%. Spend a lot of time saying to people don't get too hung up on it, at least in the first iteration, get the first working version out there and then you can always tweak but the dial in and the refining it. Once you've got that space to think about refining it is quite a step. So you mentioned you've got three books I guess four books and a traditional book and then three books that you're writing with us. The first one was the unplugged vacation, which I'm guessing comes from this idea that you've got a lot of over subscribed people. Do you want to talk about that one a little bit and what the impetus behind the book was and who the audience was that you were trying to serve?

Brannon: Yeah, the unplugged vacation was addressing the major issue that our clients have. And I had a call with a younger CPA years ago and he said he wanted to sell us. And I started asking him like do you enjoy what you do? Yeah, I like the profession, I love my clients, I'm engaged, I love my staff, like everything's good. He was just burned out.

I said when's the last time you had a vacation? And it had been quite a while for him. And I said look, before you sell your paper, go, take a week off, go somewhere really cool. Don't take your laptop, don't take your smartphone, go and just completely unplug and then come back and see if you like your business. He's still in practice. Okay, yeah, I knew this was a need because so many people in today's world, so many people are staying connected all the time. They don't disconnect and our brains need to unravel and it's actually a big benefit to your business. And so that was. And we give this book out at conferences. We took it to an AI CPA conference in Las Vegas right when we published it and we printed off a couple of copies and we were just handed off. So we would come up to people and say do you check email when you're on vacation?

And they would be like, yeah, we're like you need to read this book, and they would take the book, they'd put it under their arm and walk around the conference. We saw these orange books all over the conference, so it was great for that.

Stuart: It's such a so many opportunities to use books in different ways. We've done some podcasts in the past talk about some of those different ideas but the fact that there's a relatively straightforward way of getting it created it's not the traditional publishing lock yourself in a cabinet and six months and thousands of dollars of editing. So there's a vast cost effective way of creating something. And then, once you've got the asset, the tool, there's a suite of ways in which you can use it. And even if you're using it in the print sense and using it as a kind of elaborate business card in conferences the cost of printing them, I think, even if we include shipping, which is obviously the heavy things, that adds to it a bit but $3 or so to get something printed. Trying to get something printed or the Merchie give it away, type G ball type things that people do at conferences which are debatably affected of value that's created in this thing because it's sharing something. There is an element of it's one of the psychological tricks, if you like all the book the fact that it exists and it's printed on the page. It carries so much more weight than just a brochure or a letter or a pen with your name on it. It's really interesting to think about those ways, now that you've done the work of creating something, the ways that you can use it.

That conversation with people do you take? Do you check email on vacation? It's such a great follow up question. So we often talk about, now that you've got the book, the autoresponder, when someone opts in for a copy, those five or six touch points is the opportunity to get that conversation going. And second email so the first email is delivering the book, the second email we refer to as beer email, a short personal expecting a reply, that do you check emails when you're on vacation. It's such a disarming and that opens up the gates to a conversation. I imagine that's something that has resonated with you guys and then with the people you asked the question.

Brannon: Yeah, the expressions on their faces were very interesting to watch, it was.

Stuart: It's not. It's not what you would expect someone to ask you, and it's. It forces you to stop and think for a second before answering it. Yeah.

Brannon: Yeah, we got a lot of different answers and some people was like, of course doesn't everybody.

Stuart: How could you not yeah?

Brannon: So it was an interesting and we had a great conference because there was, I think, about 2000 people there, so it was a lot of people to test it out.

Stuart: On An idea of writing a book sparked by the conversation with that CPA. Is that a book? Obviously, there's two more followed on from that. So we're thinking in terms of very different funnels and different approaches, different opportunities for people to come into the world. Has that first book, the unplugged vacation one, do you find that is typically used as like a lead generation piece at the top of the funnel to people who don't know you, or is it more like a lead conversion piece? People come in maybe from different channels, but this is a great way of people who are aware of you, of elevating the conversation and sparking a different thought process.

Brannon: because it's an engaged question, that's a it's a little bit of a difficult thing for us to answer because we are a very heavy content driven company and we're very, if you think about our transactional. We broke our CPA firms, so most of our business is extremely transactional and our sales cycle is very lengthy. So sometimes I'll talk to people five, even 10 years before they want to sell.

So we have this lengthy pipeline and we've used it both as a lead generation like at the conference with people who didn't know us, and we've used it as a conversation follow-up. So let's say I'm nurturing a long-term lead, someone who's thinking about selling their business, and they call me three, four years prior and they're burned out, and I've just from a conversation that I might have with them on a common follow-up call. Then I go oh, I've got this book for you, let me send this to you, and so I think it helps nurture the relationship even more. And we, when you think about our product, it's a very high value, it's a high trust type of yeah.

Stuart: And that rapport building the fact that there are all different tools that you can deploy depending on how the conversation goes. Again, it's an asset that's created in one point of time, that's useful for decades down the track to be able to pull out as something that really adds value to the conversation. Because I imagine that it's not thinking about that example. You're checking back in with someone years down the track. This happens to come up in conversation, sending them that copy of the book. It's not closing in the sense of it's not jamming in a sales tool into a conversation. It's really all value and helpful information and building that relationship even more, knowing that it is such a long lead time for conversions.

Brannon: Yeah, exactly. If you're in any kind of sales work and the sales cycle is really lengthy, you'll learn really quick. You can't push people when they're not ready.

Stuart: I talked about the. I've mentioned it on a couple of shows recently. There was a book that someone had recommended years ago. I think it's actually out of print now. It's called One Selling by an Australian academic called Michael Gleason, and here's I can't one. That is an acronym for something and the fact that he's Australian. That's why I'm guessing that's what led to the title.

But one of the things that he talks about in that book is this idea of check moves. So here's work with sales teams is that the sales people are never finally in control of the sale. That's always in the hands. They're the ones that make the decision. So it's misplaced to incentivize or track sales people on closures. What you should be tracking is closing opportunities, so what he'll check moves. So every time you do an outreach they would lead to a close check that track that.

And it's really horses the bit that you said. You can't force someone into it, but by staying there as a trusted partner, as a trusted advisor or someone useful in their world, knowing that will, being there at the point that they decide that today is the day for them, is the secret, and this being another Even then. Again, we sometimes have conversations with people who are talking about books and want to put the cart before the horse and run down the track of thinking about five before they've even done one. But even if you had one book to be able to pull out a use, full chapter or useful takeaway that kind of reinforces the conversation, and then follow up with the book by using it to deliver more value, you definitely don't three or four. It can be done with one. It's just thinking about ways of now I've got this asset, how can I use it in a way that adds value? That leads to the second book. The second book was positioned slightly differently. Don't give us a bit of a background on that one.

Brannon: So we the second book was scaling, scaling cloud firms. In the last, I'd say, five to seven years, we've seen an increasing number of fully virtual CPA firms that are being sold now, and I think these firms were probably started being created maybe 2010 ish, and so we really didn't see any sales of those firms until a few years afterwards. And it's becoming a bigger and bigger part of our business. So we thought, hey, we'd like to get out front as the thought leader and be useful in this industry. So we essentially took some of our knowledge, put it in the book for scaling, knowing that a lot of these cloud firm owners are very entrepreneurial and they're very interested in growth. A lot of those firms grow very quickly, so that's what they're interested in, and so we wrote something to help them and then, hopefully, if they're interested in acquiring or selling, they'll think of us when that time comes.

Stuart: Such a great way of thinking about a niche, like taking a moment to think about the trajectory of the industry as a whole or if there's a segment coming up and, like you say, there's an opportunity with being the first to market with something that introduces the idea.

And it doesn't need to be like the book itself is 70 pages or so. It's not like you wrote again six months in a cabriolet and writing the 2000 page tome on cloud computing. It's just hitting the idea because, as you said, these are long converting opportunities into dynamic and moving environment. So it's in the idea, always knowing that there's more stuff off book, out of book. There's kind of building on it. It really allows you to be quite lean and move quickly to get something up there. That introduces a fascinating thought process to think about the different assets that you've got in the books. There's like a founding fundamental walk addressing a problem that a lot of people have got. There's a new early market. Here's a thought technology that is evolving as we speak, and then the third book, trying to talk about the third book and where that sits in the spectrum.

Brannon: So the third book, which it's one of those ideas like why didn't I have this idea 10 years ago? It's how to prepare your CPA firm for a sale. So we actually had a white paper that was about 10 pages long called our succession planning guide, which has been very successful, and now that we have the business alongside the brokerage business, this sort of serves both audiences. We felt like this would be a great tool for promoting our coaching business.

It would also be a great tool for people that don't really want to be coached but might want some easy sort of low hanging fruit ideas to get their business in shape to sell and then hopefully, if we give them value and it's helpful, when they do go to sell, they'll call us.

Stuart: And that's exactly the point, isn't it?

It's not like the job of work of the book is close those people immediately, it's to make them aware of you so all of your potential clients could be interested in that book, whether it's today or 10 years down the track.

So it thinking of the books is that first step, and I think that's a big difference between the 90 minute book approach and the traditional approach.

The traditional book either publishes the thinking about it in terms of the book itself being the product. Therefore it needs to be so big and it needs to be. It needs to be able to justify a $20 hardback cost and we want to sell 20,000 of them or it's people think about traditional type of books is I want to put all of my knowledge in here so that people are overwhelmed by the book, so that they immediately throw me up asking to do business with me and it does complete the sale cycle for me, when the practicality of that, the reality is that's not the case. It's like you've described customers who are one to 10 year journey of absorbing information and then at some point they're going to be ready. The benefit of the books that you've created is it starts that conversation and to a certain degree, in their mind, you've adopted the incumbent position. It doesn't guarantee that they'll come to you, but it certainly makes it more likely.

Brannon: Yeah, and it gets them in our funnel right. It gets them in our ecosystem of content, which we're big content creators. It's a great tool and I think it's also even if it's a 50 page book, you're still an author and you're still. It gives you credibility in your space and people don't want to read a long book, not busy professionals I had. When we got back from the Las Vegas conference that I talked about earlier, I got an email from a gentleman who was there and he said hey, I read your book and, coming back from the conference and can you send me five or six other copies, I want to send this to some of my CPA buddies that I know, sure what's your address, and we send him five other copies or 10 other copies or whatever. And it doesn't have to be a long read and, matter of fact, it's better if it's not for most busy people.

Stuart: Yeah, it's this idea of your thing, the idea of, like, how to sell the CPA practice or how to put it to be. That could be a college credit course. You could have like months and months worth of stuff that could go into it or scale it back. It could be 200 pages or scale it back further. It could introduce the idea and the concepts and deliver the beginnings of value and then give people the way to get more. It's the start of the conversation. It's such a key difference because, like you say, it makes it more likely that it will be read and it makes it more likely that it will done, because you started off the call by talking about the first traditional book you did and it was more painful than the last three. So, with them being busy, the likelihood of going from nothing to something is way more valuable than going from, from not having thinking about doing something but not actually having it, because you never get it finished.

Brannon: Yeah, and only that, but I think the two, the mindset that I would encourage people that are writing a book and thinking about it is it's better if it's not long and just give them the real meaty stuff. Don't be afraid to give them stuff that's really going to help them, because the more you think about helping your reader, more that book is going to do the job that you want it to do, right their authenticity and their value comes across.

Stuart: People can tell if you're holding things back or if it's just superficial, and then the call to action is when I need to come into the office and, well, lock the door behind you and I'll grab you for two hours.

It's working these times, super, appreciate it's your time. I would be really great at some point and they're not teachers in the future to jump on another call and talk about the. You guys are such big in terms of content and delivering value beyond the book, so it'd be really great to jump on another call at some point if you've got time to really dive into that, because you guys have got not only the ability to create that content but you've got a mindset of creating it and continuing to deliver value, and the books feed into that funnel and trigger some of it and their anchor points for some of those later conversations. So that whole ecosystem that you've got of having various different assets that you plug together and I'm sure it's now in a situation or known date which is much more advanced than it was to begin with. So if you have time at some point and not to just in future be great to dive into that a little bit more.

Brannon: Yeah, be happy to we. In fact, we are in the process of reorganizing our website because we have so much content that we found out that, hey, our content's a bit scattered, so we need to bring it into one hub and have it all Easter. At least you can find your path to it fairly easily, and maybe that'll be a good point to touch back with you.

Stuart: Yeah, and we can do. You can share the kind of before and after, because I think it is it's an organic problem. It starts off. You're not a content creation business as such, so you didn't start off by building everything to scale to 100 people consuming the content, and I think this is the problem that everyone gets. You start off by having a blog and then maybe having a YouTube channel and then it just gets very spread out so to be able to consolidate it and link it together. Yeah, that'd be a point to do that. Thanks again for your time. I don't want to make sure that people have got access to check out more of what you guys do. So what's a great resource or place for people to go to find out more?

Brannon: best place is just good on our website, which is ho group advisorscom.

Stuart: Fantastic. We'll make sure we put some links in the show notes for it, both on the podcast feed and the website of the episode. So as you listen to this, check that out. Obviously, if you've got any interest, if you're CPA firm and you've got interested in the coaching side of the business or you're thinking about selling or setting it up that way, but even if you're in any other business, recommend checking out just to see what what Brannon and the guys are doing. This has been really enjoyable. Like I said, a million questions. I could think we could talk for another hour, but that'd be really good to check back in again. So thanks again for your time this morning. Thanks everyone for listening. Definitely check out the show notes. We'll put the link there to Po Group Advisors. And thank you, we'll catch you in the next one.

Brannon: Thank you, Stuart. Look forward to coming back.

Stuart: Fantastic.

Brannon Poe runs Poe Group Advisors, helping accounting practice owners buy, sell, and optimize their firms across the US and Canada. He's written three books, each targeting a different part of his long sales cycle.

This matters because Brannon's business has extremely long nurture times. It's not unusual for someone to take years before they're ready to sell their practice or join his Accounting Practice Academy program.

Brannon walks through how each book serves a specific audience: younger CPAs looking to grow, established owners thinking about optimization, and those getting ready to sell. He explains how the books keep him connected with prospects regardless of where they are in their decision process.

You'll hear specific examples of how he uses his books to add value during those long nurture periods, and why having multiple books lets him match the right content to where someone is in their journey.

Show notes: https://mrstuartbell.com/podcasts/htb/133-maximizing-your-assets-with-brannon-poe/

About Brannon Poe: Website | LinkedIn

Your Book Is Closer Than You Think — You already say everything that needs to be in your book. 90-Minute Books turns it into a done-for-you lead generation tool. Get the Free Book

Today on the Book More Show, we're talking with Michael Nula, Founder and former CEO of Elite Physical Therapy, which he grew to 13 locations, serving 60,000 patients before integrating the firm into Ivy Rehab Network. He is now the Founder and Executive Director of Nula Training Systems (NTS), a physical therapy business coaching & professional development company.

Michael started his physical therapy career in school following a personal experience of treatment following a sports injury. Over the past 20 years, he's built a very successful practice across Rhode Island, with multiple locations and thousands of clients, and he brought together his knowledge and passion for helping people in his book, The First Step, in 2015.

After integrating the practice into Ivy Rehab Network, he's used this wealth of experience to launch NTS and help other physiotherapy practices build their business. Understanding he's now looking to attract a slightly different type of client, he took the opportunity to update his book to not only provide value to potential patients but also demonstrate the NTS approach to business development clients.

This is a great call looking at the lessons Michael learned from building his company and hearing how a book can pivot to support the new goals of an entrepreneur.

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

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Book More Show. It's Stuart Bell and here we've got Great Guest. I'm really looking forward to talking. We've had a couple of guests recently who have finished their books recently, so I'm more familiar with what they've done with it. Michael, who we're about to speak to, actually finished a couple of years ago and then has developed a bit since then. So this is going to be really in conversation to see how that book's developed over time. So, Michael Nula welcome to the show.

Michael: Thank you, stuart, good to be here.

Stuart: Great to have you. So you're a physiotherapist up in Rhode Island. Why don't we start by just sharing with everyone a bit of the Michael Nuller story? Talk about their practice, where you're based and what you specialize in.

Michael: Yeah, I fell into therapy really by accident. On my last year of high school. I had suffered a really bad knee injury that was misdiagnosed, and I learned later that I had torn my patella tendon, and so at that time I was playing basketball at my school. I had to forfeit the season and spent the entire year in physical therapy. But as they say, one door closes and another opens. I fell into this profession absolutely, just adored it, and everything after that was really a becoming a therapist and owning my own one day, and then, interestingly in the middle, I became a high school teacher and so but then continued the path to become a therapist.

Stuart: So. So in school there wasn't kind of you weren't going in with a physiotherapy type. That wasn't the end goal. It was really based on the personal experience that you changed.

Michael: That's right. Yeah, had I not gotten hurt and required therapy, I don't know that I would have fallen in love with it, and sort of came to that conclusion, but someday this is what I want to do and have my own practice. Yeah, yeah.

Stuart: I mean it really establishes such a strong connection. If you've had an experience that really kind of anchors everything you're doing because you almost come to it from the patient's perspective, not from an academic or theoretical perspective or kind of like the outcome of being in that industry your introduction is the exact same introduction that all of the subsequent patients are likely to have.

Michael: That's right and that's why, at the core, I you know I care deeply about the patient experience, you know, and I went to me when I went through my experience. It wasn't like I was enamored with the experience itself. I fell in love with the profession and so my way was OK. This is a really cool profession. It helps people. I love helping people, I love science, I love being active and seeing others be active. This is something I want to do, but when I do it I want to especially make sure the energy I put into is building that patient experience.

And so so I, you know, fast forward. I started my practice 20 years ago and then now last year I just turned over my to my longtime business partner and we brought in a big partner, ivy Rehab Network, which is a world-class network partner. And now that's created this for me to get into physical therapy, coaching and professional development and also start a therapy program here in Rhode Island that in two years will be opening it up so that we can start to take doctoral students and kind of need a place with the new generation of physical therapists.

Stuart: And that's the trajectory of a career, from the beginnings, of just deciding to be in this industry through to specialising and building your practice, into selling into part of a bigger organisation and now sharing your knowledge, both from the coaching perspective and the education perspective. I mean that's really quite the life cycle and there must be a lot of lessons that you bring into the coaching because you've had such a strong personal experience of being in the business for an extended period of time, through bicycles and multiple changes in the expectations and getting a wish of age. So we both started pre-internet really I mean my first job. I think I was saying to someone a couple of weeks ago I didn't have emails for the first couple of regular jobs that I had. So you must have experienced the same that customer expectation or their understanding has changed quite a lot over that period.

Michael: It has. Yeah, thankfully, I mean, I did come in the new side of things with websites and email and so forth, but it wasn't what it is now, you know. And yeah, I've really lived through every phase of therapy private practice, you know. We started. I started with, you know, one clinic and then grew to 13 clinics and 125 ease and did that with a partner who's also a therapist and just amazing experience. But always, at the core of it, I'm a teacher at heart, I'm a coach at heart and I love people and seeing them enjoy a great experience, and so now I'm just so passionate about helping, you know, the entire profession that are, you know, trying to continue to grow and develop and refine their businesses in this really complex landscape that we're in, right, I mean it's an issue to evolve right.

Stuart: And at a faster and faster pace. It's very difficult to sit back and just relax on something that has worked and not always be thinking, okay, what's the next thing? What's the next thing? And I'm guessing that's a lot of the experience that you bring to people in the side of things, just because, again, you've seen so many iterations and moving from one practice to 13 is a significant growth. I imagine there's similarity in the delivery of service is going to be there, but running the business is going to be completely different from an individual location to elections. So that experience that you're bringing it's really going to help them shorten that learning curve from not trial by error, trial by someone else's experience.

Michael: That's right. Yeah, you know and I, you know, respect that a lot of times the majority of the attention of the practice owner is just on what's in front of them, right, Trying to get through the day, get through the week, what's sort of like the immediate things on fire and creating pain, right, and so just sort of managing present time. But you know, one thing I've learned through the years is the importance of being able to look ahead and project ahead and, you know, keep the vision strong for the entire team.

Yeah, and so bringing external eyes like me, with my background, you know, I get excited to kind of meet them where they're at and kind of try to figure out where you're going and then how can we work together to get there.

Stuart: It's interesting, the breakthrough bleeper events that we do down in Orlando, the entrepreneur events that we do down there.

One of the benefits I say to people is being in union with eight other business owners.

They're going to talk about their problems but you've got the benefit of not having their baggage. So it's very difficult to step out of your own of the fires that are going on and just look dispassionately at the issues to try and come up with us, because consciously or subconsciously, all of the fires are still burning and your kind of view is tainted by that, by the reality of the day today. So, just as other business owners who are at those events, it's easy for them to offer advice because they're not constrained by the practicalities and for their own business they can think about that situation for themselves and sometimes it sparks things there which they wouldn't necessarily think, having almost exactly the same conversation. But if it was about them individually. So I'm guessing that's what you see a lot of. You're able to go in there and talk to people things that they really should know or would know if they were given someone else advice. It's just difficult for them to get to that point themselves.

Michael: Right. And then the advantage I have is having that kind of separation where I'm not inside their practice day to day like they are. I'm able to review things with them objectively. And I think that's where we're able to be most productive and effective is by looking at all the facts and what's objective and kind of take a step back from some of the emotion that also goes into running a business. Today we get frustrated, sometimes we get clouded, we want things a certain way yesterday, so being able to kind of just slow things down enough to take a look at where again, where are you and where are you trying to go, and then just objectively let's map out some steps and strategies and etc.

Stuart: It kind of reminds me of so if we talk about the book, so the book was written. Was it 2015 originally? I think it was that far.

Michael: That sounds about right.

Stuart: I was looking back at some of the files before we were just jumping on the call and it was interesting to have that initial thought of, oh, that makes sense, and then two seconds later to have the thought of well, actually doesn't make sense, because that's now seven or eight years ago and that seems like a long time where just seeing 2015 doesn't feel like a long time.

But one of the things that stood out about what you're talking about now in terms of the coaching and the book is it was originally in, so I'll just grab the cover of it and put on screen for people who are along with the video. So the first step, one of the chapters in the first version was talking about patients having experience in the pain but then leaving it until it's critical. And then they're in a very different situation of having to deal with the problem when perhaps there's fewer options or there's more urgency or the time frames are more constrained. Just as you were talking about the business coaching, it's actually there's some polls that quite often the business decisions or the decisions to grow or to stop a problem are sometimes left until they become critical as well. So it's just funny that you were talking in that context, yeah, from the book as well.

Michael: Yeah, you know, this book also was kind of a labor of love in terms of, you know, philosophical approach to taking care of oneself and well-being, and it was this idea of let's get, let me get a you should, with my business partner, jason, out there to just educate society on physical therapy. What is it to you know, because it's come such a long way right, what is this beautiful option that's in front of us? What are some things I could think about with how I manage pain today that I can approach naturally, conservatively, effectively, but then learn things along the way that I can do to maybe minimize or reduce the likelihood of that problem coming back, maybe get learned the core of the root cause, so that you know that contribution that's what inspired this work, you know, whatever that was back in 2015. But then now, you know, kind of doing a revision was just to kind of renew this commitment to this approach and wanting to educate society.

But then, as I'm working with this around the country, you know, inviting them to reflect on their philosophy and their approach but, more importantly, their outreach and what doing with teaching initiatives in their communities, because the reality is we still have a lot of people walking around this country, and the world for that matter, that have painful problems, not really know what to do to manage them, have a desire to feel better, do don't really know what to do. What's the next step? And we're in this, like we mentioned earlier, really complex world. A lot of information's moving now talking about internet. It's at our fingertips and it's coming at such a rapid pace that it's creating this cognitive flooding among people, where they get numb and paralyzed and they don't know what to do.

Right, Should I, should I, shouldn't I? And they're stuck in this paralysis. So you know. So trying to celebrate the you know the therapy communities in where you know we're here to help at the largest level. We're a resource, we're a terminal for society and, you know, working with CIS to help elevate them more so they're loud and proud and available to their communities as a resource to then collaborate with other healthcare professionals, right and so that's the difference.

Stuart: Like you say, it's no longer the case the information and the answers is restricted to the professionals. So it's not the case that you can only get a referral from a GP, a family doctor, and you get one choice and that's the choice. It's no longer that all of the options aren't available for the people who want to go and look for it, but the opportunity to build a relationship with the community so that you're a trusted source of information, of adding value, improving the quality of life, and then, somewhere down the track, there's some business transaction. That means that it's also profitable to do that. It's such a game changer now and, I think, for the next foreseeable future, particularly when you think about things like I was just watching a catching up on a YouTube video before we jumped on the call talking about chat DPP for, like the latest iteration, there we use some of the AI stuff or the podcast transcripts and in the pulling out some of the book, as we're creating some of the books and some AI stuff in there. Yeah, so this idea that there's information in data has been.

The first problem was that people didn't know about it. Then everything was made available. So now, like you're saying there's a filtering problem. That filtering problem is just going to get worse, where now the creation job gets 100 times easier because it can be done at scale. So to be the organization that's making a connection, that's almost getting back to front gate type approach of a person talking to another person, this is going to be technological ways of helping that, but sharing your vision either you yourself or you, as in one of the companies that you're helping sharing that vision. Why physiotherapies important, what difference it can make, what the easy way of getting started is, what things to watch out for. That connection is really going to be the thing that changed.

Michael: It's powerful and now more than ever private is around the globe, need to make sure they're continuing to develop and grow their organization so that they're present and they're organized Right. So you know, with all this because people the society's reaching and searching for solutions to take care of their bodies there's a lot of energy in longevity, medicine, right and recovery. And you know, with this energy and attention we're going to see life spans go even further, we're going to see people being more active longer. So, like any fine machine you own and with enough miles on it, it needs tune ups, it needs repair, it needs enhancement and TLC. And so what better than you know physical therapy to be well positioned to make sure that again they're loud and proud and well known and thought of within their communities?

but have to be organized and you know in the ready. So so, being able to spot where there might be some hidden dangers or some stops in how some workflows are organized and the absence of systems or outdated systems and processes right, not necessarily technology, but a systematic approach of doing things that provide the great patient experience right, and that's a great point because it does become the line for what's required moves over time and gets higher and tougher over time.

Stuart: The technology is making some things easier, but the kind of just making sure that the fundamentals are taken care of. Any problems at that level really become barriers to moving on and they'll impact the organizations, I think, in an exponential way compared to the past, with fewer clients, a longer turnaround time, less demand, less immediate, the expectation of immediate responsiveness With all of those not so much there. So when you think family doctor back in the 50s would have a handful of clients. They get around to them. They got around to them. Maybe someone could go to a neighbor and use a phone to call three, but it might be two days later. Now you're expecting to log into a portal and have an immediate to everything. So not having those systems in place, I imagine, is going to be even more detrimental than it would have been in the past.

Michael: That's right. Trying to solve that problem, that's right. And then rising their certain professional competencies too that we need to manage today's complex patient and to effectively collaborate with other health carepers. So you know, what are we doing to train our teams? What are we doing to elevate and develop our teams? What are we doing to make sure that we're always developing our mindset and progressing, that we're not still thinking with old ways of thinking and old ideas. But raising this world is evolving at a very rapid pace, so we have to remain adaptively meet and, quite frankly, exceed the needs of today's society.

Stuart: So that's right, exactly, yeah, there's so much opportunity there. It's really particularly a few and a few passionate about, because then all of this opportunity is just a light that you're drawn towards. It's not a light and it's a train about to run you over. It's kind of exciting. The book has a way of starting that conversation with clients and setting a set of values and delivering something that's kind of all giving. We talk about that quite a lot. It's a way of starting that conversation with adding value. The book itself was originally written more for patients to get that message out, and now it's changed a little bit in the latest iteration. Can you talk for a moment about what those early thoughts were, the idea of going from no book to a book? What was that transition? Why pick that as the way of getting in front of people, and what was it you really wanted to share with them in that first version?

Michael: Yeah, I wanted something that would help the conversation, like you mentioned earlier, with the general public and also referring providers. You know, the reality is we've got not just doctors referring, but there's nurse practitioners, physician assistants, there's nurse case managers, there's discharge nurses, then there's different administration professionals. Right, you have a coordinator in some of these offices and healthcare systems. So it was trying to find a way how can we help the conversation, how can we also put some stable information out there that you know here's where physical therapy is now. Not sure where you're at with your know-how on physical therapy or if you or even know what we're doing these days or how to get our help or when it's indicated. But so it was trying to create something that could kind of organize it and also share our philosophy, you know, to well-being that.

You know pain doesn't have to be a way of life. You know it's interesting, right, every machine we own. It's our responsibility to figure out how does it work, right, and so the body is like that too. So when you have these warning lights on, like pain, you know you need to know how to address those things. And then, above now, as I'm working with privates around the country, it's you know what are you doing to address the pain points in your business, so that you can serve the patients who are coming to you with pain and then you can effectively manage your team, who have their challenges, their issues right. They're difficult conversations, they're, you know, obstacles. They're trying to.

Stuart: Yeah, it's interesting that there's a parallel between the patient experience and the business owner experience. I mean, the. The details are different, but there's definitely a similarity in that journey of kind of some of the acceptance not the deming cycle and not the 12 step program, but why would that framework is that accept it first and then address it and then kind of revisit it afterwards. Yeah, one of the groups you were talking about which is a fan. I'm going to try and remember this one as an example when I'm talking about it in the future. It's this idea of complimentary, non-competing businesses. So when I'm talking on calls with people about how to use the book further down the path, then there's obviously new clients that they're using it as a lead generation tool. There's existing clients and there's rules.

There's also this idea of complimentary non-competing businesses and the whole nurse practitioners, the case managers, whole three of people who are crossing over with your clients, who are perfect that you can serve the best. So taking a moment to stop and identify who those are and what information that they might find valuable. This is a great example, as I'm going to try and remember this one, for they're doing their day-to-day job. They're not physiotherapists. They've got some awareness, but it might be outdated. So using this as a tool of saying, hey, if you have clients who are experiencing this and they're not getting the benefits from what they're trying, this might be a great path to help them. Did that? Was there much, much acceptance of that? Did that with groups of people? This complimentary, non-competing group is one that I feel is always because people don't think about it. So I'm always looking for examples of where people have gone down that route and it's really kind of resonating.

Michael: Yeah, we got a ton of feedback, not just from the community as we put this book in hands of patients, but again referring healthcare. There's a fun part about collaborating with you folks is that it's a short read, it's not a long read, and recognizing that today's professional, especially healthcare professionals, they're on the fly, they're on the move, they don't want some novel. So this provided a really concise, condensed kind of read and it got great feedback on it. As they said, it was tight, it was easy to follow.

Stuart: They realized some things.

Michael: It provided some value in how they're routing and triaging patients.

Stuart: And helps it to stay front of mind as well. I guess because I was on a call yesterday with a financial advisor and they were talking about an older traditional book that they've written and the uptake on it wasn't quite what they were hoping for and it was big and like all of the problems of traditional books. So I was saying to him because he was feeling a little bit dejected, the fact that hadn't a build in they will come type thing, it hadn't quite worked out that way. So you just got to remember that people are busy. I'm sure that if you interviewed each and each person that received a copy of it, they would absolutely tell you that they would love to read the book. So future future Michael really wants to read the book. Past Michael really wants to have it, have had it read. It's just current Michael doesn't have time to do it. So I can, they really want to do it, they really want it to be done, but, yeah, just don't have time. So that concise message that just takes the conversation one step further.

Michael: It's just the beginning of a relationship that you got and I'm so passionate about this profession and seeing it do well and, at the very least, what I'm hoping is that this just creates this sort of like link.

As people think of pain, they think could physical therapy help it right. And so if that facilitates a conversation with their doctor, or if we're talking about a doctor or other health care provider that's thinking about, okay, I have a patient in pain somewhere, they're starting to signal their brain like, let me just keep this in the choice bank therapy as indicated. And then you know, if we're all working hard in our communities to position ourselves as experts in therapy, experts in science, that we're taking time to educate our communities. All those nice health care providers they'll think you know front of mind, like you know what we know this group or we know this guy or this gal that they're geez, they always seem to be talking about therapy and their therapist out there, just sharing and educating. Why don't I reach out and see if they might be able to help? I've got this tough case. I think might need physical therapy, not sure. And then we talk through it and now we've got a relation.

Might not have otherwise happened if that if something like this isn't circulating out there, and it's like you said.

Stuart: It's that starting point. The job of work of the book is done when it makes that first connection. It's not that the book is designed to sell someone and a client walks through the door. It's the start and you can imagine a situation where what would be an example, the Boston Marathon and trying to think about where you are, the Boston Marathon I'm sure that doctors get an increase in people with leg related issues as people who are suddenly training for the marathon. So sending something reminding them of the book that they've already received as a talking point, but then a very timely reminder of something that they might see. The relationship's always been established because of the book in the first place. Now there's a reminder. Oh yeah, I did have a connection there and this might be relevant. Join the dots and start the conversation.

Michael: You got it. My greatest desire would be, quite frankly, that elevating everyone's awareness about physical therapy will push them, in their communities, to reach out to their local therapy place that they have some confidence in and want to learn more about how it can help them. Because we need to help society stay moving to stay healthy, and so to do that therapy is just so important. We can figure out why aren't you moving, why aren't you being as active as you normally are, and let's see what we can do about that.

Stuart: I remember in the UK there was so much across in 2018. So this is a bit of an old ad, but there were some stroke ads in the UK. The health service was paying for some stroke related ads and, of course, now I'm going to prove that it didn't necessarily work entirely, because I can't remember exactly what the acronym was, but I think there was like five steps and it was an acronym for each of the five steps and their ad campaign was helping people recognize the early stages. So it was something about people's. You might not recognize that someone might be having a stroke, but you might not recognize it here at the five warning sites like face dropping slightly, speech slurred mine sounds a bit slurred, but it's because I've got a cold still and then they gate. So just the fact that it's raising awareness of some preventative steps. Rather than letting it get to a critical stage, there's the opportunity to do something early which might mean that the outcome is fast, shorter, less painful, keeps mobility longer. Really, just keeping that conversation going.

Michael: And the cool part is it's saving people time and money. You know when they're thinking of first step. Should it be therapy? Could it be therapy? It's just amazing integrating that in early in the intervention plan what that's doing to help people save time and money, you know, in the long run.

Stuart: So the book itself has gone through a couple of iterations. So this is something I wanted to drill into a little bit because, as I say, a lot of the people that we've talked with recently, they've just recently released the book, so I haven't had time to kind of let it season and then get some feedback and pivot in a position in a slightly different direction For you guys. The one was fast to get out there. It did the job of work. It was doing that great engagement. More recently you mentioned moving the practice into the bigger group, taking more time to develop the business coaching side of things and then in the book to support that goal a little bit more and very keen.

The one of the big differences that I try and share with people on the 90 minute book approach rather than the traditional publishing approach is that these books are to be living things. It's not like you've signed a deal on a line that started and it was knocked into a stone tablet and then you can never change it without either paying thousands of more dollars or much time and effort to do it. Fast thing that can pivot. I always like that saying no plan survives contact with the enemy, or like it's started approach Once it's out there. You get that. So can you talk a little bit about this latest iteration and what the thought was behind tweaking it a little bit and how much change you made and what now is the purpose of it?

Michael: Yeah, so the idea now was, as I'm out there working with more privates around the country, helping them forward their goals and continue to grow and develop their practices confidently, it's still staying at the core, some of my passion At the core.

I'm a teacher, but I'm also a healer, I'm a physical therapist and I'm staying current and that's important to me, that I'm still making decisions out into society with information that's helpful and then also for all these other privates out there, inspiring them to pick up the book.

Feel good about that. I'm out there as an ally here to also. Maybe this helps them reflect on what their educational initiatives are in their communities, helps them with their conversations that maybe they're thinking about developing or even starting that they haven't already and challenge them to kind of take a look at their active following and can they engage them further. Because the fun part is when you've helped one patient at a time to do really well and improve their health and have an exceptional experience. They're an ambassador in their community, in their home, their work, their neighborhood, and it just inspires people to help each other more. Look to see what we can do to help each other in this crazy fast world that we're in, and I'm thinking even about you can't go anywhere now where you don't see people looking down at their device.

Stuart: So how do we?

Michael: help people, remind them to get your eyes up, look around, someone kind of crouched or posturally twisted, moving a differently, nursing and compensating in some way. Then lend a hand and just reach and say, hey, are you okay? What do you? I noticed you're limping or moving a little bit difficulty. What's going on? And that take an interest, be curious and then ask my favorite question have you tried therapy yet? You know, talk to your doctor, see if it could help.

Stuart: Yeah, particularly as you say, with an aging population, it's easy for people to mask injuries and brush them off and again growing up in kind of the UK healthcare system, which might not be the fastest around, but it's. There's no direct charging for things, so people aren't reluctant to seek therapy because of costs, which obviously is a big deal over in the over here in the US. So, sharing with people that there might be a it's not necessarily going to be an expensive fix, particularly if they catch it early. There might be some things that really really allow them to preventative steps that keeps things moving for longer.

I think that's one of the big takeaways that I've taken from this. Is that reminder that it is. There is so much opportunity in the preventative care stage of things and thinking of the bodies and machine, just like you get your car service. It makes sense to kind of keep on top of things rather than I don't know if it's the curse of youth like you always imagine that you're full out of a tree when you're 10 years old and you bounce back up and carry on. You kind of miss a step at 40. And it's a little different.

Michael: You kind of have to think about it a little bit more.

Right, but you know it's appreciating and respecting that the body's changing. You know, over time, and you know any machine that we hold for a longer time, you know we're managing it differently through the years. I mean, the first time you get your car, your brand new car, you can be rough, you can get out there and just go. Then, as the years go on, you know you're letting it warm up in the driveway before you go for it. You're mapping out the trip. How many miles is there? You know, should I, is this really the car I should take for that? Right? And so, as we were evaluating, is this city that I should really be engaging in or should I be modifying? You know, because we'd never tell people just stop moving or stop being active. We're just saying every seven to 10 years, are you just reviewing what you're doing for activity and being honest about you know kind of modifying some things? I mean that's why professional athletes aren't staying in professional sports until they croak right there.

They have a life cycle, you know and we have certain life cycles for certain things, but it doesn't mean you can't do it, it just means you do it a little differently right and so the fun parallel for me now is helping private businesses also realize that's the mindset in their business as well.

Be proactive in what you're doing to take really good care of your machine, your company, your business, so you can really deliver great care, great service, which is the reason why we get into this field in the first place. And then what are you doing to evolve and modify it over time? You know you just can't run the business the same way you did on day one With each few years at Gisby. We need to keep developing, we need to be modifying, adjusting, because we're adapting to the changing needs and also the changing landscape around us. Right, that's so funny, right we? It's like I had this conversation with someone not long ago about change versus variety, you know, and it's like change is tough for some of us, even though we know the only thing that's changed. But something about variety we're cool with.

We like shaking it up a little bit every now and then, so, but how do we get the little best of both worlds and just keep evolving and keep trying to get better. That's really the fun and the goal.

Stuart: How do I get a little better Right that nuance of logic as well? It's such an interesting observation. Change versus variety the two what's happening, could be described in either way, but understanding the language, which I guess comes back to the book in a certain way. It's the way that things within the book are going to be either more or less so, taking some time to think about that and then, in the practice as well, understanding that not everyone's going to be thinking the same way that the physiotherapists might, because they're in it all the time.

Again, with creating the books, we sometimes talk to people who've been in business for a number of years but they're struggling to think about what should be included, and it's often a case that they're thinking too complex. Their equivalent when they're thinking about books in their industry is academic pieces or big traditional books written at a high level, because that's the kind of peer level that they're on, having been in the business for 10 years, but understanding that this is starting a conversation with Dave or Mary who's looking at this subject for the very first time, bringing it back down to that kind of 101 friendly introduction level that is meeting them, where their conversation is going on, and it's easy for people to underestimate how valuable what they see as the basic information is, because for other people that basic information is pretty advanced thinking.

Michael: You got it, yeah, and there's the art right of what we're doing. We have art and science right and there's that art, that's that receptivity, like just being able to sense and perceive and sort of feel what the people are that you're trying to help serve, support, do really great by. It's like getting a vibe and being able to meet their needs and I always like to say, exceed their needs. Knock their socks off right.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah, exactly. If you've got that opportunity, you've got the passion. It would be unfortunate if there were just some systemic things that stopped that from happening. Delivering the best service but then having email not going out or billing thing fail or an appointment get missed the fundamentals of the business. Cracking that code means that your passion for exceeding can really kind of shine in the best way. That's right, super appreciated of your time. It's really exciting to have this conversation with someone who wrote a book a number of years ago and then see how it developed. Just as we're wrapping up, let's talk a little bit about the coaching that you're doing for other organization and who is the best helping and I'm guessing that it's not just local in Rhode Island, it's anywhere.

Michael: That's right. I'm working with this around the country. My company's called Nula Training Systems. It's a therapy, business and professional development firm. We're doing professional executive business coaching but also have some workshops for some courses for team trainings, coming on site and spending a day with a business owner to work on their business and outline strategies and action plans so that they're achieving exceeding their goals and doing really any support that they're really needing. A lot of times business owners are they're facing difficult decisions. They perceive they have some hidden dangers or unachieved opportunities in their practice.

They're trying to have a level of prediction trying to gauge ahead, trying to make big decisions that also impact the future. Some are also trying to manage a growing and changing workforce and trying to figure out how do I just get everybody getting along working together, supporting each other, so we can support our communities. So you know, my services help with that and always available for discovery. Call for people to learn more.

Stuart: And the like we just talked about for the last 30 minutes or so, that breadth of experience and the opportunity to go into an organization as an outsider, as a kind of knowledgeable outsider, and just be able to give an opinion or give an opinion without the baggage that has to be, I imagine, so for people. Thank you, we'll make sure that there's links to the website in the show notes, so if people are interested, then definitely check out that. We'll make it as easy as possible to get through the practice itself. What's the website for the practice? If people are in the NulaTrainingSystemscom.

Michael: Invite them to reach out and you can go to the contact page and sign up for a discovery call and a chance to get to know each other and, if anything, make a friend, but also to have some information, learn more about what we're doing.

Stuart: Fantastic. Well, thanks again, michael, it's been a real pleasure. It'd be interesting to catch up in another six or seven months, now that the latest version of the book has just come through an update on that one. So it'll be interesting to check back in and see how the practice, the development, practices developing and see what's happened over this year. So, yeah, looking forward to checking back in.

Michael: Thank you, Stuart, appreciate it.

Stuart: Thanks everyone. Thanks for listening. As I say, check out the show notes for links to Michael's stuff and the cover is one of. I actually really like this cover. There was a early version of it that was on the version one, but the latest version has been updated to. It really shines, so really suggest jumping over to the Book More Show website and looking at the cover. That's just over my shoulder. Okay with that, thank you. We'll catch everyone in the next one.

Michael Nula built Elite Physical Therapy from one location to 13 locations across Rhode Island, serving 60,000 patients over 20 years before integrating with Ivy Rehab Network. Now he runs Nula Training Systems, coaching other PT practice owners.

What makes this conversation interesting isn't just Michael's business growth story. It's how he pivoted his book strategy when his business model changed. His original book "The First Step" was written to attract patients to his practice. After selling and launching his coaching business, he updated the book to demonstrate his approach to potential coaching clients instead.

You'll hear how Michael's personal injury as a high school basketball player led him into physical therapy, the lessons he learned scaling from 1 to 13 locations, and how he repositioned his book to support his new business goals. It's a practical look at how your book can evolve as your business evolves.

If you're thinking about how your book might need to change as your business grows or shifts direction, this conversation offers a real-world example of making that transition work.

Show notes: https://mrstuartbell.com/podcasts/htb/132-pivoting-your-book-with-michael-nula/

About Michael Nula: Website | LinkedIn

Your Book Is Closer Than You Think — You already say everything that needs to be in your book. 90-Minute Books turns it into a done-for-you lead generation tool. Get the Free Book

Today on the Book More Show, we're talking with Rajesh Jyotishi (RJ), Financial Advisor based in Atlanta and Author of The 5 Biggest Risks in Retirement & Money Talk.

RJ has been a pillar of the Indian community in Atlanta for many years and started a financial column in a magazine he helped create back in the 90's. Several years ago, he distilled this knowledge into a traditional book called 'Money Talk,' and last year he created a conversation-starting book, 'The 5 Biggest Risks in Retirement', to answer 5 of the most important retirement questions his community has.

This is a great call as we talk about how RJ dialed in his audience by understanding who he can best help, how he chose the information to share in a conversation-starting book, and how he's using it to serve his community better.

RJ's passion for delivering value comes through in everything he does, and this call is a great reminder there are people out there hunting for the information in your head, and your book is a great way to help them start their journey.

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

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Book More Show. It's Stuart Bell here and excited again because we're sharing one of our authors' stories. So today we've got Rajesh Jatishi with us. I'm just going to start with a quick disclaimer. I haven't done a number of compliance books that have to go through compliance. I'm kind of aware of the different compliance levels of each organisation, so let me just share this one quickly.

Stuart: That definitely makes the 30 or so years go very fast.

Rajesh: So which came first?

Rajesh: Well, actually we did not even know if you were going to be able to sustain it, because the Indian community back in Atlanta back in 1991 was very small. So we would literally only take three-month agreements from clients for advertising because, just in case we had to shut it down, we didn't want to take any extra money, we had to owe it to them.

Rajesh: Well, I really like to do creative work story. So for my 25th anniversary, I wrote my first book called the Money Top Retirement in the State Planning for Indian Americans. It's right here and it's also on Amazon in Audio, inprint and e-books. So it was just something that was more of a bucket list goal than anything else. I just wanted to write a book. And what do you write a book about? So I really like the spiritual and motivational type of things, but there are so many books on that already. I knew financial services, but there are so many books on that as well too.

Stuart: It's such there's so many things to unpack from even just those few minutes of description, because the two examples that you've got the original book, which is a more traditional book, and then the 90 minute book, which is more targeted at a specific campaign. So the two things I really like from what you said is this idea in the first book of understanding who the audience is. So you're a financial planner. If people look on the 90 minute book's website, in the gallery there's more than one financial retirement based book. So finding that position or angle or the way that you present it, from knowing and understanding the audience and not thinking how is this going to appeal to the broadest group of people? But how is it going to appeal to the group of people that I engage with and can add the most value to Such a fantastic way of thinking about it, whether it's a traditional book or a 90 minute book? Because it separates you from the market and, at the end of the day, we're creating these books for the most part not to sell copies of the book's authors but to sell the ideas and then encourage people to ultimately allow us to help them some more.

Stuart: And the five are ones in the top of people's minds. So, given that you're trying to start the conversation with someone at the beginning of their journey with you, it would be crazy to think about some esoteric risk on systemic failure of an insurance broker, of a stock provider. I mean, be pointless talking about that element, at least after 2009. It might have had more airtime then, but joining people where they're thinking about and leading them towards it it's one of the issues that we have when we're talking to people who've been in business for a long time is that the level of understanding and the level of knowledge and the level of complexity that you tend to be dealing with once you've been in business for a while, you move past the base level, because that's either taken care of by a system or a junior partner or something else you as the business owner or the person more senior. It tends to deal with more complicated things. So it's definitely a conversation that we have to try and remind people to just remember where the people are coming from. They're at the beginning of this conversation and you might think these pieces of information are too basic to include, but for the audience, this is exactly what their thoughts are the frameworks that you've got the five risks.

We've got this concept of people make the decision to take the next step. You can't force that decision on them and really there's only two choices Is it for them it's either today or it's not today, and if it's not today, it could be a week or a year or a decade in the future. But by staying in touch with them over the long term and sharing, reinforcing this useful, valuable information, you've got the opportunity to intersect with them the day. That is the day for them, let's say, whether it's today or a couple of years down the track. And it's not a case of spamming them, it's not selling the list to someone else.

Stuart: Right. That's why I love five, like three to five things in a book. I'm holding up four fingers, I don't know why. Three things in a book that are on point for the overall subject. They're easy to consume and easy to get started Because then you've got the opportunity.

And I think, in having some of the other things available, like the YouTube channel and whatnot, if people can just see and hear you and your demeanor, I think it makes a big difference than just talking over the phone or reading in a book too, so it just allows them to really connect it a little bit more personal sort of way. So that's really been my intention is just to once again provide value, which is a number one requirement. I mean, I'm only one man, so I can't serve the entire world, but at the same time, whoever needs help and wants to reach out to me, I'll do what I can Right. So you know, and I practice what I preach too. So anything I wrote in my books whether it be on the long term care planning, the way to reduce market risk I practice what I preach in the book too, and have done for a number of years.

Stuart: I mean, that's the thing that comes across. It's the I don't even want to say credibility, because that's not the right word but it's the authenticity, to a certain degree, of your approach and your passion with helping the community through the column, the longevity of that, the extra value that you're providing in other resources and other mediums. But just this approach and I can definitely imagine that the people that engage with that, who don't know you until they come in that first contact point, is going to be so much more, so much more of a personal connection than it would be otherwise.

Stuart: Right, exactly, I mean that idea of making sure that something is not set in stone and it can be updated to keep it relevant and keep it valuable.

Rajesh Jyotishi figured out something most advisors miss: your best clients are in communities you already understand. Since 1991, he's been serving Atlanta's Indian community, first by co-founding a magazine when no other media existed for that audience, then writing a financial column for 22 years.

Now he's taken that same community-first approach to his books. After writing a traditional comprehensive guide called 'Money Talk,' he created 'The 5 Biggest Risks in Retirement' to answer the specific questions his community keeps asking.

This conversation shows how RJ dialed in his audience by understanding exactly who he can help best. He talks about choosing the right information for a conversation-starting book and how he's using it to serve his community better. If you've got expertise that could help a specific group of people, this is how you think about getting it to them.

Show notes: https://mrstuartbell.com/podcasts/htb/131-serving-a-community-with-rajesh-jyotishi/

About Rajesh Jyotishi: Website | LinkedIn

Your Book Is Closer Than You Think — You already say everything that needs to be in your book. 90-Minute Books turns it into a done-for-you lead generation tool. Get the Free Book

Today on the Book More Show, we're talking with Karim ElMofty, dentist with Southdown Dental in Mississauga, Ontario and coauthor of How Do I Take Care of My Children's Teeth, a book that helps parents make confident dental choices for their children from newborns through teens.

Karim and his partners at Southdown are passionate about dispelling dental myths and providing great information and have established KnowDental.ca as an educational resource to help improve people understanding of good dental hygiene. Their latest book builds on this work with parents as the audience.

It's a great conversation looking at ways this book supports their educational goals, as well as all the ways they can use it as a referral tool with the families they've been supporting for generations.

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

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Bookmore show. It's Stuart Bell here, and today we've got another great interview with one of our authors. We've got Karima Almofty, who's a dentist based out of actually, I don't know where you are geographically, Karim, where are you based?

Dr. Karim: I'm currently practicing in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

Stuart: Ah, fantastic. So Karim's on the fly, joining us on the move. So if you're watching the video, don't be surprised that it says thumbnail and you don't see him talking. But we really wanted to grab the moment and get this recorded. So I guess the best place to start is Karim, if you share with people what the business is, and then who it is that you're serving at the moment, and then we can jump off from there.

Dr. Karim: Okay, perfect. Hi Stuart, how are you? Thank you for hosting me here and having this conversation. I am very happy to be telling my story. I'm very excited about this book. So my name is Karim Almofty, I'm a dentist. I work in Mississauga, Ontario. I have advanced training in children dentistry, pediatric dentistry. I'm a general practitioner but I'm looking into this area more and I'm looking also into the dental public health, specifically the oral health education, where I finished my master's degree in Egypt almost what? Seven, eight years ago almost and yeah, now the business is dentistry. We're doing dental service in South Down Dental Mississauga. I work with my partners, slash mentors, Dr Khaled Khaled, Dr Bob Vavaruzos, who both co-authored the book. I work with them, I learn from them. It's a great team we have here. I'm focused towards oral health education as well, so this also triggered the book to try to provide answers and to tell the story of how to take care of your children's teeth.

Stuart: Basically, it's such a great niche because there is something, there is an education piece that's missing. I think I remember being so. I'm 46, 47. So I remember back when I was in school there were dental hygienists in the school, would come around every so often, but here in parents' talk now I'm not sure whether that's the case and again, that was in the UK, so maybe that's never been the case in North America. But the opportunity to share information with people in a pretty accessible way. I'll make sure we link to the cover of the book in the show notes. So it's such a great and engaging cover. And this idea of talking to parents about how they can make better choices, did you find that was a problem? People were coming in and really not knowing what the best choices were to make and looking for that information.

Dr. Karim: Unfortunately. Yes, and of course to varying degrees. So you mentioned being located in the UK. Now I'm working out of Mississauga, Canada. I used to live in Egypt before where I did most of my education. I had some training in the States, had some training, brief training in China. So everywhere you go, the information is out there, but I Don't know you know the saying that we live in a world today of where information is abundant, but the actual answers to questions scares right. So, of course, you can Google anything, you can look for anything on Bing, you can use any search engine you can think of, but now chat GPT, it seems, but where is the actual answer to the question that I have?

Stuart: so.

Dr. Karim: I can't really call it a problem, because Everywhere you go, there is an ongoing system that makes sure that people get the answers to the question and understand how to take care of their health, how to take care of their teeth. Everyone who goes to a doctor the doctor would will tell him a little bit about how to go ahead, how to do that. But we can always benefit from more simplification, more Facilitation of the science, of the current science, because science is always changing methods that used to work 10 years ago. Maybe we have better methods today, maybe. So this is what I'm talking about. It's not a problem, but we can definitely benefit from more information About the topic, except, especially when it's directed to the parents, who are they just really do what they're best. They just really do want to do what's best for their children.

Stuart: So, yeah, it's in a moment in their life when they're kind of desperate for information and really trying to be as helpful as possible. It's. This isn't a situation where there's a pressing need that they need to resolve the problem and a Desire to make the right choices, because they're kind of very tuned into the long-term consequences.

Dr. Karim: Yes, yes and also yes.

Stuart: I was just gonna say I liked what you were saying as well about. There isn't a shortage of information out there these days. Two minutes of googling for something and you'll find a wealth of information, but that doesn't necessarily help in the final decision of what the instruction is or what the practical advice is. There's a lot of theoretical advice and a lot of conflicting advice. So your approach of writing something that's kind of comprehensive on this one subject that's helpful. Did you find it difficult narrowing down what to include and what to exclude? Or, based on your general practice, is it easy to know which of the top five or six things to address?

Dr. Karim: So that's a very good question because actually you pointed at exactly the technique I used to Arrange the subject and subjects in the book and to narrow down the different topics I'm talking about. This is not a scientific book Like. If you're looking for the science and the evidence and there is no shortage of that you will know how to find it in different types of books. And, at the same time, this is not a book that's talking about recent trends and all of this Direction. Also, there is another book for that but this is actually a book that was put together from you can call it the frequently asked questions that all the time we are trying to answer in different ways.

Stuart: Those three or four things that you hit on there. As some of the conversations we have day in, day out with people, I'm trying to help them overcome whatever barrier or block they've got to get and started. So oftentimes we'll have people who are it's the two ends of the spectrum. Sometimes people will be doubtful that they know enough information and other times people will have too much information or too advanced information and they're trying to jump too far down the track. So when we think of the job of work is to engage those people at the top of the funnel to provide help in the early stages of the conversation, then if you've been in business for more than a year, you probably know enough of those frequently asked questions that you mentioned to pull something together that's really helping people. And if you've been in business for 10 years, then it's valuable to remember that all of the basic stuff that you take for granted, other people really find it valuable because they're earlier in the journey. So I really like again that you were trying to pull together something that's focused on helping those people but not getting bogged down in the fact that every case is actually unique. But we need to sell some somewhere.

Dr. Karim: Absolutely, and there is an added layer of complexity to this, Stuart. It's this part is directed to every new parents out there. When you're a new parent, the amount of work that you have to put into your everyday life, the lack of sleep, the motivation to do everything in the perfect way to your child all of this adds a lot to the pressure to new parents, and how to integrate this health message, this oral health message, into their everyday life has to be practical. We have to know that we always target to the 100%, but if you get to the 60%, if you get to the 70%, you're still doing your best. Your best is different than my best, is different than everyone else's. So this individual advice also it's very important to know that Of course, we wanna do the 100%. Everyone wants to do the best for their children, but I don't know. We have to also give ourselves a break. You know, yeah.

Stuart: It's the exactly it's that element of giving yourself a break and understanding that all of the effort that you do ink is targeted in the right way and not allow the fear of the hundred percent or the fear of missing the market a little bit to cause much much mental baggage or stress in a time that's very stressful anyway.

Dr. Karim: I don't know if I don't know if this last part gave away that I am a new parent myself or not.

Stuart: yet you can hear the passion and the sympathy.

Dr. Karim: There you go, there you go.

Stuart: Well that I mean you're getting the that exact experience out of dentistry, which obviously is your field of expertise. You must notice it in all of these other ways. I always kind of I think it was a TV show or movie, or I've heard in some marketing speak the example of someone going in and buying baby carriage or baby stroller, baby chair thing and the salesman saying, well, we've got this model in this model, but for people who really love their children, then there's this model which is more expensive. So that whole industry of adding extra pressure. You must, as a new parent, feel that in non dentistry related things to a certain degree.

Dr. Karim: Oh, of course, Of course, of course.

Stuart: I think the accessibility of the book. So, as you started, the book itself is called how do I take care of my children's teeth. So it's very non judgmental. It's not adding any additional pressure, it's just providing an answer in the title kind of question magnet book types we talk about sometimes, or how to book types.

Dr. Karim: Yeah.

Stuart: Well as people. I know this is a relatively recently finished project, but have you got any feedback yet from real people receiving this and how it's being received by parents?

Dr. Karim: I'm really looking forward to hear this feedback and I'm expecting it very soon.

Stuart: Yeah, it's. We're always excited to see podcasts with people, so we tend to jump in a little bit early and before examples, but it does give us the opportunity to say, hey, we have to come back in a few months and check in, so let's jump then. So it's not, we've just finished. It. It's not in the hands of parents. We're going to pivot and we'll get a lot of information coming back from them as they're receiving it. When you started the project, did you have a feel or an idea of how you were getting it to those people? You talked about the education piece, but then you've got all of your clients and people coming into the practice. Did you have an idea for the distribution element?

Dr. Karim: Yes, the book is going to be available on Amazon. You can buy it through Amazon, which is the most accessible way, it seems, nowadays. At the same time, we will actually be. We will have the book available for dental office in the South Down Dental here in Mississauga Every oral health education project that South Down Dental sponsors.

Stuart: And what great opportunity. I mean, you can imagine the scenario where kids are coming home after a dentist has been into school and they come home with a little cheap toothbrushes and a couple of flyers. But as the parents are going through the bag at the end of the day and then pull out the book, how do I take home my children's teeth? Accessible formats, it's easy to consume. There's some clear next steps and some options that people can take towards their end.

Dr. Karim: That's a beautiful way of putting it. That's, I think this is exactly how we see it. It's really complementing each other's effort. Everyone is doing his best as the community, as our, as different efforts, provided by different people, by different specialists, by different people in their own organizations. They all want to do their best, they all want to realize their goals and to make sure that they did everything the right way. But the overlapping of the efforts, in a very positive way, can only benefit the recipients of these services, you see. So I think this is how we see it. I'm dreaming one day that this book and this kind of oral health promotion and education, it could be used by every dental office. Right?

Stuart: There's a couple of things that spring to mind. So we did a podcast not so long ago with a financial advisor called Bill Bloom. I'll link to it in the show notes. But he wrote a couple of books with us. One of them was called Retire as you Desire, which was a very short book relatively speaking, but it just hit on a couple of key points and talked about a framework that they then elaborated into other things. So now the whole onboarding process from this particular channel is around this retire as you desire framework. So you were talking about the educational games and the opportunities to talk to different groups. You can really see this whole world coming together where the how do I take care of my children's teeth? There's the book and the game and flashcards and pointers and just the whole world. Oh yeah.

Dr. Karim: The ecosystem. Absolutely. We want the information provided to us in a very nice, pleasant, non-time-consuming way for everything in our life. I think this is where we are heading. It's a personal opinion, so why not deliver this information with a huge science background to people in the way that they are going to do it? Two people in the way that they like?

Stuart: So yeah, you can imagine and again my mind starts running a little bit with these ideas you can imagine a website supporting the book and then for the eight or so chapters that are in here, I'll just quickly run through them for the people listening. So there's talking about babies' teeth, getting children to brush their teeth, milk teeth, and then going through to adolescents and sports injuries, helping teens with their progress. But you can imagine a website supporting each chapter because there's additional information and elaborations and maybe the walk-along videos and the video technique, called where you Like, the video that the describer type video is where you've got, like the animations that go along with the different bullet points.

Dr. Karim: Right.

Stuart: So helping people as they come into the office and they're talking about one particular problem, or they're talking about a friend or family member with one particular problem, Giving them a copy of the book highlighting that particular chapter, pointing them to the website where there's more resources, all of that leading back to okay, this is the general information, but at some point you need the specific information for your case. Being able to provide that to other providers, it really is the jumping off point for a much bigger, accessible education piece.

Dr. Karim: Absolutely. And, Stuart, allow me to add something here. This is, you can think I like how you're running really towards the important points here. And you're talking about the digital world, of course, because this is where everything is heading, if we're not even there yet. But let me remind you that everything we interact with in the digital world until now, in most cases, of course, is just using our visual experience or you hear something, or but the classic ways of engaging as many senses as possible and use games to transfer the information and to show people how something happens on big teeth models.

Stuart: My wife is a kindergarten teacher at a Waldorf school. Oh there you go. Excuse me, they're very experiential and kind of all through. They've got I think they're three through six. They've got a mixed stage kindergarten. So all of their day to day stuff is very experiential and physically connecting things with any kind of learning opportunities rather than academic first approach. I can see I just Googled there at no dental, I just threw that into the search engine and there's a big picture of I think it's you with some huge teeth.

Dr. Karim: Yes, there it is.

Stuart: That example of being able to share because I think it is. Not only is the you touched upon the pressure and the uncertainty and the the concerned that parents have, but also there's the things that the kids are bringing to and they're being in an unusual environment and being disturbed about the process and potentially being in pain in the first place anyway. So being able to bridge that gap and make it just less of a daunting experience really does tie together so well.

Dr. Karim: Yeah, of course, as much as possible. If you, if you move now we're talking about prevention and how to take care of your teeth, but then if you move further in the chapters of the book, we eventually reach the treatment. We eventually reach the types of treatment, not as an advice, of course, to what treatment to get this is, of course, is decided by the dentist but the parents. They want to know. Today we have, we want to know what's going on, how are we getting the treatment? Whenever we can do, of course, regular dentistry, we do it. The other options of sedation and sleep dentistry Dr Khaled Khaled is actually a dental anesthesiologist, so at South down dental we have the option of putting patients to sleep. We get all the dental work needed to be done while they're asleep. Dr Bob Vavaruzos he provides all the orthodontic and braces service services and treatments needed, along with the general dentistry that he provides. So we there is the treatment part that we are also explaining and trying to simplify as a general idea, of course, alongside how to prevent the disease, of course, which is what everyone wants.

Stuart: And that, as the reader of the book, not only are you trying to find the immediate information, but to know what the path ahead looks like and what the options are. You start off the conversation by saying there's no shortage of information out there. You can Google as many things as you want and go as deep as you want, but what you're really doing is building the relationship with people so that you're their go to person throughout their whole journey, whether they're just in with what can I best do for my baby today, through to teen dentistry and then adult dentistry as well. So once you've built that relationship, but building it in this instance, through one particular channel. I know we've done other books for other people in the past talking about kind of pain free dentistry and sedation alternatives, because they've picked that particular channel as the starting point, the jump and off point, but picking this one. As you mentioned, you have other books as well, but picking this one as a jumping off point for the building a foundation for the rest of someone's life.

Dr. Karim: No for sure it really establishes. One of the most amazing things that we see at the office is a patient, for example, who used to need sedation dentistry when he was younger. It was very difficult for a reason or another, and then he's growing and he's getting used to, or she's getting used to, having regular dental treatment whenever needed without sedation dentistry. So this is exactly when we feel that this is one of the purposes. It was Pain free experience, it was a trouble free experience whenever needed. That could just help the patient reach a point where he is okay to get regular dental service done. And you're talking about building the relationship. It's even more beautiful to see the cross generational relationship. This dental office was In its same location, working there for 30 years, 30 something years. I joined a few years ago, but they've been there for forever, so actually they treated patients and then now they're seeing their children and their grandchildren. There's nothing more fulfilling than seeing good patient relationship evolve and the seeing people's lives moving forward and you're adding something positive to it. You know right.

Stuart: Yeah, that relationship. You get to know them and it's seeing their kids come through of patients that you would have seen, like you personally, but the practice would have seen as small kids themselves. Yeah, we're in a world that you were saying earlier. How much you've moved around, obviously now in the US from the UK, but surprising how many people are in an area and don't leave the area, or when they find Someone that they know and trust, a willing to travel two or three hours just to keep that connection. So it really does establish the groundwork. The other thing that springs to mind as well, talking about that, really established footprints, the list of patients and people who never became patients. I guess that you must have access to To be able to share an email with those people and just say, hey, we've written this resource. It's really valuable. It takes a lot of pressure off new parents. If a family members just hasn't you born, your friend hasn't you born, just let us know and we'll get them a copy of this book. Such a great way of spreading the message. Three people who know, like and trust you already, and it's not like.

Dr. Karim: You're not a great idea, of course.

Stuart: And it's not like you say to them hey, we do a good job, you like us, so refer all your friends. You're starting by giving value. You're saying, hey, if you know people who are struggling and don't know what choices to make, then we've got this resource that can help them out and it's really leading with that, giving hands such a great opportunity to build on those relationships that are there already. Yeah, yeah, I'm conscious of your time. We've got a thing that I just want to say thanks again for dialing, and I know you're busy getting from one place to another, so just really appreciate the time. Is there anything, as we've jumped around a little bit here, is there anything that we've missed that you think it's useful for people to know about this book or about just the idea of writing a book in the first place?

Dr. Karim: I think we covered most of the important points that you actually directed me to cover most of the important points. Thank you for that, and thank you for inviting me and for allowing me to use this platform to spread the information about what we're doing, our vision to the future. Everything I think is covered here. It's the passion of spreading information, the passion of spreading the value of what you're doing and what you wish To be more of out there in the world and just yeah, I know writing a book is one of the very first ways people did this and will always be the gold standard of doing this.

Stuart: My pleasure and that's really what we're passionate, as well as helping people kind of break down that barrier. The traditional publishing world is difficult and expensive and time consuming and it stops people from sharing a message in a format that people receive is very valuable and very, very accessible. So the more people we can help, the better. So I'm just thanks to you for coming on and share your story. Hopefully encourages a few other people to Take the plunge and know it's that they can kind of take from your passion and understand the importance of sharing the message. I'll make sure that we include all of the links to no dental and south down the practice, just so people can follow along with the journey, and we'll make sure we get you a copy of the podcast as well so you can feel free to use that in any way that you help. And, yeah, just really excited to check back in in a few months with you and see how things have gone and give everyone an update.

Parents Google everything about their kids' health, but they still leave dental appointments with unanswered questions. Dr. Karim ElMofty noticed this pattern at Southdown Dental in Mississauga, Ontario.

Instead of repeating the same advice appointment after appointment, Karim and his partners wrote "How Do I Take Care of My Children's Teeth." The book isn't filled with complex dental science or trendy health advice. It's built entirely from the questions parents actually ask.

Karim explains how they decided what to include (and what to leave out), why they chose parents as their audience, and how the book supports both their educational mission at KnowDental.ca and their practice. You'll hear specific ways they're using it as a referral tool with the families they've served for generations.

This conversation shows you how to spot the gap between available information and practical answers in your field.

Show notes: https://mrstuartbell.com/podcasts/htb/130-sharing-an-important-message-with-dr-karim-elmofty/

About Dr Karim ElMofty: Website | LinkedIn

30 Strategies to Build Your Business with a Book — The playbook behind 1,200+ books that start conversations and bring in clients. Yours free. Get a Free Copy

Today on the Book More Show, we're talking with Bill DeBoer, owner of DeBoer's Auto in New Jersey and author of Profitable Fleet Management, a book that helps small and medium size companies manage their fleet of vehicles to ensure they continue to serve the business needs and proactively stay in service. He recently finished his book and recorded a book launch with recent guest Rich Bontrager, and we caught up to see how he's been using his book.

Bill has the value-driven approach we often talk about. Passionate about helping other business owners, he understood that his book could help his ideal client today and be a resource to organizations whose fleets are just starting. They may be too small to be clients now, but by providing value, he's building relationships with people who will become clients tomorrow as their fleets inevitably grow.

He's also using their proprietary technology to grow their company into other states, and his book allows him to build a bigger footprint outside of New Jersey and find customers and partners ahead of any investment.

It's a great conversation, and I really appreciate how Bill is looking to drive value in each element of his book funnel.

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

Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the Bookmore show. It's Stuart Bell here and today great interview with one of our authors who just recently finished the book. So I really wanted to get his insights into what it's been doing for his business and also because it's a little bit of an unusual business as well. I mean, as we think about examples of people writing books, bill's business isn't the one that springs to mind. So, bill DeBore, welcome to the show.

Bill: Thank you, stuart, it's nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Stuart: No problem at all. So I start off by saying that your business isn't one that necessarily springs to mind when we're talking about examples of books. So do you want to give the audience a bit of a background on who you are? Let me get up an image of the book as well. So the book is Sure. Let me on the screen here. The book is Profitable Fleet Management. So what's your company and what do you guys do for people?

Bill: Yeah, so we have a business DeBore Zotto in Hamburg, new Jersey. We've been in business for just over 40 years now and we take care of people's cars, trucks, vans and all that. So pretty much the book was spawned out of. A couple of years ago we were looking for ways to increase our business and we started knocking on doors of the small and medium-sized businesses out there that have fleets of that size and started seeing some real pain points inside of those businesses with regards to how hard it is for them to manage it, how much of a pain it is.

Stuart: This idea that we talked to a lot of people about in terms of picking a single target market, and not that it's exclusive of everyone else. It's not that you have to turn away other business, but the idea of reaching out in a campaign sense and picking that target market. You were talking about other vehicles and other types of non-van fleet people that you can help. What made you pick that area as opposed to something else? Was it an area that you wanted to break into, or is it the most profitable area or the area you can help the most?

Bill: Well, it's a couple things. So in our business I mean, those fleets are a good, steady supply of vehicles for us to work on. In our business everything comes down to car count how many cars we have to work on. And the thing about fleets that is attractive to us as a business is that we can deal with one or two people and collect 30 to 40 vehicles with only a couple contact points, where for us to do 40 vehicles, that's 40 different phone calls, 40 different people. We got to deal with a lot more work that goes into that. So the fleet business works well for that.

Stuart: So such a perfect marriage. A lot of organizations that we talk about the coach inside the business is this idea of excess capacity. So if you're doing something but there is excess capacity, you've really got that. The engineers, the tech, so they're anyway, the equipment's there anyway. It really gives you a lot of leeway to do some quite innovative things in terms of reaching out to people and creating a win-win situation because you've got the capacity set there. I mean, it really does expire at the end of the day when the mechanic goes home. If he's been sat around doing nothing, then you can't get that time back Exactly.

Bill: To be able to marry it.

Stuart: It's that being in business for 40 years gives you a lot of insights into that ebb and flow and the seasonality of what you're doing and the lifecycle of the maintenance of different fleets. Is that a competitive advantage that you've got? Being able to proactively reach out to people and sow the seed of what might be about to happen, almost before it actually happens?

Bill: Absolutely. That's what the book does. It's a real simple read. I made it so that it can help people at whatever level they are at in their business with these fleets.

Stuart: It's such a great approach because not only most people I think about finding the customers who are ready to go. Now, so much of that advertising, burn and churn is to try and find those people who do something today. A lot of time you've probably heard me say before on podcasts or when we've spoken, my brother's a yacht broker. Well, they're the distributor for a specific brand, but in a previous life he was a yacht broker, walked in as a relatively junior broker to an office where I think the guy had passed away. I really should fact check this story. I can't remember whether he retired or passed away it changes the dynamic of the story a bit, but anyway he was no longer there. There was literally a draw label dead leads. One of the first things it filled in was went through that draw and reached out to the people and sales came from literally a draw that was labeled dead leads.

Bill: Not really. It just all flowed together really nice once. I decided to go ahead and pursue the project, made the outline with the chapters and all flowed from that. My background is in.

Stuart: One of the book blueprint mindsets is this idea of value-driven content and it really sets the scene In the early days although we don't see it so much now, but in the early days of the book business there were people who were talking about oh, they wanted to give away all of their best stuff in the book and it's such an alien concept. It wasn't really coming from a marketing background. That was never really anything that we were, it was just a thought that hadn't popped into mind. I think the likelihood of being able to give away enough that you're actually giving value, but obviously saying to people oh, there's always more, there's more. That's out of the scope of this book. It's not that I'm holding things back, it's just that it's out of scope.

Bill: The thing, too, is I wrote the book. We live in our little corner of the world. It's not like I can service the entire country, but there's something in there for everybody and the problem that I see locally here is just across the entire nation. So leading up to this book, I've been producing content on a regular basis about fleet management, trying to get control on this stuff, and through our blogging and our YouTube stuff out there, I've already generated calls from around the country, people that have this unwanted stepchild dumped in their lap, calling me for advice. They want to pay me to be a consultant, which I don't really have the time or bandwidth for, but the pain is real out there and I wrote the book so they can be helped and try to get a handle on what they need to.

Stuart: Yeah, as you say, the local being 50 mile, famous for being able to legitimately help people where you've got the bandwidth and infrastructure to help is one thing, but there is a good feeling about knowing that this is universally applicable and you're actually able to help people. And it almost sets the idea of kind of like digging the well before you need the water expansion later into another area. Potentially this kind of lays the groundwork for customer base in that area or bridging into other things. So no bandwidth at the moment for consulting or doing the one on one work. But you're not the first person that we've talked to, probably on a podcast, Actually. I'm thinking of a couple of people where years down the track, their businesses have pivoted into something that they weren't necessarily expecting. That's not going to be the case for everyone and even if the opportunity is there, it's often people don't want to take it up.

Bill: That's the one action. The one thing that we're looking to see and get feedback from the book as it rolls out nationwide and if we get leads or people calling us up that aren't in our direct area that we can service, to obviously connect them with the book but also test that market out there to see we can go in and become a. We're exploring the idea of being a fractional fleet manager. So what that would look like is we have a tech stack that we can go into, say, a company that's in California or wherever around the country. We can deploy this tech stack that we use it currently locally with our existing fleets, go in there and we can manage from afar. While we may not be touching the cars and fixing them, we can do the actual fleet management piece of it make sure that they're staying on top of all the maintenance schedule on the vehicles for service and taking that burden off of whoever's managing it inside of the office.

Stuart: That's an interesting point as well, because that expansion and knowing where you sit in the overall eco structure really means that you can maximize the benefit for those people, knowing that some people will grow into it but also that some people will grow out of it. A lot of listeners are probably strategic coach members because we've got a big footprint with Coach. So their idea of, like the free zone, frontier and this who, not how mentality of creating something that's bigger than the sum of the parts, so you've been able to help an organization in the other side of the country that has great capability but maybe not the infrastructure or the technology to be able to come in and provide that for them. I mean it's such a win-win, not only for you to expand the footprint, for the customers to get a better service, but also for those shops to be able to make a more robust model, the people who, so the office managers or the fleet managers that are interacting.

Bill: Yeah, so we got a couple different downloadable tools that I talk about inside of the book the cost per mile worksheet. We have a pre-drive checklist for drivers so that they're doing regular inspections, which is key to keeping these cars on the road. For these fleets, I mean. Typically the major breakdowns and the catastrophic breakdowns occur because they go extended time between intervals and they end up with low fluids, and the way to catch that stuff is to have a regular inspection process. So we have the inspection checklist that they can download and then, ultimately too, they can book a discovery call with me where I can kind of help them out with their fleet, talk to their pain points and send them in the right direction of alleviating that pain. Give them some Tylenol for it, right?

Stuart: That took out building your success on the success of others, the fact that you've got the vehicle checklist that the local managers can give to the drivers. That is almost preventative to the I mean there's a case to say that's taken, read out of your table or whatever the analogy is but it's really adding value and building that relationship in a way that makes it easy for them to get on board with Such a fantastic idea of basing your success on their success. And again, I imagine that just builds the rapport even faster.

Bill: Yeah, and these are simple tools. They're simple spreadsheets and stuff that they can download and start implementing and they're a business, like I said again, if they can't afford our services with our fractional fleet service, when we go in with the tech stack, that's already built into everything that we do. So we talk about this paper checklist that they can go through with the drivers. Our digital version of that is linked up with our tech stack and they can have. Every driver have their own, whether they use an iPad or a phone for the business they can go in and do the inspections right on that. Everything gets reported up. Any issues go up to us as the fleet manager and we can start looking at them and addressing them. Also takes care of a lot of safety issues, make sure that we stay in front of that stuff for the fleet and just the whole host of other things. But again, starting out and helping people where they're at, meeting them where they're at, helping them grow their businesses I mean that's really what I'm passionate about.

Stuart: And that I think that's authenticity, if that's not an overused word these days, but that comes through in the book as well. I think you can read some things that clearly look like marketing pieces that are just given enough to get you to the next stage, and then other pieces like the book, where it's clearly you know the business, you know their pain points and you're really trying to deliver as much as possible. Talking to getting in front of the right people then. So none of the books created. The next stage obviously is getting in front of the people who can best be served by it. So what are you doing at the moment? I know it's somewhat early days, but what are you doing at the moment to get the visibility out there and to get it in front of the right groups of people?

Bill: Well, we just started. We just we did a live book launch this week with Rich the Trigger, bond Trigger and his company Rock the Stage Media, I think it is. So he helped us out. We did a spotlight interview on me we're highlighted me a couple of weeks ago, a little 15 minute clip that got put together. Then we did the live book launch Tuesday evening of this past week and he brought on some special guests, actually some of our existing customers, and you know they all read the book. They gave their testimonials how it's helped them, how we helped them in their business. And you know we also took it.

Stuart: Have you seen the Success Magazine ad that Dean did a while ago for Email Mastery?

Bill: Yeah, yeah, I did see a copy of that.

Stuart: Yeah, did we talk about it? We did a strategy call a couple of weeks ago. Did I send that to you as part?

Bill: of that. Yeah, you shared that to me. Yeah, perfect.

Stuart: I'm going to take that now.

Bill: I just saw it before.

Stuart: I'll link it in the show notes for anyone who wants to check it out and hasn't seen it already. But this idea of providing content in a kind of advertorial type way, so providing because all the individual steps that you've got in the book and all of the other things that kind of are related to it, but not necessarily just in the book, that's definitely article length information that's super valuable and give people the bite-size pieces and then offer the free copy of the book as the next step. Hey, if you like this, grab a copy of this for more. It's such a perfectly dialed in way of amplifying the message. Are you guys present on LinkedIn in a meaningful way?

Bill: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so we're on LinkedIn. Actually, when we did with Rich, we did it non-traditional way or I guess maybe a newer way. I felt like instead of registering for Zoom, a Zoom call, where he registered people and we invited guests and people and tried to fill the room, I decided to go another route where we just went live on all the multiple streams and got it out there. Not everybody can come and watch it at the time that it occurs, so I figured if we just went live and then all those rebroadcasts or once it was on their live, people could watch a rebroadcast as they will. So we went live on YouTube, linkedin, facebook and pumped it all out there.

Stuart: We'll link the if we can grab a link to the. I always find it difficult navigating LinkedIn sometimes, which is why I'm not as active as I should be on there, because my frustration level gets too high. But we'll find the replay link for the LinkedIn version and stick that in the show notes as well here, Because I think not only is it interesting to see what you did in the kind of look behind the scenes way, but it's also interesting for people to see that kind of live element of the customers coming on and talking about it. And so you're presenting the various elements of the book, because the point of the podcast here is too full. Not only is it to kind of highlight what you've done with the book and what you do in the business, but also really, if people copy and cheat and take the shortcuts from everything that we've learned over the time, then it can only serve to do them better. I think I'm pretty safe to say that we haven't done another fleet management book. Sometimes with the financial advisors it's maybe a little bit more challenging because we've definitely done more than one retirement planning book. But yeah, if people can be inspired by different industries, that definitely helps everyone. It helps everyone out.

Bill: I think to go back to your point too how a lot of people hold back so much information in a book. I didn't feel that in this at all, because I feel like the more that you're out the information, like you can go out and coach people and talk to people, the amount of information that they implement is so small compared to what you actually put out there. If you give them everything all in the book to it, they're still going to come to you for some more information. I think it's the best if you're fully transparent, get all the information out there and then see what happens from there.

Stuart: You're right, because it's particularly. We were talking about chat GTP the other day and as that develops and gets even more robust Google's been around for 20-something years Chat GTP kind of takes it to the next level a little bit and just makes it more interactive, going one or two levels deep. It's not like the actual information isn't out there, but people's ability through either an understanding or even just a capacity to actually do it. I think that's really the biggest problem that 90% of people have got. It's not knowing what to do, it's just having the full picture or the capacity to do it. I agree, share is I mean, it's what we did in the Scorecard book went slightly overboard on the videos and things in that book, but sharing as much information as possible. It just really gets people to the point that they know and understand that you are the right person to help them and they've started to build that rapport anyway. So I'm more likely to select you as they realise that, hey, I'm not going to get to do this myself, I really need someone else just to do it.

Bill: Yeah, so we talk about especially in our business. There's a huge side to just automotive repair. It's called do-it-yourself the auto parts store service customers that work on their cars at home. Then there's a do it for me market, which is what we're in. People bring the vehicles to us and I feel like the same thing is true with the business. In my years 25 plus years of being in this career path I found at times I didn't have the budget so I had to do it and follow the book and maybe spend a little bit of extra time. And then there's other times in my life that I've found where I can just hurry up and bypass and save a whole lot of time and jump to the front of the line by calling somebody. So again, I don't think holding back information ever really helps anybody.

Stuart: No, because people can tell as well. You definitely get that feel for when someone's just wanting to move to the next conversation and get someone to sign on the line that started. Come up on time. Super appreciate the time you spent today. I think people are going to get a lot from this. I want to make sure that they can check out more of what you're doing. So there was freefleetbookcom.

Bill: Yep. Freefleetbookcom is where you can get the book. Anybody feel free to connect with me professionally. I jumped in Bill DeBoer I think I have the only handle with that on there, so it's pretty easy to find or DeBoer's Auto is the business, so check us out.

Stuart: See what we've got going on. And we'll make sure to put links to all of those in the show notes as well. So, as you're listening, just hop over to the show notes, which I think also appear in the show notes of the podcast player, so should all be clickable, just to get straight through Anything that we haven't touched on. That you wanted to like. If someone was asking you if they should write a book for their business, is there anything that kind of springs to mind that might, that they might not realize?

Bill: No, I mean, I think that you know, depending on what you're in, I mean I think everybody's got a book in them and 90 Minutes obviously does a really nice job of packaging this all together. You know it just got on the call this afternoon with a marketing colleague that we haven't talked in a while and just catching up talking about the book, and you know, on the discussion, like he's probably got like 10 different book ideas that he could just, you know, just sitting out there and it never really dawned on him to you know, put it in this. And then you know a lot of how he generates his business, is going by to you know these industry trade shows and giving away these, you know the stupid trinkets and probably the other stuff that nobody ever wants right Worship drawers and magnets and pens, yeah. Right, and you know I told them. You know I mean how great would it be just to have a book and hand out a book to everybody, in what a Greek of a way versus all the pens and whatnot that they have.

Stuart: So yeah, fantastic. Well, it's been a pleasure. Thanks again for your time. Thank you, I would say. I'll make sure that we've got showing the notes and links to everything that you're doing, so I highly recommend people check that out and we'll do another strategy call a little bit further down the track and we'll check back in and then we should do another podcast as well and keep people in the loop of the world domination that's starting not far from me here in Jersey.

Bill: Yeah, Sounds good man.

Stuart: Alrighty Thanks, Bill Thanks.

Bill: Thanks for watching.

Stuart: We will catch you in the next one.