Why a Book?

"Foreign."

"How are we doing?"

"Fantastic. How are you?"

"Very good, thank you. It is a rather autumnal October day, but it's really feeling like the middle of November. It's definitely not as warm as Florida over here in North Wales."

"It's perfect in Florida."

"Is it? I can remember I used to go to college up in the Lake District, which is kind of relatively outdoorsy. I can always remember the outdoor instructors there saying, there's no such thing as bad wear. They're only the wrong clothes. But sometimes I beg to differ."

Stuart: That's so funny. Yeah, that's less close here in Florida. So I've been thinking about what we could talk about today. And because I want to maximize my guest appearances on the book more show that one of the things that people I think ask me is like, what should I use my book for? You know, like, I think that there's. If I look at it as why you would write a book in the first place, there's a really great case that you could build for at least three purposes for a book. And so the first is as a lead generation tool and the second is as a lead conversion tool. And the third is as a blueprint, a way to establish a working relationship with somebody. A during unit book, as we would call it, or to set the stage. And I was thinking about it that we model that and we use three different books for or the 90 minute book process. We use a lead generation book called the 90 Minute Book, which opens up people's minds to a new possibility of writing a book in 90 minutes and sets the stage for why somebody would want to write a book. Why a 90 minute book is the right type of book to write, meaning that especially as a lead generation tool, the fact that people are going to 80% or more make the decision based on the title of the book, the fact that you have a book and the fact that you have a way for them to get it, that those are the most important things. It doesn't matter how long or how many pages the book is all of those things. It's that you capture the essence of the compelling thought in the title of the book. That it tells that you're basically resonating with what's going on in their mind. Now in a lot of ways there. And I'm seeing this as I'm talking with more people one on one or seeing people who come to the breakthrough blueprint events and we talk about using books that in some cases the greatest thing for a book is as a lead conversion tool. If people are generating leads, they're getting opt ins, they're getting new people coming. The lead conversion book is really about imagining that you've got an hour to sit with somebody who's, you know, or in a group of your ideal prospects and get all of the things that you would want to say out to that group, knowing that they are listening or receiving that message uninterrupted, you know, and that's where you can. I always like the idea of giving people all the evidence that they would need to convince themselves that working with you is the right decision. And I say convince themselves because that's really the truth of how it happens. We often think that we're doing something to convince people, but the most convincing thing we can do is give people the evidence, the information, the access, the thought process to allow them to come to their own conclusion that this was the right thing to do.

Guest: And it's almost the case that they've already made that decision a lot of times, isn't it? It's just reinforcing or giving them the evidence to give them the sense of, that they've done enough due diligence to reinforce the decision that's already been made, or they're certainly on the fence one way or another on the, on the positive side. So it's providing enough of that reinforcing evidence to let them complete the thought that they've already had that started with the question in the first place that got them.

Stuart: Yeah, but maybe there's one or two things that are standing in the way. You know, maybe there's one or two things that people are not yet convinced of. You know, like if you, let's use our example here. So you're in, in contact with, and Betsy's in contact with people who are involved in the process of deciding whether a 90 minute book is the right thing for them. There's a lot of ways we're introducing a new thought to them. Right. Most of the time people, it's kind of, I think people can be convinced that a book is the right thing. That I don't think you have to go too far because societally and everything about it tells you that a book is a good thing to have. So then the, the, when you get down to the essence of what are people, what are people sort of debating or what, what is the, the block. And people might think, what would you say would be some of the reasons that people might be reluctant to do a 90 minute book or some, or resistance or questions or something that may, may block somebody from that. Do you have anything that kind of comes to mind?

Guest: Yeah, absolutely. I think it falls into maybe two or three main categories. So there's the ch. General procrastination of knowing it's the right thing to do and people wanting to do it. Certainly in the last couple of weeks even Betsy and I were talking about it just, just last week off, not on the show, but just when we were talking together about the number of people who have now getting towards the end of the process having started just a couple of months ago. But there was a real spike in people saying, man, I wish I'd just done this when we were first talking eight months ago rather than just leaving. So there's procrastination. But I think one of the biggest things or the other two reasons rather is a. Either the process. There's still some doubt about their time commitment. So although we position it as the 90 minute book, there's still some disbelief that it can be done in. In just that amount of their time. They're still anticipating more. So there's an education gap. But the other one which is maybe even more the bigger group of people fall into is people not necessarily seeing it as a, this is a good thing to do, therefore I should do it rather than coming to it from the point of view of the outcome of this will be engaging these people this much extra business. They're not necessarily associating a clear outcome, a clear benefit with the. With the effort, with the work. So in the context of a conversion book, I've just been taking notes as we've been talking actually. But maybe one of the things that we're missing is another piece of content, another book that. That shows them more specifically almost like beyond the book. So we provide it as part of the internal program of okay, now you've got it, you can do this with it. But maybe bringing that forward in the funnel to show people more and even case study some of the people that have been using it of the existing customers we've got.

Stuart: And that, you know, part of the thing, like what I would suggest, maybe even for some show episodes here might be some conversations to help, you know, brainstorm or go through that. That process, you know. Yeah, much like what I do for more cheese, less whiskers, just having it be helping people think through the process of how to find the best place for their. A book in their mix. You know, how to think through the process of whether that's whether it's a right thing for them. Like you mentioned, you know, we. Our book the 90 minute book is. There's three books in that series. We have the 90 minute book which introduces the context of what a 90 minute book is and why it makes sense to just get started and to move forward and to, you know, get that first version one of your book out, which you can always go and, and expand on, you know, and that, that's something that. I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second. But the, the idea that we've got the 90 minute book to introduce the concept, then we have the Preparing for your 90 minute book which walks people through the process of how to, you know, how to get the most out of the process. Thinking through. Thinking through the content and outlining and that kind of process. And then we have beyond the book, like what to do now that you have your book. And so each of those things, you know, we look at them as the appropriate thing to give to people at just the right time. And so a lot of times people might think, well, I get all the leads that I need or want. But the. So the place for a book in their business might be in preparing people to have the best experience with you or preparing people to. Or equipping people to use the experience with you as a catapult to a bigger and, you know, better outcome. So you get that chance to. Anytime it would be valuable to have somebody's full attention for an hour and get all of your best thoughts, all of the things that, that you might want to say to them out one time and package them as a book. It's such a time saver for you too.

Guest: Yeah, I'll link in the show notes episode that we did, maybe it might even have been a year ago now with Kevin Craig, who wrote a book solely for the purpose of. He kind of used the. He said it came to him because he was constantly saying, getting people calling up and saying, hey, I'd love to take out for coffee. Pick your brains on this subject till. Or talk about a particular point. So he wrote the book because he found himself going through. Everyone was asking the same questions. So the book was really just to capture all those thoughts exactly in the way it said, not necessarily to a customer audience, but just to not even really business partners, but people who he was an influencer of to a certain degree. But that led on to quite an astonishing amount of work both within their big real estate brokerage company. So both within the organization and then has led on to coaching type business where he's been asked to speak and then people have approached him to pick up a one on one coaching type opportunities but capturing questions that are already happening anyway. The profit activate number three type thing of leading people into that conversion point into doing business in the best possible way. So that not only are they more aware of what you do but but you're more aware of the mindset that they're coming in. And it's definitely a multiplier, I think.

Stuart: Yeah, I think that's it. Like that and that whole, you know, I really, I like that model of asking or answering the questions that everybody wants to know and asking or answering the questions that they should be asking but don't even know to ask and, and then leading people to what they should do next. I think that that alone is such a great structure for, for creating a book, you know.

Guest: Yeah.

Stuart: I did a program years ago when I wrote Stop your divorce in 1998 with horror MacDonald book that's still selling today. Sold millions of dollars of that book. And the. I did a course then called how to write, publish and sell a money making ebook. And in that one of the exercises that we did was for creating a great like outline for the content of the book is to start at the top with a crystal clear articulation of where your audience is right now, what's going on with them, what are they thinking, who are they? And then at the bottom of the page and I would use big. Like a drawing tablet page and so I could brainstorm on it. And at the bottom of the page I would have where do they want to be? Right. Like here's where they are at the top and where do they want to be? What's the bigger data, better, brighter future that they would, they would love to magically be transported to. And then I would just brainstorm in the center of that with all of the things that somebody would have to know in order to get from where they are to where they want to be. In no particular order. I would just brainstorm all of it, just map it out like little, like cities or little destinations that they're going to have to, to go through on the journey from where they are to where they want to be. So I would not like make it as a list. I would put one over here and then I would put one over here. I would just start brainstorming words and sentences that would describe the things that they would need to know. And then I would take a pencil and kind of start mapping the journey from the top from where they are to where they want to be, where with the path of the order of cities that they need to kind of go through to get there. And it was such a great like way to create an outline and keep all the content within the context of here's where my prospects are and here's where they want to be. And this space in the middle is, is all the expertise and all the knowledge and all the things that I want to share. So I want to tell them about this. You know, like you look at if I were doing that outline for, for the, our process or for the 90 minute book, which essentially is exactly how I went through that process that somebody's sitting here on the top, they've got an idea that a book would be a good thing. Their preconceived notion that they're going to have to spend a months or a long time slaving away writing the book. And that's there's resistance to that. And I know that the promised land at the bottom is that they've got a book, they've got a landing page, they've got a completely finished lead generation system for their business that would be like the magic promised land if somebody could just snap their fingers. Right? So I know that in order to go through from, from where they are to where they want to be, it starts out with, you know, they've got to understand that you really can write a book in 90 minutes. So I need to outline our process, I need to prove it by writing a book that took us 90 minutes. Like the 90. The great thing about the 90 minute book is it was written using our exact 90 minute book process. So there's crystal clear evidence that it works and that the output is a real book. So they see it and hold it and know that that's evidence there. Then they've got to have a title, they've got to have, you know, the content for the book. They've got to. I know that all of the things that are involved in our Preparing for your 90 minute book, you know, the, the and the process that we use, they've got to have all of the content recorded. If you look at the infographic that we show on the 90minutebooks.com website with that shows the whole process, that's essentially what I'm describing is it's showing exactly how things, how things work, you know.

Guest: Yeah, exactly. I think that's one of the big benefits that people who do get on board really see having kind of maybe procrastinated or worried about it for, I mean in some cases years leading up to it. But the very quick process that we've got through experience and expertise of helping people pull out those points, filling that middle ground to say, okay, this is what you're trying to achieve with the book, this is the audience that you're thinking of engaging with. So us having to pull out all of those bits in between, that's really the key difference with getting someone to help you versus trying to do it yourself. But I think you've hit a good point in. Until people come on board, they don't get to see or experience that. So it may still be a procrastination point or a lack of.

Stuart: Right. One of the things that I think may block people is that in the old world of publishing, you were committing. It's as if you were committing to like chiseling the book. Yeah. In the Stone tablets that once it's done, it's done forever. Right. Or that, you know, you couldn't change it. You know, you gotta get everything right.

Guest: It's gotta be perfect time.

Stuart: Yeah. And you know, one level up from chiseling it into stone tablets is thinking from the old model that we're going to have a print run of 5,000 copies. Or, you know, that you've got to do this so that you're stuck with it. You know, but the reality is you, we always think and try and convey this to people that if you think about it as version one of your book, that you think about it, that you can very, very quickly, in 90 minutes as a matter of fact, go from I've got an idea for a book. I wonder if, I think I resonate with my audience here. You can get all of the big answers here very quickly and, and continue to evolve it and get feedback and work with it and, and develop it from there into anything you wanted it to be. Right. A bigger, a bigger book. If you want to continue to add to it or a, you know, another version. I mean, we print and you get copies first of all. You get the electronic version, which you can change instantly. But even the print copies, we get them through, create space where you can print 1 or 100 or whatever number you want. We're not, you're not bound to it,

Guest: you know, so you can not get entitled to anything.

Stuart: Yeah, right. And so that's the way I look at it.

Guest: It's almost a short term memory. I mean, it's not so long ago that the Lean Startup was one of the top selling books on Amazon. And the whole premise of that is you as the entrepreneur, as a business owner cannot tell for sure what's going to be successful. So put something out there and then respond in an agile way, in a fast, in a lean way to what the market feedback's giving you. So it's so interesting, we see it time and time again where people get into what, to use a strategic coach term, this kind of not applying the 80% model and getting into that kind of increasing resistance of trying to get something perfect.

Stuart: Yeah.

Guest: Or worrying about trying to get something perfect that delays the whole.

Stuart: That's exactly right.

Guest: Rather than. Yeah, that's exactly the feedback. Yeah.

Stuart: And that's the thing is you can get to a point where you can test everything and you can tell especially if you're using as a lead generation book, if you're going to be using the book as a way to attract new clients, which I believe is one of the very best things you can use a book for is, you know, the way that you can, when you have a book, get people to raise their hand is very, very valuable. And once you've got a title and you've got your book and you've got your landing page and you've got that all set up to refer people, it really does not matter that the book is 50 pages versus 250 pages. It doesn't matter if you're not resonating with the title of the book. If you haven't struck accord, you know it very quickly and you can regroup, readapt, take the same content and test a different title. Test, you know, I mean, you know that rather than investing so many extra units of time that it would take to get the book complete before you ever know whether it's something that the audience even resonates with.

Guest: Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more. And that whole principle of getting it out there to test in the market before burning all of those units on something is, is quite. Is I think one of the biggest missed opportunities that we talk to people about or people who do eventually get bored after they've delayed for some time, really kind of regret because that time's passed. And.

Stuart: Well, one of the, and that's one of the biggest things that. One of the biggest reasons I'm such an advocate of getting version one out there in actual book form versus getting a transcript and shopping it around to your friends and opinion, getting opinions on it is Dan, Dan Sullivan had a great thing. He said he never tests ideas on non check writers, which is really a valuable thing. Right. He never, especially never with that he writes a check to the only vote, the only vote that counts is the person who can write you a check. And so that, you know, the reason that I'm such an advocate for getting the book packaged, getting everything. It's funny how there's a lot of resistance sometimes around like, oh, yeah, I'm going to see it right before we like, as if we're like, it's a commitment, it's not, we're not chiseling it in stone. We're sending you 10 copies of the book to have it in a book format that people see it, they know that it's a book, they see that. And what you realize is that then removes the need for people who you show something to as a manuscript format. It removes the need for them to feel like they need to suggest something. Right.

Guest: Like it's not homework.

Stuart: They're adding value to you. Well, oh, you know, I don't, I'm not sure, I think you should do it this way or I think you should say it this way or whatever, but when you show somebody something that's a real book that's going to trigger the things, it's less likely that they have trivial changes or things now they feel like, oh, it's already done and you'll get a whole different opinion. But either way, the voice that really matters is the voice of the people that you are hoping will write you a check, not the people that you write a check to.

Guest: Exactly. This whole concept of the book isn't the product. The book is the tool to share the product with other people. It's.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah.

Guest: Changes the most.

Stuart: And the truth is that's really the thing. The fact that you have the book and that people have a way to get it and that they can raise their hand and ask for it is really 80% of the job of the book. Once they raise their hand and ask for it, the book has done its job. So it's less even important. I mean, exhibit A that I always point to of that is the number of people, hundreds and hundreds of people that we've helped write books right now that have not actually read the 90 minute book. Now that's a shocker, right? But they will. They've seen it. They hold it in their hand, they download it, they ask for it and they get that sense of it. And then from that makes the decision that it's the right thing to do. Now, I know that a lot of the people have not read it because of the questions that some of the people ask or the blocks that some of the people ask, right? Or they'll, they'll be convinced that the 90 Minute Wolf and 90 Minute Book isn't, isn't an interview. Well, look again, Buttercup. It is. I mean it's like it's exactly the 90 minute book that we are, you know, using as the flagship, as the lead generator, as everything to start the relationship that we have for people to help them write books is exactly the product that we are helping them create. We use is nothing out. There's nothing that's an outlier of that. Right. There's, it's exactly following the process I recorded, I did a 30 minute brainstorm call with Susan Austin. We recorded for one hour. We went through everything that we would go through with our authors. It was transcribed, it was edited. I worked with Glenn, our designer on the COVID of the book. We set it up, put it into CreateSpace format, got it set up on CreateSpace and shipped it to me just exactly the way that we would do with any of our authors. Right. It's exactly a product of the, you know, of the process that we are helping people with. And that has been the catalyst for all the hundreds of people that we've helped write books. Right. We use it to run AdWords or not AdWords, sorry, Facebook ads, to generate new leads for people to download the book, then inviting them to, to come on a workshop where we can help brainstorm some titles and then inviting people to have us help them write a 90 minute book. It's, it's exactly modeling the process that we help everybody else do.

Guest: Yeah, exactly. I think it's the perfect example of the, the best way, the minimum viable commitment way of taking someone from the first step to the second step. And then there's another process taken from the third. The job of work of it is that first example that we have, the lead generation type book. And it's the really the quintessential example of how effective a nine minute book can be. And like I said, done in exactly the same way.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah. So that's been, you know, and that's become a real business. Like I said, we help hundreds of authors. You know, so that's my, that's my deep thoughts for a Saturday morning.

Guest: I think that's a perfect place to leave it, leave people wanting more for the next one. But hopefully by that people have listened and, and realize that if they are having a thought, there's nothing really holding them back. Jump on board and well, where are we now? The beginning of October. So I mean certainly by the end of the year they can have a funnel out there getting people to raise their hands or helping converting existing leads and really the dial on something that's meaningful.

Stuart: That's it.

Guest: Fantastic. Well, thanks for your time. We'll catch up again in a couple of weeks. For anyone else that's or for anyone that's listening, dive over to 90minutebooks.com podcast, get all the show notes that we've got. This is episode 39, so we'll have transcript and show notes and some of the links for things that we've talked about. So thanks Dean. We will catch up next time.

Stuart: Thanks, sir. Bye.