Thinking beyond your book

Stuart: Foreign. Welcome to another episode of the book More Show. It's Stuart here with Betsy Vaughan. How's it going, Betsy?

Guest: Fantastic. How are you, Stuart?

Stuart: Very good, thank you. Although in tradition of starting the podcast by talking about the weather, very cold because it's been like 15 degrees in the UK for the last couple of days and storm Emma apparently.

Guest: Yeah, yeah, it is. I just looked at my car when I was running an errand. It's 83 and sunny and there's even a little bit of breeze here in Tampa. As you know, I was in Denver over the weekend and it was cold. I had at 1.16 degrees and I've been in Florida far too long for that. So

Stuart: it makes me laugh when Dean talks about going to coach in Toronto on some of the the there's four events a year, so two of them are kind of in the, in the winter season and his endless summer, his attempt to kind of not, not go anywhere where this snow or too inclement weather is, that's the only time it's impacted is Toronto in the, in the winter.

Guest: It's brutal. I don't, you know, I, I know I can't ever live in that kind of climate again, you know, so I was happy to come home.

Stuart: Good stuff. So yeah, we are going to do a quick show today catching up on a couple of things that have happened in the last few weeks. A couple of interesting calls with people want to just highlight some of the highlights from there and then we've got two of the mindsets in the book blueprint scorecard that are very similar to each other or thematically the same. So we'll knock those two off as well and then we'll just have the last two to go on the scorecard and yeah, I think that's it. So it should be good. A good show today.

Guest: Very good. Looking forward to it.

Stuart: Perfect. The first things I wanted to talk about was a call I had last week with a guy called Mubarak up in Winnipeg. We were talking in the last time you and I were talking we were talking about syndication and this idea of being the person that adds value by writing the content but then leveraging the distribution of that through syndication. So creating something that can be shared with others kind of A for the greater good, but B, to really kind of, I'm going to say promote your own cause. That sounds a little bit selfish, but it's promoting your own cause through having value driven content which is one of the school card mindsets we'll talk about in a little While. So it's. It's an interesting approach and one that I don't think many people immediately think of. We do it with a couple of examples that I always use because they're easy to describe. On the Realtor side of things, we have a book called how to sell your house for top dollar and we've created that as part of our own Realtor program. And then we allow the realtors to put their name on it. So kind of syndicate in that content, knowing that we want the Realtors to be successful, to remain members of the program. That's a great way of doing that. There's another book that we have for a financial advisor company. They deal with later life planning, elder planning, and specifically around how an IRA forms part of your estate. So that coaching organization wrote the first version of the book and then they allow their clients, their members to put their name on the book and it be co authored as a tool. Again, knowing that their success is based on the success of their members and this helps their members be more successful. So I think those two ideas are great ones that people can think about in how it affects, how they could use this idea to either promote their message or leverage their kind of their reach, their footprint, broader than if it was just themselves.

Guest: Very good.

Stuart: I think the conversation I was having with Mubarak and we'll catch up later on this week, but they've done some great work in their local area working with organizations and groups to promote their business training. So they've got a lot of great relationships. I think the thing that we were talking about, and I had a similar conversation with Jim Hacking, who we've talked about before, and the immigration work that he does around this particular immigration program that's referred to as carpets, where visas go into a holding pool, where it's where there's no action taken on them. And to get the action moving again, you need to take some specific action which are not that many people aware of. So it's affecting a particular community. It's a new idea that hasn't got much leverage or much awareness out there, rather. So again, knowing that Jim is successful when the community is successful, and for Mubarak, knowing that he's successful when these events are successful, being able to write something that allows the other people to get a book out there, to get people to raise their hands and making visible prospects visible, to spread the word and the message and introduce people to a new philosophy or new framework or all of those things, are fantastic opportunities, I think, for the person listening to this, who knows their subject. It's a great way of taking that and being able to distribute it into channels that they don't necessarily control.

Guest: All right, very good. It does, yes, yes, definitely.

Stuart: It's one of those ones again, because it's slightly separate from the normal approach of saying, you know your subject, you should write a book. At the end of the book, you should promote the next step that sort someone can take that brings them closer to you and starts the conversation. Having this kind of third party element into the mix, it just makes it that little bit more, not really complicated, but it's a framework that I don't think many people necessarily think about. And in the conversations that I've had with people talking about it, that's what's come up. There's sometimes a resistance or it takes a particular way of thinking about it to think, okay, well, I'm doing all this work and I'm just giving it to someone else. But to understand that you're giving it to someone else because it serves the greater purpose. And if you know that you've got some success based off the success of this idea, then as long as it's an effective way of doing it. And we're potentially not even talking about the physical books. It's not like we're saying put a $10,000 investment into ordering a couple of hundred books and physically giving them to people. The opportunity is always there to do this in the digital sense, of course, which makes it far more cost effective. But that opportunity to leverage other people's channels with something that you're giving them, the content that you're giving them, great opportunity. The same goes actually with the. We've talked about kind of complementary, non competing businesses before, so putting the books into dentist waiting rooms or doctor surgeries or the reception of vets, or doing stuff for schools. Victor Pantini is probably a great example of this in the Erin's Law solution book. So Victor provides training for the Erin's Law programs, which schools in the majority of states, if not all states, are mandated to provide. So he's successful when they're successful. And by them being successful, I mean raise an awareness of what the Ehrens Law solution is or what the, what the requirements are. So for him to be able to write that and then give it to the organizations to be able to give away, that does exactly what we've been talking about here. It serves your own purpose because it spreads the word, introduces you as the authority, the leader in the area. You know that a certain percentage Whether that percentage is 1% or 71%, you know your own numbers or will learn to know your own numbers. And as long as it makes financial sense to put all of those coins in the machine at the top, then what spits out at the bottom still makes the overall effort worthwhile. And you've done it in a super valuable way that's increased the understanding across the board and really positioned you as a leader.

Guest: That was all very well said.

Stuart: Yes, very well said and very croaky because I've just realized that when we jumped on the call, I forgot to get coffee before. So I'm only 10 minutes in and already my voice is starting to crack a little bit. It's the emotion of it. I get passionate about this type of thing and it's causing my voice to crack. There you go. What other conversations have we had recently? I'm trying to think. So much of it, the last two weeks or so has been tied around this kind of syndication model. I'm just trying to think of what some of the other ones were that I've been. That have been particularly interesting or distinct from. They're worth sharing. I was talking to someone about a training setup. They've got access to. I think they were previously a lecturer, so they've got access within their particular niche or speciality. They've got access to a lot of previous material. So we were talking about how to leverage some of that, not necessarily in a book. The conversation went a little bit wider. So really we were talking about. And I think this is key. We're going to. I'm just looking on the screen at the book blueprint scorecard as we're talking about this. And the last of the. The eighth of the mindsets is beyond your book. We don't talk about that so much on the podcast, but it's probably worth going into a little bit over the next couple of weeks, this kind of thought of. Okay, so the book. We're not talking about being a fiction author. So the job of the book isn't to gain book sales and then create a lifestyle and a business from the book sales. So the books, although we spend a lot of time talking about creating them, it's really just to get people to raise their hand and start a conversation. So that conversation as it develops. There are lots of studies out there and market research to suggest that it's the minority of people, not the majority who convert straight away. The majority of people convert between 90 and 365 days later because it's. And again, this is going to be business dependent, but for the majority, it's not an immediate conversion. So this is why, as we've said before, the books are a great way of getting people to raise their hand, identify them on a list, know that they're the people that you would want to be in conversation with. So therefore, what is that conversation? The book's a great way to start it, but that follow up sequence, we were talking, in this particular case, we were talking about using some of that educational material, some of the stuff that I've already got from other things. Now this guy was a lecturer, so I mean had, I mean, years and years worth of content they could do something with. But even from a relatively small business, even if you were a florist on the high street writing a book that talks about how to pick the perfect wedding flowers or how to, how to make a real change in your office without breaking the budget or a flower arranging, whatever the thing is that might raise people's hands of people who are interested in getting cut flowers, writing that book to spot the conversation in the first place, but then over a period of time, having something to deliver to them, having something, it doesn't even necessarily have to be around a program, but just have a reason to reach out to people. The reason to reach out to people is an email. And an email contains valuable content to make it worthwhile and interesting to open. But really the thing that you want to include is the PS at the bottom of it or the super signature as we talk about. So you'll see that in our emails, as this podcast goes out, there's every so often in the email there's a PS this is happening now, you should do this. Or this is coming up, you should do this. And the super signature at the bottom is, here are four ways that we can help you today. And the purpose of the email is always just to present those opportunities to people. And the reason for sending the email is the subject is the body. So we were talking about that and how it can all tie together with the book as like the manifesto, the kind of positioning piece to start off the conversation and then to a greater or lesser degree, those touch points or the flagship communications that you send out afterwards, how you can follow up with people and continue to make the offers to them, knowing that the majority of people are unlikely to convert immediately. So what is it that you can do to make the return on the book worthwhile? To get that hand raised in the first place, but then to continue the conversation afterwards. And this is actually, and I'm definitely going to take a breath in a second. But this is something that we're starting to offer to people because of the success that we've had with the programs internally. On the entrepreneur side of the business, with more cheese, less whiskers. On the real estate side, with the listing agent lifestyle to a lesser degree, because we haven't put as much attention to it. But with the book. More podcast to follow up on this side of things with the special report that we wrote recently about the book titles that convert the book title types that convert all of those things, the mechanisms for following up with people. This is something that we're more and more looking to offer to authors who've written and using the book as a manifesto, but then working with them to create that way of kind of like facilitating that model of getting in front of people more regularly. Because I mean that it really is the game changer. It then is, it's the opportunity to stay in front of people, stay front of mind so that you're there when they're ready to take that step to do whatever business it was that they were originally thinking about.

Guest: So when you said you were talking to somebody and they were talking about, I wrote this down training setup after the fact specifically, can you go into that? I mean, I think I'm either I missed something or we got off on a sidetrack because I was trying to think. I just had a conversation with somebody very similar and we decided we would discuss it later on in the process because the goal was to go ahead and get the book started. But then we were talking about the after fact of something else that they kind of wanted to do, not just with like a training manual, but a

Stuart: whole

Guest: other process to offer their clients, you know, be it videos or something. And so they were actually like, hey, would you guys do this? Would you have an interest in doing? And I'm like, let's talk about that later.

Stuart: And it is something that this whole kind of our model really, although we spend a lot of time focusing on that lead generation that getting people to raise their hand, the book house, the, the cookie, the thing that raises it through really what we're doing. And this crosses over into some of the follow on programs that we've got on the other side of the business, the entrepreneurial side of the business around the breakthrough blueprint and email mastery. All of these things are really around keeping that engagement going, both with new customers, new potential customers to bring them on board, but then existing customers as well to keep them engaged and Keep that retention going. Although that's probably the least attention that we pay to things. We're much more in the before unit rather than the during unit. Well, the before and after unit rather than the during unit. I was talking to and I've completely blanked on who it was I was talking to. It was about three weeks ago. But the way that we were talking was there are the training modules that came from the physical environment are now being switched to online. So whether for your guys that you were talking to today, whether they're currently delivering that in a classroom environment for a university or a school, or whether they're delivering it in a kind of workshop, seminar type environment, taking that content and moving it into an online delivery framework. Not that I think that's anything that we'll particularly get involved with because there's lots of platforms out there already that you can just plug into. We were talking about the how to engage those people so that they eventually end up like up until the conversion point of when they go into the program. So whether they put those programs on Linda or Udemy or their own website, that's that program delivery bit. What we're interested in is getting people to the point that they convert. So if we go back to the profit activator mindsets we've got, choose a single target market for the campaign, give away for them to raise their hand as interested in the minimum viable commitment way possible, and then slowly, patiently educate them towards a buying decision and then make a compelling offer so that it's easy for them to get started. So those four mindsets, that's really where a lot of this comes in. So taking some of that training material and whether it's a case of breaking that down. I was talking to Elizabeth on the phone last week, this similar thing. So she has a 12 stage program in her world. We were talking about writing the book and she was initially thinking about doing something that at high level covered all of those points. Whereas I was suggesting okay on that this was around kind of the personal development side of things. So there were kind of three before unit stages where people might come in kind of physical, spiritual and financial. Like the 101 level of all of those things, the entry level. So saying okay, potentially then you've got three books because those three things will be trigger words for three different groups of people. You could write the one book that goes deep into that first level on each of the three different subjects. And then the call to action in the next stage is just making the awareness that there are Obviously other level one things that you need to know and then there's also another nine levels after that that you can move on to. So taking that overall content, separating out the hand raising stage, the stage one, and then being able to follow up with a sequence afterwards, that takes some of the other things, some of the other elements and just builds on it. So the couple of options that spring to mind, taking the. So let's say there are three entry points. So in any one particular funnel, when someone comes in through number one, the first one share with them the second and third one. So you've got the same content, you're just positioning it in a different way and then building on that drip feeding content that builds on those original ideas, but again through a different framework. So for each of those three books, those three entry points you could have something audio related to the content, something video related, something graphic related, the white paper or and again this depends on what your business is and what your specialty is and how much time you've got. But you can have a white label type thing, you could have a peer review of other, other stuff out there. You can break down each of those. Let's say on average the book's got five or six chapters that go into the details of it. You could take each one of those and then break them down into a little bit more because, because each one of these emails, again, it's just kind of this minimum viable effort, minimum viable commitment, next step. It's a small thing, but just regular. The kind of drip effect of regularly delivering bite size, interesting bits of content that are adding a little bit more value, a little bit more value and delivering it in a way that allows you to remind them that hey, here's something interesting, a quick snippet here, but there's all of this other stuff. Whenever you're ready, Whenever you're ready. There's this next step with the training programs, particularly now. So this is getting a little bit more into the delivery side of it. But there's always the opportunity to create the workbook content that goes hand in hand with the initial 90 minute book. So you've got the. Like we do with the Profit Activator, the Breakthrough DNA Book and the Profit Activator Score Book. The scorebook is the scorecard and the Breakthrough DNA book is the kind of the manifesto, the positioning piece. The same with the Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast, the Listing Agent Lifestyle Manifesto. That book is the, is the framework, is the setup. And then on the the scorecard side of it, there are ways that people can position themselves. So someone's workbook element doesn't have to be a scorecard, but having something that's kind of the narrative version of the book is the words that sets the position and says, okay, you should do this, this, and this. The workbook side is okay, specifically now do this. Either go away and do this and come back and report here, or here's an exercise to do in the book, or here's a list of actions that you need to take, whatever those additional things are. So, I mean, we've got. I mean, the team that we've got in place is one of the best at the production side of things and pulling together content into something that's useful and compelling. It is brought together in a. In a good way. How then you go on to build that into the program or the steps that you take to kind of set that up and position it. All of that's going to vary slightly depending on the individual use case. But let me just go back to the florist. I use florist sometimes as an example because it's the kind of furthest other end of the spectrum that I can think of from something very kind of mathematical, like a financial advisor or lawyers or something like that. So even the florist writing the guide to buying wedding flowers and putting a lot of valuable content in there about the things that people don't think about, whether that's geographically specific to the area. So I would imagine that the guide that someone would write in Florida is going to be different from the guide that someone would write in the Northeast because of the climactic changes. If nothing else, let alone the local styles and the personal taste for it. Then you can add in all of the things like the local directory. So the guide to wedding flowers. Actually, wedding flowers tie in pretty much hand in hand with these other things. So like the photographer and the venue and the decorations and all of the other things that go with it. So adding some of that content in, but then the drip content, the beyond the book stage of, okay, you've delivered this, you've asked them if they want to buy wedding flowers, so you've reached out to them, you've gotten to raise their hand on something about buying wedding flowers. You probably know as your own business that someone looking at wedding flowers is either in the very early stages, so around the point of getting engaged, and just that initial excitement of, okay, now we need to think about all of these other things, or they're in the later stage, they're maybe kind of six months out and they're really trying to get things dialed in specifically. So that email follow up sequence, there's a sifting and sorting question that you could put in there to see at what point, at what point they are so asking people the question of have you booked a venue yet, have you got a florist yet? These things that give you an indication of whether someone is quite far out yet or whether they're quite close. And then the emails that you send on the back of that can be either a little bit more high level and theoretical and conceptual and giving people ideas versus being a little bit more practical and specific and almost trying to bring them towards a decision a lot faster. But that follow up a campaign, I mean florist particularly, you've got a whole host of things you can do around video, audio is probably less of is probably the least interesting in that respect. But yeah, videos and photos and guides and style guides and reviews from flower shows and wedding shows and pictures of flowers in venues, of the bouquets that you've created of the different styles. All of these other things. And each one of those emails has the super signature on the back. It's my phone being a bit loud. All of those things that follow up from that initial content, all of them have the super signature of. By the way, here are four ways that we can help you today. Coming for a free consultation, download our flower pricing guide, come in for a session where we'll specifically match the colors to your dress and engage us to do your flowers like the come work with us type. Call to action.

Guest: Those are some great examples there.

Stuart: That wasn't. We've got a bit of a hard out today which is why my phone was ringing a second ago. So I was pretty confident that we would start off with one or two things and then be able to get to cover two of the breakthrough. Sorry of the book blueprint scorecards. But actually we haven't done either of those so we're going to have to till next week.

Guest: That happens. That happens.

Stuart: It does. We do need to wrap up in a second. I need to jump on that call that just rang through. But was there anything or anyone that's kind of the things that we've been saying resonated with conversations that you've had or anything that spring to mind that I didn't give you a chance to

Guest: say no, no, no. My conversations have been pretty generic as of late. So you covered it well and your examples of the florists were great and I think very clear for the audience to get an idea, you know, how to implement

Stuart: well. And I think if you're listening to this, I mean, we do spend a lot of time. My background as people know, I think is financial services. I tend to think that way. My mind just defaults down that route. But there's so many businesses that are less numbers driven, less regulation driven, less specific. We think about solving a problem in the words of the book and answering a particular question. And we talk about how there's the opportunity around tax law changes and immigration changes and all of these things that are very kind of externally driven and very specific. And you can quite easily think of a way of writing about a particular subject. But right down at the other end of that kind of specific external stimulus end of the spectrum, a local business or even a local restaurant or a local social club or I'm trying to think of all of the things that aren't, that aren't necessarily at the services end of the spectrum. So a local restaurant can write the restaurant guides to the area, how to eat healthy in winter Haven and talk about all of the different restaurants, then promote, kind of subtly promote their own things as part of the book. The florist example we just gave. A swimming club could do something similar around swimming styles or I mean, I've maybe just shot myself in the foot in the last two minutes by choosing a particularly difficult one. But you could imagine writing the guide to local swimming venues. So across, I mean, it's the depths of winter at the moment in here in the UK and I go to like a swimming club thing once a week just for exercise. But there were guys there that are talking about lake swimming and triathlons even at this time of year, which is insane. So you can imagine a swimming club writing the guide to triathlon swimming or outdoor swimming venues or outdoor swimming apparel guides, all of that type of thing. Wherever there's an interest, there's enough to write something about the thing that's going to kind of scratch the itch of someone that's exciting. And that started the conversation, it's made the person visible and then as we've been talking about today, it's the follow up. It's the opportunity to present to them the super signature of saying, by the way, here are four ways I can help you now or whenever you're ready. All wrapped up in a useful, valuable communication point. But you can't do any of that communication until first you know who those people are and you've given them a reason to raise their hand. Which is the book.

Guest: Very good.

Stuart: Okay.

Guest: Yeah.

Stuart: So with that, I need to get on this next call. I need to find somewhere to make some coffee in between that. Otherwise I'm going to really be struggling. As you're listening to this, head over to 90minutebooks.com podcast. And this is episode 52. So 052 show notes and the transcripts are going to be across there along with some links. I'll put some links into the book blueprint scorecard and the More Cheese Less Whiskers book and school and podcast. Just so you guys, as you listening to this, if you haven't listened to that already, you can jump into that and start to see how that model works. And really the reason that we talk about all of these things is so that you can replicate it. And obviously we're here to help you do that. So if you've got any questions for me and Betsy want us to talk about on the show, just drop a Note to podcast@90minutebooks.com but obviously the best thing you do is head over and get started. So head over to 90minutebooks.com and follow the get started links and we'll be here to help you as you get it created.

Guest: Very good. Awesome. All right, so next time we'll talk about the purposeful outline and the value driven content, what we planned on today. Very good information. Useful information though.

Stuart: Perfect. Okay, well, thanks for your time, Betsy. I'm going to try not to talk for quite so long next time.

Guest: All right, we'll talk soon.

Stuart: Okay, thanks guys. Thanks, everyone. Speak soon.