Working with others

Stuart: Foreign. Welcome to another Book More show. It's Stuart here with Betsy. How's it going, Betsy?

others: It's fantastic. Happy day to you.

Stuart: It is nice and sunny across here so that always makes it a better day. I just realized I need to get a more consistent opening because I didn't first, I didn't surname either of us this time. It was informal first name only. Start.

others: Maybe they might know by now. Stuart Bell. That's Yvonne. Here we are.

Stuart: Yes, it's the Dean Jackson approach to starting every podcast with hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson.

others: Right.

Stuart: Okay, so we are today going to get to the bit that we didn't get to last week. So for everyone following along, Chris in the we're in a season of looking at the beyond the book stages. Your books completed or approaching completion. What are the best things you can do to make the most out of it? Now it's complete kind of getting it out there, allowing it to really be the thing that starts the conversation and generates business. So we're going to carry on on that theme today. That sound good?

others: Great. Yeah, look forward to it.

Stuart: I know it's definitely something that we get a lot of questions about as we said last week. So hopefully this show is going to be another grab bag of. Well, we're going to talk about one particular subject but hopefully going to cover lots of different examples. So no matter what type of business you're in to a certain degree, no matter what you're trying to achieve with the book, where it kind of fits into the overall marketing strategy, hopefully there's going to be something here on the subject of competing, working with complementary non competing businesses that really gives you some great ideas and some really low cost or no cost ideas that you can grab today and really start, start priming the pump or sowing the seeds of leads and conversations over the summer that, that turn into the business as as you get a little bit further down that track.

others: Awesome. Very good.

Stuart: Okay, so complementary non competing businesses and working with those guys to as much as possible for the greater good, for the benefit of everyone involved, really identify the invisible prospects from the invisible prospects and help educate and motivate people towards making a decision to ultimately do some work with you. So what do we mean by complementary non competing if the words don't speak for themselves? So what we're thinking about is businesses that you can partner with or you can get leads from. They can refer business to you. They can show some additional value to their customers by talking about you. Who are those companies and what's the kind of the mechanism or the framework of making that relationship work as best as possible. So we're going to go through some examples but what we're really thinking about here is ways of helping educate everyone and giving a complementary non competing business a useful, valid reason to add more value to their customers by giving them your book. So it's not like we're going to work with. What's an example? So we do a lot of work with realtors and realtors and I'm getting confused on US UK words again. What's the name of the people that do the surveys? Like house surveys when you're going to buy a, buy a house.

others: So like an appraiser, the, the cert. Well there's a survey that's a, that's an actual position as an actual job.

Stuart: Yeah, that is the term. So the appraiser or the survey. So the person would go home and say this house is worth this much and right. This passes all of these checks and you want to watch out for this big inspection. Thank you. Inspection.

others: Yeah, that's the one.

Stuart: It's like a game of charades.

others: Right.

Stuart: So the inspector. So we work with a lot of realtors, they work with a lot of inspectors. A lot of those relationships aren't necessarily the most with the end users experience in mind. A lot of them are financial based. So there might be some affiliate fees or referral fees and oftentimes not picking on realtors, but oftentimes it's just transaction based. What we're talking about more is thinking about the book that you've written that Add Value. It educates people on a particular subject. How can you position that with the other company so that they get value from it? So one of the examples that we've used before is florists. Still not sure why that's top of the list, but we seem to have picked it up for the, for the theme of the show. So the florists, we were using the example of the main guide to fall wedding flowers, that book as an entire value proposition, as something useful that you can give to people. Giving that copy of a book to various venues or photographers or cake bakers, cake wedding cake making companies or wedding dress organizers.

others: Event planners.

Stuart: Event planners. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Giving that to them as a way of adding extra value to their customers, giving them some more education help, giving them something useful basically is a way of you entering that conversation with a more targeted audience. So rather than on the one hand you could put the book out there at a stand outside A train station with a billboard saying free copy of a wedding flowers, full wedding flowers guide. That audience that you're talking to is all and sundry as they're walking past. Tying it in with complementary non competing businesses just means that you're fishing from a more relevant pool. And you're doing it in such a way that starts the conversation off by adding value. You're making it more likely or easier for the other company to recommend you to give you that introduction. Because you're giving them the thing that just adds value. It's not like you're saying to them, oh, you should give me all of your customer database and I'll send them an email about flowers. It's you're giving them a, giving them a thing that adds value. And then that goes into the whole kind of reciprocity and some of the pre suasion things that we've talked about before. If as the, if as the venue, I can give you the book that actually gives you all you need to know about the full flowers for this particular area of the country. Here's all of the information that you need. So no matter where you're going to go, here's some great information for you that makes me feel good as a venue. It adds value to my customer, the people that are booking the venue. All of that means that you're fishing from a better pool. There's a better start to the relationship. It's likely to be a more, not more impassioned, but it might be more of a emotional recommendation rather than just, oh, here's a list of other vendors that we work with which is pretty passive. There's clearly no financial relationship there. So it doesn't start to feel icky in any way. Yeah, yeah. Just referrals because they're getting a kickback and it gives value to the person, to the, to the customer. It starts off your potential relationship with that customer in a way that's higher value, starts creating that reciprocity, starts creating a good feeling. So the key with all of this is that you need the way of then capturing the details because what you don't want to do is say here you can have a copy of my book if you give me your name and email address. What you don't want to say is to the, to the vendor, to the venue in this situation, oh, that's great. But if you can give me the name and email address of anyone that you give a copy of the book to. Because again, that's how it's the relationship. So this is where we've talked about in the past the importance of that middle step in the back cover copy or that middle step in the kind of minimum viable commitment step to moving people forwards of head over here and download a copy of the checklist or a copy of the scorecard or the bonus material that amplifies the messaging and gives you even more information. You need a way of collecting names and email addresses of people who have got a copy of the book, but you're not necessarily involved in that transaction. Exactly the same way as Amazon. If people have requested a copy of Amazon, no way of getting their details. So you need a way to point people to somewhere where in a minimum viable commitment way, a small additional step, you can collect their details in return for adding even more value, adding something of benefit.

others: Right. I think that it's funny, I was thinking of an example of people that I know who've, well, some of our current clients, but then I have some people I follow on social media, happens to be a florist. And so I've watched them evolve. They've had their business for two and a half years and they're people that I, I knew in my former career. So I knew, I know them. So I was watching them just for that. But I've watched how they've done this and how they've, they've really. Without a book, but they've done it with, they've built this community amongst themselves. You know, they've, they've got a photographer that they appear to always be working with. They have, you know, a baker that they're always tagging. They have a couple of event planners that they're always putting together. It seems like they've really created this, you know, real community amongst themselves, you know, just, just and, and they're a new, a relatively new business and they're women who were stay home moms who created this florist business. And it's kind of just taken off, you know, completely. And I think, you know, it's, it's important. Some of these people are not even, you know, this is like people that, they don't, not even work in the actual, actual area that they live in. They're a little further away, but they've just sort of reached out and it's, it's evolved, you know, into something, something more. And there's a lot of, you can see a lot of referrals and communication between them back and forth.

Stuart: And this is exactly the point, isn't it? Naturally as humans we make those connections and form Those networks because of a couple of reasons. I think this is not pre suasion but it might be an influence. Robert Cialdini's earlier book talking about the reciprocity element of making a referral kind of within the tribe. And I know Dean talks about this in the Secret Psychology of why People Refer report, which if I remember I'll put a link to that in the show notes but this within a tribe, within a community, we as individuals like the, the kudos or the good group feeling of being able to recommend something that will give someone else value regardless of, to a certain degree, almost regardless of what their experience will be. We like the feeling of being able to refer things, of having kind of the secret of being the person that had the good connection. So all of these networks happen naturally within kind of social groups or business groups anyway. So to be able to leverage that a little bit more and rather than saying oh here's just a blind referral, but saying oh here's something of value, the benefit that that extra step gets by having your book being the thing that they recommend is it bridges the gap one step further. So not only has the initial person made the recommendation of something so that carries a lot of social weight with it, but the beginning of your relationship with that customer is then improved rather than just getting a referral and they should make a phone call or check out the website. They've made a referral and now the customer has read something that's added to their experience even more. So it's just amplifying something that is naturally happening anyway.

others: Yeah, that is so true. So we talked about this, maybe we're going to discuss this but, and I'm jumping ahead but somebody approached me recently and they're still in the deciding, just trying to decide when I think they want to come on board after summer due to traveling. But he is a realtor and he wants to create sort of, it's not an advertising, but hey, these are who I use kind of, you know, so he's a realtor. So let's say it's the surveyor, the title company or the inspector, you know, all these mortgage brokers, people that he has already developed, you know, strong, long time relationships with and he wants to put a little something in the book for you. He wants, that's how he wants to create the book. And you know, and I thought well, you know, that's, I mean that's great and it could lock you into, you know, what if there's, you know, 40 other mortgage companies that, you know, could potentially work. And I understand you have this relationship but you know, he, and then he was looking at it from the standpoint of if he did that then you know, they would just keep a hold of books and give the books out to people that they came across. And again, I think there's, it's a double edged sword. I think it's, it's a great idea that people that you've really worked with and have these awesome relationships with and you know they're going to refer you, they're going to hand your book out but then they're set sort of. Does it lock you into well, hey, mortgage companies in here?

Stuart: I don't know. I mean, I guess it does to a certain degree because at the end of the day if one company a is, is in the book, companies a in the book. But only until they're not in the book. I mean the whole thing that we talk about creating with the 90 minute book process particularly is that compared with traditional publishing, the whole purpose of it is to keep it as fast and effective and agile and changeable as possible. This isn't into tens of thousands of dollars to get something written and then you need to print tens of thousands of copies and they're left sat on the shelf. This is fast, cost effective way of creating things, super cost effective way of making changes further down the track. Anyone that's worked with us knows how quick and easy that is and print on demand. So if it was a situation where either the mortgage company went out of business or their business model changed so they were doing different things or worst case scenario they did something inappropriate so you wanted to sever ties with them. Making changes further down the track is very, very stable.

others: Right, right, right.

Stuart: This model actually it's kind of an expansion to the complementary non competing idea that we were talking about. So this is just kind of off top of my head as we've gone down this particular path. But you can imagine being a, I'm going to use the word thought leader and even as I say that, I'm kind of throwing up in my mouth a little bit at the term because it's so, it's like the term entrepreneur. It's so overused and misused. You can imagine being the thought leader of a particular thing in your area. So a leading real estate, you're kind of active in the community even if you haven't been working for very long. That kind of passion that you've got for the area comes through the fact that you want to be helpful in other Areas you have a supportive person, a good person to do business with, that presence that you've got. Amplify that by writing the book for the winter. Get Windhaven Guide to Moving Home and pulling together in there a chapter for each of those four or five things that we talked about. So how to find a real estate agent, how to find a photographer, how to find a moving company, how to find an inspector, how to find a decorator or handyman to get those last jobs finished off that you needed to do. Another section in there about how to stage your home so that it shows the best. So not every chapter has to be from another service provider but. But the guide that really adds value to the thing that's very joined together. So moving home and then each of the chapters in there that is another service provider or another service could be written by the other person. And the way that I think people know now the way that we capture the content is through audio. So bringing together those audio elements by asking the other person the relevant questions. It's more work typically than we'd suggest in a 90 minute book. So it's not as easy to create as something where you just create yourself from your own knowledge just because there's more moving parts. But you can imagine right in that guide and those four or five other providers that are in there, it's going to be something that promotes them, it makes them look good, it's super useful for their customers. They can potentially use it in their own funnels all the way. You're, you're the main body and they're the main contact in there. You created it. There's a guy. The main call to action is in your direction rather than theirs. But it's leveraging your skills in bringing this together and their ability to get in front of an audience, a relevant audience that you don't necessarily have. So it's kind of like eyeball arbitrage. If you like you're creating something that is then bigger than you because it's like that old saying kind of Archimedes or Galileo, whichever one it was kind of. I can see so far because I stand on the shoulders of giants. So yeah, that knowing that you can create something that then has a distribution wider than yourself. Dean talks a lot. We might have been. I can't think whether it's anything that we've got on the book side or whether it was more on the profit activators, the breakthrough DNA side. But one of the earliest businesses that he had in college was they would go around and Survey people within a local area to see whether they were planning, getting renovations over the next 12 months. So Windows or yard work or building work, all that type of thing. And then they'd sell those leads on to the, to the window companies or the decorating companies in the area as hot leads. These people are, are planning it. So the, this story is going to fall apart now because I can't remember what the original theory was that they started doing it. But anyway, it doesn't matter. The point being that they were paying for their effort to collect the leads and identify the leads that they absolutely wanted. They were paying for all of that effort by selling the leads to the other companies. So in a similar way, you kind of leveraging other people's access to market by writing something that makes them look good and it's beneficial to them as well because they'll get, they can get some business from the asset that you've created. It really, I mean, it's really the best example of the greater good and the kind of synergy of the sum of the parts being greater than the, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. Kind of individually, each of those organizations has something useful to say. But by collectively bringing it all together, that asset, that book has now got far more leverage for you than it would have done if you just tried to do it by yourself. Yeah, I mean, some people, we've talked to some people about this before and they've talked about kind of selling chapters and getting people to pay to have that position in the book, which is definitely an option. And as long as it's ethically done, I mean, it's not the end of the world. You can, you could effectively pay for the book to be created.

others: Right.

Stuart: But that pay to play type model always leaves a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I mean, if it's people that you know and that you work with and you agree to split the cost, that's one thing. Just paying for a position in there, that kind of takes the edge off it a little bit. And I think if you can, I mean, again, I mean, if, if that's where you want to go, that that's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. But if you can come from the position, from the positive position of everyone working together for, to bring together this greater thing, then it just positions the. I think it positions a relationship. I think cash is always a little bit of the easy way out. This is such a kind of an off the cuff thing to say. So it doesn't really stand up to scrutiny, but to a certain degree, cash is always the easy way. If you're trying to work with people and then think about, okay, what's the bigger benefit, what's the greater good? Let's all think together for the best answer rather than let's just think as far as $500 to get your name in here. The outcome, I think it's just going to be such a better outcome because everyone's pulling in the same direction.

others: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

Stuart: Okay, that was a bit of a tangent and I can't remember the direction I was going. What were we talking about? So we were talking about the florist example and the venues and the photographers and using your book that you've written, but giving it to other people to share. So let's tie the two together then to. So we've got two examples. One is a book that you've written by yourself and you want to leverage it into complementary non competing businesses. And the second one is one where you've orchestrated that a little bit more. So you've kind of brought those complementary non competing businesses into the fold beforehand and actually created a book with them. In both examples, those third parties, those other businesses aren't the brains behind creating the book. So they're not necessarily going to be thinking about how to best utilize the book or how a book can sit in a funnel or what's the best way to position it and get it in front of people. So one option would be just to buy 20 copies for everyone and then just say, hey, give these out, it's great. Your customers will get a lot of value from it. Give me a call when you've only got two left and I'll drop off another 20. That's the minimum level of effort to go into it. And to a certain degree, if it's sat on a countertop in a dentist reception, then they will get taken. But it's not really orchestrating that referral. It's relying on kind of passively people picking them up. So if you rely on other people to think about the marketing message or the funnel around it, then it's not going to be that much. You're not going to get that much bang out of the project. A better way of doing it is think about a affiliate type model. So assume that these people are your affiliates, are your sales team out there spreading the word for you. So obviously they're not, they're independent companies. But if you think about it in that way, what you then start thinking about is okay, if they did work for me, if they were salaried employees and I wanted to instruct exactly what they would do. If in my head I've got the perfect model and as close as I can get to them executing on the perfect model, the better, then you can see already that it's just a way more successful. It's much more likelihood that the project of getting your book in front of other people are going to be successful because you do a lot of that work for them. So the things that we're talking about, there are things like potentially writing a cover letter for them to attach to the letter attached to the book when they give it out. So rather than just giving the book out, here's a book that a good friend of mine wrote. There's a lot of useful information there. There's also a cover letter that goes along with it that highlights as we've talked about before in like the follow up email sequence that highlights the really important section within the book and make it look as personal as possible. Almost as if you'd been past the referral and you had the chance to, or the opportunity to write a, write a message in there. On a one, on one level, it's just kind of scaling that up a little bit. You could go down the route of saying to people, okay, let's do a broadcast to begin with. So we're just introducing this idea of you giving the book to people. Why don't we also broadcast it to your audience of customers on the one hand and unconverted leads on the other hand. So allowing them to use it as a cookie to re engage dead leads. Hey Betsy, are you still interested in a wedding in, in Maine this fall? If so, a good friend of mine has just written the book. Love to get you a copy of it, just let me know. By allowing them to use your book to reactivate their leads. Yes, it's reactivating their leads. So you might think, oh well, why would I want to do that? Well, but the thing that the main point is that you're still using as an opportunity to get your asset out in front of that group. So if it goes to 100 people and 80 of them turn around and say, oh yeah, I'm interested in a wedding and book the venue and you never hear from them, but 20 of them say, yes, I'm interested in a wedding and the flower thing looks interesting. So I'm going to read that and then reach out to the, to the person that wrote it. The 80 that didn't contact you doesn't detract from the 20 that did.

others: 20 that did. Yeah.

Stuart: Particularly if you're looking at it as a digital and not a physical, because then there's no cost. But obviously the actual book costs are super low anyway, so that the math might still work out. But this concept of if you were designing the perfect funnel, what would you design and how closely can you get someone to, to adhere and to follow up with that. Talking about follow up, if someone, if. Let's jump back to the physical model. If you did give the book to someone and then they reached back out and said, oh, that was fantastic, who's the person that wrote it there? The points that they put in there about flowers are changed my life. Giving the, giving the venue, people, specific words to say, specific ways to move that referral opportunity through to you is another way of making it easy for them so they don't have to think about what the answer is. They don't have to think about, okay, well what should the answer be? Should it be, yes, it was great, wasn't it? Thank you, move on, or yes, it was great. Now I need to collect your name and email address and make sure that I pass that across, giving them an easy way of allowing the customer to take the next step. So in the example that we'd had before of like the scorecards, the checklists, that minimum viable commitment way of moving people forward, saying to the third party vendor, here are the books, here's the way that you should pass out. If someone comes back to you and wants some more information, then we'd recommend that you point them to this checklist because then they can download it for themselves and just really go through the full flower checklist and that will give them even more utility or more benefit or educate them even more on this subject that we're talking about.

others: So

Stuart: whatever you can do to streamline it, to make it easy both for the end customer to get in touch and for the third party to hand out the thing in the first place. Remember that there's an opportunity to get the thing out in the first place and then orchestrate the referral through to the next step. It just streamlines. The aim is that we're streamlining the process all the way through, sticking with that idea of making it as easy for them as possible. Because your objective is to get the book in front of as many eyes as possible. We talked about creating an email campaign for them, allowing them to use the book as the asset in a campaign that promotes them, but kind of subtly promotes you as well, but there's also things like print ads or images or social media campaigns, all of the things that you can create for them. So say, hey venue, here's a book. Actually here's a banner as well for your website. So I mean feel free to stick this banner on your website and if someone wants a copy of it, here's how they can get a copy of it or on their social media feed. Rather than saying I want you to promote this book because it's going to be beneficial for your guys, rather than just saying that, say, oh, here's some copy for the post on the social media post, here's an image that looks great if possible or where practical I guess, if you can combine them together. So if it's all in a local area, take a physical copy of the book, give it to the venue owner, see if they can hold it in front of the venue and not sort of cheesily point into the book with a big smiley face and a thumbs up, but kind of subtly have it on the table in front of the venue. So the main bit of the picture shows off the venue venue. So there is benefit to them still, not just yeah, yeah, yeah, so this whole model of making it as making it a win, win for everyone all the way down the chain. It's a win for you because you're getting in front of more eyeballs. It's a win for them because if you're thinking about writing a book to promote your business, you're already thinking about it from a marketer's perspective. You're already thinking about the benefits and how it can be used in multiple different circumstances. Likelihood is that other business owner isn't thinking the same. So you can be there their go to person for this particular campaign. Not only is it benefiting them because it's getting them exposure into channels that they might not be comfortable with or familiar with. And you've actually done the work for them. But because you're doing it in multiple different ways and because you're thinking this is a skill that you've now got anyway, it's easier for you to create it and leverage it to multiple different people than it is for them to think about, okay, now I've got to do something with this and I don't really have the context and I don't have the skills or the experience.

others: But I think you said like it needs to, if they're not thinking about it, I think it's gonna, you know, it has to be simple for them. It has to, it has to be really simple because people don't, if they're not thinking about, they're not going to want to do any work to it, you know, or on it. And I think it also has to really, truly benefit, you know, it has to be approached in the sense of it's more beneficial to that person other than yourself. More than yourself, you know. Yeah, because people are, you know, they're, they're very territorial over their, their list or their clients or, and they don't, people don't always want to share. So I think, you know, you really have to position it as, hey, you know, Baker, this is really going to be great for you, you know, or venue or whatever, whoever it is, if you're, if you're the florist, you know, really position it, you know, not just go at it with that.

Stuart: And this comes back to the earlier book blueprint mindsets of creating the book. So as you go through those eight mindsets, they are ordered in a particular way for a reason. It's not just random. We drop down at eight things and the content of the book comes after the title and the call to action. It's how you can add value. It's not that you start with mindset one, I'm great, I want to tell people how great I am. So I'm going to write a book and then everything else comes after it, starting with the end in mind of what's the problem that people are looking to solve? What's the call to action at the end? How can they improve their understanding or education or the likelihood of success? And only then in the middle of it becomes the words that takes them from the front to the back cover. And those words are the things that answer the question that was posed by the problem statement on the front cover of the title and the subheading. So if you write a book that talks about how fantastic you are and all of the things that you've done and why you're the best person to work with and then you try and take that to complementary non competing businesses. Even if it's people that, you know, they're going to look at it and read it and say, why am I sending this press release? Right. How fantastic you are. That's not adding any value to my, to my people. Even the middle layer, which we've sometimes talked about before in kind of the financial advisor type sense where, and again, not wanting to pick on financial advisors, but sometimes there's a, there's a position of, well, I can tell you so much, but I Don't want to give away all the secrets. So I don't want to answer that too deeply because either I want to keep something for myself, otherwise why would you come here? Or it's too complicated. There's always caveats around why I can't give the exact answer and there's absolutely compliance reasons why that might be problematic and there's realistic reasons that things are complicated. But writing the book, that absolutely gives value that as a standalone thing. If people never ever spoke to you that they would get something from that book, it's the, it's the introduction, the one on one level of okay, before you do anything else, you need to do these straightforward things, then giving that to the complementary non competing business, this third party business that you want to have them share on your behalf. If it's all coming from a position of give, give, give, make this the most valuable thing, then there's no reason why they, or there's far less reason why they would be resistant to sharing it because it's coming from a position of here's an absolutely valuable answer to this question that we all know is important. It's not. Let me tell you how fantastic I am at answering this question that everyone thinks is important. Right, right, sorry, that's indeed a bit of a rant.

others: No, no, that's not. Yeah, no, I got it.

Stuart: But it's so important. And again, it all ties back into what's the purpose. The purpose is to identify invisible leads, people who are interested in the thing that you're offering, who might not be customers today, but who are on the journey towards being the best customers. And by best customers I mean best for you because they're the targeted group of people who are dialed into your mindset, the way of doing business, and the best customers because they'll get the most out of it as well. You can absolutely, genuinely deliver value and help them in whatever it is they're trying to achieve achieve. And writing the book that starts that journey in the most helpful way just means that all of these subsequent things are more likely to happen as well, because you can leverage other people a lot more because you're adding value to them. It's not just that you're trying to leverage a relationship and saying, hey Bob, we've known each other for 10 years. Promote this.

others: Yeah.

Stuart: A couple of other things that spring to mind then is just the context in which their customers would have reason to see the book. So all the way through this we're talking about having the mindset of how to make it as easy and successful for them. So some of the things that come into play then are things like context. So if it's much more likely that. So let's think of the example. So with the venue, wedding venue, that's physically around one particular place. So the likelihood is that at some point the customers are going to be at that venue. So a physical copy of your book makes sense because they're physically going to be there. It's not you expecting this person to carry your book around with them. They can have them under the desk at the reception. And because you know the majority of the customers are passing, that's the opportunity. The flip side of that context is potentially someone like the photographer. So again, sticking with the wedding analogy, the photographer, it's very unlikely or far less likely, I guess, that the customer is going to come to them. You might have a storefront where the studio is, but certainly in the UK at least, it's far more common that the photographer will just be working from home and go to you as the client for the introduction and then go to your wedding or whatever the venue is. So in those scenarios is far less likely the physical book would be useful, but potentially the electronic book would be more useful. And as part of their follow up package, as part of their proposal package, you could suggest including a copy of the book, an electronic copy of the book. Now that's not necessarily always the case. So like we were saying last week with this examples there, it depends. So think about the overall strategy and what you're trying to achieve rather than latch onto this one particular thing as a tactic. So it might be the case that physically they do take some stuff around, so maybe they've got a binder of stuff that they leave with them as a, as part of a package of things with some photos of previous weddings so that they've tangibly got something. So physical one might make sense, but in that scenario you really want to sit down with your photographer and what is it that would, how can you position the book as part of something that should take up space in this package that gets left with the client? So that might be something like doing a kind of white label version of the book where the book is primarily yours, but allow the photographer to write a forward to the book. And that forward could be something like, I want to add as much value as I can to you and make sure that you've got the most perfect day. I've worked with these guys at the Flourish for years. I wanted to extract from them some of their knowledge about how to get the best full wedding in Maine. And we worked together to create this book. So something that rather than just trying to convince the photographer to put an extra quarter of a pound of weight in his bag and take up the space in the folder that could be taken with something else, make a compelling case as to why that should be in there and how it can add value to all of you because it gets your name out there as the florist solution and increases the value of the package that they're delivering. Because they're not just saying, choose me, I'll take the nice pictures. They're saying, hey, listen, I'm interested in making sure that your overall experience is the best it can be to the extent that I can make a difference. And I know that having fantastic flowers on your wedding day can make a huge difference to the quality of the photos you've got. Because it's surprising how much people's eyes are drawn to that. So if you have the wrong type of flowers or the wrong colors of flowers or they don't look, they're half dead, then that's like your, your flowers look, your photos look far, far worse. So it's just orchestrating this and thinking about the overall position from each of the stakeholders, position, from the position of you, from the position of the complementary non competing business, from the position of the customer, the end customer, who eventually gets it. Taking a little bit of time to think about how that all plays together today means that the kind of amplification of the funnel that you're trying to set up, the kind of effectiveness of it amplifies over time. And it's kind of like a compounding effect where the outcome a year down the track is far, far greater than the effort that was put in on day one.

others: Yeah, I think this is really great because I don't. I think it's thinking just a little bit outside the box and not what people think about on a regular basis, you know, when they're thinking about promoting themselves or their book or what have you, you know.

Stuart: Yeah. And that's the thing, isn't it? No one ever thinks about this because everyone's so busy, they're just thinking, okay. I mean, we even see it with people writing books with us. I need to get a book, I want to get a book. I need to get it done, done, done, done. Okay, it's done now. Thank God for that. I never have to think about it again and then, and then disappear and nothing happens with it because it's so easy. Just to put it on the back burner because it's a little bit too difficult to think about and I'll come back to it later. And then two years pass by. And that's exactly the same with the third parties that we're talking about. Even if you have the best conversation with them, unless you kind of spoon feed them in the nicest possible way and set it all up for them as much as possible, which with the smallest amount of effort you can do, particularly if you're going to leverage your own efforts. So you're going to do, because it's repeatable, this funnel that you're putting in place for the photographer, you can put the same funnel in place for the venue and the same for the baker and the same for the car hire company and the same for the efficient person that comes around. You can leverage your activity in a way that they're not going to do for themselves and even for yourself. And kind of as the business that wants the exposure. Very few people think about this two circles out. Everyone thinks about the first themselves and then the first circle out. But it's very rare that people think that, that further down the track. So there's a lot of opportunity that's left. Yeah, there's a lot of opportunity that's left hanging, I think.

others: Yeah.

Stuart: I wanted to do a quick run through. That's kind of it on the kind of strategy side as you, I mean if, if you're really wanted to dive deep onto this, then grab a copy of, of the book Blueprint score card from bookblueprintscore.com and there's the checklist to run through. And then for each of the mindsets that you would think about for yourself on the first round, then just take those same, those same mindsets and tweak the words slightly to be the third party. So, okay, I'm the florist. I'm thinking about the photographer. Let me just quickly go through the, the mindsets and think about how the photographer would see it and what's important to them and what they're thinking about in terms of the next step and how can I bridge what I've got into into what they do. So that, that's one suggestion. The other thing I wanted to quickly do is they're thinking about maybe we'll do it next time. Yeah, I'll tell you what, let's do that because we're coming up on 45 minutes now already.

others: Okay.

Stuart: The beginning of next, the next show we'll quickly run through the gallery that we've got on the website just of 100, 150 or so of the 500 books that we've created. And I want to just randomly pick out a couple and think about what those complementary, non competing businesses might be. Because sometimes people struggle to think about what that is. Sometimes it's difficult to think about. Okay, who might those people be? We'd obviously stuck on the florist example today and hopefully as you're listening to this, that's enough to. To get you thinking about who those people might be in your business. But it might be interesting exercise just to go through the gallery and then give like a. We can start next time with a quick fire round of various different types of businesses and how that might. That might set up. If for no other reason, then I've really got a little bit engaged in this subject and my voice is going super croaky already, so I'm not sure how much longer it'll last.

others: There you go.

Stuart: The transcript might start tailing off as we get past 30 minutes because harder and harder to hear me and I talk faster and faster.

others: Right, all right, very good.

Stuart: Can you think of, is there anything that we've kind of touched on that we've kind of skipped over a little bit today?

others: No, I don't think so. I think something you said that was key is sometimes it's that first circle, that inner circle is as far as people think. And so I think, I hope that that statement will make people think a little bit further out, you know, and just really think about who they can reach out to and who, you know, how to create their tribe or their community and, and make this all work for them. You know, instead of just thinking small, you know, just, yeah, just thinking about the baker, let's think about the photographer and the venue. And there's so, you know, and again there's the florist. But whatever that that industry is that you're in, you know, think a little bit bigger, you know, just another step, even one layer out I think will open up so many more. The possibilities for so many more people to reach you, you know, or you to reach them. So I think that was a great thing that you said. So good information and. Yeah, fantastic.

Stuart: Well, hopefully. Well, actually, just on one quick last point as well, the. We've talked a lot about people in the physical location. This works just as well in a kind of a virtual world. If you're not talking about local businesses geographically. It's just then that the group that you're interacting is just. Doesn't have geographic constraints. You then go and base on communities of interests or communities of people. So, yeah, it works just as well, I think, in an online environment as an offline environment. It's just the constraints are very different.

others: Right. Very good.

Stuart: Okay, so we are on. Where are we now? We're in the middle of May now. So I think that if anyone's ready to get started, the summer is a great. Or leading into the summer is a great time to pull the trigger on this and, and get going because we typically are looking at kind of six to 10 weeks to get a book turned around for someone, depending on how fast they move and how far down the. How we find our thoughts are. So that puts us into the beginning of the summer. So as you're listening to this now, this really is a great time to get started because you can get a lot of this movement done before the summer starts, then not worry about being away or people traveling over the summer. So a nice break there and be in a position to hit the ground running. As we come into September and fall and everyone is. Is kind of back to work and thinking about the new school tournament cycle making up for the. The kind of push towards the end of the year. Of course, that's the. We're in May now and we're talking about the end of the year already. That's kind of the extreme. I mean, we can definitely turn things around far quicker than that. And there'll be some people listening now who have definitely got something ready to go in the summer and really then take advantage of the fact that a lot of people, a lot of other people are thinking about, oh, I'll leave it until September and get started and kind of steal all of that summer traffic while everyone else is thinking about being in the beach. I always remember that there was a Gary Vaynerchuk Instagram thing last. Last summer talking about exactly the same, saying that I think it was maybe Memorial Day or Labor Day saying, holidays are great. That's when all of the suckers head to the beach and there's money to be made for people who are just doing the work. So not that I'm as much of a fan of the beach as anyone else, but anyway, there's nothing, no need to wait for just the calendar. So we mentioned the book blueprint scorecards a number of times. So if you haven't listening to this and you haven't filled that in for yourself, then head across to bookblueprintscore.com and you can gauge yourself across the eight book mindsets to see how far down the path you are. It'll help you refine your own thinking if you're wanting to do this yourself. Or it'll identify where the gaps are and we can work together together to close those gaps. And of course, if you want to be a guest on the show, then just head over to 90minutebooks.com and follow and podcast and follow the guest link in the podcast area and get something scheduled and we can scheme some book schemes for you so that you can hit the ground running on your project. This is going to be episode 61, so head across to 9minutebooks.com follow the podcast links. And this is episode Tripling my words, episode 61. And there'll be links to the things that I said that we'd include. I did just thought that there was one thing that I said that I do include, but I can't remember what that was. So as I'm producing. Yeah, yeah, I'll listen back and try and include that. So hopefully whatever I promised 45 minutes ago will also be in the show. Show notes. So head over there and check that out.

others: That's funny. All right, Very good.

Stuart: Okay, thank you. Pleasure as always, and thanks to everyone for listening. And we'll catch you in the next one.

others: Great. Take care.

Stuart: Thanks, Betsy. Bye.