Avoiding the edit trap

"Foreign."

Stuart: Welcome to another Book More show. It's Stuart here with Betsy. Betsy Vaughan. How you doing?

Guest: I'm fantastic. Happy day Friday. Happy day.

Stuart: Every day is a happy day.

Guest: Happy day.

Stuart: Just some are more happy than others.

Guest: Exactly. How's it going?

Stuart: Good to be very good. Kind of getting acclimatized to the warmer climates of Philadelphia and getting into some schedule up here. So it's nice to slowly be getting into a new routine and hopefully a better routine of you and I recording and then after Dean's summer tour get into more of a routine with getting Dean on the show as well. Because I was looking back through the last few calls and we we've got a lot of or a number of mortgages Less Whiskers episodes that we talk about books on. So I'll sometimes refer back to those in the in the stream. But actually it was almost a year ago that Dean was last a guest. So special appearance. I know. It goes first, right?

Guest: Yeah, it does. All right. Mr. Jackson needs to make an appearance.

Stuart: The other thing I might try and do as well is although I'm thinking about it out loud now, so I'm not sure the best way, but get a better on the More Cheese S Whiskers podcast, I might see if I can categorize those where the conversation is more specifically around books or tag them at least as 90 minute book related episodes. And that way people, as you're listening to this now, can always jump across the more useless Whiskers feed and filter it by the 90 minute book tag and then that will get access straight into those recordings as well because I know not everyone's subscribed to each of the each of the individual feeds. So I'll try and remember to do that after we get off the show and I'll tell everyone the update next week.

Guest: Go ahead. Good idea. So what are we going to talk about today?

Stuart: Well, today you might be able to hear that my voice is a little bit croaky again. So hopefully we're going to get through it all before it gives out. But today we're going to talk about trying to hit two things. First, one, again, this is like last week's. This is because a subject's come up over the last week or so as we've been talking to people. So we want to talk about editing and how much is enough. So again, we'll specifically be talking about the 90 minute book process. But the same applies to whether you're doing this yourself or whether you've got someone externally working with you to do this, but we'll talk about it in the context of the 90 minute book process. And then the second, assuming we've got time is run into segmentation and creating a series of books and how best to break out rather than. Again, this comes up quite a few times in conversations with people. They want to include a broad amount of information. And quite often we'll say to people, think about what the job of work is, write enough to support that case and then keep the rest of the material for a second funnel for a second book. Because that's more effective. Having two books that are tailored is more effective usually than having one book that is just on a broader subject. So I think we should have time to hit both of those. And hopefully I'll definitely answer the question for not only the people that we were talking to over the last week or so, but as you're listening to this, the editing one particular that I think for most people that definitely is a. Is something they run into. Run up against.

Guest: Yeah, I mean, we hear this. I work closely with production Kim and production and so constantly, you know, people will get their book. And we had this conversation this week just about how people, they think, what they've put out there, what they've said is sounds one way. And they actually see it in print. Maybe it's not exactly the way they thought it would in their head. It didn't come out of their mouth that way. And so sometimes they just, they start getting into it and I think they just start pick, pick, pick, pick, pick. But we, you know, I mean, this is a. This is something we do almost every single day in our business. You know, it's nice when you get the occasional person who says, no, the book is absolutely exactly perfect. It's what I want, what I need. You know, but we're so hypercritical of ourselves.

Stuart: Yeah.

Guest: That. That doesn't happen. You know, it's more of a lot of editing that went into it and spending a lot of time. I hate to use the word nitpicking, but it almost gets down to that.

Stuart: You know, I think the real issue is opportunity cost. So it's not so much that with infinite budget and infinite time, it's not so much that it's a bad thing to do, but it's the opportunity cost. What else better, what better value thing could you be doing with the same energy and budget and attention? So let's describe briefly what. What happens what most people. The scenario in which it comes up most of the time. So as everyone knows, the most effective way of creating the content is recording it. It's difficult to record it yourself because it's difficult talking into a dead mic. The easiest way is to have someone interview and have the structure already defined so that on a single recording from start to finish, you can work your way through the content and end up with something that encapsulates and captures, encapsulates all of your best ideas, your best thinking on this subject. So what you end up with then is copy that is transcribed from the call and when you receive that back, even after a number of rounds of editing, preferably by someone else, not you, because otherwise you really get in, sink into this trap soon, sooner rather than later. It's actually pretty difficult. It's like marking your own homework. It's actually pretty difficult editing your own content immediately because that first pass that comes straight from a call recording is always not rough in terms of the content, but rough on the eyes a little bit because it has all of the breaks in the speech, all of the part finished sentences and where you jump around a little bit just seeing that raw copy. It's difficult to edit yourself because you're too vested, you're too close, you've got all the assumptions. Like you were just saying, people typically think they sound or talk differently to how they actually talk. There's all of the foibles and speech artifacts of talking versus writing anyway, so all these things, it's very difficult. So if you're not working with us to go through the process, if you're listening to this, thinking about doing it yourself, that would be one word of advice is that transcript that comes back, send it out, get someone else to edit it first and then you just deal with the piece after that.

Guest: Absolutely, yeah. Jumping, that's key because I think that was. We had a situation earlier in this week where someone felt that it was, it was, it was too much of a task for them to take on. You know, they just weren't, you know, this is someone who's in medical kind of dental field. So I think, you know, it's, it's not their comfort level. And so they were looking at it as a, you know, 60 page book and very overwhelmed, you know, very overwhelmed by the whole process. And so my advice was, okay, well how about we find somebody else to do it like in the office, someone who has the same knowledge that the doctor has, but that can at least kind of go through that first round, you know, if he's four, if he's willing to do one chapter at a time, you know, one chapter make it not seem so daunting, you know, and

Stuart: I think this is the. I think the issue is, or one of the issues at least is that typically people are thinking of things in the traditional publishing sense that it, they're just naturally coming to it from the mindset that this is months worth of work and it's difficult and hard and, and no matter how much you try and tell people that it doesn't have to be that way, their assumptions, their mindset, that's where they're coming from. So that's what they're baselining against. This is why so much with the process as you're working with us, we try to take all of that away from you so that it's all done in the background and the thing that you're presented with is the thing that is absolutely good enough to go straight out. Now, there may be things that you want to add, add or change or take away potentially. But as we'll get into in this conversation, the advice is always, it's way, way, way more effective to get this one out there and put. Move the attention onto the next one and then the next one and the next one. Which is why we also want to talk about serialization today than it is to get bogged down in the details. Because at the end of the day, the book is not the product. You're not making money from the book directly. This isn't about book sales. This isn't about winning some literary award for the best piece of writing. This is all about creating something that is compelling and takes people to the next step. The content has to give value to start the relationship on the right foot. But it's not supposed to win any awards. You're not even necessarily trying to write enough to change people's minds. This isn't a huge manifesto. I was trying to give an example, but all I can think about is bad examples for manifesto type books. This isn't supposed to be a War and Peace or a magnum opus on every detail. It's moving forward. And then if there's a second book in a second funnel, talking about a second element of your business, again, it's way more effective. Going from zero to 90% is, is much, much more effective than going from 90% to 95%.

Guest: Right. You know, and that, that was that. That's sort of my constant. I mean, I really could just record this and hit push the play button over and over again. This isn't the conversations that I have, you know, several times a week. Make sure that you know, my thing is make sure the content is accurate, particularly if you're in one of those fields that can get you into trouble, you know, medical or legal or financial or something. You know, obviously you want to make sure that information is as accurate as possible. And that's. That's always. That's always my. What I say to people. Just make sure it's accurate. Don't worry about if the comma is in the right place. You know, we can debate that whole. We can debate styles back and forth all day long. We can decide that it need to be a comma. Doesn't need to be. I mean. And we do.

Stuart: I mean, that's the. Exactly. I was just going to say the same thing. That's the other thing as well. Styles to a certain degree. I mean, there's some things that are black and white, correct or incorrect, but the 80% of it is by far a stylistic preference, which you, as the author are gonna have an opinion. Someone else's. The editors can have an opinion. Every reader is gonna have an opinion. So that's definitely one to avoid getting bogged down into.

Guest: Bogged down with it. That's the thing. Make sure the content is correct. It's an accurate and, you know, factual so it doesn't get you into trouble. And then get the book out there and start using it. You know, that's. That's. That's hard for people to. My name's on it. I want it to be an act, you know, I want it to be just perfect. And I want it to, you know, I want to make sure all the information there. I hear that a lot too. No, you don't. And you just said that a minute ago. No, you don't. You don't need everything. Doesn't need to be in that book.

Stuart: Yeah.

Guest: Give them enough. Yeah, yeah.

Stuart: It's the relevant information. And this is why we say go deep in answering one narrow subject rather than trying to go broad. Because going broad means that you'll never have of the information. At least going deep on the one subject means that you can get to the point of it being comprehensive enough to answer the subject, answer the question that's raised by the. By the title. And it's definitely not that we're saying keep stuff back or intentionally keep stuff out. It's just that you could be here two years later and still not have it out the door, still try and include one thing in another thing and another thing.

Guest: Right.

Stuart: It's. That doesn't help the customer. The best thing that as Long as you're going into this with a genuine intent, you know that the very best thing, like for us, we know that the absolute very best thing is that someone doesn't get on the fifth phone call and ask us a whole load of questions. Just jump on board with the product, get something recorded and get something out the door. We genuinely believe that that's the very best thing that they can do. So the 90 minute book as the example, as our example lead in, I mean, we've already tweaked it three or four times over the three or four years, sorry, four or five years that it's been out. We could write another. We could write books that are four times the size of that and still the same number of people or broadly the same number of people would come on board because you get to a certain point where X number of words are adequate to move people into the thing that's best for them. And the thing that's best for them is to take the next step. Adding in another number of words isn't going to move that needle and isn't going to help any more people. And what we're really looking to do, and as you're listening to this, really what you're looking to do, is help people make the best choices. And nine times out of 10, it's to start to do business with you. And if you can help them by answering one question first. Anyway, before we started recording, I was talking to Betsy and promised not to go off on a rant of pick the single target market and then stay focused on that. But it's difficult to avoid.

Guest: It is sometimes.

Stuart: I wanted to jump back slightly to describe the problem a little bit more so that people can recognize it because sometimes it's difficult for you to recognize when it's happening. So from the transcript, you've got a document back that's gone through the first passive editing. Now in theory that should be good enough certainly internally for the books that we create. Anyone that knows Dean or has worked with Dean before or been around Dean before, knows that he's very much. I mean, almost at the other extreme of just get it out and move on, get out and move on. Because he does have a skill of being able to talk about something coherently and consistently, so that the first pass, apart from just some grammatical tweaks and edits from the recording, is good enough to go out the door. But I think people would be surprised when they know how little editing was done on, on the 90 minute book and the breakthrough DNA and listening Agent, lifestyle, all of the ones that we do internally, very, very, very light to the extent that Dean never ever sees it. And we only really send it out to one external edit. There were mistakes in all of them. Point being, it doesn't matter because the message still is out there. So this first draft that you get back, the first version you get back. So if you're working with us, we'll have sent it through a couple of revisions. So the, the grammatical, the heavy lifting on the grammatical changes and tweaking some of the language that just comes across in conversation, like removing the years or the likes, which I just did, removing the word that to a certain degree because. Yeah, yeah, that in a conversation it makes sense that you're referring to that, but when it's written in the book, it stands out a little bit. Anyway, all of this heavy lifting stuff that we do, the version that you get back should be good enough to go straight out the door. So what you're really looking at doing then is exactly what you described a moment ago. And as I said, if you're not working with us, get someone else to do this first pass so that the thing you get back should be good enough to go out the door, particularly again. Another benefit of working with an organization that have done this 500 times is the outline. We put a lot of time and attention into making sure that the outline is comprehensive and when the call is recorded, all of those outlined elements are captured. Because if you're just recording something and trying to wing it, or working off an outline that you haven't really given much time or attention to, then you aren't going to record stuff and there's going to be things missing and you're going to be less satisfied with it. This really is the last thing you should be thinking of doing, is fixing it in post. You should always, always be trying make sure that those things are covered up front. So all of that being said, the thing that you get back then is a document that should be good enough to go out the door. Concentrating on making sure that there's no inaccuracies factually in the content that's there, just as you said before, is the number one most important thing. But everything above that, grammatical options, whether or not certain elements are included or excluded, the flow of it all that should have been considered before you even started recording. And as long as that outline is done, then really the amount of editing that you should do afterwards should be very, very limited. Because as we started off by saying, the risk is the opportunity cost. It's not that it's problematic to do. It's not that it causes more problems. It's not even that it's a bad thing to do.

Guest: It's.

Stuart: It's that you will spend weeks, if not months, if not years with this thing, not out there engaging new potential customers and helping people. It will sit on the shelf and not move forward. And even internally, we see that internally with people saying, oh, yeah, I just want to do a quick pass through it. And then years later, in some circumstances, we've never heard back. And it's a shame, because that great information is. Isn't getting in the hands of the people that really need it.

Guest: And when you stop. And I mean, think about. I mean, most of our clients, just the one. Just one right person, you know, one right client would have paid for the book itself. And I. That's the thing people don't get like, yeah, that's been sitting there and you've done nothing with it. And it just would have taken one person who's not. Who's not criticizing your grammar or your spelling or.

Stuart: These potential customers aren't there waiting to do business with you because they know a perfect book is on its way and they want to read that first. These people are going somewhere else. So every day that goes past, there's a customer that's working with someone else, not working with you, when that might have been a different outcome. If you've got it out there. Yeah. I think this whole thing about the book being the product is the real key, because so often, I mean, we even get it now. People will. Which, I mean, we're grateful for. We'll fix things as. And when we get around to them. But people point out grammatical mistakes in things that we put out there all the time, or there might be the odd typo or for whatever reason, something could be fixed. That's great, and we appreciate that, and if we see it, we'll fix it. But we didn't not put it out because that might be there.

Guest: Right.

Stuart: At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. It's not important. The important thing is getting out and getting in the house.

Guest: Yeah, exactly. Drilling those leads and using the book as it's intended to. To. To be used, you know.

Stuart: Yeah. To start that conversation.

Guest: You know, I think about. Because we did have. We have. I thought it was kind of funny that someone took the time to go through one of our books and send it over back to us. And. And with all. And. And again, a lot of it was just Style preference, you know, it just. What it came down to. And so I made the executive decision what got changed and what didn't and so I just kind of left it. But I don't, I don't think like that because I read just like I speak and listen. Our audience hears it. I'm like all over the place. I stumble on my words, I say random things, I make up words sometimes, like I just, I'm just. Because I speak fast and that's how I read. So I can't imagine someone reading a book, like even a 25 page book and catching all of that, you know, like that. To me, when I see, when I. When you see something like that and someone like, how can you. You can't enjoy. Like, if I was that person, I would never be able to enjoy anything I ever read, you know, so people are not reading, they're not reading books to find your errors or they just want to see what kind of great content you're out there providing and get some great information.

Stuart: Exactly. I mean, we've done whole shows about the fact that realistically the, the amount of the words on the page that actually get rid is astronomically smaller than people anticipate. So that' just another reason why the prospect or the thought that people are wasting six months, three months, even three days procrastinating or worrying over making sure that things are perfect is really just such a false economy. It's just crazy. Crazy.

Guest: I really hope people are listening and really taking note of these words because, you know, like I said, we talk about this a lot. We have, I have a lot of conversations with our clients, current clients, potential clients, you know about this. And I really hope they will take this to heart. Like, okay, I really don't need. Even if you're doing it yourself, like just know, you know, it does not have to be that perfect document.

Stuart: Exactly. And we've seen this time and time again. And this is the reason why we get a little bit heated and passionate about it. Because it's not that we're trying to justify our own actions or give people excuses, is that we know time and time and time again that the most important, important thing, not even for you, forget about you as the person thinking about writing it, think about all of the customers. If you genuinely believe that people are better served working with you than not working with you, that it will make their lives better, that it will fix a very important problem, then for the. It's almost gonna curse that. But for the sake of the itunes rating, I won't get the damn thing out there in front of people where it's gonna help two things and then we'll move on to the next bit because it's easy to start just ranting about it. Hopefully people have got the, got the message now. But the two things that spring to mind are. The first one I've forgotten, but the second one was that point that you were saying that the value of getting it out there, even if there are things that could be corrected, is that for most people listening, a small handful of clients can make all of the difference and pay for any budget of the book and and really start that lead generation. So we were talking just before we started recording about someone else that you'd been speaking to about the book. They'd been introduced to us by an old podcast on someone else's network and they were talking about, hey, well last week I just sent out a nine word email which is something that we talk about a short personal expecting reply type email, something we talk about in some of the other frameworks. And they from that activity had got two clients worth seven grand.

Guest: Yep. Yeah, seven grand each.

Stuart: Seven grand each. I didn't even realize it was that.

Guest: Yes, each.

Stuart: $14,000 just from sending out the nine word email.

Guest: Yes.

Stuart: And that correlation to having a book which is shares fantastic information but isn't looking at winning book awards, but does engage with the type of customers that you're looking engaging, why would you not want that out tomorrow as quick as possible?

Guest: Absolute.

Stuart: The first point that I was going to raise was on a similar vein and this is the amount of overhead and the costs associated with it. So I talked about the real issue being the opportunity, but just in terms of the raw cost. We've had people come to us who have spent five to 15 grand on trying to get a book out there and they've just burned through money paying people to do revision after revision after revision still might ended up with something. If you want to do that. Well, if you want to do that, feel free. But actually if you don't want to do that, call me directly, give me the 15 grand, we'll go back through our normal process between 1800 and 2800 and then everyone will be happy and you and I can go, we'll have a summer retreat somewhere. But joking aside, money can absolutely start evaporating as soon as you start paying the hourly people to go through and tweak and tweak and tweak because it is an endless pool. You could tweak even if you're Go back, read a blog post or something from two years ago that you were absolutely delighted with at the time. And I bet you would now find things that you would change. Not because the market's changed or because some knowledge has changed, just because every single time you look at something, you could make a tweak. And without the constraints. We talk about this in the book Blueprint Scorecard, they're having beneficial constraints. Without the constraints, you're never going to move on this and you're just going to burn money. So, yeah, yeah. With that being said, yeah, when we started recording, I was thinking, well, we've got two things that we want to talk about, but maybe this will be a bit of a shorter show, but we're already 25 minutes in and just hit that point. So. Okay, so we've talked about where to draw the line under editing. So make sure it's factually correct grammatical differences. If you don't have a particular pet peeve, you could make some changes, but just be very careful because it's a bit of an endless pit. And then adding things or wanting to include bits and pieces. Compare it back to the original scope. So you've got a title at the beginning and a call to action at the end. And every word in the middle should move people from COVID to cover. It should move people from yes, I've got this question or problem articulated in the title to, oh, I see now that this is the very best next step. The call to action at the back of the book. Every piece of content in the center should support that goal of moving someone from the beginning to the end. All of the additional stuff, then all of the ancillary stuff, that Venn diagram that you're drawing of all of these different chapters and possible things to include the ones that don't cross over or don't cross over enough that they are candidates for a second funnel, a second sales channel, a second way of engaging people. So the easy example that we talk about sometimes are things like if you were a chocolate cake lover and you were walking through the supermarket and you saw the overhead signs advertising things, at one end of the store there was something saying cake, and at the other end of the store there was something saying chocolate cake, you would walk directly to chocolate cake, because although you're a cake lover, you're really a chocolate cake lover. And that particular section of the shelves has enough content in there to give you exactly what you want. The same with the books, including then stuff in your chocolate cake book about I must be hungry today. In your chocolate cake book about strawberry cake or donuts or bagels, or as we're getting further and further away from actual cakes, then all of that is potentially a second channel. And if you can serve people not only chocolate cake lovers, but strawberry cake lovers and bagel lovers as well, then then write in the book that talks about the answer to the best chocolate cake, the answer to the best strawberry cake, the answer to the best bagel. Having those as separate books is far more beneficial when you think about overall marketing campaigns than trying to shove all of the bagel stuff and all of the strawberry cake stuff into a generic book about cakes. Or worse still, a book about that was originally about chocolate cakes, but now you're trying to shove in all of this other stuff. Does that analogy stand up?

Guest: Does that make sense? No. Yeah, absolutely it does. Yeah. I was just, I was thinking of different books possibly or that we could do or other subject matters besides cake. You were talking.

Stuart: So the florist one is one example. So we keep coming back to this. So sticking with that for a second, we used the examples previously of wedding flowers in Maine. I think it was the example that we were giving. So having, if you were a florist based in Maine Main, having one book that talked about wedding flowers and another book that talked about funeral flowers and another book that talked about how to enhance the value of your office by having fresh cut flowers in there. Another book about flower arranging. If you also ran a flower arranging class. All of those things are relatively standalone because although there's a crossover that they're all talking about flowers, the drivers for someone looking for wedding flowers is very difficult, different. Rather than the drivers for someone looking to increase the environment in which they work, do something about the office. We were talking about dentists before with the example that we were talking about the editing. So the particular dental procedures are also pretty different depending on what you're going in. For someone looking to trying to think of an example, but someone looking for a pain free solution to root canal surgery or overcoming fear of going to the dentist just for general routine work is very different from someone looking for teeth whitening or teeth straightening, invisalign, all that type of stuff, even down to like the day to day dental. The routine work that might be, you might be thinking that's a difficult cell because clearly there's a marketing drive or there's a, there's a desire for the straight teeth, white teeth, invisalign, teeth whitening, all that kind of things. The cosmetic side of things, there's quite a lot of passion associated with that. But there isn't a lot of passion associated with day to day dental work. And you could argue that one dentist to another doesn't really make that much difference. There's not that much that differentiates them. And again, this is potentially talking as an outsider. There might be a lot that differentiate them, but that group of people. So dealing with people who have a fear of going to the dentist and how to overcome that, maybe dealing with how to oral care for children might be an issue. Dentures might be another issue as well. So all of these, although they fall under the same dentistry umbrella, those are pretty unique and separate, separate funnels with separate drivers, the avatar, the single target market that you're talking to, each one is very different. So.

Guest: Well, I think that's what I mean, pretty much any. I mean, you know, you look at the clients we have. I was talking to this real estate guy today and, and he's like, well, yeah, I'm in real estate. Which, this is funny because I hear this a lot. Oh, I'm in real estate and I want to write a book. And yeah, that would, it almost scares me sometimes because that, that's the blanket statement. Okay, well, do you have a focus market? Do you have a target market? You know, are you, you know, do you specialize in condos in Miami beach or, you know, or waterfront property in Jacksonville or, you know, is there something that, that you. Do you really want to write that great big book about real estate? Because most people don't want to read that great big book, you know, that great big thick book on real estate. So let's, let's take it and, and those few things that you do really well or you're focused on and let's turn them into a few different books. And so that makes it easier for people to want to write a book, first of all, you know, then they can see that, the potential for people

Stuart: to want to read it.

Guest: Yes, want to read it, because that's just it. And the thing with this real estate gentleman that today that I was speaking to, you know, he's like, well, you know, he said, I'd like to do like a general, like getting started in real estate kind of thing. Okay, that's fantastic. That's simple, that's easy. But also, you know, my specialty is foreclosures and capital investment, you know, so. Okay, great. Well, there you go. You've got another book, you know, buying, you know, buying and selling foreclosed properties and, and raising capital. And it's another book, you know, so we kind of went through. He was a little more focused, more one of. I would say one of our followers, if you will, like, you know, really into Dean and. And knowing what's going on. So it was. He was a little more, you know, focused, dialed in a little bit better. So. Yeah, so. But there's so many. When you get those calls and someone's a dentist, you know, I. I like when someone really gets. Sorry, I'm hearing like a noise.

Stuart: Sorry, voices in your head again. No, Picking up on those individual areas I think is great because. Exactly. You said it makes it more beneficial and helpful when you're thinking of writing it because it gives you scope. So as you're listening to this, if you want to go deeper into that particular thought, then jump back to one of the earlier episodes of the book Blueprint Scorecard, where we talk about the mindset of choosing a single target market and that will help you kind of dial it in a little bit more. I wanted to talk briefly because we're running up. We're running up towards 40 minutes. So I wanted to talk briefly about the different types of serialization or the segmentation of how you can do it. We talked a lot about the kind of segmenting by market group and marketing funnel of how you might want to attract those people. But there's also the opportunity to segment on a kind of. On a linear journey of how people are moving through the process. Kind of like the 101 level of the book and the. The 202 level of the book and the advanced level of the book. So moving forward in terms of depth of understanding, so introducing the subject at the top level is great for people who don't have an awareness. If you're trying to introduce a new subject but going deep on a particular area or going into more technical, having more assumed knowledge, basically when you start writing that next level down or maybe even two or three levels down and depending on your own use case on how you want to use the book, then serializing in that way might be beneficial as well. So with the real estate investing, there's going to be a book that's the introduction to the subject. Assuming that people have got no prior knowledge, really introducing some terms and some concepts and a high level of what we're thinking about. But there's also some very technical levels to it, whether it's source of funding or the tax structure around organisations or how to put deals together. That level of depth to it and segmenting the books by competency if you like, for want of a better term, then that's also an option. We don't talk about that very much because we're typically dealing with people who are looking at top of the funnel stuff. So introducing the subject. But I think it is worth mentioning because it is relevant for certain people. But the only thing I'd suggest that people think about it in terms of is, as we've said with everything else, start with the job of work. Start thinking about how you're going to use this book or why you even need a book in the first place. And if you're not, if you're not selling an advanced course, if you're not looking to attract people who are advanced members of the community, then it's not necessarily useful to start including all of that in a book or writing a separate book on that subject at all because you're just adding volume, you're adding more words, but not words that necessarily move the needle forward for that particular funnel. Yeah, that's the separation that again, going back to that job of work and thinking about whether you need the separation at all in terms of what it's going to do is going to save you a lot of headache because I think again, it's very easy to get like with the editing, it's very easy to get sucked into this mindset of I need all this additional stuff. Where actually do you. And have you questioned that and what's the purpose of it? Right.

Guest: Yeah, that's. That's great advice.

Stuart: I think the only other thing on the segmentation thing that sometimes comes up is just kind of like the overall breadth. I'm trying to think of the, of an example to back it up, but maybe like the florist example and if there are elements of the business that you don't get involved in or maybe like a. What's the American term for ifa? The financial guys. CPA or financial advisor?

Guest: Oh, yeah, cpa.

Stuart: Those types of guys. That whole tax environment or business setup environment. I mean, I would imagine that if you start getting into the code, there. There is a million things that you could include if you wanted to competitively include everything. That's usually not necessarily worthwhile. So the only other thing that sometimes comes up when we're talking about it's a little bit more what should be included in the book rather than the serialization. But sometimes people will get carried away with the serialization and think I should include this and this and this and this and this. Whereas actually it's not worth it. You might have One person every five years that asks about this particular random subject, unless you wanted to really specialize on it. I guess what I'm saying is just because you could do it, just because you could include it or you could serialize around it and create a whole separate book doesn't necessarily mean that you should. Again, same premise, I guess, just go back to the use case and what you're actually going to use it for and what's the value?

Guest: Right. I agree. That's good.

Stuart: Yeah. Less is more often.

Guest: I think I agree with that. Yeah. I think that that's something. That's one of those things when someone first contacts us, they just really, I think sometimes can feel overwhelmed with. They have this idea, they have all these ideas, you know, and so one of the things we will guide you through and help you with is narrowing it down and pulling some of the most important subjects, you know, the focus. Things we need to focus on during, you know, when you're writing that book, that we don't have to put all of that stuff, if you will, in there, for lack of a better term. Stuff.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's just more stuff, isn't it? It's filler and padding if it's not supporting the goal.

Guest: Right, exactly. So focus. Put it where people want to read it. You know, the information people want to read. What. What's going to be most beneficial to your business. You know, those are the things I need to focus on, you know, versus 250 pages of words that people are not going to read. Yeah, yeah.

Stuart: So with that in mind, let's wrap it up a little bit and give people a couple of things to point towards. So the first one, as you're listening to this, if you haven't yet, head over to bookblueprintschool.com and fill out your own book blueprint scorecard. So across the eight mindsets that we've talked about in the past and continue to talk about now, the eight mindsets of a great book. It will help you assess at what level you are in each, and it will give you some pointers as to where you want it might want to put the focus. So that's the first thing. Bookblueprintscore.com if you want to be a guest, we're getting some guest spots slotted in over the coming weeks. So if you want to be a guest and we can talk specifically about your book, whether you're not. Whether or not you're a customer, we can talk about your book and the book ideas and its usage and all the types of things that we've talked about in the show. So head over to 90minutebooks.com forward/guest and fill out some details. And we're going to get some guest slots scheduled over the next couple of weeks. Great opportunity to brainstorm some ideas. And then last but not least, as you've already heard, to say, we're we're passionately and we passionately believe that the best thing you can do to get your book out there is to jump on board and do it with us and we can guide you through all of this. So head over to 90minutebooks.com get started or follow the get started buttons on the top of the page and then there you'll have the opportunity to get started just like the button says.

Guest: So that easy?

Stuart: Yes, it is that easy. Yeah. Yeah. So another great show. Thanks for telling Betsy. I will get this up in next day or so and speak to everyone in the next one.

Guest: Very good. Take care.

Stuart: Thanks, Betsy.

Guest: Bye Bye.