Your book's 'Job of Work'

Stuart: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Bookmore Show. Stuart here with Betsy, Betsy Vaughan. How's it going?

Guest: I'm fantastic. How are you?

Stuart: Good, thank you. We were just laughing before we started recording, talking about the computers being slow and in a slightly paranoid way, I'm hitting 20 different things to try and make sure this records in at least one of them. And Betsy said that she's got a slightly different problem that she needed to clean up her computer because all of the images that we save for the various different people that come through end up clogging up the hard drive. Which is fine because it takes up space, but it's not the end of the world. But with everything being interconnected now, it also means that lots of authors bio pictures come floating across the screensavers every now and then as Windows or Mac OS tries to be clever and show you share with you pictures you might

Guest: be interested in that could be dangerous. And some of them are just a little like, because my office is also where I am at night. I watch television and stuff. And so my fiance said, why? Who is that man? And why is that picture? Why are they all there? Really is kind of weird.

Stuart: Do you watch Seinfeld? I can remember years and years ago sending a poster to a friend of mine of it was the poster of George Cassanta sort of leaning back on the shade long. So he randomly received a poster of George in some underwear.

Guest: Dude, that's it. Okay, let's go back. First of all, I think every man I ever know, I've known can start quoting Seinfeld episodes like they have every single one of them memorized. That is such a guy thing. First of all, Dean does it all the time. Clips. Send me clips of y' all remember every episode.

Stuart: It's like a gospel. Gospel according to Jerry. I wonder how much exactly. Generational thing, though. So I'm 44 and was in the UK at the time it was the airing. So we were probably 12 to 18 months behind maybe. And it was one of those shows that it was on one of the lesser known TV networks at like 11 o' clock at night on a Friday. So it definitely wasn't tv, it wasn't prime time stuff like it was here. But even now, when you think about how long ago that was, at the risk of taking this into the old person's podcast, when you think about how many years ago that was, there's got to be quite a significant number of people now coming through who have never seen it. Although I haven't said that. Lucy's kids. So imi, the oldest is 19 and then down from there. But those guys have watched all of Friends. You hear people quite often a huge Netflix type hit.

Guest: I think because of Netflix. That's why all those shows have sort of come, you know, come back around, you know. But I think like my son's 20, almost 24. I don't think he would understand or appreciate a Seinfeld reference. But they're not big TV watchers either.

Stuart: Is it bad that I judge people harshly that don't find it funny?

Guest: Right. I find it funny, but like, I mean, I know that the man in my life will watch like there's nothing else on the 700 channels that we have. He will watch a Seinfeld episode before falling asleep. And I'm like, There are literally 699 channels that you could choose from. And all these shows I knew I liked.

Stuart: My true reason,

Guest: it's that it is that generational boy thing. There's a certain age group. But yeah. And then let me just say something else. I know we're off topic, but you call. You said George was laying on a chase.

Stuart: What, now you're going to put me under pressure to pronounce it? I said it fast last time so no one would pick me up on it. A chaise long, like.

Guest: Yeah, chase lounge.

Stuart: I think we're both saying the same things but in very different ways.

Guest: So lounge. O U N G E. Yeah, it sounds like you're saying chase long.

Stuart: So it's French. So I think.

Guest: Yeah,

Stuart: well, not intentionally. I think I've only ever known it said in that one way. But again, this being the random showdown,

Guest: the Brit says the proper way.

Stuart: Well, and ironically enough for anyone in Europe, the irony is that Brits absolutely don't say things with any correct European accent whatsoever. So I've got some friends I had some friends I haven't seen for years, but I had some friends who owned a snowballing school in France, like on the French Swiss border in the Alps there. So we would go across there quite often, but obviously the names of the places are all French or French Swiss or German.

Guest: Swiss. Right.

Stuart: So she was British, but had been across there for years and years. And we would regularly run into instances where either A, we couldn't quite decide where we were going to meet because I was pronouncing it in a completely wrong way, or B, we would work out where we were going to meet and then when I arrived, she would tease me mercilessly for saying it in completely the wrong way. So it's ironic now that we've got it the other way around.

Guest: Right. That's funny. Oh, my. Anyway, people are going to be entertained if we leave.

Stuart: We're laughing at ourselves if no one else is.

Guest: Exactly.

Stuart: Well, let's see something useful then. And the. The fact that I didn't intend for this to be a bridge, but I guess it works. We were talking about Fence being rerun and the fact that it's 15, 20 years later, but there's still a huge audience today that it was before. That's kind of reiterating the point that we talk about with books sometimes, that as the industry insider, as the expert, you might think to yourself, oh, what's I can't write a book, or I can't think of a subject to write on, or everything's been written about already, or why would anyone be interested in this? Because it's such basic understanding. But the truth is that doesn't matter because as I've heard, as we were just saying before, every day someone's born that's never seen Seinfeld. So there's always. It might not be new to you, who's been around for 10 years, but to someone else who's just starting that journey. This information that we're capturing, even if it has been presented somewhere else, if someone's interested in the subject that you're presenting and the question that you pose in the title resonates with them, it doesn't matter if there's 50 other sources. The fact of the matter is that you're in front of them at the time that they're interested and are trying to fill that gap and giving them somewhere to get some more information and lead on to the next step. So it really doesn't matter whether the information's been out there before or whether you think it's basic or whether you can't think of a reason why people wouldn't be going to other sources. The truth is, they're not going to other sources. It's your information or your potential information that's in front of them at that time. And like we said before, really don't undervalue the value of what can seem like basic information to an expert, but someone who's just starting that journey, it's. This is where they are in the journey.

Guest: If nobody gets anything else out of this, I mean, I have no idea what's going to be said in the next 30 minutes, but if nobody gets anything else out of this podcast, because I get approached so often with you Know, we, our clients are a lot of real estate, financial. We seem to be in a dentist industry pretty heavily right now. But let's just say, I mean, so many people said to me, well, this information is not new. This is, it's out there. Anybody can find it. And I'm like, okay, but you just want to put it. I mean, it is, it is out there. So why don't you give them something that is in your language, in your words, your thoughts, put it in front of them. Just, you know, people, people want you to put it right in front of them. People don't want to search for stuff, first of all. And so I, you know, I just had this, this conversation with a gentleman that we're working with and he was like, this isn't new. And now I'm hearing people are using my stuff and you know, and I'm like, what? Is it really your stuff though? I mean, is it really, you know, is it or it? And he's like, well, some of it is and some of it could legit be his stuff because of the wording and the language that he uses. But in some of these industries, I mean, how different is financial information? It's just a matter of getting it in front of someone.

Stuart: An IRA is an IRA is an ira. There's variations on the theme. But it's so funny you say that people can't be bothered looking for things. So why would I want to put this information out there? Because it's out there already and people can go and find it. I was introduced to Dean when we first met years and years ago through Ed. He was in Australia, Ed Dale. So I knew Ed because I was active in their forums. This was right back in the, in the early days of my kind of marketing career, doing things in this space rather than the kind of corporate IT history and in that forum at the time. So it was a form that kind of came. Came back to life after, after being offline for a while. It was a group of people who were not, not beginners. It was a, it was a paid forum. It was a, it was a relatively developed group of people, but still in that, in that short window of time that it was around and particularly active for I had the most, the whatever their reputation, karma type points thing where that they used on there had by far the highest count on there purely because I was in a place where I was really interested in kind of absorbing all of this information. So I didn't mind going off searching for it, but the majority of other people didn't or didn't want to or couldn't get around to it. So by being the person that aggregates that information, none of it was my answers. I was just going off and looking for it.

Guest: Right.

Stuart: Developing opinions after a while and. But that point of. If you translate that goodwill, that karma, that authority, that ability to start conversations, all of that came from just collating the information into a way that was useful for the people at the time and presenting it in the place that they were, which in this example was that form. And each piece of information was just an individual piece. But translate that to the book. It's you that's in front of them at the time. They're not going off and searching anywhere else. If you can provide them with an answer, if they're on your website and you've gone, opt in for a download that answers their question, if they're on their Facebook feed and they see your ad that presents them with the answer to the question they're looking for, then why not do it? The information's in your head. It's a way to group it all together and get it in front of them at the right time. It's. Yeah, those conversations, it does make wonder how much of it is just. Well, I think it comes down to two things. One is again, that we talk about every single time. It seems like the good thing about writing a book is the psychological benefit that it carries above and beyond what it actually is. This magic around a book, all of that is benefit. It is also all problem and downside because everyone gives themselves, paints themselves into a corner or puts all of these caveats about why they can't do it or why it has to be a New York Times bestseller or why it has to be this huge thing because they fall into the same spell. Oh, well, it's a book, so it has to be this. Forget that. Get all of the benefit without locking yourself in to the. To the baggage that comes around traditional publishing. So that I think, is one of the elements people are. Again, this is a book, therefore it needs to be this rather than no, I've got the opportunity of putting this into a book and getting all of the benefits to the outside world. And the other thing is, I think it's just an element of analysis paralysis people that their minds are fighting against doing the work or having the understanding to commit to doing it or to execute it. And then they're just looking for reasons for why it can't be done or it can't possibly be that simple because of this Or I couldn't possibly include that information because of this. Whereas in reality, just get it done.

Guest: Yeah, yeah.

Stuart: Talking about getting it done, then getting done.

Guest: Let's get her done.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah. So what we really wanted to talk about today is this idea of the kind of the main two types of books that we help people create. Not necessarily the main types of books, I guess, but the main jobs of work of what they do. So you'll have heard us talk before about the eight profit activators, the breakthrough Blueprint framework. And if you haven't, if you're new to the podcast or you're not familiar with it, then head over to breakthroughdna.com and grab a copy of the book. That's the opt in at the top there. This is Dean's flagship framework for think about business in terms of the before, during and after unit. I'm going to skip over this relatively quickly because I'm assuming that everyone knows it because we do talk about it so often and it is so fundamental to what we do. But the before unit, this is everything you do up to the point of a customer becoming or a person becoming a customer. The before unit breaks down into four of the mindsets. The first one that we've talked about at length is selecting a single target market. The second one is doing something to identify potential customers and that's where we talk about the books mainly. The third one is educating and motivating people over time to take a decision. And the fourth one is having a, what we call a mafia offer a way to get an easy way to get started. So rather than dropping people straight into the full service, what's the smallest step that you can take to get them to get going? So we're going to look at number two, number three today. That's identifying people versus motivating and educating them to take to take the next step. The reason I wanted to dive into this a little bit is because it's come up a couple of times as people are talking about the types of books that they want to create and a lot of it comes back to what's the job of work, what's the reason for creating it. So if you've got a known group that you're already working with. So for us, for example, we've got a list of people who've already opted in over time and the majority of of those people have opted in because they've requested a copy of the 90 minute book, which is our example of a profit activator. Number two book, a book that's purely designed to get people to raise their hand. So for that list of people that we've now got in our super signatures on our emails, we'll offer them something like the five book type formulas. The five book title book which talks about five different book titles that you can craft in order to create a book to aim at a profat for two or three audience. So two different books there, two different audiences that they're aiming for. And we'll go into a little bit more detail of what the difference between the two is. But does that sound good so far?

Guest: I think it sounds great because this comes up all, you know, some of these things come. We talk about titles a lot and, and sort of how to figure out how to come up with a title, you know. So I think this is a simple way for people to sort of break it down and, and help them come up with it. Is it a how to or is it informative? Is it, you know, are we questioning something? So yeah, I think that's be good.

Stuart: I think before we get started though, a word of warning to everyone going on what we just said, the kind of analysis paralysis type problem. We're going to share some information and some frameworks and some ways of thinking about it. But at the end of the day, if the choices do anything versus nothing or just whatever your current idea is, just get that out there and then iterate an update on it later. Then do that. Don't allow this to be a reason why you spend another six months trying to worry about whether it should be in this camp or another camp or fall under this category or another category.

Guest: It's always because we will help you with that. We'll help you with that.

Stuart: Yeah, exactly. And there's no wrong answers. There's no wrong answers. Something is always better than nothing. Okay, so let's dive into it a little bit. That being said, profit activator number two, identifying. Giving people an easy way to identify themselves as interested is typically the way that we talk about books. Most often it's the. Out of everything that you could do to identify potential customers is probably one of the best. And the reason it's one of the best is because it comes from a purely giving place. You're giving something of value, you can write it intentionally. The job of work of the book itself from the reader's point of view is to answer a question that they've got. But the job of work from your point of view is to identify those people who are interested from the whole of the population out there. So when you look at what some of the other things that you could do are to identify customers, you could go to a list broker and buy lists of people who fall into a demographic that you're interested in. You could run Google Ads that are intent based, so when someone types in a particular keyword, your ad comes up. You could run Facebook ads that are asking, that are more brand based, so asking people if they're interested in financial planning, then come in for a free consult. You could go to expos or conferences and and stand outside with a billboard or take a stand and a stall and try and speak to people who are geographically in a place where they're kind of self selecting. But a book is a, when we think about the cheese and whiskers analogy, it's kind of an all cheese way of giving something to people to start the conversation, to start it in a way where, where you've just added value, you've just answered their question, you've given them something that helps educate them. It's an easy way with no whiskers, with no kind of sales intent, conversion intent in order to raise it. So that type of book is all about giving, giving, giving, giving, giving. You don't have to ask for anything there because entirely by the nature of the fact that they've requested the book, it's done its job as far as you're concerned in identifying a customer. You don't then have to worry about trying to motivate people or convince people or give them every piece of information that you could possibly think of. It's not like you're asking for money for the book. Again, going back to previous podcasts about whether you should charge or not, the job of work is identifying invisible leads. And just the fact that they've requested it does that. So what's in it can then again just be amplifying that good feeling that they've got of you giving them the information of sharing with them the answers. You don't need to hold anything back. You don't need to make it too complicated, even keeping it relatively simple and straightforward. It's not a textbook. There's no test at the end of it. They're not separately getting examined on something. So you need to make sure they're at a certain level. Everything can be about starting the relationship in the best possible way. The other thing that that does, the kind of secondary effect, and I'm going to take a breath in a second, but the secondary effect is that it also makes it easier for other people to share that book, it makes it easier in the whole referral space or the whole complementary non competing, working with supporting organizations. It makes all of that more beneficial and more likely to happen because there isn't this salesy closing type intent behind the book. It's just pure information. And that whether it's asking existing customers to share the book with their friends or it's asking other businesses to share the book with their customers, all of that is more likely to happen when there isn't a strong sales intent in the thing itself. The thing that we're trying to do is capture email addresses, identify invisible leads so that we can then educate and motivate people in the next step. Not in this step. Makes sense.

Guest: Makes sense to me. Yes.

Stuart: I think that's something that we get. When I hear you talking with customers, when I'm talking with people, a lot of the questions that come up day to day, that is something that gets lost in translation a little bit. And it's not that this is an absolute black and white. It's either one or the other. Most books that we actually end up doing kind of blend the two and they can certainly be used in different context. And the conversations that we've had about the back cover copy and the call to actions and the next step, all of that do start making that transition into okay, well what should you do next as a reader? And depending on where it sits in your funnel, how you use it in the campaign, that can vary to the amount of. To how close to the close that actually is. But just in its purest form in the. Absolutely. At the beginning of profit activator number two, at the very first step of identifying an invisible lead, it can just be all about giving something because the book itself, the very fact that they've requested it, it's done its job. Because you now know who that person is.

Guest: Right. Yeah.

Stuart: I wanted to run through. We've got. And I'll link to it in the show notes and yeah, I'll link to it in the show notes. We do have a book that talks about different book titles. So it's the five book title formulas that generate all the leads you need. And this talks about the main five types of book titles that capture people's attention. And as the author of the book is passing through their stream of consciousness in whatever way you get it in front of them, these are types of titles that really stand out. So I wanted to, before we move on to profit, activating number three in book types that can kind of motivate and educate People to take the next step. I wanted to run through these five briefly and then we can see how these five kind of either sit in one or the other of the categories or they could bridge across both. So like I said, I'll link to it in the show notes. So if you haven't grabbed a copy of it in the past, then be able to grab a copy of it from there. So the first one on the list is the Name it and claim it type book title. So this is one where it's, it's kind of putting a stake in the ground to own a particular category. The example that we've got in the, in the report is Dave Ramsey's book Financial Peace. So as a category title, it's not a how to, it doesn't exactly explain what it does in the tin, but it's a very clear title that is claiming that space of financial peace. Now the book itself could be about retirement planning, it could be about debt management, it could be about investing, it could be about anything in the area of financial peace. But Financial Peace has a name. It isn't a word or a phrase that was owned by anyone else at the time. It's something that. It's like Breakthrough DNA or the 90 minute book. Those words didn't exist before they were coined as we coined them. And now because we use them so often and refer to them so repeatedly, it is that kind of tent pole around which lots of other things come out from. A couple of the other examples here are like Tim Ferriss the Four Hour Work Week or books that we've done the Two Week Divorce or the Adult Acne Cure. All of these things, these Name it and Claim it are ways to identify a particular thing, own a particular thing. So now let's look at whether it fits into a Profit Activator number two or Profit Activator number three book. Is this designed to identify invisible leads or, or educate and motivate people to take the next step. And as I said at the start, this is where it's not binary, it's not one or the other, it could be either. But just bear the framework in mind. So these types of books are probably slightly more 60, 40, I'd say, in favor of identifying invisible leads. So the nature of the title, it really stands out as something compelling to someone that's interested in that. So if I've got any interest in my financial security, something called Financial Peace is going to stand out. So me not knowing Dave Ramsey, it's not that this book is. It's not that this is necessarily motivated me to take a specific step more. It's identifying me as someone in the entire population that's interested in financial security. The same with the Adult Acne cure. Although this one's probably a little bit more grayer just because the word cures in the title, so it does suggest something to do. But even so, someone interested in adult acne if out of the whole population, that was me versus you, who's not interested in that at all. It's a Profit Activated two book that stands up and helps identify an invisible prospect.

Guest: So let's talk about that real fast. The Adult Acne Cure. If we took the. I mean, the Adult Acne cure. If we took cure out of there, it's. It's still. I mean, it would still be the same thing though, right? I mean. Yeah. And because that is a specific market right there. I mean, that is, you know.

Stuart: Exactly.

Guest: I have acne. I'm not interested in your book, but exactly. You're struggling. Yeah. And that's like, hey, I need that right now.

Stuart: And from a profit elevator, to standpoint, identifying someone out of the whole population who is interested versus those people who aren't. You're absolutely right. The fact that it is adult acne that is going to resonate with me as if I was someone that suffered from that. That would resonate because those words would stand out. The fact that cures in the title, that's the thing that it doesn't make it any less valuable as a Prophet Activated two book. In fact, it probably makes it more valuable than if it was called the Adult Acne Problem or the,

Guest: the.

Stuart: I'm trying to think of another example off the top of my head, but something that just sounded like it talked about the problem, but without a solution, even as a Profit Activator 2 book, the fact that it does suggest that there is a cure makes it even more compelling. So the fact that cure is in the title, that maybe bridges it into a profit iterator 3 book. So 100% relevant for profit iterator 2 may be slightly more relevant for profit iterator number 3 because it's got Cure the title. So if, for example, I knew that if I'd written this and this was written by Luba, if Luba had a list of people already, she'd been building lists over three or four years for skincare products, a subset of those people are suffering from adult acne. Sending this book as something that, that known group of people where they might already have some idea that libreoff is a solution. Sending this as a book that talks about the cure could be written in such a way that it was a profit activated three book. It was motivating and educating people to take that next step. So the whether it's a profit activated two or prophet three book is a little bit more about the content than the title. We're talking about titles here just because early in the process most people have thought about the title before. They've thought about the content in detail. At least when we look at a book blueprint framework, the title comes before the content. Because in that we talk about the content being one of the last things to do because it stitches together all of the other elements that we need. So the title, the single target market, the call to action, the next steps. So thinking about it as a profit activator 3 book, then educating and motivating people to take the next step, it's the content that will be slightly different there. The assumption is that we already know these people are interested in the subject. We're assuming they've to a certain degree already got some education around it. They've already read something, they're further down the funnel. So the content of the book, if it was targeted specifically to motivating and educating people to take that next step, the content would be a little bit more directed. It would be a little bit more, or rather a little bit less about the broader challenges and a little bit more about, okay, you should do this now and here are the next steps. And here's a little bit more of a push, a stronger push towards taking the next step. And taking that next step is to work with me in some way to migrate people into becoming customers.

Guest: I think that's a great explanation of the name and claim it.

Stuart: Yeah, the next ones and again we're going to the other ones will be a little bit quicker. But the difference between whether it falls into profit Illustrator 2 or 3 is really around intent. How you intend to use it in the campaign and knowing how you intend to use it. That's going from zero to identified or identified to a client. And again, the reason we're banging about this quite so much is that oftentimes people try and combine those two things together rather than trying to take them separately. And they're just more effective if they're separate. Okay, so the next one then is the just do it category. So these are titles like Think and Grow Rich, Stop your Divorce, Double your Dating, Catch him and Keep Him, Hypnotize your Husband, three Dress Drop three Dress Sizes, all of these things are very specific. And again, this one is the opposite way around from the last one. It's probably 60, 40 in favor of motivate and educate rather than identify. And again, they can be used for both. So it's not either or. But when we think about that title and the nature, assuming what the content is, the assumption is that it's a little bit more prescriptive. So if you're telling someone w dating, catching and keeping drop three dress sizes, the assumption there is it's going to be a little bit more specific than something more generic about weight loss or something more generic about income generation.

Guest: I think my favorite, I mean we've talked about this before, stop your divorce like that. I mean it's a specific market obviously, but like, I think that is such a great title, you know. Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

Stuart: This is it, you know, and that's a good example. So as a title, the suggestion is that there's some specific actions in there that you can take to stop your divorce. So if you had a list of people who were already on a relationship based list, a subset of them will be going through or facing divorce. So using it as a education and motivation book to move people towards your counseling solution, then stop your divorce and a book written that is a little bit more explicit would be a great motivation education tool. And the outcome at the end of these steps in the book is. And also if you need further assistance, then contact me for some for our consulting program.

Guest: Right, right.

Stuart: It also works as a profit activator 2 book. Having that out there as a let's stick with a Facebook ad example, pushing that into a news feed to people who are in a relationship and who have been married for more than five years, then having that book passing the feed is still going to do a good job of identifying those invisible prospects. But understanding that depending on the context on how we use it, whether we want to use it as a profit activator 1 or sorry, profit activator 2 or profit activator 3 book to just identify people or to move them along into some consulting that informs again, not just the title but the content of it and how we then go on to use it. Because the downside is understanding that it could be both and that it's not necessarily either explicitly is important. It's more about how you plan to use it, but it's at the extreme of the spectrum where it starts to stand out. So if you wrote a book that was called stop your divorce and it had a Couple of basic tips in there about don't be nice to each other and then said, but really you need to come in for counseling and here's my phone number. Come in for a schedule an appointment using that as a profit activator. 2. Book as identifying leads. Because of the strong sales intent, it leaves a bit of a. It could leave a bad taste in the mouth. As opposed to writing the book that was entirely focused on helpful advice, knowing that you're capturing the lead because you're identifying who they are and then following up with more additional supporting information and stuff that does start to educate and motivate people towards making a decision separating those two jobs of work. It just makes the book more effective at the job of work that you want it to do. Either you want it to collect leads or you want it to educate and motivate. If it tries to do both, there's just more of a risk that it doesn't do either as well as it could do. On the flip side, thinking about it just as a profit. 3 book, you've already got a list of 10,000 people who are having relationship problems. You want to write something that really motivates or motivates and educates them, compels them towards coming in for counseling. Then you can write something that actually starts off a lot stronger because you already know that you've had some interaction with them, they've already got some understanding, you've already got some kind of relationship with them. So you can just kind of amplify that a little bit more and go in for the harder hey, listen guys, you've been trying to do this for six months now. You're getting towards the you're having more relationship problems, not less. So let's cut the BS and you really need to cut to the chase and do this. So it's just that fit for purpose nature of it. Okay, so jump through the other two quickly because it's going to be more of the same book titles that fall into the how to category. So how to win, fence and influence people is probably like the most famous how to how to be the best barefoot skier on your lake or how to be the best bear fault on your lake. Carla, that was Lane's book that we did locally in Wins Haven. They had great success with that over a good number of years. How to get high paying consultants. Even if no one's ever heard of you. That was a book that Frank Kern did a while ago, how to sell your house for top dollar. These types of books, much more specific Very much a single purpose, identifying that single group of people. Again, where does that fall on our scale of whether It's a profit 2 or 3? It's probably a little bit closer than the others. Maybe it could really be either because it will come down to the content and how salesy you make it and what your relationship is with the people. But those titles, if you've got a very specific niche in mind, and if you've got a clear funnel of how to move those people towards making a buying decision to work with you, then they're great as identifiers, as profit number two, because it's very specific. And if the rest of the funnel is very specific as well. So there's a clear line for how to sell your house for top dollar. That's a very clear line towards okay, someone wants to list their house and I'm a realtor, list it with me. On the flip side, the educating and motivating, again, a title like that, you can go in a lot harsher, a lot more direct, a lot closer to the sale. You've got a relationship with them already. And then how to do a specific thing, you can be very bang, bang, bang. Here's what you need to do and the absolute next step is you need to do this with me. The last one of the five, just briefly then before we jump back into the others, is Information Gold mines. So these are books and this is almost one of my favorite, but it's almost one of the ones that we do the least because I really like the idea of bridging, of using data that's out there, but just presenting it in a different way. So Information Goal mines are books like the 2019 Social Security benefits Guide. Anything that is specific and has a time element to it. We did a whole show a couple of weeks ago about the time based nature of certain types of books and this can fall into it. So if you've got, if you're an expert in the field, that level of expertise you've got is valuable. It's a gold mine. There's knowledge that an outsider might find difficult to bring together. If you've got access to data that's difficult for other people to get hold of. Again, that's a gold mine that you sat on top of. If those things change annually or even doesn't even need to be that regular. But if you've got information that changes regularly, then the ability to update it regularly and present the latest set of information is even more valuable. And these ones are really, I think these fall Pretty heavily in the profit activator 2 identifying a visible leads camp because this is much more around. Here's a subject that I've got access to some knowledge on. You don't necessarily let me present it to you. And by virtue of the fact that you don't have this knowledge, this is probably going to be information that's pretty close to the top of the funnel. This is a new subject that you're learning about or there are changes this year for information that you haven't got from previous years. So here's the new stuff that you didn't previously know that falls pretty much at the top of the funnel.

Guest: So is this always a. Is it always, I mean, a dated guide? I mean, is it always. Does it have to be? I mean the examples we're giving are. But. And you know, I'm not a fan of the dated dated anything unless, you know, unless it is like truly somebody who's going to, you know, I feel like we get through with the book in July and the 2019 book is basically not useful anymore. So it. Does it need to have that talk about. Touch on that again real fast?

Stuart: Yes. So there's a couple of things. So I'm probably more interested in this than I am with other ones because I know how easy it is to update it year on year. So if we do get done with the book in July, then there is the argument to say, okay, well, come September and certainly come December or January, it's then immediately out of date because I know how quick and easy it is to make updates. That fact that there is an expiration on it doesn't bother me so much.

Guest: I get that because I know how easy it is as well. But I just think, is it not the next level?

Stuart: A lot of people, I think, don't know how easy that is because again, like we started off, they fall into this trap of a book is a big thing written on the stone, carved at the top of a mountain. It's going to be impossible to make any changes, which through our model is the exact opposite. It's super straightforward. Put that to one side, then let's forget about how technically easy it is to make changes. Then comes the validity question and the time question. If information never changes, then you artificially put on a date on it is actually a deterrent. It's bad in the sense that everyone out there is also going to know pretty quickly how, how pointless the date is. If they receive something and there's clearly no difference year to year, then it just becomes A I'm tripping over words I actually want. It's not deterrent but it becomes disingenuous or artificial. It's trying to. It's like fake scarcity versus real scarcity. I think most people these days have come across things where oh, I'll go to a website and it'll say there's only 10 places remaining when actually you go back three weeks later and oh, there's only 10 places remaining. So that artificial scarcity becomes the false nature of all, the disingenuous nature of it comes out quick. But if there is anything that does change, even if what changes is only relatively minor, then I think it does add value to it because whether it's data that changes so therefore the numbers are different this year or whether it's policies and procedures that change even if

Guest: that's changed, you know. Yeah, that's true. I mean I think if it legit things are going to change even if it is a small something and you are the person going to stay on top of it and change it then yeah, I think it is absolutely valuable, you know, because it's fresh and oh wow, this is the newest information. This is the 2020 information, you know. So yeah, verify them again.

Stuart: Going back to a lot of other people fall in the same camp, they don't want to make those changes. Whether they use a print model like us where it's easy to change but they just don't want to or it's an overhead or they just never get around to it. There's lots of reasons why they could change but they don't. But equally then a lot of people are stuck in the old model, the old publishing model of actually it's so expensive and telling you time consuming to write this book. I need it to be valid for 10 years because I never want to even think about this again for another 10 years. So the fact that other people don't almost makes it more of a compelling factor. The reason that you should when I think about a couple of the examples that spring to mind, we've got real estate books that talk about pricing guides for particular areas. So the Winterhaven Lakefront Homes pricing guide or the yacht pricing guides that we do for motor yacht listings, those have data that underlies that shows an underlying change. There's data in terms of the number and this kind of anecdotes changes in terms of market analysis and sentiment. So the 2018 guide to lakefront home prices or the 2018 2018. That's what I'm reading on screen the 2019 guide to flybridge Cruisers or to Sunseeker yacht prices. That's going to be valuable because of his underlying information. Things like the Social Security Guide or the immigration guides. The 2019 version of that, although the underlying legislation hasn't necessarily changed the interpreter interpretation of the rules and so stick with the immigration option. Kind of personally going through that a lot recently, knowing the 2019 version of the book, although the underlying rules haven't changed, but actually how they've been interpreted and some of the reasons for rejections and some of the things that you might not have been such an issue in the past, but are now hot issues. All of those things make it much more interesting that I would request the 2019 guide to fiance visas versus the guide to Fiance Visas. Yeah, those really stand out. And I think the timing issue is an issue. If you're doing this and you're expecting the way that it's running through is that this is going to come out in September, then writing the 2019 guide in September. Okay, well, you might want to reconsider that and either accept that it's going to have a shorter shelf life and you're going to have to update it, even if it's just updating the COVID within three to four months. Or in fact I would do that. I was going to say all the alternative is you could hold it back for a couple of months and then just release it in November because the 2020 guide in November is probably fine. But actually that's a stupid idea because getting something out there for two months, even if you collect one lead, the majority of people that we're dealing with and we always say the book isn't the product, the services are the product. And for most people, even if they went through all this process with us and just got one client from it from a lot of people that we deal with, that one client given us, there's some referral and the lifetime value of that client and their referrals is probably worth more than the effort of creating the book in the first place. If you only got one person out of it, it's still worthwhile. Okay, just for a change, we've running longer than I anticipated. So let's just touch briefly on wrap up with looking more specifically at profit activator number three types books. So we looked at the identifying profit activator 2 and identifying people from the whole of the rest of the planet. Profit activator number three is educating and motivating people to take the next step. We talked about it in A couple of these examples looking at book titles of how with if the aim of the book, if the job of work is in the funnel at profit number three stage. So you've identified these people already. Now you're just motivating them to take the next step. The nature of the book or the kind of leveraging the relationship you've got and being a little bit more direct with it, you can position it it knowing how it's going to be used. Scorecards are ones that come up quite a lot. So we work with a lot of strategic coach clients. The coach scorecard method is something they set up a couple of years ago, making the suggestion that everyone should write a scorecard for their business. As you're listening to this, you've probably seen or experienced our own scorecards. So we've got the bookblueprintscore.com and profitactivatorscore.com, which talks about the book blueprint framework and the profit activators framework. Those are really squarely in the camp of profit activated three books. I don't think we ever really use them at all as lead generation books, although they can work for that purpose. But I would say they're probably 70, 30 in the camp of it's a profit activator 3 rather than profit activator 2 book. Part of the reason is just the complexity of writing them and where they get positioned. So if you're in a situation where you're having to explain the concept and then present a scorecard, it's trying to do two things. You're trying to introduce an idea with a kind of manifesto type book and you're trying to evidence to people and motivate them to take the next step. So it trying to do two things is less effective than it trying to do one thing. So when you look at the scorecard books that we've got, there's really no explanation about the framework. So look at the 8 profit activator scorecard book. It doesn't really explain what the 8 profit is. It just presents the scorecard so you can score yourself against the Prof. Iterators. The expectation is that you've already read the breakthrough blueprint book or you're already well and truly familiar with Dean's framework and therefore you're just coming in to score yourself against it. And then, then the suggestion on the back of it is to take the next step. Some other types of books that fall into that category, I won't rehash what we've already talked about, but basically it's setting them up with the premise of, hey, look, you've already been on this relationship list for six months now. You know you've got a problem, it's not getting fixed, therefore you need to do this. And that might be that the content in the book is a little bit more higher level, it's a little bit more complex in its expectation of what you understand. It's a little bit harder to achieve. It's a 202 level book rather than a 101 level book. And the strength of the call to action, the okay, now when you really need to stop messing around and just pay me to work with you, where the expectation is that you've already got something of a relationship, you can position it a little bit stronger than that, that funnel. And again, it's not that it can't be used as a profit to an identifying tool, but with all of the other psychological cues being a little bit more around conversion, it just isn't quite as effective. It could leave a bad taste in someone's mouth if it gets very salesy, if that's the first time that they've come across you. So, all right, do those two make sense?

Guest: Make complete sense?

Stuart: I think again, as is always the case with most of the things that we say, it's never that it's one or the other, it's just here's some additional things to bear in mind when you're thinking about it. Not to the point of not doing it because you're overthinking about it. Something is always better than nothing. But this will give you an opportunity to refine it. And it's definitely the case that we've talked about how easy it is to make updates and amendments and later versions of your book. So you might have started off by doing something, but now you're a little bit more. You've got some feedback from the real world. You'll think about things in a funnel, in a campaign sense of where the book fits in. So it might be the case now that you want to revisit one that you've written previously and make some updates to it, or you've got one that's out there that's clearly serving Profit activator number two. So you're thinking now I should write the book that serves profit activator number three. Yeah. And of all of these leads I've generated, let's create something that educates and motivates them to take the next step.

Guest: Wow, that was good stuff.

Stuart: Alrighty. Looking at the clock again. I Was convinced that we would just be going for 30 minutes today and we're just passing 50.

Guest: Yeah, we had the whole Seinfeld conversation.

Stuart: That's true. Should start maybe introducing chapters into the podcast episode, which I'm not going to do that, but you can just skip past the intro and just get into the meat of it.

Guest: I think the intro is pretty fun. You might want to keep.

Stuart: Yeah, well, it keeps us coming back, so more. Right.

Guest: Okay, well, very good. I think you said at the beginning, like, don't let the idea that the title, you're hung up on the title on which category it falls into stop you from getting started. We do see that a lot. So I hope that when people are listening to this, they're like, okay, you know what? I have this idea. We'll work out the title and we'll work out where it goes. Where does it fall into later. So it's funny, isn't it?

Stuart: I mean, we were just talking about a particular book just before we started and someone's just come on board. We've been talking to people for. We've been talking to the chap for two years. I mean, it's crazy. Think about how many books could have been written or how many leads could have been generated in those two years. Even if it was the worst book on the planet, it was going to be more than one exact point.

Guest: Exactly.

Stuart: Okay, so let's wrap there. I'm going to make sure that the five book title formulas book is in the show notes. So this is episode 6, episode 60, episode 80. Sorry. Head across to 90minutebooks.com podcast and episode 80 and I'll make sure that that book titles formula book is in there. But really, as we always say, the best thing you can possibly do is just get started, whether that's by yourself or with us. To get started with us, just head over to 90minutebooks.com and follow the get started links. We can definitely help you dial in the idea of whether it better fits as a profit two or three book. But really the main thing is just to get started and get it out there.

Guest: Yeah.

Stuart: Okay. Thanks as always for your time, Betsy. Thanks to everyone listening and we will catch you in the next one.

Guest: Take care.