Beneficial Constraints

Stuart: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Bookmore Show. Stuart Bell here. And today, as we're closing in on the end of the year, I just grabbed some time with Betsy to talk about one of the book blueprint scorecard mindsets, its beneficial constraints. The end of the year is always a great time to plan for the year ahead, but also it's quite scary to look back and think about how fast the last 12 months have gone. So this idea of beneficial constraints really looks at helping us understand that sometimes less is more and how having those constraints allows us to get things achieved, which sometimes without that scope, constraint might drag on and lead us not completing things. So really there's the real and artificial constraints that we want to use to our benefit and help us get a book out there, build our business. If you want to read along as we're going through this episode, then head over to bookblueprintscore.com and you can complete your own scorecard. I really think you're going to get a lot from this episode, especially at this time of year. We're kind of looking down the barrel of. Of 2020 just before Christmas as we record this, and it's great to think about all of the possibilities of the year ahead. So enjoy the episode. I'll catch you on the other side.

Guest: Betsy Vaughan.

Guest: Stuart Belle. How are you?

Guest: Very good, thanks. How you doing?

Guest: Fantastic.

Guest: All in the Christmas spirit, right?

Guest: Exactly. Yes. I. I saw a few like, I don't know, they weren't really ugly Christmas sweaters, but they're Christmas sweaters. I didn't. I didn't buy one, but I thought I almost did yesterday. The audience listening. We had our holiday party at the office and I almost wore one and I thought, ah.

Guest: Oh, you did?

Guest: Yeah, I thought about it. Really? Oh, actually, Mike has one with like a reindeer on the front with a. With a Rudolph nose and then it has like the reindeer tail on the back. Have pulled that one out and just worn that. So, yeah, I think to keep in

Guest: character, I'd have to wear one with a Grinch on the front because I just get. So. It's just not a thing. I mean, I'm not particularly anti Christmas, but I'm definitely not a big holiday promoter.

Guest: Isn't it? Not that you're anti Christmas. Anti, anti Christmas. It's all the stuff that goes around it. Right. It's just all the nonsense that.

Guest: Yeah, I think it's anything that involves. Yeah, yeah, I think it's anything that involves getting in the way of. No, that's Fine. I mean, I'm sure Lucy would tell you I'm more than happy to do that. Particularly on pointless tech gadgets, I was gonna say, but, yeah, no, it's more the interruption to the flow of just getting on and doing stuff.

Guest: Oh, yeah. There's work to be done. There's things to be done. Yes.

Guest: Things more productive.

Guest: And I. Gotch. What are we doing?

Guest: So you can see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Guest: Are we still sitting at this lunch? Like, I could see yesterday, I was like, okay, we need it movement. I forgot we have to do.

Guest: Now it's time to go.

Guest: Right. Yeah, yeah.

Guest: I don't mind so much. I'm not sure what it is about it. Even that bit. I don't mind so much. Like, it's nice to hang out with everyone because you don't always. Particularly with being the team's pretty remote, so. Or spread out. So even that it meant so much. But it's just the. I think, as well as the risk of turning the podcast into a therapy session, I think it's where everyone has expectations or they project expectations that they have for other people onto you. That's the thing I've got the least amount of time for is anyone else's expectations of what I'm going to do.

Guest: I get that. Yeah. Yeah.

Guest: I mean, nothing talking about, you know,

Guest: this lunch and that lunch and, oh, can you bring a meal and can you bring a. I got a text today. Can you bring dessert on Christmas Eve? And I'm like, I don't want to bring a dessert. Like, just, you know, if you want me to bring something, let me bring what I want to bring.

Guest: Right. I barely want to be there at all, let alone instructions.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: Which may or may not be satisfactory when I actually arrive.

Guest: Exactly. So, you know, I said in my head I'd already planned something that was easy for me, you know, to do, so.

Guest: Right.

Guest: But I get it. This Christmas, I'm feeling like I. We had a. Again that one tense in a therapy session. But this morning, Mike said to me, I just want you to be, you know, happy for the holidays like you normally, which I do. I love to decorate. My house is all decorated and, you know, and the presents and stuff, but it just become. It feels like it's a little bit of work this year. And that's what I'm kind of.

Guest: Yeah, that's.

Guest: Yeah. You know, that's where I'm like, well, this is no longer fun. We should probably rethink this. I'm thinking just a vacation next year. No, you know, just go away.

Guest: Yeah, the gift of peace and quiet.

Guest: Exactly. Yeah.

Guest: Well, that idea of constraints on holiday kind of ties in with what we were going to talk about today.

Guest: Yes.

Guest: Desperately bridging back into something useful. So we were going to look at one of the profit profit scores, one of the book blueprint scorecard elements, which is beneficial constraints. So on our list of eight mindsets that we've got that we look at when we're looking at creating the most valuable book for a business, number seven is beneficial constraints. And I think the reason that that springs to mind now is because end of the year, typically people have a bit of a retrospective plan for the year ahead, maybe look at resolutions and that type of thing. So very, very, very often when we're talking to people, we'll talk to them year after year after year sometimes. And it can, it can be the case that the idea for a book is there, but the execution on getting it done isn't necessarily there. And part of those reasons is because people often approach it as an open ended, non defined or ill defined project with no real scope or constraints. So that's why it just tends to drag on and on and on and on. Or just as happens with a lot of things, the year goes by before you even realize it. So beneficial constraints is a great way of thinking of a way of narrowing down the scope over many different elements, but narrowing down the scope so that it gets done. So does that sound like a plan?

Guest: Yes, it does. It sounds like a great plan. So let's see, we can come up with.

Guest: Fantastic. Okay, so I was going to quickly read the mindsets that we've got listed down and as you're listening to this, if you haven't yet, head over to bookblueprintschool.com so you can fill out your own scorecard and measure yourself against all eight of the mindsets. But beneficial constraints. So at the lowest level, this is where you haven't really considered any constraints at all to the writing. You want to include as much content as possible. You might have all of the other elements dialed in so you know who you're talking to with the single target audience. And you've picked a title and you know where you want to lead them in a call to action. But there's no thought of how you could constrain that into a specific, a specific set of time or effort or attention or money or whatever, whatever element it is to tie in those other things that you have actually defined. So the first level, the most basic level, haven't even given any consideration to it at all. The second level is then you're focusing on the specific problem to answer, but you haven't clearly defined the scope of the content. So what not to include just as much as what to include. So you might have the outline defined, the purposeful outline that we talk about, but you haven't really tied it in to say, okay, within that outline, here's where I'm going to limit it. And also you haven't given yourself a deadline or haven't really thought of any reason to do it this year versus next year. So in the second level there we're starting to think about it a little bit more. We're starting to the concept of a constraint is there, but you haven't really defined it in any way. So the third of the four levels then is you have a clear scope in mind and a specific deadline. So the two main elements that kind of fall into the scope creep problem of drift, you've kind of thought about those two things. You've narrowed the content down to the things that you are and aren't going to include. That delivers on the promise of the title. It meets the outline to guide the person from the one from the start to the end. But you've also given yourself those additional constraints, really drilling down to the next level. And then at the highest level of this particular mindset, you really start with the end in mind. You know, the purpose of the book in terms of the funnel or the campaign in which you're going to use it. You understand and kind of internalize the job of work that this book is doing. So there's no mistake about whether it's trying to just collect as many leads as possible in as quick a time as possible and then just quickly take people into the follow up process versus you trying to get access to a particular group of people, or address a particular industry, or speak at a particular event, or use it for some media opportunities and speaking on local news like we were talking about in last week's show. So the highest mindset level of beneficial constraints is all of that is very clearly defined. So you've got a very clear and locked down scope because you know that any additional work outside of that job of work and purpose is really wasted effort or effort that could better be spent elsewhere. So those four levels, it's a great way of thinking about, because beneficial constraints, constraints is often thought of as a negative word rather than positive word. But in this, when you think about it as a way of making sure that something gets Done. Anyone with a project management background will be very aware of that type of thing. So even though you've gone through the other steps of deciding on who the target audience is, deciding on the title, having a purposeful outline so that all of these elements are very clearly in place without the beneficial constraints, there's still the risk of this scope creep, of drift, of not having a deadline, of having no real clear targets or reason to do it today versus tomorrow. And with all those things comes the likelihood that it will slip and slip and then we'll get to this show next year and still be in a situation where a lot of people listening will think, oh, yeah, I did mean to do that. So this is the things that are beneficial constraints is kick to kick to get that done as you're talking. I mean, we've said before on the show that a lot of the time it's you that's talking with people as their first kind of engaging with us. And we've spoken before about this, it's surprising how many people we talk to. And then we actually go back and look when the last time we spoke, it was a year or more ago. This idea of constraints in the conversation, does that ever come up or is it more? People just say, wow, surprisingly, a year has gone by and I didn't actually realize it, and here we are.

Guest: No, it happens quite a bit. You know what will happen in January, Stuart, is they we will be bombarded. I mean, every. I will have, you know, lots of calls in January. And there's those who are just ready to get started mostly because those are the people I've talked to, you know, last year or the year before, and they had that goal. But then some of them either wanted to try it themselves or, you know, those who I usually hear from in October, like, oh my gosh, I'm going to do a book this year. But they're, they're, yeah, definitely sort of across the board. People say, oh, time got away from me. Or again, there's certain things like, I know I want to write this book, I need to write this book, but it's that. But, you know, you know, I can't come up with a tide. All the things, there's all sorts of reasons, you know, why that they can or can't do it. And I think one of the most important things, I always ask this question, like, do you have a deadline? Oh, no, I don't want to do that to myself. And I think you're the person who needs a deadline, you know, because right and some people can do that. Some people need that pressure of, I have to have this finished by, you know, February 15th or whatever. So it's always interesting when people come back and come back to us in a year or a year and a half and say, wow, I should have done that. Why didn't I do that?

Guest: Yeah, I just remember quite. I can't remember where it was from, but years ago, hearing someone saying, I love deadlines is the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

Guest: There's a lot of truth to that.

Guest: I think that idea and that idea of deadline as a constraint, maybe the easier. Well, there's two main parts of constraints that are easy for people to conceptualize. One is the scope constraint of the amount of stuff that goes into it, and the other one is this idea of a particular deadline. I think the. The challenge with deadlines is that for the majority of us, as we're talking and listening to this, we're in positions that it can be difficult for external people to impose a deadline because at the end of the day, we're often the people responsible for the outcome. So if we don't do it, we're only really letting ourselves down. At the risk of sounding like a high school teacher, the. It's easy to come up with reasons and to justify why a time passes by. So I think the only way of knowing yourself and knowing that, okay, if I'm choosing that this is an important thing to do and that I should do it and I want to do it, therefore, if I don't do it, it's just because I haven't got around to it. Coming up with an external commitment that would add another element of pressure is maybe the only way of doing it. So there are lots of services out there. Like, I can't remember the name of them. One of them is called, like, sticks or something like that. But it's this idea of an escrow account that's arbitrated by a third party. So if you. If I was to say to you that I'm definitely going to do. I'm definitely going to do this thing, maybe we should have the. Yeah, maybe we should make the commitment of. In 2020. We're definite. Record a podcast every week. So we. I would commit that. I would commit that to you along with a dollar amount and then a charity or an organization which I particularly dislike. And then this money would go into the escrow account with the payment details of the organization that I dislike. And then you, as the third party, would be the arbiter of truth at the end of the period. And if I did make it, then that money would be returned. And if I didn't make it, then that money would automatically go to despicable charity. So there's a lot of external services like that which are kind of the stick side of the carrot and stick argument where you can almost give yourself a painful outcome if you don't do it, which might be more painful than actually doing it in the first place financially. It's interesting that they then add the extra step of, well, money will go to something that you hate as well, because oftentimes you can, particularly if you think that that money's been paid already. If it goes into an escrow account, then it's out of your account. The already been struck, the money's already gone. So if it was just the money, I think a lot of people would just write it off. But the fact that it goes to something that you don't like, Distasteful. Yeah, that kind of adds an extra element to it. But even with those things, I'm not sure that as you listen to this, I'm not sure if cash or even going to a bad service is a bad charity, is, well, I guess not a bad charity, but a charity you don't personally like, that still might not be. Yeah. From the perspective, from your own perspective, that's going to vary person by person. But as you're listening to this, I'm not sure whether that even would be enough of a motivator. But some other things might be external commitments. So I think for a lot of us, cash is one thing. I mean, it's not. It's easy to justify to yourself wasting cash on something wasted. And even the charity thing is easy to justify saying, well, I don't like that charity, but someone else does and I'm sure they're doing good in some way.

Guest: Yeah, right.

Guest: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So one of the other things might be an external commitment to something public. So our name and reputation is usually more valuable than just the cash argument. So making a commitment to speak on stage based around this particular subject, to do an event to tie in with a workshop or to tie in with someone else's effort, if it was a joint project with someone, to say, okay, well if we do this thing, you bring whatever element you bring and I'll bring the book element in which we can frame it all around, then having personal commitments is often much more of a motivator than something else. And that can be tied in with the actual business Benefit that we're going to get from it as well. So if you can have at the beginning of the year, it's often easy to find calendar of events for other organizations. So if you were looking for a small business bureau or a chamber of commerce event three, six months out from now that you commit to speaking to, there's many. What's the name of the. The Business Expo events? There are some big events like that. Yeah, Small Business Expo. They do multiple events throughout the city. Getting a booth at that place, volunteering to be a speaker, even doing something at a school or college as an alumni piece of work where you're using the book as the. As the main talking point, tying all of those back into the business opportunities of having it done, of matching it up with a product launch or a workshop that you want to run or a speaking event or onboarding new staff or anything that you can do to amplify this constraint idea. Kind of build up a lot of things around a particular date that really means that it's not just one thing that you're losing, but actually six or seven dominoes will fall over if you don't do this. Then all of that adds this idea of a constraint, a commitment, but with a beneficial outcome because it means you get it done.

Guest: Yeah, and that's true. And like I said, I ask everybody before they come on board an event. Oh, oh, yeah. You know what? We have that seminar that we're going to do, you know, in three months. So yeah, I'd like to have it sort of reminds them like, oh, I can use. Even if they weren't thinking about using the book, like, oh, I need to have this finished. But I. We find the person with a deadline is an easy person to deal with. You know, it's their focus or dialed in. They stay on track, you know, and then they really, you know, get it finished versus somebody who's like, nah, I'd like to get a finish, you know, first or second quarter, you know, kind of thing. Well, that becomes third or fourth quarter, you know. You know, it's sort of third or fourth. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So, so, you know, having that deadline, I think that, that they don't want to be pressure. So I don't want someone to say handed to book in four weeks, though it has happened, you know, but you know, a realistic time frame, they need it, you know, and like you said, there's so many potential missed opportunities, you know, oh, I am going to that seminar or I am going to that conference and I can have it here and you never know who you're going

Guest: to miss once it's done, it's done. So that opens up, it's an asset and a tool that opens up many of the doors and opportunity further down the track. So anything that you could do to kind of kick yourself up the backside to make sure that it gets done. You were talking there about four weeks. I mean that's the idea of, that's when it goes from beneficial constraints to kind of damaging constraints that really causes problems, problems right across the board. You were saying there that as we're talking to people and, and they realize things that hadn't particularly realized before. I think that's one of the benefits of the scorecard is it asks those, it forces you to ask those eight questions which are really fundamental to using this as a tool to build your business in a way that you might not necessarily take the time or effort to kind of take a moment and answer those eight elements as comprehensively or in a joined up exercise if you hadn't have gone through the scorecard. So even if you've got here we've done previous podcast, podcasts, podcasts, talking about the mindsets and even if as you individually listen to them and think, well yeah, that makes sense, it's obvious I can think about that. I don't need to go through a scorecard, but just to take that time and effort to go through as one exercise and just think about that one question in isolation. It's not that this is rocket science or magic secret formula, but it does really get you to sit down and think about it in a way that you, quite often you wouldn't do without taking that dedicated time, the time constraint elements that, that we were talking about and having the, having something that's sensible and stacking those sensible things definitely then counters against the not sensible way of doing it. So this is where any good idea can get, get corrupted into a bad idea and piling on a, A, an unworkable amount of constraints, there is a limit to it. So whenever you're thinking about what is the beneficial threshold, it's kind of like the minimum or maximum effective dose idea. There is a range in which it makes sense and a range in which it doesn't make sense. So just kind of bear that mind, bear that in mind as you, as you think about time as a constraint. Okay, so the other element then is content constraints and this ties very closely with the outline, the purposeful outline that we've talked about. But I think the constraint element of it is Something slightly different. So having a purposeful outline and giving value driven content, both of those are ideas of adding stuff to it and the stuff you should include. So the constraint really is then looking at the flip side of that and what should you exclude and where do you need to draw the line? Really talks to the kind of black hole or endless rabbit warren of Ryan, if you don't think about what shouldn't be included and just think about what should be included, because what should be included is kind of what could be included, and that is everything. So if you've gone through the steps of the scorecard previously, you know who you're talking to, you know what it is that what the promise of the title is, the thing that you want to deeply but narrowly answer, you know where you want to lead them, you know what their motivations are and what information, what content is valuable to them. All of that helps to define everything that should be excluded. And this is really just a exercise in discipline of saying, okay, I need to not write about that. I know that as an insider to this business, if I start talking about choosing a title and the importance of title, then what seems like a straightforward question of just picking some words, does this sound better than that? Is really. That's the tip of the iceberg. All of the elements under the water are things like who is it we're trying to resonate with? What is it that motivates them? What's the. You might have heard Dean in other podcasts talking about this idea of a word cloud. What is the language, the words, the terminology, the tone that is specific to the user in this context, and what. Why is this particular phrase more important than that? So if we just come in and talk about a title in isolation to those things, then we're not really doing as good a job as we can do the same with creating all of these elements around the constraints, knowing very clearly the subject or the question that we're trying to answer at the kind of 101 level, but knowing that we could be Talking to someone 20 levels down about all sorts of other things that are still relevant, but not on that immediate. Not immediately answering that question, thinking about that a little bit more is just as valuable as think about what should be included.

Guest: So we talk about the. Oh, sorry. When we talk about the content constraints, I think, I think when I, when I look at the. When you look at the blue, the scorecard, oh, you've got your target, you know, audience, and you have a great title and you know, subtitle and you know, you've got a good call to action. People. I find quite often that there's a. They want to include everything. I mean, they just want to. They. They have, you know, 100 ideas in their head and they want to cram all this into, you know, a book. And I think that's one of the most difficult things that I, that I sort of have to combat with someone is don't. Don't, you know, give them good, valuable content without giving them everything, you know, And I think that's when people start to trip over their feet, you know, because. Oh, okay, well, yeah, this is my audience. But they need to know all this. They need to know these hundred things, you know, or whatever that that number is. And, you know, and I said, well, my biggest thing is giving it. Giving them all of it. They don't need you. You know, if you give all the information, you don't need it. But I think people really struggle with that. Again, they may come with all the other things look good on paper, but

Guest: that's that point that you. That point that you mentioned there about having. About not giving everyone everything because why do they need you? I come to it from a slightly different perspective and it's so interesting. And this actually is a subject. We could do a whole show just on this. But it's. It's less about them. It's less about holding information back because then why do they need you? Because at the end of the day, we talk about creating books and this is episode 90, so we've got 89 other episodes talking about. So we've given pretty much everything that we can give and we've even put beneficial constraints before. So now we're talking about things twice. So we've given as much as we can possibly give. There's still. People need it because it's easier if you can do the service for people, if you can get them the results that they want. That's why people want to work with you, because it's better. But what is a very relevant point is they don't need it now. Like if you were. A college course runs over two or three years because there were building blocks going from A to B. You don't try and give all of the college course information on the first day, or you don't have a lecture that starts and then continues until you've delivered everything all in one go. So I think it's more about overwhelm and thinking about the stepping stones in a process to get someone to the point that they're Happy and comfortable and know like, and trust you enough to do business with you. The stepping stones. Well, we only need to know this today. You don't need to know the step five steps down on the first step of the process. So I think it's almost more there. It's not overwhelming people and, and yeah,

Guest: that's true. You know, I think that's true. It is. I think and sometimes depending on, on if, let's say we're speaking about someone who's, you know, the financial. You're probably hearing everything going on in my house right now. So the, like a financial, you know, look at a financial person. That kind of information to someone who's not in the industry, you know, is extremely overwhelming. And, and I think that's what we hear from some of our financial guys. You know, they tried to, those guys do try to give just enough information so that not to overwhelm, you know, the potential client, you know. So, yeah, I think, I think, and

Guest: it's interesting, this almost comes back to the problem that we're almost demonstrating our own problem because there are so many nuances and levels that kind of add to what is enough information and what's too much information, that it's very difficult as the insiders, as the people talking about it, knowing, being able to see all the picture. It's very difficult to know where the line is. I mean, to a certain degree this whole conversation could be, hey, give yourself beneficial constraints, use the psychology of less is more so that you don't kind of write yourself into a hole and find it very difficult to just keep at writing more and more and more and more. Just decide before you start what is the correct level of information to share and then just share that. Don't find yourself going on and on even in this conversation. So the financial advisors, very often they're at the other end of the spectrum. They're not doing it off, they're being too superficial. So that's just as much a problem as going too deep. Understanding the breadth versus depth element of constraint. Often people are writing too much because they are going wide. So it's not so much that it's going too deep and sharing the information 10 levels down, but still on that particular subject, quite often it's, well, here's the 10 levels of this particular subject. But actually you also probably could do with knowing this thing over here to the left and this thing over here to the right. It's, it's such a, it's such a getting to this point in the conversation. It's such an interesting demonstration of exactly the problem. If we were writing, if we were recording this as the book, we should have stopped 10 sentences ago. Now it's fine in podcast form, obviously, because people are just listening to this and it kind of is just additional information in the background. And hopefully, as we're talking about some of the broader constraints is triggering people to think, oh, yeah, that's what I might have done had I not thought about it. Or that's what I've done in the past. But that's where it's fine in the podcast, but not fine in the book format. This is why people saying, I'd love to use a. I've recorded this talk that I gave from stage, or I've got this webinar content. Can we not just use that? The problem is that it's not all the challenges. It's not fit for purpose. So where it's perfectly fine to speak more broadly in a podcast. If we were just trying to take this episode and turn it into a book, I wouldn't be as good as record book thinking about the constraints beforehand. And when we're writing the book and we get to the beneficial constraints chapter, okay, we know we need to just talk about these things and not start talking about people using webinars.

Guest: Right, right, right.

Guest: But it's so interesting, that level of. And going through the scorecard and thinking about these elements. It's. That's when the value is. Because this type of conversation, you wouldn't have this just going into it. You might think to yourself, okay, title content, call to action. I know that it needs to be specific and leads people through, okay, go. But without thinking about this additional element now of constraints and how you know where the warning signs for drifting off onto a tangent as far as the book goes, without having gone through the scorecard, you might miss that to get the podcast back on track then. So those two constraints, and there are many other constraints as well that you might want to put into it. So, like the time of day that you've got to write, whatever the work schedule is, depending on what's coming up there, you might know that, okay, if we're a financial advisor firm, really, this time of year is challenging because everything's happening this time of year, whereas in the summer, we've got a lot more time. If you're a lawn care business, then the winter is maybe a better time of year to do something than the summer, for obvious reasons. So all sorts of other constraints we've talked about, the two big ones but don't let that limit whatever you think of. In fact, it might be an exercise to go through and just take 10 minutes and write down as many things that could be a constraint as possible. Take that exercise of just dumping it all onto a piece of paper and then separately as an exercise, kind of cross reference that with the book that you're planning to write and think, okay, well is this a real constraint and is it beneficial and how can I lock it down to make sure that it gets done?

Guest: That's good.

Guest: Yeah, yeah, I think it's definitely worth, worth doing that. So the other exercise that's worth doing as well is around. So the time. The time one's obvious, I think is straightforward, but the content one. The other exercise that you can do is think about it almost like, I don't know if you ever like an AdWords campaign. So an AdWords campaign campaign, you kind of pick the keywords that you want to target, but you also pick the keywords that you want to exclude. So thinking about all of the phrases that are relevant to your business to exclude is an interesting exercise because it forces you to go that one level of deeper. Everyone can come up with 10 phrases to include off the top of their head because it's their business. Yeah, the list of 10 phases to exclude is a little bit more challenging. It's not really difficult, but it's just not as front of mind. So if we've established that we've gone through the scorecard, we've picked the subject of the book, we know that we want to answer one question as, or a narrow set of questions as possible, but not go wide. Because people can always go wide when they're in the follow up, when they're looking for more information. So knowing going deep, then go through that exercise of saying, okay, in chapter two, I want to talk about this particular element of it, but if I find myself starting to talk about X, Y or Z, then that's outside of the scope. That's going wide, not deep. So as you've already gone through the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, the fifth mindset of a purposeful outline, as you've already determined what you want to include, then as part of this constraint step, going through and saying, okay, for those five chapters, here are the words that, here are the red flag words. I want to be careful of that. I don't go outside and start drifting down that because that's a separate subject and if it's important, then I should include that in the follow up and not include it in the book in the first place.

Guest: I think that's a great idea. I mean, really and truly, I don't think I've ever thought along those lines. It's always what should be included. You know, we're so focused on that. But then thinking about what needs to be excluded, that's a great exercise for people to do.

Guest: And I think, because we're always thinking about what. It's always within this creation mode and the creation mode is adding, adding, adding, adding. Because that scene is the biggest job of work. It's almost like the book itself. I mean, this is why we go through the exercise of doing an outline with people and talking to them. Because as we're helping people create them, we're naturally doing some of these other steps. Because this is part of our internal stuff. We don't have to have the conversation with people about beneficial constraints because from a time base we're following up with people, trying, okay, carry on. If you don't lose momentum because it's difficult to get started again. And from a constraint space, we're naturally doing this because we've got a fixed amount of time that we want to record in, or there's a window at least. And we're doing the outline with people we know our own process. So we're naturally building in some of these constraint conversations. But I mean, that's almost one of the things that I would say to people, whether or not you're working with us or trying to do it yourself is just turning up, turning up on the call. And the actual recording of itself should be the everything is known already. It's the execution of the plan that's already been defined. And as much time as you can put into those prior steps, almost the easier it is. And constraints is one of those things that's the most dramatically different. If someone turns up on a call, having gone through all of these steps and done some additional work and put some thought into it beforehand about what they're going to say and what they're not going to say. Keeping in mind the call to action and knowing where they're. They're guiding people so that all of the words that come out of your mouth are fit for purpose words and do the job of work that is night and day different from the occasions that we get where someone joins us for the outline, goes through that and then thinks about it. They look at the diary and think, oh, in 10 minutes, I need to jump on this call. Well, that's fine. I know my subject. I'm just going to Talk about it and then try to do it on the fly. Not that that's completely unsuccessful, but it's a very different picture from those two cases are very different.

Guest: So very true.

Guest: I don't want to over commit or put up a thousand dollars to a check. Sorry I walked away from my computer.

Guest: I know you did.

Guest: I was kind of drifting away and thinking about possibility. Um, yeah, so, so I was saying, not that I wanted to put any, any money on the line for this commitment I'm about to make, but one of the things that we haven't done is we've got the, the scorecards. The, the, the people can follow through and do that themselves. So as a reminder, go to bookblueprintscore.com and do it there. But for anyone who has done that, we've obviously we know who's completed obviously because they submit the, it's an online form that's filled in and then you'll get an immediate response back with, with some ideas. But what we could do in early next year is then create a follow up for exercises for each of the mindsets. So if we talk about it quite a lot, but we don't specifically give people exercises, but that might be useful. So for anyone that's thinking about doing it themselves, here's the scorecard. This will get you thinking about it, but then additionally we can follow up in January with a couple of specific exercises which, which you may or may not have done already when you were going through it by yourself. But yeah, that might be a good thing. Yeah.

Guest: Yeah.

Guest: So I mean, I guess we're coming up on time and coming up on time but as, as an exercise, if you haven't done your own scorecard, then head over to bookblueprintscore.com and that will take you through the process of answering, presenting you with the stages for the eight mindsets. If the easiest way to get it done with all of the constraints in place for you, and I was guiding you through the process is obviously to get started and in there we've got a show that's in the pipe for next week anyway. So the next time we record it will actually be released next year and it'll be interesting to feedback and see how many of those conversations we've had of people who are getting started now where we've talked to in the year before. So if you are as you listen to this run up to Christmas, the opportunity to get head over to the get started pages on 90minutebooks.com and jump on board and make sure that we're not here next year having the same conversation about it not being done.

Guest: Okay, good.

Guest: Was there anything talking for a little bit towards the end there. Was there anything that we haven't talked about that you wanted to raise?

Guest: No, I think we're good. I think we've got it there.

Guest: Fantastic. Well, in that case, thanks again for your time, Betsy. We'll talk, obviously, but have a fantastic holiday. And for everyone that listening just again, thanks for listening. Over the last year, 2019 has been very exciting and 2020 seems like it's not going to slow down any or be any less exciting. Lots of opportunities, lots of calendar based opportunities to get ahead of the curve. It's an election year. There's all sorts of peculiar things going on in the UK at the moment. So kind of globally there's going to be a lot of change and change, whether it's for good or bad, gives opportunity.

Guest: Absolutely.

Guest: Yeah. 2020 is going to be exciting.

Guest: Very good. All right, look forward to that.

Guest: Fantastic. Well, thanks guys. Head over to the show notes. There's going to be a couple of links and things. 90minutebooks.com podcast and this is episode 91. Last time, head over to bookblueprintscore.com to do the scorecard. We'll be follow up with people who do that a little bit more directly in the new year. And as always, if you've got any questions, then just shoot us an email to podcastightyminutebooks and we'll be here ready to answer them.

Guest: Very good.

Guest: Okay, thank you. We will catch you in the next one.

Guest: Take care,

Guest: Sam.