What we saw in 2019

Stuart: Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart Bell here and great episode today and it's recorded with Dean. We did kind of like a year in review just recording this in between Christmas and New Year, so thought it was a great opportunity to pick Dean's brain. Take a look at what kind of trends have changed over this year, what things were still pretty bullish about and the experience we've had dealing with people over the last 12 months. Some really interesting insights here, particularly in kind of the psychology, interestingly enough, the psychology of how people perceive requesting a book versus taking another action and what we can do to make that as beneficial as possible. So great episode. Really looking forward to you hearing this. Some great insights. And I will speak to you on the other side.

Guest: What do you want to know

Stuart: the secret? What I want to know isn't that a movie that I can't make a reference to? That's terrible.

Guest: I don't know.

Stuart: We should move on with something more productive than me trying to guess at movies.

Guest: I can't remember. I did grew up in a whole other country, so there's that With a completely separate language. That's true.

Stuart: So what I thought we would want to know today is a year in review of books. So yeah, I thought that might be quite interesting. What sparked the idea is obviously we're at the end of the year, so that's one thing. And then another thing is on Instagram, quite a few of the ads I've seen recently are for people using books in various ways and a couple of different book type services. But a lot of them are talking about books in maybe a traditional sense of publishing and best selling and that type of thing. Yeah. So I thought it might be interesting to talk about the changes that we've seen this year because that definitely seems to be less of a thing than it was this time last year. This time last year, maybe lots of people are talking about bestsellers this time. The reason the ad stood out is because it's the first one for quite a long time that I've seen. So yeah, thought that would be interesting.

Guest: Well, you know, the year in review in books has been very interesting because, you know, there's a lot of things have happened, actually a couple of notable things like, you know, people who are traditionally using webinars as a front end lead generator and, you know, finding that the cost of those leads is, you know, a. What they thought was a reasonable amount. You know, some people were paying seven or eight dollars, some people as low as Five or six dollars, but very rare that I hear that low a price. But most people would be in the $10 range or so for a webinar registration. And in one notable, like one that really stands out that we did actually on the fly while we were in Amsterdam was this gentleman who was there, young guy who was running very profitable webinar campaigns by doing it where he would spend, you know, $10 and, or €10, sorry just over €10 to get a webinar registration. And they were converting those fairly profitably. And we switched while we were there at the event. So we're there for three days. We talked about it on day one. He was a fast action kind of guy. We turned everything around, started offering book to the same, you know, in the same ad, replaced register for the webinar to download this book and, and turn and got the cost from just over €10 to €1.18. Or what do you, what do you call €1 18?

Stuart: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Guest: Equivalent. Yeah. So €1 and 18 cents. And that the thing is that often people are reluctant to do that because people think, well, people who come to a webinar have more skin in the game or they're more committed. And what it really means is that you're just getting forced consumption. Right. And that's, I agree with that 100% that that is what you want, but there's nothing stopping you from. And this was, this is the path that we take is offering the book on the front end and then immediately inviting people to the webinar or immediately just going right into playing the webinar. That's the first thing they see. And so we've seen that happen now, you know, again and again that I've got so much evidence of this being the way to go. I love it even for, even for myself. For our stuff, you know, I just launched a new book called the 50 Minute Marketing Sprint. And our, you know, that cut our lead cost in roughly half from the, from the previous control book. You know, so we're getting up lead book opt ins in the two to three dollars range and the, you know, and that makes a big difference when you're, you know, even I look at it and our, you know, our thing, I was happy and everybody's sort of in awe when you tell people you get them for $4, you know, or under $4 and then you go to get them for a while there, you know, we were getting them at, you know, under $2. And then I kept raised the age limit and refine the Audience even better. And we're now at, you know, still $2.50 kind of thing for our ideal audience, you know. And that makes a difference.

Stuart: Yeah, that whole thing about the. The two points to that, the cost of the traffic in the first place and the ability to open up way more. Way more conversations. Price. And then the idea of separating out that. Collecting the details from people. So you've got that for the long term versus going straight for the offer. And although the now people might be more now, or you might see them as more now in the original plan, the opportunity to talk to the people who are now later and not have to reacquire or repay for those same eyeballs.

Guest: Right.

Stuart: The combination of those two is astronomically different in terms of cost.

Guest: Yes. That's the thing. That's my. Look at it. That I would much rather pay $2 today for a lead who might not buy for a year, but I get to email them for free for a year, rather than pay $10 for somebody who's, you know, more inclined. Don't even know that that's true. But perceptually more inclined to buy now and then have to pay $10, you know, again, later, again, to reach them. It's free essentially, to educate and motivate them. And that's what makes a big difference, is the asset value of the list of unconverted prospects, the people who have not yet bought. The goal would be that every year that list gets bigger and bigger. I look at that. That's our primary asset. When you and I were talking about that, when we were doing some of our planning, our primary asset is our. Our lists, you know, our main lists of the. The real estate all, the realtor side, all the entrepreneur side, and. And the book side. All of those. Those three things are the primary assets, and they've all been gained by somebody downloading a book in some form or fashion.

Stuart: Yeah, that idea of the people's concern about not wanting to stop what they're doing because it's working and it seems to be effective. But that idea of going from a different opt in, a book, opt in straight through to the same offer that you would make anyway just seems like the perfect blend of the two. If you're concerned about what the change might mean, then this is the minimum effective change that you could possibly make in order to get the most bang for the buck and build the lead, but then still immediately go into that same funnel. I was just talking to some of the guys I worked pretty closely with. Financial advisors are doing the traditional or common postcard to events to offer after the event, that type of approach. So we were kind of split, testing the book opt ins and the first one to go in January. But the follow up sequence there we were talking about having a couple of steps in the sequence to kind of move people towards the event. But talking today, I think changing that again so that we immediately go to the. What would have been the original offer, the event offer, no need to put additional things in, put the additional things in after and then cycle back to it. Rather than the thinking about this as a funnel, a campaign where there are many steps before you actually get to the.

Guest: No, no. I mean the fact is, listen, if you are. This is what I say to people. What's amazing, right? And we've done it with, you know, we've done it very famously with print ads. You know, people doing workshops or seminars. You know, I think about Maltin as a perfect example, Schneider the doing stem cell seminars and our workshops and running full page ads in the, in the Louisville newspaper and you know, getting 20 or 30 people coming to the workshop and then switching to getting a book. But now getting, you know, 80 people coming to a workshop and building A list of 1200 people is a, is. Has been a big, big win. And that is the exact same model here. What I say to people is it's not like we're looking, it's not like we're getting a completely different class of people. It's just that we're getting that. You know what I mean? We're fishing.

Stuart: Yeah. It's the same pond.

Guest: The same pond is it's all of the readers of the newspaper or it's all the people, all their news feeds in the audience that you are, that you're focusing on in Facebook. Everybody there, it's 100% of them. And when your odds of when your offer is, you know, come to this webinar, they have to not only be interested in the information, they have to also be willing to come to a webinar. And, and they have to be available on Tuesday night or whatever. So they've got to jump through three hoops to do it. Whereas, and so you know, there's no. People are filtering themselves out of this instead of the people who if you offer them a book, can ask for the book now and, and still be interested in the information. So you're just identifying. You're getting a more qualified, you're narrowing down your list actually from the big audience you're getting, you're turning invisible prospects Indivisible. And every single time we've done this, I mean, you look in every instance with the financial advisors, with, with the doctors, with coaches talking more. Same thing with doing webinars. Switch to book, opt ins and engage with the people, you know, getting those leads for way less than what the webinar leads are.

Stuart: Yeah. On the leads front, this year has. We've seen a change this year in using lead forms more than sending people to landing pages. Of all of the people that we've worked with, for me, the conversations I've had, it's still lead forms still seems to be the most effective, seamless way of doing it. Have you seen anything different or does that hold true? That hold true?

Guest: Well, I think it goes down to convenience and it's much easier for people to just push the button than it is to go to the website, fill something out. You know, anytime you have friction in something, you're going to limit it, you know. And so I think that it's, you know, a good thing to, you know, to get those, to use the lead forms. That's. It's my favorite, my favorite thing.

Stuart: I think I'll hold true for the. All of the steps that someone would have to take immediately after that as well. If you do want to move them onto the webinar side of things. So you don't want to move them into whatever that next step is, making sure that that is as seamless as possible.

Guest: Yeah.

Stuart: See a couple of examples of people kind of stitching various different funnels or different assets together. And even the visual incongruity from incongruency from jumping from one, one thing that looks in one way to something that looks completely different. It's almost jarring and separates the flow is making it as simple and streamlined and just the small steps to go from one to the next to the next. I think way of going it. Yeah.

Guest: I've come to this thing that you know what's really going on when people are downloading a book and we've talked about it before that, you know, since the Kindle and Kobo data came out, you know, it shows kind of the state of readership that, you know, really over half the people that buy a book never open it. And you know that only 22% of them get past the first 80 pages. And that is a, you know, that's pretty fascinating. But I think what's happening is that we have, we're carrying, we're going along the road with, you know, when we're in our day to Day lives. We're kind of dealing with our future Dean and our, you know, present Dean and our, you know, we've kind of got the planner and the doer, you know, and the guy with the hope and the things and the present Dean. And I say this, I'm taking myself collectively for everybody that present Dean, present you only wants to do what they want to do right now. Right. They don't want to do any. They want to put things off into the field. I don't have to do something now. I don't want to do something now. Right. But we also get a sense that we're, you know, future Dean. We keep putting things off to future Dean. Oh, yeah. Future Dean will figure that out. Right. And then we realize that when we arrive there, there is no future Dean. It's all present Dean. And that, you know, part of the thing is that if you live in a culture that of, you know, your own personal culture of putting things off to future Dean, that what ends up happening is that present Dean is constantly living in a state of crisis of having to clean up the mess that present Dean left him in because he didn't take action when he could have to prepare for future Dean. Right.

Stuart: Yeah.

Guest: So that's. You're laughing because you see that there's a little bit of awareness in that. Right. For me. But here's the thing, is that President Deane does think fondly of future Dean and wants him to get the help that he needs, but he doesn't want to be involved in any way or inconvenience in any way.

Stuart: He just wish he would get it sorted out.

Guest: If I could just click this button and get this book that would. That future Dean would appreciate this. I'm not going to read it. I'm not going to read it right now. But future Dean would love this. And I'm okay pushing this button to make that happen for future Dean so I can pat myself on the back, feel like I've taken some progress for future Dean and then I can get back to my day. Right. Of doing whatever I want to do. But I'm not going to sit through a webinar today for a future Dean.

Stuart: Right. Yeah. I'm invested in the outcome. I wanted to point out, but not to the extent of taking half an hour. Right.

Guest: Exactly. I don't have that today. I'm not going to do that. But I'll put this out there for future Dean. And so that dynamic is exaggerated as it sounds and silly. It's exactly what's going on I'm convinced of it. That that's why it's easy, because we know we want these future things and it's easy to buy a book or to download a free book, especially to help our future Dean. You know, it's like almost. Yeah. And it's so great that we're, you know, it's. It's really about this little experiment lab that we're running with our own brains, you know, trying to observe and see how things actually happen. And when you really understand what's going on inside the mind of your prospect, that's going to be a. That's going to be a big advantage because you can shape things to go with the current of that.

Stuart: Going with the current is such a fantastic way to describe it because trying to fight against it or trying to wish it was a different way, trying to change people partway through that's going to take a lot of effort and really not going to go anywhere. This current, this train's moving in this direction. Get on board, understand where it's going and plan a couple of steps ahead. I think that's why the book blueprint scorecard is written. It's ordered in the way that it's ordered. It starts with who you're talking to, the target market. And then there's the title and the subheading because that's the first point that gets people to raise their hand. But then it jumps to the minimum viable commitment call to action that jumps to what you want them to do next. And then it comes back to the outline. And it's not until we've done all of those that we even start to think about content. Because the content isn't the thing. It's. It's just, as you said, the. It's the direction. It's what people, what we anticipate people wanting to do next. And they're making it as easy as possible for them to jump to that point.

Guest: That's right.

Stuart: The book is almost. It is the Trojan horse that gets the message through for the next steps that the types of books that people often come with have. People often come with a specific idea, if not a specific intent. So this idea of a manifesto type book versus a how to type book, and I'll link in the show notes, the link to the book title types, webinar workbook that we've got. But this idea of a manifesto book for introducing an idea versus a specific book answering a question, it's a conversation that I've had a lot more this year than previously. And I Think in part because you've articulated it more, we've talked about it more ourselves, it's more front of mind, but it always kind of trips over a little bit as I'm talking to people. The difference between those two because they get into the weeds a little bit and then the two start sounding the similar sort of for you as you're talking to mom. How do you describe the difference between this idea of the manifesto book and more of a step by step or how to type book?

Guest: Well, I look at the, you know, the role of this, right. Depends on where you're trying to meet somebody. And what I'm looking for from the book I'm almost always focused on as a lead generation tool, right. And so what that means is focusing more on the compelling than the convincing. And so I'm not trying to teach somebody something, I'm not trying to, you know, give them so much, you know, action. For, you know, educating them. What I'm doing is I'm looking to think about what is it that they would really want. You know, we want this to really resonate with their desires. And that's why you look about like a, the manifesto type of book is putting out something like our listing agent lifestyle book where the, those words, if you're a real estate agent resonate because that's what you want to be. And you've got a, you've got a way to have a life instead of what real estate is traditionally known for is you've got to sacrifice your life, be a successful realtor. But it's not that way. We want to have listing centric business with an approach to lifestyle. And so laying those things out, when you lay out the sort of here's what we believe or here's what this picture, the COVID of the box, that's a good way to describe it is if you've got a multi part, you know, big vision for somebody that requires like, you know, a lot of steps and, and hopefully a long term relationship with someone. What a manifesto type of book would do is lay out the, the COVID of the box, right. Of the puzzle of how to put this all together, right? So if we look at the COVID of the box is the listing agent lifestyle. But inside now in order to do that, here are the elements of that. We've got to have a way to get listings and to multiply your listings and to get referrals and convert leads and find buyers and then the lifestyle elements of have abundant joy or daily joy and abundant time and financial peace. So we Lay out this is, this is what we're all about. These are all of the things that are in store if you buy into this listing agent lifestyle. And then each of those chapters or elements becomes its own training program. So now you say if you want those things, then we've got a whole program called getting listings. Here's how we help you do that. If you want to multiply your listings, here's our whole program around that, you know, everything is like an introduction to all of those things and gives people the map of the territory and then ultimately the scorecard can help lead them to the path to.

Stuart: Yeah, to what that is. Yeah, yeah. I think that's a great point as well because so often it's kind of I need to write a book. A book house is a good idea. Here's some words that could go in a book. Therefore we should do that rather than thinking about where does it fit into the bigger picture. The book is just a tool in this bigger thing that we're creating. And it really does depend on how people are coming in and where, where their point of reference is. So rather than just do something, do the thing that's the most relevant to how it's being used at that for that purpose, that job of work.

Guest: That's right, yeah.

Stuart: The, the talk there about the scorecard as a follow up to help people.

Guest: Well, you know, once somebody, if I look at it in terms, you know, if I take our approach here, that the, once somebody asks for the book, the book has done its job. Now what I want to do next is I want to engage in a conversation with people, right. I want to see are they five star prospects, Remember five star prospects, people who are willing to engage in a dialogue, friendly, cooperative, they know what they want, they're ready to get it and they'd like us to help them. That's what a five star prospect is. So when I look at, we always start at the top. Are they willing to engage? So we give people next steps that are kind of like their way to engage. Right. If you want to see how the listing agent lifestyle elements are working in your business right now, go to listing agentscore.com fill out the listing agent lifestyle scorecard and then they see where they need the work. We do the same thing with the profit activator score. We do the same thing with the book blueprint score that it's a way for people to find what they need to do. Right. Kind of like where they assess where they're at. Now if we look at our profit Activator score card. I look whenever we get, you know, lots of those every day, people filling out the profit activator scorecard. And what I'm looking for is we can see where somebody is, where their strength is and where their opportunity is. Right. And so you look and identify patterns. What I look for our profit activator scorecard has, you know, the eight profit activators on it. I'm looking for people who are strong in profit activator 5 where they can deliver a dream come true result and people who are strong in profit activator one where they know who they want to attract and then they're struggling in profit activator 2, generating leads and profit activator 4 making offers to convert those leads. Those are things that we can help people with. Right. And so it's all now engaging with them so we can fill out, take the scorecard, look at it and say, you know, and start a conversation with them. Relevant about what the scorecard reveals for them.

Stuart: It's such a great almost, it's one of the great interview type questions almost of here's a way of evidencing that you're a five star prospect because you're engaging and feeding back and you're demonstrating or sharing with us that you know what you want and where you are at the moment. But it gives so many insights to then for us to go back and continue that relevant conversation that you just talked about. I think that's such a, that's such a difference from what everyone else is. I don't can't think of an example I've ever seen anyone else do that. In all of the kind of like the consumer interactions that I've had, it's always raise your hand for something. Well in the cases where it is raise your hand for something is then just immediately onto a relatively. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. Other people who have expressed this interest have also bought this type of thing. There's no, there's no attempt to engage or get to a real person. And I think this is what we're talking about all the time. It's getting to that conversation with a real person. It's not just burn and turn through automated leads. It's getting someone to engage in a meaningful way and then following up with them. And the book is a great way of doing that at the beginning and then orchestrating those steps, thinking about those steps, being that chess player is a great way. Next. Fantastic. Well, I think that does it for today. Thank you for your time.

Guest: We've settled it I think so.

Stuart: That was 2019.

Guest: I like it. That's it. I think that's my big takeaway is, you know, I am, I'm bullish on books still even more. And, you know, I can't think of any better way for people to get started than to let us do it for them. Yeah, that's the easiest thing.

Stuart: Fantastic. Okay, thanks for your time. We will catch you in the next one.

Guest: Okay, thanks.

Stuart: Okay, dear one, bye. Bye. And there we have it. Another fantastic episode. Really love this idea of people willing to take a certain amount of commitment for their future selves, but not necessarily too much time out of their day. And how book really ticks that box. As we were talking, I was just kind of in the office recording here and looking at the bookshelf behind me and there's 20 books on the shelf that I have still every intention of reading and I'm excited to read. And they've been on the shelf and in fact moved from the UK to the US still unread. They've been like that for years. And those are books that I have paid good money for, excited to read, but still haven't quite the future may still still hasn't quite got into pulling the trigger on them. So with that said, two things that you can do to take this gene a little bit further. First, we were talking about scorecards through the episode. So a link in the show notes or head over to bookblueprintscore.com and just measure your idea against the eight mindsets of the book. Blueprint Scorecard. Great way of thinking about all of those eight different steps in a slightly different way and then seeing where you can pay more attention with which areas need more attention in order to get the best return. And then the second thing is obviously we can get this up and running for you. So the quickest way of getting your book out there is to talk to us. We're just, as I mentioned before the show, just recording this couple of days before New Year. So there's always the opportunity to, if you're not quite ready to buy a book now so that you can write it off this year's taxes and then don't need to start until next year. So head over to 90minutebooks.com and follow the get started links at the top and you can see the options that we've got for you there. As always, if you've got any questions, just shoot us an email to Podcasty Minutebooks and either myself or Betsy will pick those up and we'll get back to you. Looking forward to an exciting 2020 with you guys on board. I've got lots of exciting things coming up, new book types and and a new focus on some of the podcast things that we've talked about before as a way of engaging with people for the long term. Just as we were saying in the show, that opportunity to freely educate and motivate the people who have opted in until now is now for them. So with that, I hope you had a fantastic holiday. Happy New Year to everyone and I will speak to you in the next one.