Avoiding the Production Trap

"Foreign."

Stuart: Welcome to another episode of the book More Show. It's Stuart Bell here and today I'm talking with Betsy Vaughan about an issue that's come up a couple of times recently. This idea of people underestimating how much time and effort doing the work yourself takes. So creating words on a page, not rocket science. Everyone imagines that it's something they can do themselves, but the reality is the level of detail in production and the annoyance of dealing with word documents and printers and designers and outsource people. Just the commitment that it takes to do yourself. We often find that people come back to us months or even years later and then wanting to start a book where we'd had the conversation originally but they'd wanted to do it themselves and hadn't gone anywhere. So super frustrating for them, super frustrating for us as well because we know how quickly we can the alternative is. So today we're talking about some of those warning signs, some things to watch out for. And if it is something that you're adamant or you need to do yourself, then we've got a couple of pointers here to make that process a little bit easier. So a little bit of detail, a little bit production in this one, hopefully something for everyone, a little bit of encouragement that there are quicker ways of doing it. So a lot for everyone. And we will catch you on the other side. Betsy Vaughan, Stuart Bell.

Guest: How are you?

Stuart: Good, thank you. How's it going over there?

Guest: Very good, very good. It's a nice Friday. A little chilly here. This is one of the few times that you and I are in the same state. Recording podcast.

Stuart: I know it doesn't happen that often. Consider I'm down here every month. It always seems to be where we seem to be elsewhere. It's. Yeah, yeah, it's a nice time of year to be down here. It's not too crazy hot, I would say, avoiding the snow in the bad weather. But Philadelphia's suffering from climate change and it's all kind of a bit like the uk. It's a little bit wetter than I'd like it to be and a little bit damper, but very pleasant down here.

Guest: Spring has sprung in Philadelphia. There you go.

Stuart: I saw Lucy posted a picture of some the blossom coming out on the flowers. So that usually is an indication of some harsh weather to come because they're tricked out on the trees and then they come out and then the storm blows through and clears everything.

Guest: Yeah, just. Yeah, that's awesome. You know, Grayson, my 20, almost 25 year old, lives in Denver and you know, I tend to watch the weather a lot. So he's had some 75, 78 degree weather and then within 24 hours it's down to 30 degrees. And then 48 hours it's hitting, you know, 8 degrees. And so that's, that's hard. That's a hard swallow, you know, that's a constant. Never knowing what you're getting and catching

Stuart: the cold or other viruses.

Guest: Right, that's what I'm thinking, you know, so yeah, I'll stick to what we have here. So this morning that's good.

Stuart: So, yeah, I think today we're going to talk about the very exciting subject of production and actually getting the book created. And I say very excited, slightly tongue in cheek, because I think it's one of those things that people assume is the easy part of the process. Everyone's kind of knows how to speak, knows how to type, can spell, they've used word before. So how difficult can it possibly be? So I thought we'd dive a little bit deeper into that.

Guest: Let's do it. This is a conversation I have with people a lot and I'll let, I'll share the outcome with you as we dig into this conversation.

Stuart: I think we both kind of are going into this with some specific examples in mind. So it'll be useful to share the one that started off and has it front and center of my mind. And we'll kind of not include the names to protect the, the innocent because I think people genuinely are innocent. I don't think people go into this or have an expectation of how much work or how little work it will take. I don't think they do it intentionally knowing that it's a horrible, it can be a horrible job and it takes a lot of time. But they're trying to kind of cheat the system or pull the wool over on anyone's eyes or not be not appreciate the work involved. But I think it genuinely is going in knowing that I typed a document before, how difficult can it be to get words on the page? But genuinely under valuing or underestimating how much time and effort that is. So the two sides that we see it from are both when we're doing the job ourselves, and there's maybe a mismatch in expectations about either A, how much something would cost or how long it will take. But B, on the other side, and I think you can talk to this more, is people assuming that I don't need to get anyone else to do it, I can do it myself. And not understanding what they're potentially and often open themselves up to. So the one that has it front and center of my mind is the first example. So this is a job that we were doing for someone. The scope originally was, I've got a book already, I just need some of the images changing. So that's obviously something we can do. Our production team are doing this day in, day out, so we can definitely add to that. But then the scope creep of the work kind of highlights the problem. Now when we're doing it, it just means that we have to go back and kind of redefine the scope and say, someone, hey, this is fine. We've got to the extent of what we originally talked about, but now there's more work to do. So if you want us to do that's fine, we can do it. But obviously we need to charge for it because people need to get paid. If you want to do it yourself, then that's fine as well. We're not protected with this. We'll give you all of the stuff and here's the things that we think need to be done from this point and go forward and do it. But that job probably went from that initial conversation where the expectation it was probably six or seven hours work, I guess, to do that initial job. By the time we've got the document taken a look at it fixed one or two things that are often wrong. So we kind of assume that there's going to be a little bit of that work, but then just go through and replace slides, which is just replace images rather, which is just time consuming. It's not difficult as such. It's just attention to detail type work and it just takes a minute to two minutes for every single one you need to do. So it's just a multiplication exercise, but that quickly went from that into all of these other elements. So some of the scope creep on this particular project was the document that was there in the first place wasn't actually the original Word document, but it was a Word document that was converted from a PDF. Okay. So all of the words are there, but all of the formatting is broken. So there are no styles in the document. All of the margins are off. There's a lack of. You can't be 100% certain that the conversion captured all of the text. So you need to compare it to an earlier version. In this particular example, some of the text was in images. So where the conversion tries to strip out the text from the images, all of that gets broken effectively all of the images that were in there which was the original scope of the job to replace those. None of those are in tables. They're all just dropped into the content anchored to text that the conversion tool tried to do. The book itself was 200 and something pages long. When all of the images were in there, it went up to a multi gigabyte file. So then even on fast machines that we're working from, every time you touch it, it spins for three seconds while it's thinking about it. Just because it's that bigger file to deal with. So all of this multiplication of what seems like, hey, I can see words on the page, why is this so difficult? It's that level of detail underneath that really leads to either scope and cost creep if you get someone else to do it. So just if you're in that situation now thinking I've got something that's quick and easy to update, just be mindful that it might not be that quick and easy. And then b, and this is probably more damaging if you're going to do it yourself, this can very quickly turn into a job. And even with our guys who are, I would say in the top 2% of word professionals in the world, because of the level of detail that we're going in, considering the majority of the world are using it at relatively basic level, our guys are up there in the top group of people who can do stuff, but just the size and the detail and the level of effort that needs to be put into it, that really can escalate away. And if you're trying to do that yourself, if you then multiply that by having lesser skills because it's not your discipline, it's not something you're in doing day in, day out. If you can't, if you're not looking out for things like page breaks versus section breaks versus paragraph formatting, that's breaking a document, all of those things can just mean that this quick project that you're hoping to do doesn't get done. And that by far is the worst thing because it means that your frustrated the time it takes, the expectation that you had to get.

Guest: I'm alone that, you know, if it's not, you know, we have, we all are good at something, our job. But if your job is not writing and putting and laying out a book, then it is, it's going to take that time. And that is what I hear because people will say, I think I can do this myself. After, you know, we have that initial call with potential clients. Maybe I'm just going to do this myself and I can probably. There's probably seven or eight people who have come back and I wish I could. I need to go through and really like kind of remember those, the ones who said I'm going to try it. And it's usually like January, February or March that I hear this. I think I'll do it myself. And I'm happy to say find people here do this. Don't forget about this. Don't, you know you need somebody to do that cover. I do. I will happily give you that information by October. They haven't touched that book since May and now they want to come on board into our process because they found that it is, it is a job. When you said that. That's exactly it. It becomes a full time almost nightmare for, you know, someone who isn't disciplined. And we've had some great individuals write some books on their own, you know, and we've done all the, the mechanical stuff for them, you know, the COVID and all that. And, and we, we enjoy some of those projects. You know, Mike Mac just did one on his own after his second, second book with us. He did that. So it had some good, you know, good. We're doing one right now that I'm thrilled with. Like it was done professionally, but it was an ebook, you know, and he wanted to turn it into a hard book. You know, it was. And I used ebooking quotes, but you didn't see that because my camera on me. But so he just had a digital version. So that is that you, I think you have to be a. You have to like to write, you know, and you have to have that discipline and the time to sit down and do this, you know, is. Is it worth taking away from family time or, or potential the time that you could be making money in your business?

Stuart: It's the opportunity cost of the other things that you're not doing, let alone the actual cost of it getting really kind of focusing on your specialty, the knowledge that you've got in your head and just getting that out and not having to worry about all of the other bits which unless you're doing it day and day and can be very time consuming. That's the thing that people skip over and don't think about those elements when they think about just the cost versus the. Just think about the price rather, rather than the cost of doing this with someone else. A couple of the pointers for people who are still saying this isn't a choice. I don't have the cash to do it. Therefore the only thing that I've got to do is invest my time and money. Time and money. The only thing I've got without the money is to invest my time. Then I don't want to dissuade people from doing it, but just go into it with your eyes wide open. So a couple of things to make it easier is kind of the beneficial constraints element of the book blueprint scorecard that we've got. So this idea of putting constraints, constraints around what you're going to do and being diligent and sticking to those is a way of making sure that there's an end of the process. Now, whether you later revisit it once the initial version is out there, by all means revisit something later and add some additional scope to it. But that initial scope, having that quite strictly constrained, is the only way that you're going to get through this. Because otherwise there's no hard end. Why stop? Why not tweak a little bit more? Because no one's exiting there telling you that it's a bad idea. So a couple of things that are very worthwhile doing if you are definitely going to do this yourself, is start with the end in mind. So think about which platform it's going onto. If you're pushing it onto Amazon as a physical book, then CreateSpace has template downloads where you can download a blank document and you can type into that. If you copy and texting paste. If you're copying and pasting text into that, then be mindful of where it's coming from and the fact that you can carry bad formats from the other document. So if you can write in plain text so that there's no formatting on it, and then paste into the CreateSpace document in plain text and then format it from there, that's going to be, for most cases, an easier solution than trying to format it elsewhere and then drop it into the template. If you don't want to put it on Amazon, then you can't use CreateSpace because from, and I keep saying CreateSpace, but actually CreateSpace doesn't exist anymore. It's the KDP Kindle platform. That's Amazon's way of publishing books via the KDP platform. And then there's also the Kindle version on KDP and there's the print version on kdp. So if you don't want it to go on Amazon and be available in the store, then you can't use KDP to print because it has to be available on Amazon. So therefore you're now looking for a different print solution and there's a Number of companies out there, we use Lightning sources. We've said before, Lightning Source have an individual publisher platform called IngramSpark. So again, Ingram have got templates that you can download. So that. And the template is important because you need the document in a format that they print. So the real important things there are the margins where the binding happens. Each printer has a slightly different requirement for that. So you need to have a document in the format that the printer can actually print on the page. So again, all of these details, this is the type of headache that you get into if this is the first time you're doing it. I always remember I imported, when I was living in the uk, I imported a Mitsubishi fto, like a little sports car, like a little Miata size car. So Mitsubishi FTO imported it into the UK as part of the import process. So I had a friend who had imported a few vehicles before, so the actual shipping was no real problem because I leveraged his expertise. But then when it landed, there's a whole testing procedure, like a licensing process that each vehicle has to go through. So it's like a road suitability type test. An sva, it's called, or it was called going through that. I sent this car for an SVA about six times because I mean down to the last time that it went, it was because the fog light on the rear of the vehicle, I only had one fog light, which is fine, but the fog light has to be on the outside edge, outside half of the car. So the side of the car that's on the into adjoining traffic. So for American cars that would be on the left hand side because we drive on the right. So anyway, where I had this fog light positioned, which was cut into the rear bumper of the car was very slightly on the. Sorry, was on the opposite, was on the wrong side of the license plate. So I could have put it on either side. It didn't make any difference to me as far as I knew. But I put it on the wrong side. So that means that I had to come out, put it in for another SVA test afterwards, cut another hole in the bumper, put a second fog light in, which I didn't really want to do because you very rarely use them anyway, order the other fog light from ebay, wherever I got it from. And all of this thing, all of this extra effort just because I didn't know. So when I got to the end of that process, I'm never going to import another car again. I don't even live in the UK anymore. So all of that time and effort and trial and error going through, getting it through the process, which, again, none of those individual steps of rocket science, but it's just the overhead that builds up when you don't know what you don't know. Anyway, that's how I compare people saying, oh, that's fine. I'll just do it myself. How hard can it convey?

Guest: Yeah, that's a great comparison. I mean, that's what it comes down to, you know. Yeah.

Stuart: And all of that time, I mean, my own hours of doing that, if I'd have had to pay someone 500 pounds, a thousand dollars to just do that for me, if I was actually really billing for my own time, then I was negative on that. That.

Guest: Oh, yeah.

Stuart: Because of all of the wasted effort.

Guest: Well, I think that I was just. I have my notepad out here, and I remember I had a call with somebody yesterday who we're doing a book with, and initially he said, oh, he said, I started my book five years ago. And I'm like, well, where are you? And the. He's like, well, I have, like, a chapter. And. And I'm like, okay, you spent five years writing one chapter. Like you. That should tell you this is not your gift, this is not where your talent lies, that you should be doing something, you know, and here he is, you know, his book is now with his compliance department. And we did that in a short amount of time. But to think, like you're just sitting on something and looking at something, that. That feeling of being completely overwhelmed, you know, by that time with anything to do with the car, I would be completely overwhelmed, and it would be worth every single dime to pay somebody to do it. But that, you know, just like. I mean, you know, and I don't even know that money was. Was the object with him, you know, was the problem with him. I think it was. I think he thought, oh, I can do this, and. And attempted, you know, and had all the great ideas. Like when we discussed it, had all the great ideas, but just couldn't make it work. Couldn't find the time, couldn't do, you know. And here he put, you know, a $3,000 investment, and he's getting ready to have a book. You know, in two weeks, his book will be finished and. And he'll be using it, you know, and could have been doing that for five years.

Stuart: You know, the opportunity cost that's missed is.

Guest: Yes. Yeah.

Stuart: I mean, if you. If you even imagine that the book related to one client a year, which obviously that would be. You'd hope it was using the book, you'd hopefully it would be much, much more. But even if it was one a year over that five year period, adding up all of the lifetime relationship of those clients, I mean just purely from that math, it just doesn't make sense. I think it's because it's the kind of E Myth type entrepreneurs dilemma of we're all experts in what we do. We've set up businesses very often that means starting from scratch and getting everything in place and really bootstrapping it from the start. And you really do get lulled into a false sense of security of or false sense of capacity maybe of well I can do this. It's not difficult. It's not rocket science. There's no reason why I can't do it. But that's very different from but actually I probably won't do it because of all of the other things. There isn't someone standing over my shoulder. There are other fires burning that need that kind of urgent versus important matrix. This is an important writing a book is probably in the overall business plan an important thing to do, but it's not that urgent compared with other things which are more urgent and pressing. So yeah, it really is a trap that's easy to fall into. A lot of people listening obviously tuned in with the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast and the Joy procrastination and the whole strategic coach world. This idea of who, not how and that being such a game changer for people understanding that it's not the what should be done but the who can do it. And the answer is never you should do it yourself. This really is an example of that. Just to get it done. I did want to make sure that we cover some points for people who are insistent on doing it themselves. So obviously we're talking slightly more about the production side of here rather than than the ideation or the kind of above the line ideas to generate. So this is more the execution and getting it done. So having the easiest thing to do I think for anyone that wants to do it themselves is really go through the book blueprint scorecard process, head over to bookblueprintscore.com and complete the scorecard there. Not only will it help you identify which areas you are weaker in and if you're doing it yourself need more attention paying to but also it highlights those eight mindsets separately so it helps you differentiate and separate those out. So that's a great resource if you are doing it yourself. This idea of recording the content rather than just writing it is a huge time saver. So spend the time writing the outline so you have the questions to ask yourself. If possible, record with someone else asking you the questions. Because it's very difficult to talk into a dead mic even when you do know your subject. It's much easier if you've got someone there or on the other end of the phone who's just responding to what you're saying. And. And that will help you pull out some more details from that text. Then as I say, getting it into the book. Getting the transcript transcribed. Sorry, getting the recording transcribed. There are many services out there, I think everyone knows that we use rev. Our opinion is that they're the best out there. Getting the transcript edited. This is a heavy lift. That is again, I don't think people realize how much time and effort is put into that. But from just raw transcript coming back to having an initial version of something that reads more easily than just reading the words that are said literally as a raw transcript, that is a lot of heavy lifting and trying to do yourself is a little bit difficult because a if it's not something you enjoy doing, it just seems like such a slog. Because what you're actually doing is tweaking maybe 15% of the content. You're not actually changing the message at all really. You're just changing the structure of the language. So it's almost like a grammar exercise in. In high school. It really is quite a slog. But unless you do that, it's then very difficult to go to the next stage which is a further round of editing which is really to look at, okay, what words are on the page now and what do I need to do to change the message slightly or change the tone slightly or make it slightly more. The sentence structure didn't quite flow in the way that I spoke it as I anticipated it would. So those two rounds, absolutely important that both of them are done. They're both very different jobs. If you're going to do it yourself, I would psychologically separate them and make sure that you've got the discipline to just do the first one as a grammatical exercise and then do the second one as a content exercise. And then potentially you might want to edit further than that. But those two steps are definitely required. Any editing after that is optional and depends how much you want to tweak it. But if you are going to start tweaking it, then again, look at the constraints exercise in the book blueprint scorecard and really give yourself a hard deadline line so you don't get drawn into that too much. Once you've got the raw words, then they then need to end up on a page. And we talked before about Lightning Source and or IngramSpark and KDP both having templates that you can put things into and the printers themselves. Both KDP and ingramspark and the others will give you their own guidelines on what you need in order to create a cover. Sorry. In order to create the content in the, in the way that they want it. I was jumping ahead then in my mind because thinking then you've also got the COVID exercise. So covers, there's a whole host of options out there for cover design. Going from the relatively inexpensive templated to hiring an individual designer out there. So there are a number of template tools and I think KDP has a template tool that you can use. It's pretty much drag and drop on images and text and things like that. I think they've got a template builder. Obviously we don't use it because we've got our own designers. But if you want to put a bit more one on one effort into it, then services like 99designs and some of the other design platforms will allow you to create book templates.

Guest: And again, I'll say my 2 cents on that design. And that's not, that's not my talent by any means, but I have such an appreciation for what, you know, Glenn and our design team, what they are capable of doing, because I have no way to make that happen. And so I mean it would, I think that is, that is so important. You can even, you can have typos on the interior. Content can just be, you know, 70% there. It doesn't have to be great. But that cover is so important because that's the first thing that is that person they're looking at that gives that first impression. And I would say don't stamp on, you know, on, on the COVID don't try to do it yourself. Don't try to buy some images and, and put them in there. I just think that is where you want it to just be. Wow, this is good. This is great. You know, the, the interior, it can be good, you know, and still have the same, you know, message and value or you know, and get the same outcome. But that cover, I think really that's where I would spend time and money if I was going to do it on my own.

Stuart: I think as well, the COVID is the one page in the whole book that's read by 100% of people because it's. Even if we're not talking about this from a physical book perspective. Most of the time, most of the mental capital that we put into this is thinking about it in a opt in context of using this as an opportunity to collect name and email addresses. So people have probably seen a digital version of the COVID rather than a physical version of the COVID Obviously they're identical. But it's not so much that this is stopping people walking past on a bookshelf, this is stopping people scrolling through on a Facebook feed or some other direct mail piece that you're giving to them. So it's 100%. That's the reason why more people, that's 100% the reason why the interior is less important from a completionist point of view, if that makes sense. Because fewer people complete the reading exercise, whereas everyone completes the seeing it and deciding that I want it exercise. That's why in the scorecard we've got a title and a subheading and the call to action on the back after you've chosen single target markets, their mindset sets 2, 3 and 4, that's before you get even thinking about the content or what's in the book or how it's the production steps of it. So yeah, that's absolutely important. The only caveat that, or the only balance or constraint that I'd put on that is that it's not worth thousands of dollars worth of effort. It may be worth hundreds of dollars worth of effort. So there's a, that this kind of 80% rule of from getting it from 0 to 80 is absolutely worthwhile. So a bad looking cover that covers 40% or does the job 40%. Well, you should definitely put in the extra time and effort to get it to 80%. How much additional time and effort and money you put into taking it from 80 to 100. That's where it starts getting, you start getting diminishing returns. But absolutely don't use clip art that you've just downloaded from website. Don't steal images off a Google search that you found at rubbishy resolution. Definitely put the additional time and effort into making it look as nice as it can. That doesn't mean you have to spend thousands. And there's definitely a lot of resources out there where the dollar signs start adding up very, very, very quickly, which I guess actually good because we wanted to touch on that briefly before, before we wrapped up today. But this idea of people burning a lot, a lot of money and not necessarily ending up with something that they're happy with is something to touch on. So this idea came up because I'm going to use the example of someone who wrote with us first and then went away and did something else and then came back. But we've had a couple of conversations with people who have taken the first version of the book, have used it for a period of time, have decided this is working great, but now want to put some effort into expanding it, and have spent 2, 3 times the cost of the original book to end up with something that actually didn't make the boat go any faster. It didn't do anything else as far as opt ins or degeneration or progressing the conversation. They were hiring people at an expensive hourly rate who were executing on tasks and execute on tasks. I mean, there's one example I can think where they execute on it pretty poorly. So that's just a bad example. But oftentimes people are executing on tasks well, but they're not. They're not bringing any additional strategy or outcome to what they're doing. They're charging 75, $80 an hour to do a job of work, but that job of work is disconnected from the outcome. So we see it sometimes at the beginning of the process where people said, I was working with someone for a year, I've spent $7,000, I've got this document of 20,000 words, but now nothing's happened with it, or it's not going anywhere, or it doesn't really do it, it doesn't serve any purpose. So what can we do with the nightmare book process to turn that into something useful? And unfortunately it's often the case that it's the same as people saying, okay, I've got a presentation, a slideshow, how can I use this in a book? It's often the case that we can't do anything with that document. That you've got those 20,000 words in that document is not going to. The time and effort that it would take to manipulate that into something that would turn into a book is way more than the two or three thousand dollars that it would cost for us just to record from scratch and begin again, which is sometimes a bitter pill for people to swallow. And it's definitely the case that that work is a wasted. All of the mental exercise that you've gone through to create all of that content in the first place is still in there. It's not like you've got to flush all of that from your mind. All of that will help create the eventual book, but just that particular asset, as it stands, is not valuable and it would be an expensive retrofit to try and squeeze it into something that's. That's not fit for purpose. The benefit, of course, is exactly the same with slideshows and presentations and videos that people want to turn into a book is not turn it into a book, but use it as supporting additional material after someone's opted into the book to really keep the conversation going and continue to add value until they're ready to take that action step with you, to take that conversion step to start doing some work with you. So not that it's wasted in its entirety. It's just not fit for purpose in the. In the exercise that we're trying to achieve.

Guest: That's so true. That's. I'm actually. I think I had. I've had a couple of these conversations recently about the whole submitting webinar. They call it a class presentation. And actually I just got an email just as we were sitting here about someone else who was interested in doing something. But this particular person. Person doesn't want to veer from that. Like, I just, you know, some people don't speak the way they need to for a book to do, you know, for us to take the recording. And then when I ask to see the information, just to get an idea, you know, to try to give a better reason why we shouldn't use it, you know, and people are always, oh, yes, listen to this or do this or whatever. But she won't give me. She doesn't want me to see. To see it. And I said, well, you know, there's no way to know what we're getting. It could be, you know, there's. It could be anything I'm dealing with. I don't want to commit to us doing something without knowing exactly what we're doing. And there is class participation in these. In this conversation. So you've got. Not just the person speaking, but you've got random people in the audience speaking, you know, in the classroom setting. And so it really. And I said, like, just based on. Without even hearing anything, that's a lot of work, you know, to pull out these conversations. And that's what her expectation is, to pull out these people. And I said, well, then you're gonna have to pull out most of what you've said, too, because you've said something because it's a point, you know. Yeah. Completely out of context and stuff. She just really couldn't. Couldn't get that. And I was. I was hoping she would send me something because I was interested just to really have this as a great example so I could be very Specific and say, she said this, this person said this. But if you took all this out of there, it doesn't make a bit of sense, you know, so. But she wouldn't send it to Jimmy.

Stuart: It's such an interesting being on the inside of this and knowing how well the system works, when the system works, is always difficult to understand why people are reluctant just to record another hour's worth of stuff. Because it's not. It's not a huge leap to imagine that, okay, this process takes 90 minutes of outlining and recording. So it's not, not too much of a leap to think I can imagine 90 minutes evaporating just in the back and forth of someone asking me, should this be involved? Should that be involved? So it always surprises me that people aren't willing to make that additional commitment for what is overall the shorter period of time, the shorter commitment to get the thing completed. The idea that I can kind of understand that people think, although it's not true, but I can kind of understand that people think that what they said in that previously recorded environment is the best version of their words. So I can understand how people get connected with that, even though the reality is it isn't because the context is wrong. And then the last point, I can almost understand, but if someone paused for a second to think about it, I can almost. I can almost understand, but not say, apparently, I can almost understand that people don't appreciate how much work it takes to take that content and then turn it into something narrative and effectively rewrite all of that content into something that doesn't rely on the back and forth in the conversation, which kind of loops back to how this whole conversation started in people. It's easy to underestimate how much effort that takes. So I can understand why people wouldn't initially think about that. But as soon as you were in a conversation saying, okay, well, if we were to take that, that would mean that someone would have to listen to it from start to finish. Would then need to internalize and understand what's being said. Would then need to have to decide what's relevant and what's not relevant. Would then need to have to have enough knowledge in order to plug the caps in a coherent way and additionally have enough knowledge to add more content in to make up for the stuff that's taken out as soon as that conversation starts. That's difficult to be sympathetic towards people who say, oh, no, it'll be fine. Why don't you just do that? Because even just the quickest glance, it's Obviously not something that's straightforward and easy to do and that then links back in with, as I say, A, the first thing that we started talking about, but B, the second thing of people. And it's heartbreaking sometimes people will come back having spent thousands of dollars to end up with something that isn't fit for purpose and isn't out there. And just as you mentioned, the cases of people that we've talked to who have taken content, have tried to get it rewritten, have tried to use the thing in the same format that it originally was, but just in a different context, and that hasn't worked. And it's led to huge delays on the project that they still haven't got anything out there. They're still in a situation now where they have to start again from scratch. But all of that time and opportunity that was lost from not having it out there, there were customers that have passed by that will never come back again. And unfortunately you don't know what businesses missed because of that opportunity cost. So.

Guest: Right, yeah, yeah,

Stuart: Time's gone fast. I know we've got another call to jump on in five minutes. So we'll, we'll, we'll wrap up at that point and we kind of, I think we've made the point. Yeah, I think beating a dead horse, hopefully within that there was a bit of a mix of if you are definitely cash constrained, that you absolutely need to do it yourself and you do have the time to, you can invest your time, if not the money, then we've got some pointers of how to keep some scope around it and the steps that you need to take. So hopefully there was some value there, even if it was something that you're doing yourself. But the underlying message is really, there are very, very few examples where this will cost less doing it with someone else. And obviously we'd suggest doing it with us versus trying to do it yourself and definitely a lot less headache. So, yeah, with that, is there anything that, anything that you were thinking about that we've kind of missed or skipped over?

Guest: No, I think we've got it all there. Yeah.

Stuart: Perfect.

Guest: I love the challenge when someone said me, I really do. Just personally, I love when someone is, you know, adamant about doing it themselves. And then I keep a mental note and then, you know, it's interesting when people come back and say, okay, you were right, you know, okay, great. I'm glad I'm on the same page here.

Stuart: So the closing note, if you listen to this and you've previously spoken to Betsy saying that I'M going to do it myself then. Don't feel bad. She actually loves those conversations. So

Guest: you know what I love is that someone's, I mean, I hate that someone's wasted like six, seven, eight, five years, you know, on not doing anything. And they could have been doing, using this to, for their business and making money and putting themselves out there, you know, so that's what I love. And when people come back and say, okay, you were right and this was great, I'm so glad I did this.

Stuart: And like you say, it's, it's not that we like that they've wasted a lot of time, but we really like the fact that they're now on board and we can get them moving and have support them in, in a couple of months. Yeah, for sure.

Guest: Right, right. And yeah, so that's it. So that was good stuff.

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

Guest: Take care.

Stuart: And there we have it. Another great episode. It's really good to dive into the details every now and then. My personality is a little bit more detailed oriented than some other people's, so it's good to be able to let that vent sometimes. Hopefully from that we really wanted to give two things. One, this idea that if it is something that you're unique to yourself, then that's obviously absolutely fine. There would definitely be people in that situation. So there were some specific pointers in there. Definitely. Head over to bookblueprintscore.com and complete the scorecard because that will give a good reminder of the eight mindsets you need to pay attention to. There are a couple of resources that we particularly mentioned in there, like the KDP lightning source and rev connections that we made. The real thing I wanted to get across though is this idea that it's much faster, much quicker and for 90% of situations, much more cost effective just to have us do it for you. And as always, you can get started by heading to 90minutebooks.com and follow the get started links and we'll be here waiting to help. In the meantime, if you do have any questions, having problems with production, you want to ask us about a particular project that you've got, then just reach out to us at hello at 90 Minute Books and we can either jump on a call or ask some one on one questions or if you've got a question for the podcast and you just want a more general answer, then again drop us a note and we'll answer that in your future show. So with that, thanks for listening and look forward to catching you next time.