Lockdown Living with Laura Bruce

Stuart: Foreign. Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the book More Show. It's Stuart Bell here. And today, great pleasure speaking with one of our authors, Laura Bruce. Now, Laura, when Betsy and I were talking last week, we were talking about this idea of the opportunity being in the current pandemic. Amongst all of the challenges that are out there, there are definitely people that are going seize the moment and run ahead and take the, take the lead on things. Laura kind of took that and ran with it and had created a book that's specifically aimed at people who are stuck at home during the lockdown. So her book, Lockdown Living, provides 101 tips and ideas for things to do to get by in the. In the current situation without going crazy. So this was really great episode. I'll catch you at the other side and talk more about some of the next steps, but highly recommend checking out this episode. Laura's got some great energy and some great ideas. And although her project, it wasn't necessarily done with commercial intent, this didn't support her PR business. We actually ended up talking about the opportunity that she's got to bridge some of this content into projects that she's worked with before and really reach out to that community. Community. The community that she can help the most on the professional side as well. So super interesting the. The kind of turn of the conversation talk. Had a great time talking with Laura and I know you'll get a lot out of it as well. So with that, here we go. Hey, Laura, welcome to the book More Show. How are you doing?

Laura Bruce: Very well, Stuart, thank you.

Stuart: Fantastic. It always seems like a loaded question, how are you doing? Used to be one of those kind of throwaway greeting conversations, but talking points, but these days it seems to be a little bit more loaded. We're talking to you down in New Zealand. I was reading stories in the news this morning that hopefully you're on the heading towards the backside of the pandemic at least, and a little bit more control than perhaps some other places. How does it feel being on the ground there?

Laura Bruce: Well, you know, it was quite otherworldly when we went into lockdown around the 26th of March, and this idea that everybody simply had to stay in their homes except for essential workers, it was, it was, it was really a strange feeling. But I think we all had the notion that if it worked, you know, we would all be part of something that might be, you know, sort of a bellwether for the rest of the world.

Stuart: Yeah, it's such an interesting geographically new and such an interesting place because it is. So when you take air travel out of it, it's much easier to get some control on the isolation elements, which gives much more meaning to the actions that you're taking without kind of external influence. It's. Yeah, it's an interesting place. I think the lockdown, the opportunities and the challenges that come from the lockdown are particularly timely. I was talking with Betsy in the last show about this idea of although there's some obviously very dire situations going on, looking for the opportunity that's out there as well. And that's really what you've jumped on board with. So this is going to be a fantastic episode, I think, sharing your story with people and how you came to write a book and the nature of the book that you wrote, because it really does talk about that or amplify that element that we were talking about last week. I was talking about with Betsy last week about this idea of seizing the opportunity and seeing potential there and running with it. So with that in mind, do you want to give a little intro into what your book's about and what lead my words, what led you to the place of wanting to write it in the first place and then kind of pulling the trigger and executing on it?

Laura Bruce: Absolutely. What I found first talking to people about the prospect of going into lockdown and being confined to our homes. I was speaking to people around the world who are experiencing this. You know, my friend Patty in Sacramento, my sister in law in Cape Town, South Africa. And these were people who were quite anxious, a little bit sort of jokey about the prospect of being stuck at home. You know, people who were busy, used to doing what they wanted, having a lot of free time, you know, and actually, you know, quite anxious at the prospect of being stuck at home. And conversely, I felt delighted at the prospect of some uninterrupted time at home. And I thought, but I've got all these projects, I've got all so many things I want to do and I can really jump into this and go deep on this. And I've got all these books I wanted to read, I've bought at airports from around the world. You know, just a really different. For me, it was a sense of joyful anticipation rather than fear and loathing. And I thought, wow, you know, just such a chasm between us. I thought, what could I do to help people like this, people who are feeling like they can't think of anything to do. And so that's how the idea of the book was born. I just started brainstorming some ideas and Thought, you know, maybe I could put these together and maybe it would help somebody to feel a little bit more optimistic and a little bit more positive at the prospect of being stuck in their house.

Stuart: So this idea of. So the book's called Lockdown Living and it's full of 101 ideas of almost bite sized things that people can just dip into and open, almost turn to any page and grab an idea and be inspired to do something like that. The breadth of the ideas that are in there and this approach of kind of bringing them together as bite sized pieces, as individual tasks, rather than thinking about kind of a narrative, a story from start to finish, was that always the thinking? Did you always want to kind of deliver those bite sized pieces that people could just grab onto rather than a kind of more of a more narrative story?

Laura Bruce: Yes, because I think very much in terms of in this case, going wide. And going wide also meant not forcing anybody to do anything that didn't instantly appeal to them. So there are tasks in the book. The subtitle is 101 Ways to Stay Positive during the Pandemic. And the idea was that these were things that would give you a bit of a lift. Some of them is the lift that comes from perhaps, you know, organizing your wardrobe or tidying out a junk drawer, sorting out all your IT cables to things more creative. You know, things that would get your creative juices flowing. You know, doing a craft or, you know, a home improvement project, or even, you know, making notes for your first book.

Stuart: I think that idea of just delivering a series of ideas that people can dip into and then even if they use that as inspiration, but end up going in a different direction at a time when there is such a cognitive load on people, there's so much pressure of the situation and the uncertainty. And as you were describing with the friends and family that you were talking to, just this sense of foreboding about it, creating something that's so accessible as the book that you've done is, is really takes that pressure off. Because it's not like you give people homework and you're not assigning them 101 things to do. It's really presenting it in a way that here's 101 choices of things to do and a starting point and kind of take it from there and see where the journey leads you. I really like the fact that towards the end of the book you kind of ask for feedback in people's comments and what they've been inspired to do during this time. I know professionally speaking, you own a PR agency. So this idea of getting stories from people, I'm guessing comes to a certain degree of second nature, but including that as a. As a call to action, asking for that feedback. Was that intentional or was that just a kind of subconscious feedback loop that you've got because of the business?

Laura Bruce: It was a little bit of both. I can't say that it was really to do with the PR business. It was more to do with the feeling that I was hoping for of a sense of satisfaction that the book had achieved its purpose, that it had indeed helped people through a strange and unusual time, even if they just got one idea out of it. And I also thought, well, there's this wealth of information out there, people's own experiences of them saying, well, you know, I started off doing this, but I ended up doing this instead. And you might want to put that in the next book. I hope there isn't a requirement for a second book. But I thought, I thought if there was, you know, if this becomes a kind of a rolling thing, there may be people who did everything in book one who would like a volume two, you know, 101 more things to do.

Stuart: Yeah, if you exhausted your imagination on the first lockdown, then here's the. Here's the sequel. The follow up is the sequel. Yeah. As you say, I mean, hopefully it would pivot it into 101 weekend activities rather than being driven by forced lockdown. That idea, though, of engaging the community and hearing the feedback and understanding people's stories and the excitement almost of not knowing where that might lead, that, I think is an opportunity, is something that a lot of other people can be inspired by as well. I think so often people come in with the idea of writing a book as it being a very complete project in its own right, it being the product. Whereas a lot of times we're talking about the book not being the product, the book being the start to something else, which in a lead generation sense is often the start to a conversation, but in your situation, it's the start to engaging and getting that feedback from other people who have been through the situation. So I think that idea of this as a. As a living document almost, or as a. As the catalyst to a living discussion, it's really interesting to think about it in that perspective. Rather than just wanting to write down a certain amount of ideas and kind of get them out of your system and be done with it, it really is the start of something that can have its own momentum. You were saying you've got quite an interesting background because you geographically in quite a lot of different places. So you're New Zealand at the moment, but your backgr is in Canada and the UK and then New Zealand, is that right?

Laura Bruce: That's correct, yeah. I'm originally from Niagara in Canada and I emigrated to Northern Ireland in 2002 and I lived there for about 10 years and then most recently was living in Scotland prior to emigrating to New Zealand last year.

Stuart: Ticking off all of the Commonwealth countries.

Laura Bruce: Yeah. South Africa, I think will be next and then ideally Barbados.

Stuart: Yeah. Have that plan for the. To follow the sunshine around. I know, yeah. Dean, my business partner here has, has got a definite plan for. I think he's now 17 years into not having a winter. So move from Florida as the home base, but we'll move from Florida to Canada to Europe in the summer and really avoid that. That bad weather scenario.

Laura Bruce: We had two summers in a row last year and I have to tell you, there's nothing like it. I highly recommend it.

Stuart: I guess if you've sort of anytime in Scotland and Northern Ireland you've done your fair share of wet weather, so you kind of topped up for the rest of the lifetime. This idea then of bringing the book together, circling back to the creation process, I guess, the desire to bring it together onto pages rather than in any other format. Was there any particular thinking that drove you down that route to put it together as a book as opposed to presenting it in another way? Because I know you do have background in radio and presenting and kind of an audio medium.

Laura Bruce: Well, I thought, what's the most accessible thing to people? I find I don't like sitting in front of a computer watching videos. I find I feel a bit constrained. So I'm a great one for listening to podcasts, but also ebooks. I've got a remarkable. And I put them on that or I put them on the Kindle and I find it's quite, you know, you can take it with you. It's portable and you can dip into it at any time. I'm one of those people, always likes to have a book with me when I go anywhere in case I have to wait. There's something about the physicality of a book which paradoxically is thwarted somewhat by the fact that at least in New Zealand, well, we won't be able to get the books here in hard copy. So having an E version of the book was also. I mean, it was also the idea that it was quickly deliverable and that was a big factor given the time sensitive nature of the contents of the book.

Stuart: Yeah.

Laura Bruce: But someone did suggest to me an audiobook that that would be a good idea.

Stuart: Right. I think the ease of getting to market of a digital version, it definitely is the top of the tree in terms of convenience that the benefit of having the physical version so people can draw in the margins. I know it's kind of sacrilegious to say in certain circles, but I think this type of book anywhere where there's the opportunity to spark people's interest and really try and get the creative juices flowing. Not necessarily in terms of like a big creative project, but in terms of thinking of ideas that stimulation elements. Having a written version of it is very easy to. Having, sorry, a print version of it is very easy to then encourage people to write in the margins and spark their ideas that way. And the audio version is then interesting because I can almost imagine a kind of a shuffle version of it where each chapter is its own kind of bite sized piece and it was an opportunity to shuffle into. Randomly shuffle into a chapter to be inspired by it. It's almost like the audio version of the Magic eight Balls where you kind of shake up and get inspiration for the day.

Laura Bruce: Yeah, that's a terrific idea, Stuart.

Stuart: I wonder. You get kind of sparked on ideas and it can kind of run down the. Run down the rabbit warren. But I wonder if there's an easy way of creating that online version of it. Kind of like a roulette type wheel that spins around and picks the inspiration of the day.

Laura Bruce: Well, actually, Stuart. Oh, go ahead.

Stuart: No, go for it, go for it.

Laura Bruce: I thought of an app where you played a version of roulette on it, right? Yeah, the lockdown living app where you spun the wheel and you could just go completely random of the 101 options, or you could choose something that was health related or home organization related or creative and choose your sub hierarchy and then spin from there.

Stuart: Yeah. And you'd almost think this kind of minimum viable, minimum viable product type approach of that as an idea of a random number generator with the possibility of categorization sat above it. There's almost certainly a kind of white label product out there already that will achieve that, at least for the first version. This idea of testing things in the market is something that we talk to people a lot about. This kind of minimum step to get something moving rather than having to put all of your eggs in one basket and put a lot of time and financial commitment to something. I mean, in a certain way

Laura Bruce: that really informed what I was doing. Stuart. Actually, this idea of getting it 80% done that if I tried, if I strive for perfection, the book would never be published. And that's why it was so great to work with 90 minute books to get it 80% of the way there and say, okay, you guys can take it from here and do all those other bits. But it was really the minimum viable product, really informed my process around the book.

Stuart: And when you think about, particularly of the nature of the book that you had, so being pandemic related, obviously, hopefully there's an end goal and end time to the, to the pandemic itself. So there is a time crunch associated with it, which if it was, if it wasn't related specifically to this, might not be there. And it could be another project that dragged on for months and months, but definitely that speed element and the opportunity to get it out and meet a need, a desire that's out there really helps. It's an external commitment that we did some Facebook lives the first week of the pandemic to put some more useful content out for people. And the book blueprint scorecard that we have that talks about the eight mindsets, one of those is called beneficial constraints. And it's this idea of, rather than looking at constraints as a negative, looking at them as a positive to encourage you to get it done. So we talk about scope as being the constraint, really narrowing down the scope of what you will and won't accept in the book so that you can't find yourself trying to write content down and getting sidetracked by that. But also time constraints as well. Having a very clear deadline means that you don't let it slip. And if that means that things don't get included, as long as you've got a clear idea of what the scope is. So for you, it's very obvious what you want to include. You want to include things that people can take on as tasks, as activities. They're entertaining, that are relatively easy to do, that obviously need a lot of equipment or planning or certainly not travel, but that scope of the subject is very clear. And then having a scope on the time frame, you really want this completed within a couple of weeks in order to get it out there and meet people when it could be the most valuable. So this whole idea of using the minimum viable model, the effective 80% as you described it, to get something out there and then if it resonates in the market, if there's a demand for it, if you get feedback from customers, and a pivot comes from that, all of these opportunities, because you haven't invested all of the budget or all of the time means that it's the most effective way of creating something that serves the long term purpose. I think that scope constrained idea is something that people can. Anyone that's listening to this can take from the idea. Not just if you want to write a book about the pandemic or whatever the specific moment is. Did you feel that pressure at all to get it completed? Was there a sense of, okay, time's ticking every day that we're in this. Was there a kind of pressure that you felt?

Laura Bruce: Yeah, absolutely. And there were two things that drove me to get it done and to get it done as best as I could with the time constraints. One of them was the window of opportunity may shut and it may no longer be helpful. And the second thing was that in 2016 I wrote a handbook, a PR handbook for business owners. And I never got it out the door. So I knew that trying to make it perfect and include every possible exigency was going to thwart me and would lead to the failure of the project rather than it's getting out there and any potential benefit.

Stuart: And that's the real cost, isn't it? I mean, it's easy to think we have. We joke sometimes when I'm talking with Betsy, we'll talk about people who. So we started in 2013, so God, we're seven years in now, which doesn't seem like it's that long, but seven years in. So we'll have conversations with people now that we were talking to three, four, five years ago. And it's the opportunity that's missed because all that time, the potential people that could have been helped in that period have kind of the idea if you never stand in the same river twice, those people have moved on and have done something else is such a missed opportunity, regardless of the business side of things. But just from the helping point of view, I think everyone who writes is writing knowing that they can help people and to have not been able to because that opportunity has passed. It's such a, a shame that more people don't either find a system that works for them or have the not so much have the confidence, but ship something and then review it rather than getting into this paralysis of perfection and not letting it out the door, wanting it to be perfect. And then obviously time goes by. I don't want to drag up issues if it's painful. I hadn't realized that you'd written that in the past. Feel free not to answer. But that original handbook, was it the procrastination or the analysis Paralysis of perfection it fallen into. Or was it something else that meant it didn't get done?

Laura Bruce: Well, I took a two week writing sabbatical in Italy on the Amalfi coast, to write it. And I was really very diligent. And every day I would get up and I'd work for five hours, then I'd take a break in the afternoon, then I'd go back to work, work for another two or three hours. So I really, you know, I really did the work and I came home with 40,000 words. And what I realized was, you know, I had the work, but at the last minute I had introduced a notion into the beginning of the book and had kind of spoiled it. And I thought I must just give that to somebody and have them extricate that notion that framing that I had introduced retrospectively. And I never did, I never did just hand it to somebody, say, please take this part out and fix the rest, will you?

Stuart: Yeah, it's one of those things, isn't it? Particularly. It's almost like that need that you have to get it out there was served and satiated by the fact that you did do that. It's just that it didn't go then and no one else saw it. Almost the 80% of satisfying the need to get it written was served, but it just didn't get to that completion point. It's such. I mean, you're not the first person that I've heard that we've spoken with who's described a similar situation. And it's an easy trap to fall into because that window that you've got that you give yourself to do this project, once that window is closed and other things come up and then a week passes and a month passes and a year pass, it just falls off the radar. And it's surprising how much when something isn't front and center, it just never pushed to the back of the closet. It's really outside of mind.

Laura Bruce: It's a shame, it's a shame. And I actually trawled it up off my hard drive the other day. I thought I should just give this to somebody and get them to edit it, you know, because the principles are all there and the value is all there and it wouldn't take a lot to ship it. And like you say, even if it's not perfect, and the advantage we have with electronic books is you can go back and update it, it doesn't have to be perfect. And people accept that it doesn't have to be perfect, you know, and people are quite tolerant of Things not being perfect. And I think maybe it's us as writers, we come to it perhaps with a higher standard of perfection of ourselves than our audiences would require.

Stuart: Yeah, and I think there's that ownership type. Everyone's baby is the most beautiful baby around. And there's the. You kind of get caught up, invested in the thing that you creation. It becomes a kind of work of passion and you've got all of these emotions tied up in it to then have the. This is why I think the scope thing is such. Or the beneficial constraints element is such an overlooked benefit to actually get things out the door. Just as you say, it's not like we're in a situation now where you have to, as an author, get a book deal, which means that there's 100,000 sales, which means that no one wants that deal unless there's a very clear path to money. It's not like we're back in the. In the time where you had to lay out type on a machine and kind of block by block lettering. This is all very variable and malleable. And the reality on the reading point of view is that it's the minority of books rather than the majority of books that are read. Even when that comes down to kind of fiction books where the whole purpose is entertainment, let alone books where that's not the case and they're serving another job of work. People skipping through to get the feeling and the certainty that they're in the right place and picking and choosing the little nuggets of information that they take from something. It's almost like the concept of the album versus the single. People are very much now used to picking the pieces that they like and are looking for and don't necessarily consume the whole thing as an entirety. It's much more piecemeal to pick and choose. For the Lockdown Living book, we were talking about creating that as wanting to bring it together as something that's valuable for people to take something from and then just be able to use for inspiration. I know it's not related to the PR company, but was there any. Did you come into that project with any follow on activity that you thought about? Or was there any particular purpose that you had? Or was it really just creating it to get it out there and. And the words be valuable.

Laura Bruce: Yeah, I did just want to get it out there. And I thought later, I thought, gosh, I haven't really contextualized, you know, how I can leverage this, which for something I spent a lot of hours on in a short period of time, I thought perhaps, you know, perhaps I haven't really thought about how to use it. One of the things I found is that after about 25 years in prior, you know, I'm more interested in the general and the. Almost the direct response marketing approach is more appealing to me now in terms of my own work than traditional pr. And so there's elements of wanting to help people in that way. I think I'm an ideas person. I did the Colby test that Dean talks about so often, and I'm a number nine, quick start. So there's a. There's an element of me that just wants to get something out the door. And I think that just the idea of sharing ideas, and even in this case, I'm not sure that I thought about how I could use it to leverage my own business. One of the things I quite like doing is I quite enjoy training and public speaking. And I wondered if there were ways to transition into that and maybe even just sharing the story of the book as a way that, you know, this was an opportunity and it forced me to, you know, to act quickly and overcome any fears about getting something out the door, even if it wasn't perfect. I had kind of a greater motivation and that maybe could be helpful to people.

Stuart: And that's such a perfect idea, isn't it? The fact that you'll have something that you can relate. Almost like a hook that you can hang the narrative of the. Of the training or the advice that you're giving people that as a hook to describe things around perfect opportunity, to kind of contextualize it for people in a way that's very easy and accessible to understand. It's not like you're trying to describe things through the framework of something obscure or. Or industries needing a certain amount of industry knowledge. The idea of writing something and getting out the door fast and not being caught up on the perfection, the testing and the feedback, the going through the. This kind of natural progression of needing to go through the process to a certain degree before you can then see those steps further because you've kind of the front of your mind is taken up with wanting to get this thing created, and now it is created. You then start to see all of these other opportunities. It's a fantastic way of pinning that. Pinning those stories and those examples to something that people can to. Can grab onto. So this kind of secondary effect of creating something and then leveraging it, which usually we're talking about things the other way around. We usually talk about creating something a little bit more specific, but Even so, doing it this way around still gives a lot of opportunity down the track to this asset exists now. It's something that you can refer back to in whatever way makes sense at the, at the right point in time. Once it's created that, that the main thing, as I say, it's not always necessarily the way that we talk about it, but it's definitely beneficial and powerful now that it is created to be able to do that. I think the idea of, of the sound bite type approach that we were talking about before, with the different chapters being deliverable to people in different way, there's, there's 101 things now, 101 elements that you can leverage and use, positioning those and kind of replicating that model as 101 things specific to the training that you deliver or encouraging people and helping them with their PR or their messaging strategy. Using this as the first example, but then using that example with different words is also an opportunity as well. If you wanted to dial something else in even more specific. The benefit of the little sound think bytes 101. The small manageable pieces. You can almost. You don't need to write all 101 on day one. I mean you would give yourself a bit of a headache, but it could be one a day for 101 days. There's definitely an opportunity to use the same framework and this kind of mechanism that you've built around bite sized pieces of useful information that are being shared, but just now with a different message and going out to a different group of people. Those frameworks, once the frameworks are in place, utilizing them in a different way, or changing the context of them, or changing the content of them, very powerful and useful. Once you've got that framework in mind, which I'm sure you must have, the same in the professional sphere and pr, the same frameworks that you would suggest to one company can work for another company. Just changing the content and the context.

Laura Bruce: It's interesting now that you're saying that in fact the original title of the PR book was 66 tips any business Owner Can Use. And again, it was the idea that if you did nothing, if you did even one of them, it would have a beneficial effect on your business. You didn't have to do everything. You could just pick one and it would just move the needle a little bit.

Stuart: So this framework, I mean without seeing the other one or not, we haven't spoken before today, but this idea of the bite sized pieces that deliver things definitely seems to be something that you resonate with Naturally, I don't know whether it's conscious or unconscious, but it definitely seems to be something that. A framework, a delivery mechanism that resonates pretty well with you. And if the previous book is 66 points, even if you don't get to the point of giving it to someone else to edit this whole, edit the book into, into a book, taking those pieces, each of those 66 things, if they are all written. It's just that the thread kind of went a little bit sideways towards the end, but the 66 pieces must still be there. So taking those out now and either reason in a slightly different way or just delivering them to people in a different way, I mean, there must be a lot of valuable content there that's on the shelf waiting to be used.

Laura Bruce: There is, Stuart, and that is actually just such a. It is such a valuable reminder. Thank you for saying that, because I forget that the impact of a book is in the people it touches. And now especially with the economic hammering that people have taken in bricks and mortar businesses in particular, that, that's, that's what the book was written for. For people with books, bricks and mortar businesses who didn't have a PR agency, a kind of a DIY approach to pr. The nothing that was too complicated that they couldn't do, you know, nothing they couldn't do themselves,

Stuart: but they just don't

Laura Bruce: know to do probably quite. That they don't know to do and they don't know that. That this is our arsenal of, of PR tools. These are things that, that, you know, just as you said, apply to most businesses most of the time.

Stuart: Yeah. And with 66 of them, there's enough that even if that was only 50% true, there's still 33 things. Even if they, I mean, there's no way they're going to do 33 things. If they did three things, for most people, it would probably be game changing. So to be able to deliver that and get that out there, that might be interesting. I mean, we had an episode with Justin Breen probably a couple of months ago now. So he owns a PR company up in Chicago and he. Not too dissimilar to you, actually. He has a background in radio as well and so has a lot of contacts in that space. So his works with his clients to get media exposure and they use books as a hook a lot of the time. And then there was another episode that we did with Jonathan Schulthuis, who's actually a financial. Financial advisor, never written a book before, but had like a. I think it was Like a six step framework that he used with his clients around financial management and getting their finances in order. The Dave Ramsey type approach of starting with the baseline first and then moving forward. So his book, he wrote that and then just pitched it to a couple of local news channels and then. And that got picked up in the daytime slots where the news was quite quiet. And then he was traveling to another area and pitched it into that area because he knew he had three days of business there. So he was kind of filling in the gaps. And then because he could reference the previous shows that got picked up. So this whole idea of picking up on little individual bits and pieces, even with the book, the handbook not complete, moving it towards being completed and then being able to piggyback off the lockdown book as well. The lockdown book might be the one that gets the attention because it's the door. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And using it as a framework. So both frameworks are similar in that they're talking about small bite sized pieces of things that people can do, but talking then to other people about the framework. And part of the framework is referenced in the lockdown book. And part of the framework is talking about the handbook, which from a business point of view, and promoting and building the business a little bit more. That's really what you're financially at least what you're more interested in. But using the lockdown book as the kind of lever to open the door, that's an interesting opportunity because there is a commonality between the two approaches, although the subjects are completely different. This idea of topic bridging that I've talked about a few times in the past of starting the conversation on one point and then tastefully kind of pivoting to the point that you really want to make. Yeah, there might be some real interesting, interesting opportunities there. It's always kind of my mind starts going as well as we're talking a little bit more. And this idea of matching the message to the audience and then bridging to the message that you really want to get across. So delivering this book, because the cost of delivering the digital one is negligible now, it doesn't cost anything to send another email. And the opportunity, the contextual, it sits contextually that you would reach out to people with a digital version of a book rather than a physical one, because as you said, you can't actually get physical shipments or anything at the moment anyway. So there's no negative to now reaching out with a digital one, as when in the past you might reach out with a Physical one. So sending that. Reaching out to the audiences, the groups of people who you would most like to talk to, whether that was business owners within a certain genre or geographically within a certain area, finding the organizations that they're talking to. So like the chamber of commerce equivalent of whoever that would be, and leading with the lockdown book, but then having a way of connecting it to the other handbook, maybe leading with the lockdown book and saying, this is a strategy that we've used before. Before we've used it with the. The PR handbook as well. Obviously, we can't get physical copies of the PR handbook. So what I'm doing is I'm delivering these 20 of the 60 tips over the next 20 days. So if you're interested in this same approach, which is specific to how your business can make the most of PR ideas in this moment, then just opt in here and we'll. I'll be delivering those over the next couple of weeks. That might be an easy way of leveraging some of the things that are already created.

Laura Bruce: Well, I do happen to have a website called 52prtips.com. With the notion of generating a lead magnet and having people then sign up. And every week in their inbox, one of these PR tips would land right.

Stuart: And that has an option. So using the book, again, this kind of topic bridging idea, using the lockdown book as a way of delivering something of value at the moment because it is useful and there is a timeliness to it. But using the bridge being the model, we've collected these 101 things together. But actually, this all started when we delivered 52 PR tips to people. One thing that they could do week. And actually in the moment now, as things are hopefully coming out of the back of quarantine and people are starting to be back out there, these 52 things are now more important than ever. So here's a copy of the book, and by all means go and sign up and we'll deliver them over the next 52 weeks at this other place. Such a. I think there's definitely something there. I need to dial into the message a little bit just to kind of tie it into the group that you're talking to. But there's so many opportunities to do that bridging piece in a kind of the most specific way possible for the group of people that you're talking to. Yeah, it's interesting, I think, all of this idea of creating something and getting it out there, but then once it is out there, it then frees up the thinking to Think about, okay, now these 10 units of effort that I need to teach you to do to create this that are now gone. I've got another 10 units of effort. Where should I focus it? And it really does allow you to look at things or see things in a slightly different. The building blocks in a slightly different place as you look across the landscape and how things might tie in. I just looked at the clock and just before we started recording I said we're going to go for 30 or minutes or so and if it gets to 40 minutes I'll start wrapping up. But it goes quick and right enough I've just looked up and we're at that time and it has gone by.

Laura Bruce: Certainly has.

Stuart: This has been great. I really appreciate taking the time. I know it's early in the morning down there, so I really appreciate your time and I know everyone listening will have. Will have got a lot from hearing your story, particularly as they start thinking about their situation. I want to make sure that people have got the opportunity to find out more about you guys and what you do. So if people wanted to find out more, where would the best place for them to go be?

Laura Bruce: There is a website called lockdownlivingbook.com.

Stuart: fantastic.

Laura Bruce: And there is some information there and a bit of a blog and an email address. If anybody wants to get in touch, they can email me@lauraockdownlivingbook.com Fantastic.

Stuart: Well, that's perfect. And be sure to put this in the show notes as well. So as a listening category, over to 90minutebooks.com podcast. And this is episode 102, actually. We should have recorded last week and then we would have had the 101 book.

Laura Bruce: It could have been 101. Well, that's a little secret, Stuart. The book actually has 102. There's a bonus tip in there as a surprise.

Stuart: That's it then. So all of this, well, cut that out of the edit and it can all be intentional. And if people notice there's other 102, then they can laugh to themselves. It's episode 102 as well. I'll make sure that all of this is in the show notes. Again, thank you so much for your time, Laura. I know that people have got a lot from this. I certainly have and enjoyed it. So it'd be great to get back on the show. Once we get out the back of this and everything calms down again, it may be great to check back in and see how you're doing and see if anything came of the other book. Or leveraging this one in that bridging way that we talked about.

Laura Bruce: Well, thank you so much, Stuart. I've really appreciated your ideas and the opportunity to chat with you.

Stuart: Fantastic. Well, thank you. Thanks for everyone listening as well. And with that, we will catch you in the next one. And there we have it. What a fantastic episode. I really enjoyed that conversation with Laura. I think what she has created in the lockdown book is really going to kind of pique people's interest. It's so tight, timely and there's so much opportunity to kind of leverage that into conversations and use it as the, as the hook to start a conversation with someone and then bridging that into the other things that she has created with this similarity of framework. The fact that she has 101 tips in the lockdown book and 66 tips in the, in the the ghost book, the incomplete book, and then the 52 tips on the website. This framework that she has of chunking information into bite sized accessible pieces is clearly something that resonates with her and to reach out to groups in the local area, groups nationally, in New Zealand or even internationally to build the list and bridging the lockdown book because it's timely into the framework that she uses for other pieces of business. Things that she's created in the past grant great opportunities for really dialing it in. When you think about tying that with some demographic advertising in Facebook so that you're actually talking to the people who are most likely to be customers or reaching out to like the local chamber of commerce or the small business groups. All of that means that the people who are being fed into the funnel are the ones most likely to be clients or you can provide value of in a professional sense further down the track and then the one ones that resonate and engage with the content create such a hot list of people who you can help the best and can get value from the message that's been shared. So that's really a good, great takeaway from this. If you're in a similar situation, if you have ideas, if you have assets already, whether or not it's a book you can bridge into other things, particularly if that bridging is relevant and as seamless as possible, then now is a great time to, to do that because there's a big need out there for people to get the type of help that you can give. And if you can deliver that in a easy to consume, accessible way that starts the conversational journey, then now is a great opportunity to lay the groundwork for more business, more traditional business once the lockdown's lifted and things are returning to whatever the new normal turns out to be. So with that in mind, highly recommend heading over to the website, the podcast links on the website to check out the links that we have to Laura's work. And if you're thinking about a project yourself, then head over to bookblueprintscore.com and fill out the mindsets, the eight book blueprint mindsets to really get this project dialed in and give yourself a framework to make sure that it gets out of the door so that you do have an asset in order to kind of lead this topic, bridging conversation. So with that, as I say, thanks again to Laura for her time. Thanks to you guys for listening. And we will catch you in the next one.