Amplify Your Message

"Hey, everyone."

Stuart: Welcome to another episode of the bookmore Show. It's Stuart Bell here, and today I'm talking with Betsy Vaughan about ways that you can amplify the message of your book. So we know that for most people it takes months or years to become a client rather than days or weeks. So what we need is a way of staying in touch with people until they're ready, until today's Today for them. So we often talk about this idea of a flagship broadcast email, a regular message that you can send out to people. But I think a lot of times that's overwhelming for people to think about creating all of that additional content. So really there's an opportunity to create what we refer to as microfunnels or mini campaigns in the show today to create these campaigns of content that amplify specific points from your book. And the best part is that these are easy to create because you've already done the hard work already. The words already exist on the pages that you've created. So the key here we're going to talk about is picking five or six key points from your book to amplify those with video or email or infographics or things that you can amplify those individual smaller messages and then creating mini campaigns that you can release throughout the year that amplify the message already in your book. But talk to and have a way of keeping in touch with all of those people who raise their hand but aren't immediately ready. So, great episode today. I really enjoyed. Took a few unexpected turns and we dived a bit deeper than I was expecting. And then at the end we put out there. Just if you want to talk about this, jump on a quick strategy.

Guest: Call with us.

Stuart: More than happy to do that. We've got some time available at the moment, so head over to 90minutebooks.com funnel and when you're listening to this, assuming we've still got some times available, grab

Guest: one of those slots and more than

Stuart: happy to talk about this idea of amplifying the content and the message that you've already create. So with that, let's get to it.

Guest: Betsy Ford, what's. What are we going to talk about today?

Guest: We're going to continue our conversation from our last podcast. I think we had somebody in between us. JJB Oliver, I believe was there, but talk about launching again.

Guest: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. I think we got back to this was one of those rare occasions where I remember our last conversation and saying, oh, we'll pick that up next time and actually went back and checked what we talked about and actually remembering that you remembered. Yeah, yeah, that's actually. As you listen to this, if you haven't checked out last week's episode with JW Oliver, that is a great episode. JW is a great guy. We were talking about outsourcing and their. Their experience and then moved on to his book and now he's using it. So, yeah, really great. Really great episode. So highly recommend checking that one out. This one, though, we're going to pick up, as you say, pick up a point that we left off on last time. We kind of went pretty deep in talking about using the elements of your book in slightly different ways, and we've touched on, but didn't get time to talk about in depth about this idea of almost an evergreen launch. So very often people are thinking about book launches in a traditional sense, as in, this is something that's just been written. But really, because we're not thinking about the book as the product, we're not really interested in book sales as such. We're not interested in hitting bestseller lists, which things that have to be done in a short period of time to condense that effort. All of which is usually the case in a traditional publishing sense. So because we're thinking about a way of engaging customers from now to forever in the future, this idea of an evergreen launch of launch into an individual person, of being able to pull them into what is effectively a launch funnel of their understanding, of their knowledge, of their exposure to you, then this is a great model to set up in a way that you can have that same enthusiasm and excitement and build some assets that you can use around that funnel, but really set it up in a way that lasts much longer than just the first couple of weeks of getting out there, or I think the reason it came up in the first place is we're kind of talking mid pandemic and things are different now than they were eight months ago. So how can we engage people in a different way? So this idea of launching again, launching at a later date from when the book was published, but launching the campaign around it, that was really the thing that sparked the conversation. So a lot of ideas around that.

Guest: Very good.

Guest: I probably should apologize for slightly croaky voice before we even get started today as well. It's one of those days that's been on the phone all day.

Guest: Same here. So. All right, well, very good. Let's do it.

Guest: Alrighty. So I think the best place to start then is to think about this idea of how you can the easiest Way to create additional assets that can build into more of a funnel that you can use in this kind of launch framework.

Guest: I was going to try to mute it, but unfortunately he stopped before I could do that. So, yeah, sorry about that.

Guest: It adds some real life texture.

Guest: It really does.

Guest: A storm's coming down your way Somebody

Guest: was walking in the door. But I have to tell you, I was thinking, this is a total change of subject, but the other day I was calling someplace and they had me on hold and this shows you where we are in the world. And they had me on hold and instead of the standard music, there was a recording that said, someone will be right with you. Please be patient and have understanding. As most of our employees are working from home. So you might hear a child scream or a dog bark in the background. And I thought that is, you know what, that's a great, that's so great to do that. You know, I mean, we all, we're all there and. But just that little reminder for maybe that person who's. Who's not or that person who has no noise going on at their house, you know, that was, that was great.

Guest: Bridges into the subject that we're talking about perfectly. Because in the before times, for one of the better term, in the four times, there was an expectation that whatever you did had an element of professionalism around it above and beyond the professionalism of the content that you were delivering or the service that you actually provided. There's definitely an element of democratization of technology. Kind of everyone now has in, in just their phone, they've got a camera that's better than the cameras that professionals would have used five years ago in the audio setup that they've got in the, in the technology that people use. But there was this expectation that the baseline had been raised and it had been raised to the point that it not so much that it was difficult from a technology point of view to achieve, but it was difficult from a production point of view to achieve because the very kind of off the cuff way of doing things wasn't necessarily, wasn't necessarily appreciated in the sense that 10 years ago, if you were the first on YouTube with a certain channel, the fact that you were doing it with a crappy phone or a flip video camera and the quality was pretty low. You were the only one there that was doing it. So that was different and engaging enough to keep that audience's attention. In more recent times, with the technology improving both in terms of cameras and post production and just the level of detailed attention that people are Putting on things. If you try to replicate that just with a pretty rubbishy cell phone camera and poorly edited and the sound quality being very bad, people's acceptance of that actually dipped, I think, because the general quality level was raised. Whereas now there is definitely a case that you can get away with more because everyone's a little bit more forgiving of the fact in a slightly different environment. I think the same applies for. For meetings and podcasts and whatever you do this, this opportunity, you've got to put stuff out there. There is a point in time which is now, which will go again in six to 12 months because the standard will raise again. But there is definitely an opportunity now to grab hold of that and get stuff out there where the court, where the underlying message that you're trying to give isn't necessarily hampered by the production quality because people are a little bit more forgiving. I always remember there was like, I think it was either BBC or cnn, someone was interviewing a specialist from home, and then the little kid burst into the room in the background, burst in with her pants down around her ankles where she'd been in the bathroom trying to, like, rescue the kid out. I mean, now that's almost part of the course. I don't know. That definitely wouldn't have been a news story today, but a year ago it was. It was quite different. So that brings us to. Back to the point of what we're talking about today and the opportunity you've got in the easiest possible way to create a whole load of additional content that you can use to amplify the message that you're putting out there. So we often have conversations with people saying, okay, the book's completed, now what? And this idea of now what applies both whether your book's literally just completed, so it's the immediate now what? Or whether your book was created five years ago, but the environment is different, so you're looking for other ways of doing things. And what we really want to do is amplify the stuff that you've already got, because there's plenty of opportunities to go and create new stuff. And if you've got the desire or the time or the budget or the inclination to do that, then, hey, that's fine. But what we're looking to do is the minimum viable additional amplifying content and then work on the other stuff afterwards. So the easiest way to think about it is to take the content that you've already written and how you can amplify that in staying in touch with people after the point that They've opted in. And really the easiest way of doing it is taking that exact content, but just packaging it in a different way. So let's take for example, the book Blueprint Scorecard, because it's a. It's an easy example. Hopefully everyone's seen a copy of that as you're listening to the podcast. If you haven't, head over to BookBlueprint Score and grab a copy of it. Kind of follow along at home. But that's an easy book to think about because that has eight mindsets talking about the different elements of creating a book that really creates the best product, that the best, the best asset that you can do to amplify the message that you're trying to deliver. So it's an easy way of thinking about the content and then breaking it down into the individual sections of the content. So we'll use that as the example. But if your book or the book that you're thinking about isn't broken down into quite such neat chaptered packages, then just break out individual points. So throughout the book, you can absolutely identify eight talking points that are things that you can amplify in different ways after the. After the point that people have opted in. So let's jump back a little bit to begin with and talk about why we're trying to do this. This idea that people who opt in split themselves then into two groups. There's the people who are never going to take action and the people who are going to take action. So those people who are never going to be customers and those people who are eventually going to be customers, the people who are never going to be customers. There's nothing that you can do. There's no way you've keeping in touch with them enough that's going to change their mind. If they're not the right people, they're not the right people. The other group, the people who are the right people, then break themselves down into two categories, and that's people who are going to take action immediately and immediately. Immediately is defined as the next kind of day one to day 75, that kind of couple of month window, and then everyone who's going to take action in the period after that. So from kind of two to three months out to two to three years, the people who are going to take action immediately, they're the ones who are likely to respond to the immediate funnel after opting in. So someone downloads a copy of the book, you immediately follow up with them by delivering the book, then follow up with a spear email, a short personal Expecting a reply type question the following day, asking them that engaging question, trying to start that conversation. Then follow up with people a couple of days after that, amplifying a point in the book, follow up a couple of days after that, maybe referring to a case study or a testimonial or a way that your solution has helped someone else. Again, all of these opportunities are to get that conversation going and to give people a clear next step. But once you get to the end of that funnel now you're in a situation where, okay, well what do I do now? Do we just go radio silence and people can hopefully remember you at some point in the future? What we want to do is create a way that often we refer to as flagship broadcasts. What we want to do is create a way that extends this conversation period. So for the very long term engagement pieces, we're often talking about podcasts as an easy way to create new content that allows you to send something fresh and on topic out to people. But in the medium term, this idea of creating this immediate funnel that people opt into and then get delivered, and the short term period directly after that, what we're looking at doing is creating more assets now in this moment that can put into those gaps, into those windows of opportunity to touch base with people. So as you listen to this, you've probably got a couple of, you're in a couple of different situations. Either you've got this idea of a funnel in place already, so you know the steps over the next couple of weeks after someone opts in, or it's something that you haven't thought about and really you're just kind of randomly sending stuff out. What we're talking about in leveraging your book even further with more assets that amplify the message that's in there, we're looking at filling those gaps in the funnel. So maybe pad that funnel out a little bit more so it goes a little bit longer, but it still falls in this category of the immediate opt in funnel. And then we're also talking about having this evergreen launch campaign idea of delivering stuff to people wrapped around this idea of a point in time or a particular subject. It almost seems like mini funnels and those mini funnels can be delivered because of either some change in environment, something on the calendar that's happening now, something in someone's personal situation that's means that they'll this particular funnel be relevant to them. But all of these different campaigns, all of these different ways of keeping in touch with people, the thematic ways that these campaigns or these Follow up pieces are stitched together. All of that has to come from source material. And the source material that we're talking about is amplifying stuff that's already in your book because that's, that's the easiest thing to do.

Guest: Yeah, it absolutely does. I. For someone listening who maybe, you know, and we've discussed this a little bit in different settings, but you know, how much, how often, you know, does someone, you know, if I've never been the person to, to maybe let's say, let's say I have a book and let's have. I don't send emails out on a regular basis or I have a podcast. I don't send things out. What is, what is too much? I had this conversation yesterday with a potential client who, you know, she's, she's like, what am I going to do with the book? We talked about what to do with the book and you know, she said she has a list of 1600 people emails. And she's like, I don't have. She said, I don't have many emails. And I'm like, what do you have? 1600. I'm like, you'd be surprised. We're 1600 emails. But right now, she sends out something one time a month. That's it. And we discussed it a little bit at length, you know, like, what she could do to jazz this one particular particular item up. But, you know, I think it's hard for people who, like this person who once a month for the past five years to send out an email. And I'm saying, you know, to her, well, maybe you want to increase that a little bit, you know, be out there a little bit more visible. We, we talked about ideas on what she could do to send out. And, and she loved it. But I think she was like, oh, I don't want to, I don't want to bother people. Well, they've expressed an interest in you. I mean, you know, it's not like you just picked Joe Schmo's email off the street.

Guest: Yeah, exactly. That's such a great point. And I think the, the reality for most people is that the too much conversation is a mask for another problem. They're either concerned about what that message might be, they're concerned about the quality of their list. I think if you've got, if you've got a list of people who have genuinely opted in because they were interested in the subject that you're still talking about, there is no legitimate idea of too much. Because those people who are, I mean, tech obviously Technically that's not true because you can go too far. But the reality is that no one's going to do that because too much is probably twice a day and no one's going to create that much content. So it's a non event once a day. Okay, well that's probably getting a bit much twice a week. I really don't think twice a week is too much. If someone's requested information is interested in the subject and what you're sending them is new, compelling, engaging information on that subject, there is no such thing as too much. People may no longer be interested in it, but in that case they're in the no group and they were never going to be a yes.

Guest: Right.

Guest: You can't send someone who's a five star prospect. Those people who know what they want, who are willing to ask for it, who are in a position to do something about it, who like you to do something, who would like you to be the person to do something about it. But those five star prospects, there's no such thing as too much. So anyone who's not a five star prospect, what we really want to get into the mindset of doing is not talking to them. We will be talking to them anyway by virtue of the fact that we're talking to everyone. But when we're thinking about the messages that we want to send out, we just want to be in conversations with five star prospects.

Guest: Right.

Guest: Anyone else who we're in conversation with and isn't a five star prospect will either continue to stay on the list until they are and that that point might be never, or they'll take themselves off the list in which case they weren't. But what we're not going to do is hold back from talking to five star prospects in a way that we would ideally because of the two star prospects. Because that's, that's ridiculous. I mean, we're just shooting ourselves in the fort, not talking to the people who would be the most excited to hear from us because someone who we're never going to do business might not. So I think for most people that concern is unfounded. The other concern that people have is oh well, if I suddenly start sending people emails, they're going to opt out. Well, yes, they are. And if they do, then they weren't five star prospects.

Guest: Right.

Guest: So this idea of having a list and wanting to protect it is separate from it's, it's almost like, I can't think of an analogy. It's almost like having, I don't know if this is an American thing or whether it's just a British thing in some families. But some families will have like a sofa in the front room and then it'll be covered in plastic because they don't want anyone to sit on it or damage it. And then the sofa is there for 20 years and it gets used twice. So having a list is the same. Having a list of 1600 people and again, not picking on this one particular person, but having a list of 1600 people but never emailing them because you don't want any unsubscribe. Well, really, you're missing the point. That's not the purpose of what it is.

Guest: That's true.

Guest: Right, so the sweet spot for. The sweet spot for most people, I would say, is weekly as a minimum, for just a general content point. I'm a fan of twice weekly because that is frequent enough so that if people are ready and moving. Because when you think about it yourself as a recipient of email and someone who's out in the world thinking about doing things, the majority of us, it takes the seventh or eighth email of thinking, oh, yes, I'm going to do it before you actually get around to it. Unless you're in a situation where you're dealing with like emergency critical businesses where there's an external drive. Like if you've got a leak and you send someone an email saying, hey, we fix leaks, just give us a call on 1-800- Fixed- leaks. Then if they have a leak, they're not going to leave that for six or seven times before they call you. Because it's a pressing need.

Guest: Right.

Guest: If it's that you do. Bathroom remodels might be exactly the same company, but there isn't the pressing need to do it. So there is that difference. So a twice weekly frequency is a very. If assuming that you're sending useful information is a nice way of staying in touch frequently enough so that it gets those seven touch points out of the way faster and you stay in front of people more regularly. On the off chance that today's the day that they decide that they want to pull the trigger or they've got time to make this, make this decision to take it to the next step twice a week can be challenging for people. Unless you've got a particularly robust system in place to be able to deliver that frequency of information, it can be a little bit different. So when you look at what we do on the book side of the business, we're just weekly with the podcasts on the dingjackson.com side of the business on the entrepreneur side of the business, where three times a week where one podcast release and then two message emails. And those message emails are taken from previous podcasts. They're just amplifying some of the points, which is what we'll talk about now in terms of leveraging the books you've created in order to create these funnels. But as far as frequency goes, I would think of weekly as a minimum. Now, the only caveat to that is if you're really struggling with content, then I would start fortnightly every two weeks and step up to weekly if you can, rather than going the other way of starting weekly and then missing something going and then it just becomes a bit more sporadic. So weekly I think is the. Is the sweet spot for most people and then increase from there as and when you can get it a bit more robust. Now, in terms of the funnels and the. And the touch points, the kind of what rather than the. When we've got two things that we've talked about. So flagship broadcasts, these, the messages that regularly go out. And we often talk about podcasts as being an easy way to create unique, new, unique content that you can deliver to people in a way that says here's the release email for the podcast. And by the way, whenever you're ready, here's three ways we can help you. There's this flagship broadcast idea, but then around the book, this gives us the opportunity for this evergreen launch idea of creating funnels of information that we can release and deploy at different times. It might be that you've got a weekly flagship broadcast type email. But then as we're coming into. Where are we now? August 6th, as we record this. So as we're coming towards September, school term starting again, if your financial planner was starting to get into tax planning season, if you're a H Vac heating cooling person, we're talking about a season change. If you're a wedding planner, we're talking about COVID restrictions, hopefully lifting at some point or we're deciding that, okay, we're in the thick of it now, this is going to be it for the next year. So we really need to move from the restrictions of the last six months now being the reality for the next 12 months. So that's a kind of external trigger has changed something. So these events, whether they're internal or external, whether they're calendar based or kind of legislation based, or whether they're just something that we make up, you could look on the National Holiday Day calendar and decide that it was I Think it was like Avocado Tuesday last week or something like that. So your business could have something tangentially or loosely related to Avocados and use that as the release date for this next funnel. So with these individual funnels, we've talked about the one where people opt in in the first place, but the evergreen element of it means that we can take the book content, repackage that in a different way, and then launch that particular funnel as and when you need to in order to keep the conversation and keep some momentum going with people who have opted in at some point. So what we're talking about doing is taking the content from the book. So we talked about the book Blueprint scorecard as the example. So there's we've got the eight mindsets, and for those each of the eight mindsets, we've got the actual book itself. We've got the PDF around the the score as you complete the score. We did the Facebook Live videos on each of the modules. We've got the audio of that. We've got a podcast series that we did six months or so ago where we went through each of the mindsets we've got in the pipeline, we've got some infographic type things and some visual elements. All of these things are going from that cor content. Most of the time, people struggle with content because they're thinking about inspiration and ideas of how to get started. But instead, if you look at taking the stuff that you've already written, picking out the eight points that are the most salient or the most pressing, or people struggle with the most all those points that you had to touch on relatively lightly in the book, but there's actually a whole extra layers of things that you could talk about and go into details. So take those eight elements as inspiration and just talk about it some more to talk about it further in detail. If you've got checklists that people can go through around one particular point, if you've got worksheets that you can create, if you've got like say, infographics that show some chart data, all of these things can be then spun off into additional assets. So earlier today we were doing some real estate work for the real estate side of the business that we work in, we're creating some pricing guides to particular areas. So this one guide I was working on earlier was for a guide to an area that is actually not too far from you over on the Tampa Bay side of things. It's not an area that I'm that familiar with, but going into Some of the chart data, and just looking at the SOL data for the last 12 months, three relatively interesting trends picked up that I wouldn't have even thought about. And it actually took two minutes of looking to see this data that's in there. So the book that you've already written, the elements in there that are the most pressing or interesting or timely or unusual or colorful or different or let's think about even the news recently. I'm trying to think of some completely random things that are in the news at the moment you could use as inspiration to amplify and leverage what you've already. What's already in there. So when we look at some of the big trends over the last couple of months, we've got things like the pandemic lockdown and people working from home, we've got Black Lives Matter and the racial inequality, we've got voting issues and elections coming up. All of these things might trigger relevant. They might be relevant touch points to your book. Or even random things like the Air Force was confirming that there was more UFO sightings than perhaps they'd previously said there was the chemical explosion in Beirut that tragically just happened yesterday. I mean, that conversation alone, that. So the information that's out there in the moment suggests that it was a big chemical supply that had been dropped off at the port. I think it was like six years ago, something crazy like that. The port authorities have been reaching out for years to the local government, saying, what can we do about this? What can we do about this? And eventually something catastrophic happened. If you're in any kind of risk management or mitigation business, again, this topic bridging idea that we've talked about in podcasts previously, being inspired by something external and bridging it to an internal subject, something that you can talk about is a great way of taking this information and moving it forward. But the thing that we really want to focus on, because it's the easiest possible thing, is this idea of the seed content and what you're going to talk about, and the fact that you're amplifying, simplifying something that's already been done. So you might be inspired by something external, something date driven with the season change, something date driven with the tax calendar, something completely random and external, like the explosion in Beirut, something global, like everyone working from home now or schools potentially not opening up again, whatever that inspiration is, amplifying that, taking that back into the content of your book and then amplifying the message that's already there, it allows you to create Something very simply because you know the subject already, you've talked about it, it allows you to tie in all of the other stuff within the book. So recording a quick video that talks about mindset two of the scorecard that's picking the title that resonates going deep into the title, why we pick certain titles, why certain titles work better in some industries than others, then linking people off to the book titles workshop that we've did, that we did last year sometime, all linking people into mindset number three. Because mindset number three talks about the subtitles. So this ability to easily create something that amplifies what's that, whatever is there already, which allows you then to bridge into other things that are already there and you get this stitching together effect of all of the subjects talk about each other and to each other and lead to each other. And the guide, the track that that train is on goes from asset that got them to raise their hand in the first place through the amplifying message of the initial funnel to maybe the flagship broadcast that they're on for the next six months through the year, to now we're at the stage where we're launching a little mini launch and every launch around a particular subject that's driven by one of these external factors. But then the call to action on all of that follow up sequence. And again, that evergreen funnel can have three or four or seven or eight emails in that sequence because it's talking about that particular thing and amplifying it. And all of the time it's leading people towards the next step that you want them to take. That simple way that, that you've got of them. Raising the hand as, okay, now is my time, now I'm ready to get started. Now I can pull the trigger and take this first step to either call you or fill in, fill out the assessment or come into the office for review. All of this information is easy to create. It amplifies and builds on what's already there. And it doesn't get you stuck in your head of, okay, well I only email people once every six months. How could I create enough content content to fill those gaps? The easy way of doing it is by amplifying what's already there. Don't get caught up in this. It has to be new, it has to be more, it has to be different.

Guest: I think that's it. People just want to make it complicated and overthink it and I mean, look, everything you just, you know, just said, it was just so perfect and so simple and I don't think people realize what they have right in front of them. The resources they have, have, you know, like a book. People think, oh, I have the book and then that's it, and now what do I do? But there's just using that alone, that one resource, you know, can provide so many different, you know, directions and, and much content, so much content for, you know, these launches. So that's, that's, I think people just overthink it a little bit.

Guest: Yeah, maybe.

Guest: I don't know.

Guest: Right. And the unknown. And at the end of the day, I mean, this is why we say to people, the quickest way of getting your book created is to come to us and we'll do it with 90 minutes of your time. Because the other 900 minutes or 9,000 minutes that it takes to get out there, we'll do all of that because that's what we're doing day in, day out. This is why we get, I mean, you joke on the show many times that we're talking to people that we first talked to five years ago and then it's a project that still hasn't been created and all of that opportunity has been lost. I think there's the risk with the same. Sorry, there's a similar risk with the content side of things. People are concerned about pulling the trigger because they think that it's, it's difficult and challenging and an overhead to create all of this stuff because that's the narrative that's out there. Everyone talks about the frequent, the overheads of doing things because oftentimes people do it in a overhead intensive way just thinking about amplifying what's already there. Because at the end of the day that's what people opted in for. It's. I'm just looking at some of the books I've got on the shelf here and we've got ones that talk about, I mean, something completely random. Like there's a voice data provider, telecoms provider who wrote a book talking about the, the same music you can make just by looking at VoiceOver IP technology for kind of the medium sized office. Small, medium, medium sized office. So when you look at that and the data that's in there, I mean the analysis that you could do on one person's bill, I mean, every month you could do a customer, not so much a testimonial or a review, but take one person's bill and assess it and look for ways to save within that bill. Just doing that once a month, that would give you 12 pieces of content. And that reinforces by one of the chapters in the book. There's another line in the book that talks about checking for mistakes because that's one of the biggest overlooked things is just going through and looking for things that are incorrectly allocated. So doing that once a month and just having a short piece that you send out to people that talks about, hey, we're looking at the top five categories of Ms. Billed items that people don't necessarily know that there do that once a month. That's another 12 pieces of content. There's another line there that talks about contract dates and how often people will run off discounted contract rates onto full time contract rates, do that four times a year. That's another. I mean, all we're looking for for a weekly thing, we're just looking for 52 pieces. And really those 52 pieces can be repeated every year because something that someone heard 12 months ago, they're not going to remember in 12 months time. And there's going to be all of those new people on the list. And if that's valuable information, then why not send it out again? So you can imagine getting into a situation. I was talking about this on a strategy call with someone saying that, okay, we want to send something out twice a month to someone. So we were on. It was a similar situation. They hadn't really been in touch with people. It was too much of a lift to get to that weekly schedule, which now hopefully we're getting to. So we started off on fortnightly. I was saying to them, job one is to go through the calendar and for every month write down. They're in financial services. I mean, financial services is even easier because every month of the year there's something calendar driven that is relevant to people. So job one is sit down, write down on a piece of paper, January, February, March, all the way through the year. And then next to it, write out the thing that's happening around that time that people need to know about. That immediately knocks out 50% of the content that you were looking at creating. Because we're only talking about twice. This is why it was quite quick to then eventually get to once a week because we got past twice a month pretty fast. So that's just the calendar driven stuff. Then write down, okay, well what are the 12 questions that people ask as they come in? And people traditionally have this. Everyone asks the same questions. So what are the 12 questions that everyone asks? Okay, one, now we've got two pieces of content a year. Okay, so now let's add in the third one. So now write down the 12 things that are particularly interesting or particularly as an industry insider, almost the what questions should people be asking? What are the most important things that people can know? And this is often the information that's in your book because usually people are writing with that in mind, a mix of what questions people do ask and what questions people should ask. So now we've got that third piece of the puzzle, that third week of the puzzle. So now we're down to the fourth one of, okay, we want to go every week. We've done three of the four weeks of the month. So now the extra one. Now you can just do that off the cuff. You can see what's happening, what's kind of in the news this month, and then we're going to talk about this one. So we very quickly got to the stage where weekly was much more achievable. When you tie that.

Guest: And that's brilliant. That is just brilliant. I mean, that is so simple. And I couldn't write that fast enough.

Guest: And the funny thing is, as well, I mean, we should really. This is a classic cobbler's shoes situation of really, we should be taking a bit more of our own medicine because of the podcast and we send that out, but really we don't do enough of the other stuff. We should do more, more, more of that more regularly for two reasons. One, it just makes sense. And, and, well, three reasons. One, it makes sense. Two, we preach it, so we really should do it. And three, it would be a great example for people then just to copy at the end of the day. But this idea of, so that content calendar throughout the year, we've just outlined what a year looks like. Now, getting to the stage where you bridge that across into the touch points with the book. So let's go back to the first one, the calendar example for financial services. Through those touches, 12 pieces throughout the year, four, five, six of them are probably very relevant to content that's in the book, if not all of them. So for those particular articles, for those particular emails that we're going to send those out and we want to bridge people back to the book or back to the next step in the book, or remind people that they've already read this in the book that they've requested in order to get on the list in the first place, give people the opportunity to get the book. If they haven't, then, then bridging that and tying that in is a perfect way of amplifying the information that's already in there, because the content for that Particular email, as we've said, take the content that's already in the book and just repackage it in a slightly different way now, amplifying it even further. So we talked about these little micro funnels triggered by a certain point in time. Let's say that one of these triggers we just talked about coming into September now. So we're heading towards tax planning season. So we know that September, October people are going to be going through with their accountants tax planning for the coming year end. So knowing that we've got that on the regular content calendar, that one of the messages in September is going to talk about tax planning, we talk about some tax planning elements in the book. So we refer back to that. Now we need to think about these opportunities to create assets, to bring more people into the funnel. So tax planning is something that happens in September, October, we've got content in the book that talks about it. We can amplify it a little bit more because it's very easy for us to record a video or record some audio or do a deep dive on the two or three hardest hitting or easiest to achieve or biggest savings tax planning things that you could do, creating those things and making that a funnel that we can launch now. So on top of the regular broadcast that goes out, we could say that okay, we want to go all in in tax planning in September. So for these weekly broadcast messages that go out, we know that the four or in September, they're just going to be entirely about tax planning. So now we don't need to think about what those other ones are. We've got this micro funnel around September that is tax planning focused. What can we also do? We can also put those videos on Facebook and then boost or promote those, those videos so that it draws in more traffic. We can write LinkedIn articles about it, we can talk about it in responses to other people, we can reach out to other groups. All of these kind of complementary century non competing things that we've talked about in the past, all of this can be driven and trigger the micro campaign, the mini campaign that we've got around tax planning because that we know that as financial advisors in September, that's the biggest thing in the year. Now look on the flip side of that and I'm conscious that this was going to be a short one today, but carried away again. But look on the flip side of that, we might say, okay, July, what happens in July? Well, July is now a challenge because we're just out the back of or June, maybe June's more of a challenge. We're just out of the back of the tax year. Everyone's exhausted and is pretty fed up of talking about financial planning. The kids are just waking up from school, so everyone's thinking about being away from vacation. The weather's just changing, so we're thinking about being outside a little bit more than we were beforehand. So, okay, we know that July is going to be a bit thin on the ground for information. So, so in that scenario, we know that we want to keep this weekly frequency up. We know that every July we can send out the same information because it will be 12 months before we send it before. So we can just accept that September we're going to hit this mini campaign a little bit harder around tax paying. But July, hey, that's okay. We can take July off. We're going to write the four things that we're going to send out so that we still keep this weekly frequency. Those four things may or may not all be related to the book. They don't have to be related to anything apart from financial planning. But we just take four bullet points from the book and just elaborate and expand on that. Hey, in, in the book we talk about 1031 real estate rollover tax. I'm struggling.

Guest: 1031 exchange.

Guest: Yes, we had another book that was talking about that earlier today. That's why it's front of mind. So that for everyone that's talking about financial planning that might only be relevant to a very small subset of people. We've picked that because that's not really time based for anything else in the year. I mean, apart from year end. Maybe it's a tax planning thing so you could bridge it into that. But really it's just a subject within. On the content. We want to write about something that's in the book. We send an email in the middle, middle of July, in the middle of June that's talking about a 1035 exchange. Because we want to send something, it's broadly relevant. It's in the book. We're talking about it. There's the super signature at the end of that email that says by the way, if you're here are three ways that we can help you. Whenever you're ready. We can do some tax planning, download the assessment to run through your your own tax return and. Or come into the office and we can have a conversation. At the end of the day, that's the worst case. I was trying to make that intentionally kind of light and superficial and relevant, but not massively tied into a big campaign. But what we've done is we've ticked the box and we've achieved our goal of sending out a weekly broadcast that's got a super signature in there. The subject is maybe not the most engaging, not the most timely, but it's broadly there and there's the super signature to guide people back in and give them a next step. If that triggers something in their head that says, oh, you know what, that specific thing isn't really for me, but I did want to talk about someone about tax planning because of X, Y and Z. So this whole idea of taking what you've already got, of just sitting down for a little bit to expand on it for that little bit further, but this idea of really amplifying what's there already, I think just takes away so much of the pressure of having to create stuff. And not only does it take away that pressure, meaning it's more likely to be done, but it also amplifies everything that you've already done and it builds on itself. You already know what the subject of your book is about. You've already got all of this knowledge in your head. We've already helped you capture that into the page of a book, which is a great lead generation tool. Now's the opportunity to kind of amplify all of that work that's already been done in a way that keeps people engaged and gives people the opportunity to check back in with, with you when they're ready, because you're able to regularly keep in touch with them. And then on top of that, the icing on the cake, these kind of micro launches, these kind of evergreen launches that can be triggered by particular events that are timely and are very relevant for a short period of time. But those micro targeted ones, imagine having four of those a year. So now you're in a situation where you've got the flagship broadcast going out every month, every month, every week, week. You've got people opting into the book in the first place and hitting that initial funnel day in, day out. But then you've also got a micro event, a micro launch every quarter where you've easily created these 10, 15 assets that amplify a point that's already there, that lead people in the direction that you know you want them to go. I mean, that's just a, a marketing supercharged funnel, right? That is going to keep you. And, and you only have to do it once. Once you've done it once, it will last for the next. I mean, geez, we're doing stuff that we did 10 years ago, 20 years ago. On the real estate side of things. It's Right.

Guest: Yeah, no, that.

Guest: I can feel myself talking fast to that.

Guest: No, no, no, you're trying to get. That's when you get excited. You can tell. Yeah, that's, that's really. I mean that there's a. That's a lot. People may have to re. Listen to this just to grab everything because I think this is a lot of valuable information here.

Guest: Well, I'll tell you what, let's do this then. So the, the podcast recording obviously is on the. Is on the show notes. So this is going to be episode 109. So dive into the show notes and then the transcript of everything that's there. But if anyone wants to jump on a quick strategy call with us, let's put like a. We can do a 15 minute quick hit strategy session for anyone that's interested in this kind of funnel opportunity. So if you go to. We'll set up a URL. So if you go to 90minutebooks.com forward/funnel, F U double N E L. That is for funnel. Yeah, go to 90minutebooks.com funnel and until we get overwhelmed or too much time passes and we turn it off, then we'll stick a calendar up there and we'll make some time available and anyone that wants to grab a 15 minute slot just to talk about this type of thing, then feel free, I'll make some item available and we can make some. Your time available. And like I say, it's August. We're going to put this out this weekend, so definitely through the end of September. And if you listen to this after the end of September, then, then give it a try. We may well have left it up there for a bit longer. But, but yeah, I mean as you can tell, I'm. I'm super engaged on this particular subject. It's. It's such a great opportunity for people. So. Yeah, so do that. Let's leave that as the. Let's do that.

Guest: Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Okay. Very good. That's exciting.

Guest: Perfect. Well, I think my voice lasted forever long. That went on for. I think we're, we should be pretty much done there.

Guest: Well, there we go. Wrap that up.

Guest: Yeah, with that. Let's kind of conscious. I talked a lot. There was kind of just.

Guest: But that's, I mean that's great because there's a lot of things. Like you said, we. Sometimes these conversations are just good reminders for, for me, for us, for us to have in our, in our own business because sometimes we just get so caught up in everyone else's business, you know, and we sometimes forget the things that are important for us to do, you know, and we talk about it and talk about it, but we don't do it. So it's really good. But, you know, and particularly when you get really excited and jazzed up about it, you know, then it puts us, like, urgency on me, like, oh, my gosh, yeah, we should be doing this. And all these ideas are floating through my head as we're, you know, having this conversation. So sometimes it's great for me just to sit and listen and, you know, I hope somebody else gets as much value out of it as I did.

Guest: Well, that's it. If no one else got any value out of it, no one wants to take a us up on that call, then we're fine because we've got a long list of actions that we've just given to us.

Guest: Exactly. Just those little reminders. Yeah. Very good.

Guest: Thanks for your time as always, Betsy. It's. I love doing these. It's good to get out there for everyone else and as we've just demonstrated, even if for no one else, it's good for us, so.

Guest: Exactly.

Guest: Yeah. If, as you listen to this, if you want to jump on that call, then as I say, I'll leave it up for as long as we can hand until it becomes impractical. So head over to 90minutebooks.com funnel and then we'll. We'll put a call schedule link up there and just see if they will see when the next availability is and grab a slot. This is going to be episode 109. It's going to go out this weekend. So we'll send an email out to everyone on the list. If you're not on the list already and you're just listening to this other podcast listener, then the best thing I can advise is head over to blueprintscore.com and complete your own scorecard. Because a lot of these things that we're talking about are really built on having a good, robust scorecard creates a great asset in the book that then gives you the opportunity to do all of these other things with it. So that's. That's the. The best suggestion. And then obviously, once you're on the list, we'll send you a notification of this. But apart from that, I hope everyone has a great weekend. Take some notes, grab one of those call slots for sure, and then we'll catch everyone in the next one.

Guest: Take care.