Sharing Your Message with Lloyd Thompson

Stuart: Foreign. Welcome back to another episode of the book More Show. Stuart Bell here and super excited because we've got another guest interview with one of our authors, Lloyd. Obviously I'd seen go through the process but we didn't get a chance to talk previously. But he really popped up on the radar talking about some outcomes afterwards. So I'm super excited to be able to share that that with you. Lloyd. Welcome to the show.

Lloyd Thompson: Thanks for having me. Stuart.

Stuart: Pleasure. Bloody pleasure. So like I say, I don't think we got to talk at all beforehand. You kind of passed the process pretty smoothly, which on the one hand is a shame because we didn't get to talk. But on another hand is good because it proves that the process is working. Let's start off by giving people a bit of a background because you got a pretty interesting history and the company that the services that you guys offer is pretty, pretty unique I think kinder in specifically what you're doing.

Lloyd Thompson: Yeah. So my business is called Virtual Do. So that's Virtual D, Double O stands for Director of operations. So virtualdo.com is the site we provide director of Operations as a service and it's fractional. So we help busy business owners get out of the day to day operations and we one option for them is that they might hire a full time staff member, but another option is they might come to us, they might not want, they might not need a full timer, they can pay us month to month, they don't need to give us any equity. And our objective is to make it a team run business. We can be there as a transitional phase, help them build and put rhythms into the team. And so yeah, that's the whole concept of this business. We're focusing on helping overwhelmed business owners get out of the daily operations. And so that was really the inspiration for this book.

Stuart: Super interesting because you've heard lots of people talk about like fractional, not CPAs, fractional CFOs, that type of thing. But you're the first person I've come across looking at the fractional operations model. So how did that come about? Was it more you noticed the demand or more that you had the skills and just wanted to get it, get the opportunity or the capability out there?

Lloyd Thompson: This is a dangerous question because it could take me down a long road of a tangent, but I'll try and keep it quick. I had been in corporate world running large groups of large global teams and then during COVID the thought of going back to an office was not something I wanted to do. And so this was where I thought of wanting to get out and create a business. And unfortunately one of the people in my social circle was quite a well known business coach and called James Schramko. I had a conversation with him one day and I said, you know, I want to start a business. I want to go out into the virtual world. I don't want to go to an office. There must be an opportunity for this. And he said, what are your skills? And I said, well, managing teams of people, projects and operations, process improvement, that kind of thing. And he says, you sound like an integrator. Now my background was technical, so I heard the word integrator. I thought that does sound like a technical role. But in the US this term is used much more and to sound like a coo, or as I use the term, director of operations. So he said to me, there's a book by Gino Wickman called Rocket Fuel and it describes this interaction between the visionary or the founder and the integrator and the coo and put some rules together of how they should interact, but also makes it very clear to you which type of character you might be.

Stuart: Right?

Lloyd Thompson: So I said, oh, that's so. So I read this book and I thought, I am an integrator. There's a. And there's an opportunity here. And so through conversation with James, the idea of fractional integration, you know, this seems to be an area of opportunity. I don't see much of it. Fractional integration does exist, but I've not gone down the road of calling myself a fractional integrator. I did originally. In fact, there's probably still some words on my site that refer to that. I refer to it as fractional doo. Fractional director of operations. Because I simply spend too long explaining to people what an integrator is, whereas if I say director of operations, they get it.

Stuart: So it's so funny, isn't it? The language in circles becomes such a kind of in house term that you forget about it. So we're on the same page. So funnily enough, the work that I do with one of our organizations here, not on the book side again refer as COO/ integrator, because that language is just commonly known. But when I think back to my corporate IT past in the uk, not a term that comes around at all, but reading Rocket Fuel, I mean, it is, it hits the nail on the head and completely resonates with the type of work that we do and the challenges that faces and the gap that the visionaries have in not necessarily even realizing that world exists. So to be able to bridge that conversation and I guess for your clients, take some of those lessons from the book, but bridge it into director operations language must streamline the process in explaining, if not the actual term.

Lloyd Thompson: Absolutely. I mean I like I was inspired by that book, but just if I get too much in the term of integrator, yet it loses people, particularly Australia and UK audiences because people hear that word and they think that's a technical role. And they know my background originally was technical before I started managing peoples and teams. I was a programmer in early years. And so they think, oh, I must be doing something technical with this term. And so I've taken the knowledge from there and also other books like Scaling up and Agile Methodologies in that are used very much in corporate world. And so the purpose of the book is to just communicate what we do, but absolutely also to generate leads as well. Undoubtedly. I want people to know what we do and simply see what is possible by using a director operations. And they can choose to whether it's something they do themselves and they want to run it when their team or they want to do or they go, oh, you know what, there's nine ways here or nine things that can be done here to help get me out of the operation. I could get a director of operations to run this for me. And so by creating this book, instead of spending time with people on calls explaining what I do, I don't need to do that. They can, if they just want to look at the chapter titles, you know, in the front couple of pages they can go, oh, thank you very much. Then they can see exactly what kind of services on offer. And I don't have to spend time on a phone call saying, oh, these are all of the services. Instead I can understand their challenges and their pain points and see if we're the right fit for them or if it's actually, you know what, I know another partner or someone else who's better placed to solve this problem for you. So it just takes me out of spending time talking about me and spending more time understanding them and getting into the root of that.

Stuart: Right. What you can actually do for them and deliver and make the world better for them rather than having to baseline just an understanding. Okay, we're all on the same page here.

Lloyd Thompson: Yes.

Stuart: That idea of the conversation starting book that kind of starts it will lead somewhere else, but gives that baseline that framework to have a conversation that kind of pivots or develops from the fundamental bits that are in the book. Such a great way of not only identifying in the first place, but kind of predisposing people to want to do business with you. Because by the time they get to a call, having come through this route, they already know to a certain degree what you can offer and they've got an idea of how it can help them. They must just accelerate the conversation so much.

Lloyd Thompson: It makes it so much easier. I've now just started putting it in my email signature. So although people can go on Amazon and Kindle, I've just put, you know, free book and I just put a hyperlink straight out to the book so people can get it there. And then they go, oh, okay, this is. These are the services on offer. So I think the prime reason why I wanted to do it was to build that authority and say, yeah, wow, okay, we have all that. He has all this knowledge. These are the services he has. But the other things that have come with it. Yeah, absolutely. Lead generation. But also that conversation time saver is massive. Like, right, if I, I can tell you if I spend more time on the call talking about me than them, the call for me that is not going well, you know, that's like that I want to be. If they're telling me what their problem is, then I can tell them if I can solve it or not, rather than me.

Stuart: And we've got, and we've got so much kind of the people out there who don't yet understand what the benefits are, the scales and the benefits, the background that you bring to it, the experience and the use cases and the examples. You kind of passionately want to share that information with people and kind of just get the stuff in their head so that whether or not they work with you, at least, you kind of make the world a. At a place in a certain respect by opening their eyes to the potential. It's, yeah.

Lloyd Thompson: Does something a little bit differently to some of the other books out there. I mean, like I said, there are some great books out there by Gino Wickman, which. And that was where the inspiration came from. And other books and plenty of other books on this topic, like by Scaling up by Vern Harnish and Good to Great by Jim Collins and all of these things. This book is really a primer. So it's not going into the depth and of that. It's a primer. It gives them just enough to know where their blind spots might be and how they would go about fixing it. And then of course, who can fix it for them. And you know, you want to, you want to do it themselves you know, these are the kind of things you want to have a look at if you want my business to take care of it. Of course, at the end there's an option to reach out to us. So yeah, great process.

Stuart: We often talk in terms of this conversation starting idea. So sometimes people will come with, maybe they've been presenting from stage or they've got a slide deck that they always want to share with people and it's, it's a refined deck, but they want to use that content and maybe a recording of it specifically for the book. And we're pretty adamant now that we don't do that because it never ever works well because of the job. The purpose of the content, it wasn't recorded for the purpose of the book. But what we're very often saying is that content is great, but use it further downstream. So the idea of the conversation starting book, it's the same for you. You've started that conversation. You're not trying to give them the complete solution. You're not trying to sell them a 20, $30 book that has a really in depth understanding of an idea. It's the starting point because this is a long journey, just as you said, even getting to some, even getting someone to understand what the word integrator means, that could be an hour's conversation with someone given all of the framework and leading of it. So trying to explain to someone who doesn't understand or doesn't realize what a director of operations can do or how to think of operations in that way, the likelihood of being able to do that in a book is very slim. But introducing the IDE, so at least they've got a 10,000 foot view. And then either more information from you in a follow up email or a conversation with you is going to just help them dive a little bit deeper into the bits that are interesting for them. And potentially some clients, it's going to be a year before they get to the point of oh yeah, I remember that conversation, or now it's resonating, or now there's a bigger need and then they're raising their hands. But it really is that starting point, that jumping off point for something, a bigger relationship.

Lloyd Thompson: Absolutely. And you know, all I needed for this to be an effective mechanism to communicate this to clients is just one person to come back to me after a period of time. And this pays for itself. Right. Because I mean the services are for a relatively high ticket. We're not selling small items.

Stuart: Yeah.

Lloyd Thompson: And so yeah, the, the payoff for going through this process is Actually huge. And it's already paid for itself, undoubtedly by a couple of people who I chatted to in the past. They saw the book had come out and they've actually read the book. They purchased the book. At least they've seen the front cover, maybe they've even the chapter titles. And then they've gone, well, okay, you know, I'm back. So it's no way it's been effective.

Stuart: And you know what, the funny thing is that these the books that we're writing as business owners on for the purpose of education. So I'd say all the time the product isn't the book, the product is the conversation. And the people don't want to. It's kind of like I'm buying a book to help me get out of the operations problem that I've got. Don't make me read the damn book as well. Just tell me what the fix is. I mean, I want the outcome, the solution, not. Not necessarily the contents and the table of contents, the chapters that you were talking about there. For those to be a roadmap, I mean, one of the book blueprint scorecard elements is this kind of purposeful outline. So for that to be a roadmap, or signposts from the COVID to the back copy or the next step really is the thing that kind of moves all of that and gels it and keeps it going forward.

Lloyd Thompson: And one of the things I've been doing, if I've been reaching out to past people and so how I got a book out, here's the free. Here's the free PDF. I'll just take a. I actually screenshot the table of contents and just put it in an email so they don't have to even open the PDF and go, oh, okay. Oh, that chapter looks pretty interesting. Oh, I talked to Lloyd about this particular thing. What does that mean? And I found that pretty effective.

Stuart: That's such a great way of doing it as well, because we're always looking for ways of encouraging people to. Now that you've got the asset to use it in more ways. Not just do it and put it on a shelf and hope that it does something, but actually use it. So to be able to. I'd started reaching out to people. There's a service over here that a lot of realtors use called bom, which is like a video ask type thing. So you record a quick video and it's just a very quick way of sending a video message to someone. So when people join the list, opt in every so often. When I Remember to do it. I'll go back in and like pick the last five or six that have opted in and send them a quick video message saying, hey, just checking in, say hi. Just wanted to make a connection and suggest checking out the school card we've got because it's a great way of looking at your book within the framework of the eight building blocks that we use all the time. So for someone to have the book and then think about a conversation either with a past potential clients or new potential client, take a quick snapshot of the book and say, hey, I know whether we were talking about such and such, it just reminded me there's a chapter in the book that you really need to read because we didn't have time to go a little bit deeper. But here I've attached a copy of it and it's just a way of using the assets to amplify and re reaffirm the message. Almost the fact that you've got the words, you could say the words, but the fact that the words are printed on paper gives them an extra authority to. Well, it must true because it's printed. It's kind of telegraph something.

Lloyd Thompson: I'm trying to find the easiest possible way, minimal effort for them, so that they can see what we can do. So just by putting a screenshot in an email, they don't even have to download the PDF, they don't have to scroll down, they go, oh, okay, this is what's in here. And maybe they will read the book, but at least they know what the contents is, they know what problems we can solve and it's a win.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah. It's just all about those minimum viable commitment, small steps to move people towards compelling them to take that next action step.

Lloyd Thompson: Yeah.

Stuart: One of the things that I wanted to talk to you about, I kind of mentioned it at the beginning, was you'd actually done some work to. Although we're saying that Amazon's not their be all and end all, there's definitely some benefit to it. So you'd done some work to get on some of the bestseller lists when the launch was done. How orchestrated was that or how coincidental was it?

Lloyd Thompson: Well, do you know what? It wasn't from my side. I had no idea it was going to make it up to the bestseller list. I didn't. There was no paid service involved. However, I do a business coach with a huge audience, so he did. So he sent this out to his audience. He said, look, here it is. You know, it's $1 on Kindle and it's 399us. Here it is, you know, and I write this book and then I did a one week promotion a week or two later where I just made the Kindle version $0 for a week, which you can do. And so that really gave me a big bump there and getting some.

Stuart: So did you have yourself or was it the list element of it was mainly via James's audience.

Lloyd Thompson: It was James's audience and I mean of course I put it out on my socials too. So yeah, you know, a lot of people thought oh wow, you know, is he going to be flying around in a private jet now he's got a bestselling book out.

Stuart: Everyone's assumption that authors make all their money from book sales. And like you're saying when you jumped on, I mean when you think about the, the even if you price the book. So in that peak period, obviously it was a discounted price which kind of encourages more. More lowers the barrier to entry. Even if you were charging $10 a book, by the time Amazon's taken their cuts, I mean we're probably down to six if that, four maybe. And then by the time you add in some other costs, compare that with one client, I mean for the majority of people listening to this, I think are going to be service business owners where just the lifetime value of one client is more than all of the book sales for all of eternity.

Lloyd Thompson: Absolutely right. And I mean I printed the, I put, I can't remember how much the print cost was. The price that I sell the book printed on Amazon is not much more than it costs to print the book. So there's no intentional. I'm not trying to make money off the sale at all. I just want people to know that this exists, it's a service and how they're going to solve that problem and who they can talk to if they want that sold.

Stuart: Yeah, that is one of the things to mention on the Amazon side of things given it that it is the biggest platform. And I mean there are other distribution routes to market in the physical book world but really Amazon's got the share of it and their minimum pricing makes sure that they get paid first both for the actual print cost that they incur and their profit margin. So even a 6,7$. I mean I think the minimum price now is close to $6 US at least. So yeah, to be able to make any money on the top of it is crazy. But circling back to the bestseller. So I was listening. I was right at Dean's house when I was in Florida, last we were listing, we were dialed into the Genius Network event and they had. One of the big publishers was talking there because in that world there's a number of people who are writing like the more traditional bestseller book through a publisher. And he was saying something interesting. So I think it was around a thousand. If you get a thousand reviews or I'm gonna. Don't know, everyone listening, don't quote me on this. But it was something around. Any book that gets a thousand written reviews that are broadly positive is going to be the top of their category for a relatively sustained period of time. So it's actually quite a small. It's a small amount of effort to move the needle, but. But the effort isn't zero. So anyone who's thinking about kind of orchestrating that a little bit, whether you've got opportunity to leverage someone else's audience, where you've got a strong relationship there, or you can orchestrate your own audience into movement within a short period of time. The idea that a book reaches the top of a category and within the categories there's a number of subcategories and then there's region categories as well. It is something that is orchestrated with a little bit of work and pre planning. Mike Mack is another author in Canada who does this pretty well. So he's got a relatively. A reasonably good sized audience himself and he's very engaged in LinkedIn. But what he did was just kind of pre launch the book over the period of a month or so, get some momentum around it. There was a lot of activity on the day of release so that there was a lot of reviews and downloads again, discount pricing and that was enough to bump it up in the category. There's, I think as people are writing, I certainly wouldn't let the kind of bestseller list tail wag the dog, as it were. But picking the category that isn't maybe the top tier business book category in North America, which is obviously going to be pretty competitive. We've got a friend, Nick Manton, who does a lot of video work and I think it's Tony Awards. It's either Tony's or Emmys, I forget which. But they'll do a lot of work to get documentaries into those film categories because a lot of those categories are an award given within this subcategory, but also within this region. So it will be like the winner of this subcategory in East Texas. So it's relatively distributed all the way down the chain. So it's still at a top level. People have this Accolade, but actually the machinations to get it. It's a game that you can win.

Lloyd Thompson: Well, I was excited to see it bump up all the way up to number two in business management, but I can't say it stayed at number two. I mean, business management, if you look at the other people who are in that category, they're absolute giants. So I've got a great screenshot of it in the best sellers at number two in business management and.

Stuart: And once it's there, I mean, when you put the words number two in business management in Australia, no one goes in and digs around and says, well, for how long? Or compared with Watts or I mean, once it's there. And it's an interesting insight that Velocity has an impact in it as well. It's not just. Absolutely of numerical rankings or ratings. Do you know if people were buying it and leaving a review as well, or was it just on the velocity of purchases?

Lloyd Thompson: I think it was Velocity because it was how quickly it got there. They couldn't have bought it and finished it the same. Well, they could. It's a, you know, it's not a long book, but I don't think they did. I've got. But I've had a few reviews now, but nowhere near compared to the amount of purchases of the book.

Stuart: Right.

Lloyd Thompson: So I think really just.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah. Super interesting insight that Velocity plays a role.

Lloyd Thompson: Absolutely.

Stuart: Something that you're super interested in. For whatever reason, it is something that is winnable and achievable without the traditional overheads that you might think was necessary.

Lloyd Thompson: If you have someone, if you yourself have that kind of audience or you're in a network where you can publish to that network, then absolutely, it's possible. So, yeah, it's effective. It certainly got the book out and it got the result. I was very pleased with the result I was given to get it up that far that quick, get that exposure and get the conversation started.

Stuart: Right. Yeah, exactly. And it does come back to conversation because the thing with Amazon is they might tell you that the number of people that bought it, but you don't know who those people are. So being able to take that conversation I heard someone describe as deplatforming, which I don't think is quite the right use of that term, but deplatforming people away from YouTube and LinkedIn they were talking about onto an email list that. That they own themselves. But yeah, it's definitely something to bear in mind. So just go for it.

Lloyd Thompson: I'll say on the back of the book I do have some ways that I can then capture their email and find out more about them. So they do have, if I'm looking at here, there's the three ways they can download a checklist that summarizes the book and they can. There's a page where I give out one minute tips so they can subscribe to that. So it's one or the other. And then finally if they want to talk to me to solve their problems, then there's a way they can reach out. So that's how I'm capturing their details or at least keeping them warm by providing them further value.

Stuart: Yeah.

Lloyd Thompson: And like you said, perhaps in some period of time in the future, maybe up to even a year, then they'll think, you know what, actually I do want to do this. And they'll reach out even nine years.

Stuart: So we're nine years into the a nine minute book business and we still get people where today is the day for them. Dean. I've quote Dean a few times because he always describes it as people for people. It's either today or not today. There's no other time frame. It's only ever today or not today. And if it's not today, it's irrelevant when it is. As long as you keep in touch with people, hopefully the day that it is today will be the day that they reach out. Because you stay in.

Lloyd Thompson: So simple.

Stuart: Yeah, exactly. Right. I mean that's, that takes all of the nonsense out of it. It just cuts it down to the core. It's either today or it's not today. And those steps that you've got on the back, it's a great framework for capturing as many people as you can. So there's that first option for the tire kickers, as it were. The people who are really just still investigating. An option for the people who are ready to do something but not quite yet jump on the calendar. And then for those where today is today, there's obviously that route to get started. It's exactly the best way of capturing.

Lloyd Thompson: And now I've just published this one book. I've had a lot of people come to me and just say, well, how did you do it? How did you get this done so quickly? What was the process? And now, so I'm hardly an expert, but I've done it and it was simple. So that's something I've, you know, now feel very enthusiastic about because people have been coming to me and saying, what did you do and how did you get it? And yeah, it seems to be a very Effective mechanism. Yeah, I'm delighted with it.

Stuart: Fantastic. Well, I mean, it's super fantastic. It's great to know that someone's actually picking up and running with it. Not just doing it, getting across the line, thinking, thank goodness for that and put it on the shelf and hoping that some magic will happen. The fact that you're out there using it and it's making a difference in the business. And we can share this story with the listeners in the audience here. I mean, really just with. Heading into. It's December 22nd, as we're kind of recording November 22nd is recording this almost the end of the year. I don't know how things are in Australia, but the economic outlook in the US is tight, to say the least. But hopefully this becomes a very cost, cost effective way. This isn't the kind of. I mean, when you look around at some of the other people who are suggesting writing books and they've got zeros added to the end of the price tag, it's just infuriating. But hopefully this is a cost effective way of putting a marketing tool out there that can make a difference next year. And then who knows? I mean, if you want to, if the book thing becomes a passion and you want to create that kind of War and Peace bestseller, now you've got a budget to do it. You're not kind of trying to. Can't be for the horse.

Lloyd Thompson: I don't know if I'm ready for the War and Peace yet. I like to take small, effective actions. And I can't remember who gave me the idea, but I had, I had originally done a webinar called 9 Ways to Exit your day to day operations. And then someone in my network, it could have been James Franco. I said, you know, you could event, you know, use that material, that content and Talk. Talk with 90 minute books and turn that into a book really. And so that's how this began. But then I changed the title to 9 Ways to Leave because Christy and your team said, what about Nine Ways to Leave? Why is that? Because it kind of reminds me of that song, 50 Ways to Leave your lover that's so much more emotional. I love.

Stuart: Right, right. Yeah.

Lloyd Thompson: 9 Ways to Leave was born. So I have to thank Christy for the title.

Stuart: I'll let her know tomorrow when I talk to her. But it's. Right. It's interesting when you get. Because you can be so close to it yourself. And sometimes it's only when an outsider looks at something and says, what about this other thing? That yeah, it's a It's an option. I wonder what might be an idea or might be worth trying is. So we're talking with one of our other clients. They own like a best way of describing it. An analytics company that has some real bespoke software around Facebook ads and the split testing and really micro testing niches. So they'll go from an add to a book download to a webinar, that type of approach. So I wonder if in your follow up funnel there is still a place for that original recorded webinar as a conversion tool. So not a top of the funnel piece but a mid funnel piece to kind of for those who are more interested or even just the list do a broadcast saying hey we've got the next webinars coming up and join and so much of the content will be familiar. Then it might be an evidence piece to move them across the line.

Lloyd Thompson: That is a very interesting idea. Yeah, it's not one I thought of yet. And I mean, I mean I would have to do it again because it was a very specific webinar for my coaches circle. So it's not, you know, it was very much under his brand and his business. So I'd have to do it again. But I can totally do that. I think my next move actually given I've seen how good this is, I think I'd quite like to put on audible version and I mean that's how I tend to consume books. I tend to go the audible version. If it was something this small and quick, yeah, probably just get it on Kindle and go for it. But I think that's probably going to be my next move.

Stuart: Let me sow another seed as well then to percolate. So we often with the Amazon problem of not knowing who the people are, we often talk about recording an audio companion instead of an audible book. Now different channels so they might be serving completely different purposes. But one thing to think about as well and potentially do both but the idea of an audio companion which isn't a direct read of the book but is a slightly more in depth version or a deeper dive or behind the scenes just to add that personal and emotional not the right word but build on the relationship connection even more. One of the because you've only got so much space in the book, practical constraints, just the audible version of a direct read is still going to be just that level of detail and reading it might be relatively quick. An audio companion just allows you to go a little bit deeper and build the relationship.

Lloyd Thompson: But it could be and that's reusable content. Yeah, that's. I mean I can take it chapter by chapter. Yeah, I love that.

Stuart: Yeah, you've planted a seed after the opt in like building when we're thinking about that not now group. Being able to engage with them over the months and years ahead is an overhead. So to be able to create some of those evergreen pieces where at least you've got at minimum a monthly piece that you're sending out, ideally weekly, but to have some of those building those big rocks in there already which are just repurposing the existing content and then maybe send out some timely stuff on top of that. But yeah, definitely repurposing those assets. You've done the hard work now, so just squeeze. Yeah, I love that as possible.

Lloyd Thompson: Yeah, I do something I do have on the back of the page there's a link to media and I do one minute tips weekly. So they're very small, but it seemed like there is a place for, you know, almost chapter length, longer form content that can be reused and I haven't done that yet. So you've. Yeah, you planted a really interesting idea there and yeah, I can use it for audible, I can use it for companion.

Stuart: Yeah, yeah. And like you were saying, those being able to snippet those and using them in different places, each of those then become the top of the funnel piece. So you can imagine a LinkedIn strategy where you're serializing the content almost like newspapers too with. With traditional book releases. So see, serializing the content, each chapter probably has five sub points in it that are. You could talk for at least two minutes on it at the drop of a hat, serializing that content. And then this is one of the elements in the book. Download a free copy of the book here. I mean that's a year's worth of LinkedIn content there. So many options.

Lloyd Thompson: There's a lot of good stuff there. If you're happy for me to just. I know this is super familiar to you, but I'd love to do just talk about the process of doing this partly because I've had so many people ask me how I did it. I can just say, watch this podcast.

Stuart: Yeah, definitely, you're right. I kind of gloss over or forget to speak to it because it's just the day to day stuff. So yeah, definitely that I think would be valuable for everyone and you can

Lloyd Thompson: correct me if I've missed any of the steps, but how I remember this started was I had an interview or say a question and answer session on what my goals were with the book and so for me, absolutely, I've talked about building authority, lead generation, and being able to save time in calls by not having to go through and explain what an integrator is, as now I say director of operations. So that, that was the first piece. And so just so the person I'm going to be working with, who's going to be care taking me through this process, understands what my objectives are and then sets the scene of how we go forward. And in that session I had said, well, look, I'm taking content that I've already got and repurposing it. So I've already got this webinar. It's not a. It's not a replay verbatim. I that's just the base and these are the goals. Where do we go? And I'm glad we did that because then that allowed those value add processes from the team. And there was some surprises there for me where there was certainly some things I'd not thought about. And so then the next process, and I'll come back to those things I hadn't thought about, the next process was transcribing. Cut me out if I've forgotten anything along the way. So that was the session where we actually go through. And I'm. It felt like a podcast, actually. I'm the lady. Christie was into interviewing me, was asking me questions and prompting me. And yes, I had in the back of my mind the content from the webinar, but it wasn't the same verbatim.

Stuart: Right.

Lloyd Thompson: And she used that material. And that's not exactly the material that's gone out in the book, you know, exactly either. She's then spent a lot of time with me go going, well, you know, that the introduction, given what you want to do and the audience that you seek could be flavored a bit more like this. And that was particularly valuable to me because my audience is not. I'm from corporate, but my audience now is not corporate. It's online business owners. Typical team size varies from anywhere from five to 50 people. So it's not corporate. And that's shaped the style of writing in this book. It's more of a conversational piece. It's a bit more colorful, abstract, as opposed to formal. I would say it's informal. And so because she knew those were the goals and those are the targets, she was able to help me tailor that, that conversation. So the introduction, without spoiling it, talks about dragon slaying, you know, dragons being problems. And she says, you know, what do you think of this idea to use dragon Slaying. I love it. Yeah, let's go down this road. And so that was a really nice value add in terms of helping me get some ideas in the content. And another thing that came out, which was an insight from Christie was

Stuart: I

Lloyd Thompson: think my original content was very factual, like here it is, this is what you do. And she said, can you put a story in each piece because it gives the reader a break. I thought that's a really interesting thing to say. And I guess it's true. If you're talking to someone and you'll just give them facts, then that can be quite mentally exhausting. But when you put it in the context of a story, giving the reader a break and I sit back and relax and they listen to the story. So you'll find, you know, if you do get into the book, then those listening, then in each chapter there's a story, an example where it's been applied. So that was a really a nice value add there for me. Which, you know, if I'd have just gone out of writing exactly as I'd put in the webinar, it would have never come out like this.

Stuart: Yeah, I think as well. So you and I are similar. Our backgrounds are very similar. So both come from like the. Your technical backgrounds through project management and it's like integrated type roles. So very similar from the that route and in corporate worlds. So one of the habits that was the longest for me to break was this idea of writing in a way that's very, very neutral and covering both sides and caveating things.

Lloyd Thompson: Yes.

Stuart: Not necessarily from a cya, a cover your ass type way, but that's just the way corporate things are written. It's. And it's very to the point. And black and white is an emotion. Cold. Yeah, exactly. So that was the hardest habit for me to break. So super exciting to get that from Christy and have her insights because she comes to it very much from the non corporate side and the emotional writing side. So to be able to bring those elements in, definitely great insight. I think particularly helpful for us.

Lloyd Thompson: It really has shaped it and given it life. And I think the other aspect was just going through the process that in parallel with, with putting out the content, I was talking with your design, your design team and so you give me some front covers to pick from in terms of, hey, these are other books, what style do you like? And so I was like, oh, I really wanted someone to walk past the book cover and take notice or say have a look at on Amazon and go, well, that's an Interesting front cover. I don't want them to just scroll down. And so I gave these examples and then first of all, that the designer put something a little bit more corporate than I like to know, right? We had a chat and I was like, no, it's not corporate. And he went, aha, now. And we had a chat about the examples. And you went, aha, now I see what you've got. And then immediately we tuned into nearly every sample he came up with, knowing what I said, I want you to be creative. I don't want to dictate it so much. I want you to. You know, I'm sure some people have an exact picture in their mind, but I'm not a designer. I said, this is what I'm trying to communicate. And I. And this is my audience. Go for it. And he came up with some amazing ideas. And this is how we planned.

Stuart: It's the challenge with the DIY approach. I mean, it's. There's getting a book out there isn't rocket science. I mean, it's not like you need to know some PhD level math to get it done. I mean, it's just the process of doing it. But doing it yourself means that so many of these decisions are left to you. So many of the writing, feedback things, whether you're going to be spending thousands of dollars through multiple outsources doing stuff, or the responsibility will ultimately come back to you. It's what I find is the benefits, the intangible benefit somewhat of jumping on board with us is this the fact that we've done a thousand books before, so whatever challenge you've got probably isn't the first time we've come across it. And if it's somewhat missing the mark or if we think that something could be improved, or how about this idea? Even if you don't decide to go that route, at least it's presented with it. And the purely DIY approach just misses all of that. It's very difficult to achieve the same outcome.

Lloyd Thompson: If I put five times the effort in and did it myself, I still don't think I would have come close to this. There's no doubt about that. I mean, just the front and back cover, you know, that's one thing. The barcode, all of these things, you know, how would I have known that it needs to be this size in this structure? How would I have known that how to put that, that, you know, got all of these pages in there about what the ISBN is and all of these things that must be set up correctly. And the Table of contents and then just the spacing and the structure of it. How to fold all of these things, how to upload it onto Amazon. That would have been a complete headache for me. It's funny because we've done all this

Stuart: talk, we remind people not to underestimate their knowledge. Because you as a business owner, you're in your business day in, day out, so some of the things that customers might be very interested in, you're just, just not even think about because it's second nature. You kind of gloss over it, get more in the weeds of stuff and think that's the talking point. But the high level, the basic, the one on one stuff, that's the introductory conversation for most people. And we're just as much a victim of it as everyone else. I mean, like you say, just purely the production side of it. I mean, that could be five books and a year's worth of podcasts. Just to talk about the production side.

Lloyd Thompson: Absolutely. I mean, that just, you know, it's small things. Like if I looked at this piece of paper that folds around the book. Right. How do they know how thick the pages are to get that, that right length so it's going to even staple together. I wouldn't have known that. And then how. I've got a copy of this as a PDF as well, which shows the front cover, the back cover and everything included. That's super valuable to me too. Yeah. So, yeah, there's no way.

Stuart: Something that we do intentionally, so we never. You'll hear me sometimes kind of rat people on the knuckles if they ever use the word ebook. Because I always say to people, why are you calling an ebook? That's just devaluing the term. It's a digital copy of the book. It's not. Yeah, people say ebook, they think, oh, some PDF I'm just going to download somewhere. No, this is a digital copy of the book, which is why intentionally we keep the pagination left and right, we keep the blank pages in there, we keep the ISBN and everything in there because it's identically a digital version of the book. So to keep that narrative going, technically there's no difference. It's an irrelevant technical conversation. But it's just a perception conversation. All little things like that. Yeah, it's just the small steps that move the needle.

Lloyd Thompson: Yeah, I'm very happy with the process. And yeah, if I come up with another book, I'm sure I'll be heading out talking to the folks at 90 Minute Books. For now, I'm just answering the questions. For all the people coming to me and saying, how did you get this book out so fast? What was the process?

Stuart: Well, now you've got a podcast. Watch the podcast. Well, I gotta say thanks again for the time. I mean the new season, if you like a book more show. I really want to focus more on, on the people and not the process because we've done the process to death now really. But sharing stories of people who have actually taken it and used it and again results from it that I think is the thing that's going to move the needle for people because hopefully they can realize that this is a relatively fast, relatively inexpensive, relatively quick and effective way of starting those conversations. And then that's where the magic happens. It's getting in front of people.

Lloyd Thompson: It's very low cost lead generation. If you were to compare the cost of doing some advertising on Facebook or Google, which, you know, I'm sure I could also amplify my listings on Amazon doing this as well if I wanted to do that. But it just to have the book and publish it to your network, hugely valuable and not expensive at all.

Stuart: Yeah, well, fantastic. I tell you what, we'll have to jump back on a call in in the early part of next year and see how things would be great to be check back in. In the meantime, what's a good place for people to find more? Lloyd?

Lloyd Thompson: Oh great. Yeah. So there are two ways you can either email me. That's Lloyd at Virtual Do. So Lloyd is L O y d@virtual do1wordd.com or just hit my, hit my website virtualdo.com.

Stuart: perfect. Well, I'll make sure to put a link to both of those in the show notes of the episode. So with that, thanks again for your time everyone. Thanks for listening. I got a ton of this, ton of value from this and certainly going to take some insights in the upcoming book blueprint scorecard launch that we're going to officially do as well. Kind of jump on the, on the opportunity to do things more officially. Not only to get the book out there more widely, but also as examples. So just as Lloyd's done use this as an example to share with you guys. So Lloyd, thank you. We'll check back in.

Lloyd Thompson: Thanks so much, Stuart.

Stuart: And we'll speak soon.

Lloyd Thompson: Speak soon. Thank you.