TUCKER MAX Wants To Pull Your Book Out Of Your Head And Help You Build Your Business

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs and anyone trying to grow your business. Pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo. All right. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business. This is Brad Costanzo and got a fun episode today. Never would I have had guessed like 10, maybe 11, 12 years ago. I can't remember exactly when, when I was reading various books by today's guest, Tucker Max that I think that a decade later I would be interviewing him on the show. This was back before I started, you know, my business and or actually several businesses. And today's topic is actually going to be very business related. So Tucker Max, if you're not already familiar with him, is a multiple New York Times best selling author. He made his bones and actually created the, you know, I guess the genre of fratire with books such as I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, Assholes Finish first, hilarity ensues, etc. And these books really just kind of detailed and chronicled his life, drinking, partying, et cetera. However, in the past several years, it's been really cool to watch Tucker migrate over to a very successful entrepreneur, publisher and somebody who's really made a complete switch in the topics of the things he's doing. And he's helping other aspiring writers, entrepreneurs, business people get books out of their head and using a lot of the strategies he's done to not only write them, get them out quickly, but then some of the publishing strategies. So I invited him on the show today to talk a lot about that and anything else that comes up. And with a guy like Tucker, who knows where it'll go. But Tucker, it is a pleasure to have you on the show.

Thanks, man. Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. Now you're in Austin, is that right?

I live in Austin right now. I'm actually in Boulder, Colorado, but normally I'm in Austin. Yeah.

Very cool. So man, there's a million questions I would love to ask you, but one of the things I'm most fascinated about are some of the strategies that you've used not only to grow your business of book in a box and kind of this reinvention of yourself, but also some of the cool strategies that you're seeing other people use. Now I'll let you tell the audience a little bit more about what Book in a Box is just so that people get. Get familiar with it. But then I kind of want to dive into some questions that hopefully you haven't been getting asked by every other podcast host, etc.

Yeah. So book in a Box. Honestly, when I describe it, you'll be like, oh, I can't believe this didn't exist before. It's like, basically we figured out a way to turn someone's idea into a book in their words and their voice without them having to do the typing. So we just have a very structured interview process that kind of goes through the entire book creation process, positioning, outlining, interviewing for the content, transcribing and editing. We do all the work on the back end, and all the author has to do is they have to know what they're talking about because we don't add any content. Unlike ghostwriting, we're not actually adding the ideas to stairs. They just have to get on the phone after that. Those are the only two things you need. And so if you have a great idea for a book, but you're like most people really busy and don't have time or desire to sit down and figure out how to write a book, it's like the perfect solution.

Exactly. Now, these are just kind of a clarification. These are primarily nonfiction books, right? You guys probably don't.

All nonfiction.

Yeah.

That process doesn't work with fiction. Yeah.

So it's really funny because legitimately, 18 minutes ago, I got an email, a Facebook message from my friend Shelina, and she just said, hey, Brad, how's life? Are you still doing Amazon book stuff for people these days? So, years ago, when I sold my first business, online publishing, business information, products, et cetera, and I kind of stumbled into consulting, and one of the very first things I did is I noticed a buddy of mine had great info, products, and other stuff, but he didn't really have a book. So I took some of his content and I helped him do this exact same thing. Very manual process. I really didn't even know what I was doing. Then I helped him publish on Amazon. Word got out. And I've done about eight of these just as kind of an informal service for clients in the past. So I know exactly what goes into it and I know how much work it can be. But this was kind of funny that she literally emailed me about this right before we jumped on about this exact same. About this exact same stuff. But let me ask you this. So with your process, how long does it typically take when you've got a really willing. When you got a really willing author.

Who'S like, it takes the author about 20 hours on the phone over six months. Okay. We do everything else on the back end. So like we charge $20,000. So it's, it's not, it's not cheap. But relative to, to sort of like a good ghostwriter really is going to cost at least 50 grand and all that does is get you a manuscript. And really you should be paying 75 to 100 for a really good one. At 50, you could still potentially get one who's not very good. So that's the real difference is this is a way to sort of turn ideas into books at scale and to do it in a way that's really simple and really user friendly. Here's the thing. Most people know what they're talking about and they know how to talk, but the act of writing is a totally different cognitive skill than thinking or talking. So we've just essentially separated these things that people traditionally put together but don't have to necessarily go together.

That makes sense. So for instance, if I had a book idea, we would do an initial consultation. You'd find out, is it really a viable idea or not? How do you determine?

So our sales process is really more of a discovery process. Like we don't, we don't really. Most people who come to us, by the time they get on the phone with us, they know like this costs $20,000. I know the quality of books they produce. So the question is, would they make a good client and what are their questions? And so for us, what we have to figure out is do they have the book in their head already? Which doesn't mean they have to know exactly what they want the book to be about. What we actually find is that most serious professionals have two or three different books in them. And so the question isn't do they have a book? It's what book should they be doing first? Right. And so we obviously can help with that process. That's sort of how the process works. But we have to figure out one. Do they have at least one Bible book in them? And if the answer is no, then we can't work with them. And then the other question really for us is do they have other expectations? Reasonable. Is there kind of a reasonable ROI for this? Because we don't want to be in the business of rich assholes, vanity. Right. Doing vanity books. It's not even that I have. It's not even that they're necessarily bad. It's that normally people who do Those don't have much to say and they have totally unrealistic expectations about what a book can do for them. Whereas someone like you who owns a business or is an entrepreneur or is a C level executive, they look at a book as what it is, which is essentially an all purpose marketing tool that gets them authority, credibility, speaking gigs, clients, all those sorts of things. It's directly tied to a result, not tied to their ego.

Yeah, absolutely. Do you find that, as I have when I've used this, that the people who use it as the marketing tool and understand that it plays a much bigger picture, they have a lot more success than the ones who were just, hey, I want to sell a bunch of books.

Oh, of course, we don't even work with the other type anymore. We have a whole process we deeply understand. Honestly, most serious professionals who can afford to pay for our service have a book in them. They have knowledge in their heads that other people find valuable. The real question is not do they have a book? The real question is what are they going to use the book for and what are their expectations? And yeah, the people who look at it like an investment, a book is an investment in themselves, in their career, in their company, they almost always do really well. Because our process, what we do is we start by asking like, why are you writing the book? Who do you want to reach and what are you saying that's interesting to them? Why are they going to pay attention? And so we help people directly nail down exactly how they're going to use the book before we even outline the book. That's how you market a book is you've got to deeply understand what result you're trying to get from it, who you're trying to reach and why they're going to care. And if you understand that, everything else is easy.

Yeah, start with the end in mind. How would you use this? What are some of the more, some of the cooler, more ingenious methods of using a book to grow your business that you've kind of seen people do to leverage it besides just handing it out as a calling card? I don't know how involved you guys. Stay in touch with some of the authors necessarily after it, but are there any kind of cool stories that you've seen people leverage?

There's so many things it really just depends on. It depends on your business. Right. So what I would say generally is you need to. Most people look at a book as like a validation for their ego. You know, they don't really look at a book as a marketing tool. But once you start looking at it as a marketing tool, then you can really start to free up your mind and start to see how it can help you. I'll give you a great example. We have one client who is a. He is a financial planner. And, you know, like, financial planners can't advertise, like, the ones who are in FINRA and whatever. They have to basically rely on word of mouth. Right. So for him, client acquisition is difficult. So what we did is we did a book that was. He specializes with divorced women. Like, it's not his only clients, but for whatever reason, he has a lot of wealthy divorced women. And so you're a wealthy woman and you're about to go through a divorce. There's, like, 10 things you should really be doing that can help you sort of get through your divorce. So he wrote a book that explained all those things. A lot of the things are things that he did. Some are things that lawyers should be doing, whatever. But then here's what he did that was really smart. So it printed out. We, you know, we did it in hardcover, and it's a beautiful hardcover. And then he sent the book out to every divorce lawyer he knows. Because in the book, what he did is he put in the book a free financial consultation for a woman if the book goes through, if they get the book from one of the divorce attorneys. Right. And so he didn't even put the book on Amazon. He actually just looked at this book, essentially the most baller brochure he could ever create. And so what's ended up happening in the six months since that came out is he's gotten, like, he's probably done about a hundred consultations, and he signed, I think, over a third of those women as clients. And, like, the average client is bringing in, like, $10 million. So he's made a huge amount. He's greatly increased his assets under management, and it's cost him, seriously, maybe at most, 40 grand.

Wow.

That includes us and buying the books and shipping them. And the time value of his time, like, 40 to 50 grand.

That's awesome. So he's a financial advisor. He specialized, like you said, wealthy divorced women. Is that right?

Exactly.

Yep. So he sent it to the divorce.

Lawyers because that's the first person a woman who's getting divorced talks to is a divorce lawyer, and she needs financial advice. And the lawyers don't give financial advice. So what that book did is it became something every lawyer can then give that to. Every woman comes in the office and they can say, listen, read this. It tells you the 10 things you need to do financially. Plus, this guy's a friend of mine or someone I know. He'll get on the phone with you for an hour and do a free consult. Specific to you, only if you come through me. See, that's what he did, is he made it like sort of an exclusive thing. And so, like, that way, the divorce attorneys are not only more likely to give the book away, they're gonna encourage these women to call him. Think about that. Like it's. It's insane. A hardcover book at scale costs about A$70 to print. A beautiful, amazing hardcover, basically. Right? It's basically. I mean, plus shipping, call it even $4. Right. So he sent like 100 books to whatever it was, 20 different, you know, 30 different divorce lawyers. So he's called that, you know, whatever five grand, plus the time value of his time. And. But they're all sales calls. They're all potential sales calls. So he has all the. He spent nothing basically, relative to the, you know, every. Every $10 million, he's making whatever, 10, 20, 100 grand a year. Absolutely. So it's like the easiest thing on earth for him. Yeah, but that's. See, here's the thing. Here's the genius is that he didn't try and write a book for everybody. He wrote a book that was deeply specific to divorced, wealthy women. Now, I would say about 50 to 60% of the advice in that book is applicable to everybody. But he didn't title the book or position the book for everybody. He positioned it for a tiny niche. I mean, there are not a lot of women every year who are getting divorced and have like 10 million or more in assets, which is kind of his. That's like the dividing line for his book. Right. And so he went right after those women. He went to all the attorney. There's not a lot of attorneys who specialize in that group. Right. And so. But he didn't try and reach everybody. He went deeply niche. And he is the only book out there that is about this one subject. And he put it in front of the people who are like most likely to interact with those women.

Right.

Not only does it make sense, I mean, he. The genius is that he is. He's doing the opposite of what most people think you have to do with a book, which is move a bunch of copies, get a bunch of attention, except he's. That's why he's done so well, is because he didn't try and get any attention except the people that mattered for him.

Yep. So here's what I love about this. I was literally having this conversation yesterday with a prospective client of mine who is over in, somewhere in the east coast and they are a financial advisor and he has written a book. So it's already done something about cashing out, how to get cash out of your business, primarily for baby boomer business owners, etc. So it's very specific to that. I was like, well, how are you using it? And it's basically just a calling card. And I was telling him that that's exactly what we need to do is to get that in front of his potential referral sources like CPAs and attorneys and all the, you know, the clients of his, you know, the people who could potentially refer him clients. And it's this exact method. Now here's a, here's a fun take on this. You may already be familiar with this strategy, but when I've shared it with my clients, this is the first time I think I've really revealed it over the air like this. But because I sometimes charge for this idea, which is if you do have it on Amazon and you know who you want to reach, right. And it's not necessarily somebody you already know, but let's just say it's a prestigious divorce attorney here in like, I live in San Diego. Prestigious diverse attorney in San Diego. If it's on Amazon, you go and you buy the book as a gift, gift wrapped and everything with a card on Amazon, and you send it to their office because it's very easy to find out who their office is. One of the things we know about Amazon is that gets opened by everybody and it oftentimes will bypass the gatekeeper because they think it's, you know, something personal. And in that book, right, in that book where it's gift wrapped and it's got a little note, you could put something like, hey, I wanted you to have a copy of my book. I've got an idea that might help you grow your business, whatever. And you can even have a little short link to a quick YouTube video or whatever you did, talking directly to that person. It's just so effective. The clients of mine who have done it going, oh my God, I can't believe it. They called me. They loved it. I could see that as a great way to send it just to get the relationships with like, like you said, those divorce attorneys that you don't know and you let them know. Yeah. How would you like to give this book out to your people?

That's a great. I'll tell you you know who does this really well. Have you heard of John Rulin? He just came out with a book called Pistology.

I just bought that book off my buddy Dan Martell's recommendation two days ago, and I'm about a third of the way through it.

So John's a client of ours. We did that. Really cool. We did the entire book, start to finish. And we use a lot of his principles with our clients. You should have him as a guest because he's really good at explaining. There's a lot of weird psychology with gifts and there's a lot of ways to do it. Right and wrong. Yeah, that's a great way to do it. We were doing some things wrong. You should have him on. I would love to. Yes. That's a fantastic strategy.

I would love to have him on. Yeah. It was one of the things as I was reading through it, I knew immediately, like, yeah, this is huge. And as I was reading through it, I was like, I'd love to have this guy on. And as a matter of fact, one of the other strategies for like this other financial advisor client is he doesn't have any kind of a wow package or kind of a welcome to the thing. Like I tell all my professional service clients, like, create a big box of stuff just to kind of wow your new clients or potentially market to your prospective ones with two copies of your book in there, one to keep, one to give away, and then a handful of other potential gifts that represent something else. Yeah. So that's really cool. I didn't know he was a client of yours. That's a great book.

Yeah, it's really good. And he explains this. And we have a lot of our clients who do all kinds of. You should actually have John. I'll tell you the quick story, but have him tell you what he did with the galleys of his book, which was really smart. So a galley is normally in publishing speak, that's like the pre publication book, Right? So that's like before it's totally proofed, you send it out six months ahead of release date to influencers because you want them to read it and then either give you a blurb or whatever, right?

Yeah.

But they're only really cheap, flimsy copies of a book and everyone understands that and it's cool. Whatever. Right. Rootland did the opposite. So he owns a leather production company that does all these leather gifts. He did a leather bound version of his galley in this beautiful leather bag. And it came like almost like a Hermes gift kit or something. It was amazing. And sent it out to like 100 or 200 people who he wanted to reach and got an amazing response rate. And it was like maybe eight to nine dollars per thing instead of like, let's say three to four, which is a normal hardcover. So you're basically doubling the cost but tripling or quadrupling the response rate because it looks so beautiful and it works really well.

Yeah, it's more beautiful than that, than the finished product.

That's exactly, exactly.

Have you. Do you know, because he lives down in Austin. Do you know Alex Charfen by any chance?

Yeah, we just had dinner with him and his wife.

I just interviewed him on my show yesterday and he was talking about the strategy he did using his book, entrepreneurial personality type, about how he only printed 500. You know that story?

Yeah.

For anybody else, you guys can go listen to the Alex Charfen interview. I won't go into the details here, but yeah, so I've always been a huge proponent of that book. As your first tip of the spear. I read somewhere. God, I've googled around looking for the station that says something about, like, for people who have, you know, customers or whatever, that the lifetime value of a customer who comes in or a client who comes in and their very first thing was a book is something like two to three times higher because of the. Because of the enhanced credibility of a book. Like, oh, man, I found them from this book and it holds. You know, there's such a halo effect there as opposed to if somebody comes in through your ebook giveaway or your webinar or something of that nature.

I would say at least half of our clients, the main value they've seen from their book has been the indirect authority, credibility value. Like, these are high, high level Fortune 500 CEO types, some of them. And they're like, dude, I knew. But I didn't anticipate how it would change people's perception of me. Because here's the thing, man. Even though anyone can do a book right now, I actually think it's more impressive to have a book now than it was 10 years ago. Because 10 years ago, the only way you got a book is by having connections with a publisher or what? Like, you basically had to be a professional writer. Yeah, right. Or you had to have like a really be famous otherwise. Or it was a hard gatekeeper to get past. Now because it's so easy, no one has a fucking excuse anymore, man. Like, if you don't have a book as a serious professional, I mean, yeah, what that tells people is like, either you don't have enough ideas, or you don't want your ideas tested, or you haven't been able to find time to write it. And so, like, a lot of people that we've seen were already very established people. They wrote their first book with us. Now they want to come back and do more because they're like, oh, my God, I've had so many people tell me that, you know, oh, I knew you were smart, but I didn't realize how smart. I read your book. Or I knew X, but I didn't. I knew something about you, but the book changed the perception. Because that's the thing is, you can't hide in a book. You can definitely write a crap book and just throw it up on Amazon, but the thing is, everyone knows it. If the COVID looks stupid, if they do the preview and they read the first few pages and they're like, this is all just platitudes and whatever. Wait, you're setting yourself up to be judged. And the thing is, it's so. Because it's so easy to do a book, it's still really hard to do a good book. Yeah, right. And so, like, we've seen so many people who have fun, dude. This one woman, Melissa Gonzalez, all, she's like, it tripled her business in two years. All this sort of stuff. Her book did you know what she talks about when she does media interviews? She says, my mom now introduces me. And as her daughter, the published author. That's awesome. I know it seems ridiculous, right? But books still hold this weird place in society, especially in the market, who.

Doesn'T still realize how easy it is, right? Like the general population, it still is holding on to that credibility that, oh, wow, you're a published author whether you published yourself or not.

Like. Like Melissa, like Melissa's mom, Right? But that's. Is that I think it's changing on both sides. So the old side, right, is still like, oh, you're an author. It's a big deal. But people like me and you still, like when I'm like, when I went looking for a CEO coach, an executive coach, because book in a box was taking off and, you know, I don't know how to build a business, so I really had to learn. And, man, I read every goddamn book out there. First of all, I didn't even consider the consultants who didn't have books. Didn't even consider them, right? Didn't matter recommendation or anything, because how could I vet them if they didn't have a book, right?

You should have considered them and then made them a client. Like, oh yeah, maybe I'll work with you once you use my service to get a book.

Exactly. Except the problem is I didn't have time to even go through that. Like I needed someone quick. And so I read like 10 or 20. I bought 10 or 20 books by like the best executive coaches. Half of them were total garbage. Like I stopped reading after five pages, threw the books out. The other half of the remaining half, I bailed halfway through and I was basically left with two books. One was okay, one was incredible, and the incredible one, I went and hired the guy and Cameron Herald who wrote Double Double and he's a client of ours now. He became a client of ours and he did three books with us.

That book was just recommended to me just recently by my friend Sean Stevenson. I don't know if you know Sean, but yeah, he just recommended. This is amazing. What's up?

Meeting Suck Double Double or Meeting Suck Double Double? Yeah, so he just came out of the book Meeting Suck and he's doing two more with us. Double Double is amazing. The problem is it's got a really dumb title. Like Double Double is a cheeseburger from In n Out.

Right, Exactly.

No, we're gonna get Cameron to redo that book with us because a lot of the the advice has changed have been updated. That's another dude you should have on your podcast. I'll tell you man, we worked with 300 people now we've done 300 books. I interviewed so many executive coaches. Cameron was by, he was so much better than everyone else. Like this is a dude who scaled multiple hundred million dollar a year companies. So like when I would ask him a question, like a deep granular question, he not only knew the answer, he would like reframe the entire question and teach me like everything about that sector of business in like an hour. It was amazing dealing with this dude.

You know, that's kind of a cool segue to some things I wanted to ask you about because you know, you made a transition from just author who had some great success because you created some amazing books to now CEO of a service based business. What were some of those biggest challenges that you saw yourself facing? You're like, man, if I don't get an executive coach and figure this crap out, I'm doomed. What, what were some shifts?

It's a great question, you know, here's the biggest shift and I haven't really talked about this much publicly, but I ended up firing myself as CEO and we hired a professional. The dude's amazing. He was a client and then came on board because of what Basically the question you just asked. I realized that I was really, really good at certain things. And so my assumption is, well, I'll be good at everything, right? How hard can being a CEO be? I was totally wrong. It was so hard because there's a set of skills that I just don't have, dude. Like, a great CEO deeply understands their team. They deeply, like, they like spending a lot of time with them, coaching, they're detail oriented, but they also understand strategy and the big picture. And, you know, it's just a really hard thing to do. I was only good at about a third of the job, and I was really great at a third. But the other 2/3, I kind of stunk. And so, like, the lesson I learned was stop trying to be everything and stop thinking I can be great at everything and instead double down on what I'm great at. Now I spend all my time at the one third of things that I'm really great at, and I spend virtually zero time on the two thirds of things like that I hired came to teach me those things. And he's a great teacher. But I realized I was learning slower than my company needed. My company was so fast that I was the throttle, you know, and so, like, what I had to do, man, was face the uncomfortable truth that if I wanted to do was best for the company and for my team, I had to move out of that position and get someone who was already ready today to lead, because I wasn't.

What are some of those things that you consider yourself like that third of activities that you're really, really good at?

So it's basically one of our department heads, Hal Clifford said, he summed it up this way. He said, tucker, you need to spend all your time making culture and making it rain and making strategy culture and rain. So, like, I'm great at marketing. I'm great at talking to people. I'm great at talking about what we do. I mean, I do. I'm essentially still the public. Not essentially, I am the public face of the company and I'm still the largest shareholder by far. But I spend my time talking about the company with other people, not actually running day to day. And then strategy and culture, which is like, you know, like, what's our 2, 5, you know, 10 year plan? I'm really great at. I'm really great at seeing things like, ahead of time and understanding like, okay, we need to move. You know, it's like saying, we need to go to this Spot. And then, you know, the CEO actually does the navigation. But I'm like, we need to go in this direction and here's why, etc. And then culture, dude, which is like, understanding large scale. How does our company need to. How do we. So how do we message? How do we talk about ourselves? How are people perceiving us? What are we doing right that way? What are we doing wrong? How do we. How do we create the environment? Both that people outside understand what we're doing and want to come in and be a part of it, and also the team inside, the team working with us, our people understand what we're doing and we can get the best, you know, they can be the most productive possible. Like that. It sounds like, kind of like everyone thinks they're good at that stuff. It's actually really hard to be good.

At it, especially if you're doing a million other things right.

It's way harder. My mind is way harder to be good at execution. And JT is just like a beast at execution. Like nothing. He is so detail oriented. Nothing misses his eye. Like, everything gets done. He is like, like a. Like a British, like, bulldog man. Once he gets his teeth into something, forget it, it's done. I'm just not like that, man. I'm like, I want to do five things today. I don't want to, you know, and all this, I don't want to focus on. On. On sort of the details.

Yeah, you and I are a lot alike there. You bring up several kind of points. First of all, exactly what you're talking about. Have you read the book Rocket Fuel?

No.

Okay, you need to absolutely get that. I've recommended this to everybody. I had the. The author on the. On the show just recently. But Rocket Fuel is the. All about that relationship between the visionary and the integrator who is your jt. And it's not just, okay, here's the personality traits and quirks and ups and downs of each side, but it's a framework for how your visionary, your CEO, which is like. Or you, like the founder of the company, should be interacting with your integrator and the person who executes everything. And it was funny. He creates a lot of different frameworks, but one of them that I always remember is this. The integrator is always the tiebreaker. So you may come up with a lot of ideas and things you want to do, but I'm guessing you probably run these by JT and he'll take a look at the company, he'll say, okay, well, we don't have those resources right now, Tucker, go come up with another idea. We'll get back to that. It's a framework for the meetings, it's a framework for everything else. And his whole thing is when you find that right visionary and that right integrator, your company works like rocket fuel. And it sounds like you've kind of discovered that. That's one of the things I've been working on in my business. So I have another business, a coffee, a coffee brand, a national coffee brand that we sell online.

Which one?

Stiletto Coffee.

Oh yeah, I've heard of you guys.

Awesome. Yeah, so it's the only coffee marketed directly towards women. So it's got a very sassy, classy vibe. And I was great at launching it with my wife and she kind of handles all the quality control and coffee stuff. But now that launch is over and it's in that management thing and I find myself doing micro tasks around this. I'm like, oh, get me out of here. So I'm currently looking for my integrator there. But at the same time, when you were talking about how you removed yourself from it so you can only work on the stuff that you're really, really good at and you're not messing with all the details. I kind of think of that as like the, like, that's why I consult. It's the grandpa business model or the grandparent business model. I get to come in and have all the fun and give the kids candy and do all the cool stuff that I'm good at. But then when it's time to take care of them and be super responsible, I get to hand them back.

Well, I mean, sort of. Yeah. Here's the thing though, is that like it's one of those things where what we do, it looks really easy from the outside. So everyone's like, oh, I want to be that person who just comes in for two hours a day and that's it. Except the problem is to get good enough where you can do, do that and be that is actually really, really hard.

Oh yeah.

And so, so like it's, you know how like, like people, people, it's changed a lot. But it used to be like, you know, you would ask a woman, oh, do you work? Oh no, you're a housewife. As if being managing a house and a family, it wasn't two full time jobs. It's an insane amount of work. Right. But people didn't really used to think of it as a job. I think a lot of creative things kind of go that way is that it's really easy to think. Oh, how hard can it be to sit down and write a blog post or to talk about stuff on an interview or whatever? It's actually really hard to do that stuff. Right. It just looks easy and it feels easy.

Well, there's a huge difference mentally, like thinking, which you probably spend a lot of time doing. Thinking and strategizing from a high level and doing. And they're totally different brain functions. And if you're trying to constantly switch hats.

Too much. Oh no, I'm with you. Like I do. I try, I try and keep 8am to 12pm every day reserved for writing, thinking, reading. Like no task oriented stuff. And then the afternoons are calls and task scoring and stuff. Because.

Right.

Because of the high cognitive cost of switching between two things.

Yeah. Learn that the hard way. Are you writing another book at this time or is there anything you're doing?

Yeah. So we actually have a book about our process. My assistant gave me a link. If your audience, if you have anyone in your audience who's. If you think about working with us, that's great. Just go to bookinabox.com, sign up. Happy to talk to you. But people who really want to write a book who can't afford 20 grand. We wrote a book that describes our entire process, exactly how to do it. Your people can go to bookinabox.com bacon and download the book for free. It's on Amazon too. It's called the book in a box method. But you can get the exact same book for free. And it's everything. It's all of our templates, it's all of our processes, it's everything. You need to go step by step to go from my idea to finish book exactly the way we do it.

Yeah, it's amazing. I downloaded it a couple days ago and I was going through it, I'm like, I was really impressed. And if it's any indication of the kind of work you guys do, it wasn't thrown together. It wasn't just a calling card. There's actually real life, step by step strategies in there.

Of course, because it's not a lead gen for something else. We figure if you're going to read the book and do it yourself, then you're not a client. The clients are the people who need to save time. They have money, but they can save time and they don't want to develop the expertise so they just hire us. The people whose time is not worth that much. They're going to be doing it themselves. So we just figure, let's tell them exactly how to do it exactly the way we do it so they can get the book done. I love that it's not competition.

Earlier you mentioned something about that you're pretty good at, whether it was setting the culture strategy and seeing some of the trends in business, whether it's things that you should be capitalizing on or probably, you know, or sometimes some things that aren't going to be working. What are some of the trends you're seeing in business right now? I mean, I know you're probably connected with a lot of successful business people.

What are you, what are you kind.

Of seeing out there?

Do you think you want to know, like more short term, more long term? What do you.

Some of the ones that are most top of your mind, most exciting.

I mean, well, so I just read Kevin Kelly's the Inevitable.

That's on my wish list.

Is it good dude? Yeah, it's. I mean he's one of the great thinkers of our, he's amazing century. Seriously, the dude. I mean, New Rules for New Economy was written, I think 15 or 16 years ago and it perfectly described everything that's happened in the last two decades. It's amazing. And inevitable is the same thing. It's just updated. So if you want to deeply understand the mega trends that are coming, I cannot recommend a book more highly than Kevin Kelly's the Inevitable. But that's more of sort of like long term, secular, mega, short term stuff. You know what I'm seeing, man? Like, like the most important thing that I think your audience can apply is like it used. We're starting to really see the shift between commodity from a commodity economy to a trust economy. So like in a world basically, in a world where everything was commodified, 20th century economics, essentially industrial economics, you didn't really need to trust. Right. Trust was nice if you had it, but it didn't matter that much. But in a consumerist sort of commodity economy, in a digital economy where almost everything is either free or totally replaceable, near free. What really matters now is trust. And I think most old companies, old economy companies don't know how to develop trust. You're seeing the last gasp of this in politics right now. Like you're seeing possibly the most cravenly corrupt politician of all time, Hillary Clinton, run against a total fucking lunatic. Yeah, they're the exact same age or like within a year of each other. They are totally the total embodiment, those two, of 20th century business. I think 21st century business is the total Opposite, it is like I want to do business with people who I trust, who I know, who I believe in, who care, all those sorts of things. And it's so easy, it's so easy to be kind, to care, to treat people well. It's free. And so many businesses don't do it. And I think if you really are in business now and you really focus on that, it's one of those things that creates compound growth. I mean, we've seen it. Our business has been around two years, not even we're coming up on our two year anniversary already. 50% of our business is word of mouth, like client referral already. Because we focus so much on not just doing a great job that we do, but we focus deeply on the author experience and what it's like for people to, to deal with us. And by the time they're done, we're not perfect at it. But pretty much most of our authors by the time they're done love us. Not only do they love their book, but they love us. And so they become like you're evangelist so much. Right, they become evangelists. But we only get that because you get trust, because you build a relationship.

Wow, do a good job for somebody and that's the best marketing. That's so crazy.

Exactly. Do a good job. But then here's the thing though, this is an important distinction. From the very beginning, we were doing amazing books. But what we didn't do a good job at from the very beginning, that we're doing really good at now, is understanding that the objective end result of a book is only a small part of how people sort of rated us as a company. What really mattered, or a big part was their subjective experience in creating that book. You know what I'm saying? We always did a great job with the end product. But if someone has a kind of a crappy experience dealing with us, then even if they have an amazing book at the end, when you ask them about us, they're going to say, yeah, the book was great, they were okay to deal with, but I wouldn't go through it again. Yeah, yeah. Or even if they say, yeah, I'd probably do it again. But you know, I mean, they could be better then. Think about that. As compared to, oh my God, they were so amazing to deal with. They anticipated everything, it was just seamless and the book is amazing. You think it'd be this crappy book, but instead it's the opposite. It's the most amazing thing I've ever come up with. And it felt like Magic. The only difference between those two testimonials is how you treat that author as they go through the process, how you manage their subjective experience.

As far as their experience goes. What are some of the areas that you feel as though because you said you're improving on that even as it goes. What are some of the areas that you think book in a box would even be better for the experience if it provided that it doesn't currently? Well, like are there any missing pieces that you think if you could wave a magic wand, like, boom, we'd love to provide this for them.

You mean in terms of like providing a service or in terms of how we.

Either one. Here's an example. Let's say that I came to you, we got the book. Six months later, boom, I got this beautiful book. Is there any post publishing, follow up, support services, things like that?

Here's one of the main things of the book. No one wants a book. They want what they envision a book is going to get them. So we started off just doing the book and then what we realized is that no one's buying books from us. They're buying the attention and the status and the prestige and the credibility. A book gets them and they're buying the leads and the clients. A book gets them and they're buying the speaking gigs and they're buying all those results. Right? So just even though we were knocking it out of the park with books, just doing the book wasn't enough because most people didn't have any idea what to do with the book once it was done. Listen, just having a book by itself with basically no other marketing can get a lot of benefits for a lot of people. But once you pour on a little bit of marketing juice on that, then that's when you really start to see the high level advancements and changes. So to answer your question, what we've started, Zach, who's Zach Oberance, my co founder, he has already built, he started building a whole new division. We call it informally right now we call it Platform Box. Because the basic idea is people who want not just a book, but entire ecosystem around a book. So they want like a blog, they want content pulled out of the book to share on guest posts and other media sites. They want other content extensions from the book. They want to be booked on podcasts, they want, even if it's just deeply in their niche, they basically want a slow drip of media and a way to capture it. They want an email list, they want all those sorts of things, basically everything that a really Good authority or expert or something someone like that has. And so we started building that for people. We have four, actually five beta clients right now. So that service is going to come and be offered wide probably at the beginning of next year. So it's almost like expert platform in a box. As long as you are an actual expert and you actually know what you're talking about and you're a great coacher or consultants or any of those sort of things, we can build. We're starting to be able to build the entire platform around it, including the book. That's cool.

That's exactly where I was going with that, like thinking, you know, what would be those great follow ups, like what would the person want next? And that's cool that you're capitalizing on that early because I could see people going, hey, great, I got a book now what do I do with it?

What do I do now?

Right, that's cool. Are there any, are there any other project businesses, ideas and things that you're right now postponing because you either don't have the time, people, resources to work on them.

Yeah, dude, I mean there's. I'm sure you're in the same boat as me. There's 50 things I could be doing now. To me, Book in a Box was a great idea. Like great. Like off the charts. Good. I don't see myself, other than obviously my family and kids, I don't see myself spending my time on anything else other than this. Because here's the thing, Book in a Box is just a subset of the larger idea. We actually named the company In a Box, not Book in a Box, like on the llc. Right, right. Because here's why I feel like we've stumbled in the future. I feel like a lot of people are going to want and need to create media either for their business or for their personal brand or whatever it is. Huge amounts of people are going to have to learn. They're going to have to be good at creating media. Right. And it seems kind of silly for someone who is an executive coach or whatever to have to learn how video works, how speech writing works, how book writing works. It doesn't make sense. Like they know what they know. All they're trying to do is get what they know into a media form so that other people can see it. Right. We want to become the company that they go to to do any media. Right. Like any media creation. Once you have the idea is just a series of steps. Once you know what you want to say, it's just a Series of steps to put it into a book. Once you know what you know, like, if you have the idea, it's just a series of steps to put it into a speech or into a pitch deck or. Or into a presentation or a video course or anything. Right. So what we think is that we can essentially automate the process of going from idea to finished media product. We started with books because books fit a certain. I knew that niche really well, and it fit a certain profile. We can start with a high hiring client's high profit, high margin. We didn't have to raise money, but eventually we want to do everything all across the board. If you're turning an idea into a finished product, we want to have an in a box for it, speech in a box, platform in a box, book in a box, all of it.

I love that. Yeah. Video. And there's a million things that people need out there. And I'm starting to see this kind of consolidation as well. Listen, come here to get this stuff executed. And there's so much information out there. People are drowning in. It was that old saying, they're drowning in information, Starving for wisdom or something similar to that. Starving for execution. Just do it. I know what I need to do. I don't need to learn how the engine works. I just kind of want to get in and turn the key and go, are there any resources there that you're looking for that maybe my listeners or anybody else out there, it's like, hey, listen, we're looking to add this on is kind of a way that we can help, you know, provide you with any resources if you're looking for them.

What do you mean?

Are there service providers? Are there people, employees, any kind of nuts you're trying to crack right now or looking for? I mean, I get a lot of listeners and they might be like, shit, I totally do this, or this is what my company does, or I'm happy.

Oh, you mean like, listen, anyone who wants to work with us, we've got a career page. We're always taking applications. We've got. Dude, it's crazy, man. We've got 6,000 people on our mailing list for job announcements. I know, it's pretty nuts. So obviously anyone who's interested in this, just go to bookinabox.com I think there's a careers or join our tribe. There's a link on there. Yeah. And anyone who wants to talk about this stuff or whatever, just. My email is tuckerookinhobox.com I'm easy to reach.

Nice.

Yeah, nice.

Yeah, that's really cool. I like that you're approaching this like really, really detailed and professionally like, yeah, we're going to build this out to kind of be a catch all for anybody who's trying to explode their expertise, their credibility. Like you mentioned, that trust factor thing is so important. Mutual friend Perry Belcher, I remember him once saying, you know, and I remembered this, he goes, it's never been harder to get somebody to spend that first dollar with you, but it's never been easier to get them to continuously buy because you know that first. Now you've got social media, you've got Google, you got all this stuff. If you don't have a great reputation, if you're full of crap, they can spot that a mile away and they got a million options. But when you get them, when you've built that trust, there's so many more options to just get them to keep coming back for more. And I kind of kept that in mind. And that whole thing about trust, building trust is really the key to it.

All, especially in the future, man, because you can't hide anymore, you can't scam people anymore. They're eventually going to find out. We're almost going backwards. We came from as humans, as naked apes, social apes. We came from a small tribal, we evolved in small tribal groups where everyone knew everyone. And building your long term credibility was crucial to immigration in the tribe. And we kind of got away from that in an anonymous industrialized world. But now the world's been reconnected and we're going back to that which is really, actually weirdly more human than it used to be. Anonymity is not a normal human sort of condition. But tribalism is, that's what I was talking about with trust. That's why if you're building a business, you look for the long term and you're like, alright, I'm going to do a great job with everyone I work with. I'm going to do the right thing. I'm going to build my name and I'm going to be someone that I can trust. Once you've built that asset for five or 10 years, that's something you can utilize then for the rest of your life. And it's really hard to build. That becomes a moat that no one else can cross because it takes years.

To build it, you know, no abs, absolutely. That's so important. You can screw it up with one, you know, you do something wrong, it can take a lifetime. What do they say to build your reputation and a moment to screw it up but you're right, it does. It absolutely creates a moat that people can't touch. Because you can't build trust overnight. I mean you can try, but. And a book is a really a great way to do that, I guess, kind of coming full circle.

Well, it builds, it builds credibility. It doesn't build trust. They're different. Credibility and authority. Once you have a book, people know, okay, this person is smart and they are displaying their intelligence and knowledge to the world. So I can check it now. I don't even have to. I don't have to trust them. I can check it and then you check the book and it's great. And you're like, alright, now I can trust them a little bit because I have read their book and I see what they think and it makes a lot of sense. That's how you build trust, is slow steps of doing what you say you're gonna do, which is what a book is. An implicit promise to give something to someone. There's some roi. People buy nonfiction books because they expect an roi. If you deliver that in your book, then that makes you credible and then they now trust you at least a little bit.

Yeah, well, and it's. The quality of the book matters immensely. So I can attest, as I said, I've been reading. Is it John Rulin? Is that his name? Yeah, yeah, his book and then your book in a box one. I mean it's a very powerful strategy. It's one of the things that I've done just helping my clients, you know, get a book off the ground. Although I don't personally do that anymore because I know how much it. I take that back. I don't help them write it anymore because I know how much work that can be just personally going in and doing that. I like having somebody like yourself as a, a potential referral source for clients who may want that and then come back to me, I help them capitalize on it, etc. But any other non business or fun related books that you've got kind of planned. You're such an amazing writer that I know you're probably done with the fratire days. I think I've heard you say. But is there anything else in your.

No. I mean it's mostly for the next six months to a year. Year. It's pretty much all book stuff, book in a box stuff. It's all like that kind of stuff. But dude, I'm only 40. I've got all kinds of. I got decades of business ahead of me. I'm sure I'LL do other stuff.

Yeah, I'm sure you will.

Cool.

Well, Tucker, this has been really awesome. I really enjoyed a chance to kind of hear these strategies, go deep and hear kind of the kind of not just how to create a book, but other ways to utilize it and leverage on those and hear the things that you're moving forward on. If there's anything that I can personally do or any of my listeners to help you speed that up, by all means, don't hesitate to reach out. Let me know. I know a lot of people and I've got a lot of resources that may be useful for you going forward in the future. To my listeners, I definitely encourage them to check out Bookinabox and the free book, what is it? Bookinabox.com Bacon Yep, yep. You guys can download it there. As I said, my friend shalina, just like 20 minutes before we jumped on the phone, she was asking me for the exact same thing. So, you know, that's kind of a sign that you're onto something hot and it's not going any away anytime soon. By the way, are you a coffee drinker? I'm happy to send you a. Yeah, dude, of course.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

I got your office address here. I'll make sure I send it to you. I don't know if there's anything else you want to add, but, man, I would just really appreciate the, you know, the time and, you know, everything you shared with us here.

No, man, it was fantastic. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Absolutely. For my listeners, if this is a strategy that you're thinking about doing, well, let me ask you this. This is something I didn't kind of COVID What is the customer's or prospective customer's journey with you? If they are interested, they go to book in a box. Do they apply? Do they jump on the phone? What's the story?

Just go to book in a box. There's a little form at the bottom. Fill it out. We'll follow up right away in the next whatever, 24 hours. It's a real human who follows up. You get on the phone with them, they kind of ask you questions, figure out if you're a good fit for us, then we answer any questions. You have to figure out if this makes sense for you. And then if so, then we start, we start moving forward. I mean, we can, we right now we're not backed up, so we can get started pretty quick with clients.

I love to hear it and I encourage everybody to go check that out. And if you have any questions for me, Personally, I urge you to send an email to ask bradakenratbusiness.com it is a personal email. I do read them. Whether you you've got insight and feedback or you're kind of stuck in your own business, whether you've got a book and you want to know how to better monetize it or your sales have kind of topped out, you're kind of frustrated and stuck, I got a lot of tricks in my bag and I'm happy to share those with you. Kind of give you a second opinion on what might be a better strategy for you going forward. Once more, just send that email to ask bradaconrap Business and I encourage you to share this Tag me, Maybe tag Tucker on Twitter. What are you, Tuckermax?

Yep, Twitter.

Cool. And let us know what you think of the show. Tucker, thanks again, man. I really appreciate it. And I know you're a busy guy, so I'll let you get going. But to all my listeners, if you like this, keep listening. Got some more good stuff coming up and we'll talk to you next week.