Be Ready: AVOID Being Unprepared for the Big Stage!

Today's message is be ready. If you want the big goals to happen, if you want to reach your dreams, if you want to take that next step with your company, if you're tired of being stuck in mediocrity and doing all of this work and not getting results, then you need to be ready for success. You need to be ready for that big stage because when it comes knocking, chances are it's not because you don't have the ready mindset. So here's an example. When I go into making my YouTube videos, what I try to do is I imagine that It's not just 100,000 people who are watching this video who are on my channel. It's reaching millions. It's going out to the biggest network there is. The famous entrepreneurs that I profile, they're gonna watch this. And in 50 Cent's case, he did. And in other people, they're gonna watch it too. And it's that mindset because it forces you to play a bigger game. If you're a musician and you're playing at some dive bar and there's 10 people in the audience, pretend like it's Madison Square Garden. Because it makes you play better, it makes you think bigger, it makes you be the best version of yourself, and those are going to create the opportunities to help you go play that bigger game. Too many people aren't ready. Too many people, your stuff is just okay, your product or service is just okay. You're not ready for the big stage. And so it comes from adopting that mindset. Imagine like the stuff that you're already making is already great, is going to be the best you can make it, and is reaching millions of people. Force yourself to play that bigger game. And I try to do that every time I'm creating a video, I'm going on a phone call, I'm doing a presentation. It's not just for that small group. And I get that it can be hard. I get that it's hard because you look at your current surroundings and it's not great, right? There's only 10 people in the room. You're working off of a crappy YouTube video camera. You know, your product isn't fantastic yet. You gotta hustle to change that mindset, to force yourself to play that bigger game. And just the awareness makes the difference. Just me before radio show going on thinking, "This is a nationally syndicated radio show that all of my mentors are going to be listening to." Just me thinking that already ups the stakes, already makes my show way better because it makes me way better. So how this relates to my book, that's what this video is all about, the book update. I got a publisher call yesterday, or email, saying they might want to push back the date of my book. I was supposed to have it in October 15th. They're asking if maybe we should move to January, citing a whole bunch of reasons. There's a lot of books coming out in the fall, there's the election, you know, blah blah blah. There's a lot of books coming out in January. It's no difference. I don't know what the full story is. You're gonna have to find that out. But to me, it doesn't matter. I'll be ready. You want in October, I'll be ready. You want in January, I'll be ready. And I'm taking the mindset of this book is already a bestseller. I'm writing the bestseller. That's what I'm going in thinking. And so it forces me to put the most that I have into it, and it forces me to write the best that I can write. That's what it's all about. And if I went in thinking, "Huh, it's just a book, whatever, put my name on it, no big deal," and I don't put in that juice and that effort, then it won't be a bestseller. So I'm going in already with the mindset that I'm ready. Whatever date you want it, I'll have it to you, and it's going to be a bestseller. And so your business, be ready. Okay, time to answer your questions. First up, Sam Rock: Have you considered where you're going to sell the book? Your own website or elsewhere? So it's gonna be a— it's not a self-published book, right? I've got a publisher. It'll be in bookstores. It'll be online. But it's gonna be up to me to do most of the hustling. And I've got a few things planned. Right now, everything that I'm doing is based on one, writing the book and helping you guys join in on the process. In terms of it coming out, it's typically a year after you submit the book. So I've got to submit it in October or January now. And then it'll come out in the following fall or new year, I guess. And that entire time I'm going to be using to start building up awareness and attention around marketing this book, and I think maybe potentially in marketing other books as well. The easiest way to start getting attention and awareness is to partner up and make alliances with people who already have your target audience. So giving the book to people who share my common interests and have large entrepreneur audiences, going on their YouTube channels, doing Twitter chats with them, writing blog posts for them, working with the mainstream media as well. But I think something that I'm toying with is, you know, what do I do with this series? Because this is a regular series that comes out once a week. You guys are asking great questions and tuning in. And at the start, it's all been about me writing my book and the process to hopefully kind of give you guys a sneak peek behind the scenes of what happens when you're writing a published book. But once the book is done, then what does it become? And I'm open to suggestions if you guys want to leave a comment below. My thinking is I'll turn it into how am I going to then market the book? How am I preparing to sell the book? Because writing the book's not enough. You got to get it out into the hands of people. And so if you guys are interested in that, let me know and I might just make that happen. And if you have other suggestions, let me know that too. Next up, Dominic with a bunch of questions. First up, what percentage of the book is about you and your story? This is a great, great question. The book is divided into 3 main sections and I tell my story Throughout the first two sections are much more my story, and I'm sharing how I did things. I share the theory, I share how I executed it, and then I share specific examples. In the last section of the book, I share a little bit about me and then more about other companies to try to show that the ideas that I'm presenting in the book are applicable to a big range of businesses. So the last section is going to be I have my business, I have a business that's making $50,000 a year, one that's half a million, one that's over a million, one that's $5 million, and one that's $200 million. And showing how they use the principles that are in the book so that wherever you are in the stage of your growth, you'll be able to relate to hopefully my story, but then also at least one or two of the other stories. So section 1 and 2 is, is a lot of my examples. And then section 3 is a mix of mine and other examples. Have you thought about the book cover style? A little bit. Most of it is based right now on getting the content done and having the manuscript sent to the publisher. Do you want to outsource the design or will design it yourself? I don't know if I'll design it myself, probably not. I like working with people who are great at what they do, right? The book is gonna be great and I wouldn't want to limit the COVID to something that I'm not great at. I will definitely have input into it. I will talk with my publisher and see what they typically I'll tell you I'm not going to release something that I don't love. I need to be inspired by it and really feel in love with the COVID So I'm going to be hands-on, but won't likely be doing it myself because I don't really have the skills to do it. How many pages will the book have? Thank you. Right now they asked me for 70,000 words, so I don't know how many pages that translates into. And I don't know what's going to get edited and cut. And if stuff gets cut out, maybe I'll give you guys free bonus sections and chapters, but around 70,000 words, and then I guess you can look up how many pages that is. Next up, Kira. Hey Evan, great video. I learned so much when you answer questions for other people. Thank you, glad you're liking it. I'm about to launch my first book for children ages 5 to 8. I just plan on doing ads online, but an opportunity just came where I can have a presence at a book convention. Do you think it is wise to spend some money at the convention instead of push using ads? It's a good question. I'm not sure that I would spend my money on either. You want to make sure that your target audience is there. So is your target audience going to be at that book convention? Convention, maybe. I'm a big believer in starting small and testing before expanding. And so you might think it's like a big opportunity, but I really try to see if they've had— you know what I do? I try to talk to people who've gone through it before, ask for other authors who've been there. Did they get results? You know, what are your goals? Is your goal to get an agent? Is it to get more distribution, to get a media appearance, to actually sell some books there? And I try to figure out if it's worth it, because for me, I would probably not do any conventions unless I was invited to be a speaker there, just because I don't feel like the juice is worth the squeeze. The amount of time invested into preparing, getting the booth ready, flying there, it's, you know, that takes a week of time and preparation and actually executing. I could have spent that week doing a lot more valuable things, probably. Now, this is an exception. This is an amazing convention, then maybe, but I would really need to get some quality testimonials from people who say that it was the difference for them in their book. Otherwise, otherwise I wouldn't do it. For ads, I'd also be really wary. You don't make a lot of money off of each book, so this is a challenge, and I would be really targeting who I'm going after. So if I was to use an ad product, I would probably go after Facebook because you can really get into people with your dark posts. And so, for example, if you're looking at those children's books, what did you say, ages 5 to 8, you could look up people who are— who have kids. You can look at their interests and run ads against those interests. But again, I would really look to see if that's paying off. You know, I hate spending money before I'm making money, and I would really be looking at metrics that if I'm putting my ads out there, am I getting enough of return on it? Where I would tend to skew in my thinking how I'm gonna promote it much more working with influencers, much more, you know, I would be looking at who are the people who are reaching that audience already, and how can you be on their YouTube channel? How can you be on their talk show? How can you How can you get written up in the newspaper? How can you get on CNN? How can you partner up with the people who are celebrities on Twitter and on Instagram? I think you'll get much better results. But test! You know, that's my bias. Test! Run those ads. Just make sure you can track them. Don't just blindly assume that they're working because you could run out of money in a hurry. By the way, I have a son who's 5 years old, so maybe we could do something together. Let me know about that book. Lynn wrote in to say, can you share who your publisher is? Yeah, so I'm working with Parigi, which is part of Penguin Random House. I've talked about a couple times in the videos, but I have a literary agent, Dupree Miller, and they set up a whole bunch of calls with publishers back to back to back to back and basically set up a bidding war and a chance for us to connect and talk with the different publishers and make sure they got the vision of the book and we're the right people to work with. And so, um, that's who I signed with. Toss Today writes in to say, I wonder if the book is called I Hate Paperwork. I went on a bit of a rant last week about paperwork, but no, the book is not called "I Hate Paperwork." And last, Fernando, "I will buy your book, looking forward to it." Thanks, bro, I appreciate the love and support. And thank you guys every week for watching and asking questions. It's an amazing journey to be on, and I'm glad I can take you guys with me. So if you want to ask me a question about this video, about my book, about the book writing process, about your book, leave it in the comments below, and I will answer for you next week. Thank you guys for watching. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.