It doesn't have to be PERFECT - #EvansBook ep. 62

It doesn't have to be perfect. So one of the biggest lessons that I learned early on in my business career with my first company is that it doesn't have to be perfect. Where we wanted it to be perfect, where we wanted it to have the perfect plan and spent so much time working on the perfect plan, before ever actually releasing it out, that we ended up losing a $42 million sale. And that still burns me to today. But it was a good lesson. How I applied it to my book is we launched the book website. You know, we launched it up. It's, it's, it's pretty good. If you compare it to most authors and what they do for their pre-launch campaigns and pre-launch books, it's pretty good, but it's not perfect. I think it's way better than most, but it's still not perfect in my eyes. It can always be better. That's the thing with someone who's a perfectionist, like I'm a recovering perfectionist, it could always be better. There's always something to improve on. And it's embracing that, embracing the desire to get better and to improve with releasing stuff. Because if all you do is try to get better and get better and get better and never release anything, you're never making money, you're never getting feedback. And what you think may work may not actually work, and you gotta test it out, test those assumptions. And so we put up the page. And it's really good, but it could be better. You know, there's a lot of placeholders right now that show video coming soon, right? I haven't recorded those videos. I need to do that soon. The page loaded really slowly because we were just throwing tons of high-res pictures at it, and we were just so worried about getting the website up that it loaded slowly. We got that feedback from people. We now improved it. It's a lot faster to load. Some of the bonus packages were confusing for some people. They didn't know what everything meant. It was just like a one-liner. And so we're working on making that more clear, easy to understand, more visual. It takes some time. It's still not up yet. We're working on it. It's coming. So all this stuff is still coming, but it's already good enough, right? It is good enough to push out, and we want to make it better. So don't let that perfectionist side of you prevent you from releasing something because it's never going to be perfect. It never will be. There's always room for improvement. Now, on top of sharing something about the book, a rant at the top, and then answering your questions, I thought it'd be also fun to update you on the goal of how we're doing on selling the books. The presale targeted 3,000 books, and apparently that's what you need to get on the bestseller list. Still not a guaranteed spot, so it's great to have more than that, but the— that was the initial presale goal. We are at— what are we at? 39. 39 out of 3,000. So that's what, just over 1%? We got a lot of work to do. And I've started adding a counter at the top of the website, and the counter shows you our goal and then how many we've sold so far, as well as sending some thank you messages to some of the people who bought the books recently. And so I thought it'd be cool to kind of update you as well as how many books we're selling on a regular basis, how many books we sell each week. I don't know, like authors never share this stuff. So what is a bestseller? What do you need to get to make the bestseller list? And hopefully, you know, hopefully we get enough to be able to get there. And I thought that by sharing that, again, the whole point of this video series is to give you guys kind of behind the scenes and what it takes to get a book with a major publisher off the ground. And so they may hate me for this. I don't know if they've seen it yet, but, um, but I want to keep it and hopefully give you guys an honest update on how well the book is doing. And hopefully maybe that inspires you to want to help out a little bit more as well. All right, let's get to the questions. First up is Zeno: Super excited about reading your book and discovering my one word. I'm one of the many people who don't really know what they're about and who they are, and I believe your book will help me figure things out, like your videos have already helped me in many ways. And after reading this, I know that Zaino has already purchased the book. Thank you so much, Zaino, it means a lot to me. You got a random shout out too in one of the other videos, so stay tuned for that. I think the book will definitely help. I think it helps you with that self-awareness to know what it is that you stand for and then start to live a life on purpose. Initially, my intent was just for entrepreneurs, but I actually gave the pre-version of the book out, the twice as long version of the book out to What was it, 20 people, 30 people? I don't remember now. And half of them were not entrepreneurs and they loved it, which was super interesting. I know it will do well with entrepreneurs. It just will. But for the non-entrepreneurs, it was super interesting to see how much value they got out of it and how much they see it applying to their life and their career. So Zainal, I'm super excited. I know you watch a lot of the videos and you've comments everywhere. I really appreciate that and I'm excited to see after you go through the exercises and read the book, what you learned from it, 'cause I'm excited, I'm excited. I think you're gonna come up with something special. Next up is Lee. You're making a real difference in people's lives, including my own, and I appreciate all the hard work you give and your team at Believe Nation working towards a cause. Thank you, Lee, that really means a lot to me. Thank you for also acknowledging Amazon UK. I found the link on that website selling your book, Your One Word. It happens to be a deluxe edition. I just wanna know this is the full version of your book before I buy. So yes, in terms of the book, there's gonna be 3 options. There's a hardcover version, which is already available for pre-order. There is the audio version, which is not available yet, and I'm so upset at the guys in charge of the audio sales, and I still don't have an update, but as soon as I do, I will for you guys, 'cause I know a lot of you want the audio version, so it's coming. For the ebook, there's the regular version and a deluxe version, depending on the retailer, I guess, you're buying from. The deluxe version has my commentary in there. I have some videos in there. So just like a bunch of bonuses that are worked in within the ebook itself compared to not having it. So someplace you get an option, some places you don't. But that is the book. It'll be the full book as well. If you buy it, you qualify for the bonuses as well. You qualify for all the free downloads. You qualify for the random shoutouts. All of that stuff all qualifies. If you want the extra packages, the 10, 25, You know, $100, $10.25, what is it? $10? Let me look it up. What are the bonus packages? I really should know this, but this is, this is legit. This is how we run things here. $10.25, $100, and $500. That is only for the hardcover version, and then allows you to gift it to other people as well. So yes, and if anybody's having trouble with international orders, please let me know so I can contact my publisher and say, hey, we got to get it up on these places. Next up, new future builder. What is the greatest thing you've learned in those in-person meetings with your supporters? BTA347. BTA347, that's crazy. That's legit. That's almost every day for a year. New Future Builder. I love it. Spreading the energy. That's an interesting question. I would maybe divide this into two categories, two camps. I know the question's about supporters, so if I'm thinking about people I meet when I go traveling, when I go to Sage Summit, when I visit different cities and I meet up with people, The greatest single thing that I learned is that it's having a real impact on people's lives. I mean, I see it in the comments. I love it. I love seeing that from you guys. I read them and it fills me every day, but I'm still just speaking to a camera, right? And when I meet somebody in person and they tell you how much the videos have helped them, in some cases I'm the only person who believes in them in their life and their environment, and then seeing how much of a change that they make because they've watched the videos consistently. That means something to me. Like, it brings a lot of value and meaning to my work. And hopefully whatever you're doing, you have customers who are feeling the same way, that you have touched them some way. Not just solve the problem, but help them become better human beings. That, like, face-to-face storytelling is super valuable for me. You know, people sometimes drive hours to come out and meet me because I only land in one city. That's, first of all, an honor that people would spend 2 hours driving in to come and meet me. But then hearing their story and knowing how much it touched them just gives me that extra motivation to want to do more. In terms of reading the book, when I was writing it, I also interviewed people who are at different stages of building the company. So from $50,000 to $500,000 to $1 million to $5 million to $150 million in revenue, and learning that they had all built their business around their one word, and nobody had a blueprint to do it. Nobody had a roadmap. They just kind of figured it out as they went. And I wanted to learn from them for me, for my business, because I had had some success, but I don't have $150 million success. So I can learn a lot from those guys on how to do it and also how to better tell the story and other resources and guidelines to be able to make it easier for the next person, right? Because I just stumbled my way through finding my one word and applying to my business where here was something that now is replicatable. Like you guys can do it a lot faster than I did it because now this is the blueprint. This is what I wish I had when I first started. But it didn't exist. And for these other guys, it didn't exist either. And so it is exciting to— I'm so excited to see the businesses that come out of this and how quickly they take off after using it. So yeah, just, just meeting those entrepreneurs and realizing that nobody had a blueprint. They were just all trying to figure out how to use their one word to guide their business. And that led to a lot of excitement for me because this was, this is now the blueprint. This is now the plan that anybody can follow to help build their business up and have massive success. Next up, Simeon. Thank you very much for including my comment, Evan. I pre-ordered the book, sent the receipt, and can't wait to start reading it. Love that, bro. Thank you. I'm based in Birmingham, United Kingdom, so basically in UK, Amazon delivers the book. Awesome. Great. I love that it came through on the international orders. For those of you guys who are also in other countries, please let me know if the link is working and you're, you're getting results. I have one question I really wanted to ask you. Is there a moment in gentrepreneurship where you can say, is it too early? What I mean by the fact is that at any moment I'm really passionate in what I'm doing, really motivated to do my work, educate myself, and so on, ready to talk to customers. But is there a chance to be too early? Probably need to finish university first or gain experience from working as an employee for a couple years and so on. I'm pretty sure you're going to say that as I'm feeling the moment, that's the right time. I'm curious, what do you think? Thank you very much. Awesome, Evan, all caps. Cool. That's a great question. I think With business, it's about providing value. One of the most important rules in business is if you provide value, you will have a successful company. Then it becomes, can you provide value? Are you too soon, too early in your development to provide that value? If you are trying to be a speaker, as an example, you have to have a message. You have to be comfortable in front of the camera. You have to be comfortable on stage, and so you will have to start at a YMCA, at your kid's high school, you know, whatever it is, to get the practice and experience because you're not gonna get hired and get paid, you know, 5, 6 figures to go speak on some tour because you can't provide that value yet, right? So I don't know what you're trying to do, but can you provide enough value to somebody? And if not, then you need to go learn, you gotta work. What I would suggest though is a lot of people underestimate the value that they can provide. A lot of people beat themselves down. A lot of people don't believe in themselves enough. Where they can provide a lot of value, they just don't think they can. And so because they don't think they can, then they don't. Where what I would encourage you to do is whatever your idea is, to start on the side and see, can you get some traction? And if you're at the start unsure, you can go ask for help. Instead of asking for a sale, you can ask for feedback. And if people like it, they may order from you, you may have a sale, or they'll give you guidance and direction how to go. At the same time, get a job and work. Find someone in the industry that you want to model, a company, 10 employees or less, that you look up to and say, I want to be like them in a couple years. Then go work for them and learn the ropes. I would be doing both at the same time. A lot of people may have a huge ego and think they're the best at everything, and then they go out and, you know, the market hits them in the face because they can't provide enough value. But I think more people just don't think they can provide enough value, underestimate themselves constantly, undervalue themselves constantly, and never take any kind of shot. I would say start now. Start something on the side, get some feedback, start building it up, and continue to work to learn to get the resources, experience, ideas, connections to help you build what you want to build. Next up is Antoine. Thank you very much for answering my question, Evan. I really appreciate it. If you do a launch party or whatever on December 6th, count on me to drop by TDS. I don't know if I'm going to do a launch party. I don't know how, you know, I might do a livestream. I might do a physical event. I think so many people watching are not here in Toronto with me, so a local event may not be great. I might do an online stream, maybe have some guests come on. I don't know, I haven't figured it out. I'm, I'm open to ideas. What do you guys think I should do as a launch party? Leave in the comments below. I really appreciate the feedback cuz I still have some time to figure that out. But, uh, if I'm bringing other people on and it's gonna be a longer thing, then I need to start planning relatively soon to get it ready for you guys. Next up, Syed Evan, congrats on your book. We'll buy one. Thank you, man, really appreciate that. Please answer my question. How is having a goal of learning 5 languages, do you think that can be a goal or something? Sure, it can be a goal. It's not even that difficult a goal. Tons of people have learned 5 languages. I think more importantly is why. Why is that interesting to you? What's your why? Just having a goal without enjoying the process will, will be failure. Like, it can't just be, I want to check this thing off my list. You have to enjoy learning the languages. You have to have a reason to do it. It's got to be something that you really like. If you don't, then there's no point. I don't care about checking off the box to say I'm an author, I have a book. I don't care, I don't need that. I wanted to write a book to spread the message that's in the book. I could do it on my YouTube channel, but I felt this method of using a written book could one, help me get to more people, but two, what I want to explain is just better suited to a book than video. And so that's why I want to do it. So why do you want to do the 5 languages? It's easy. People have done way more than 5 languages. You gotta do the work to get there, but it's definitely accomplishable. If it's just to check a box, you're probably not gonna stick with it. It's gonna be too hard for you. If you have a deep drive and motivation coming from somewhere, then you can. And it's not up to me. Like, what do I think? Who cares what I think? What do you think? Is this inspiring for you? Is this a goal that you really want to do? If it is, then go for it, and don't let anybody, me included, tell you that it's a stupid idea. Next up, Martin: "I love these book episodes, man." Thanks, Martin. When I started this off, it was just an experiment and maybe a lesson for you guys. One, to show people the behind the scenes of creation. I did 60 episodes of this every week. It's over a year of episodes before I even said what the book was about. Just highlighting the process of what I was doing behind the scenes as a way to build momentum for what I was doing, but also to educate people on the process of writing the book with a major publisher and how it happens. So that could be knowledge for you guys, a little insight to whatever you're making. Show the behind the scenes. People might be interested in that and following you on your journey. Your journey is value too, not just the end result. But also to testing, right? Like I could have done 3 episodes and then said, ah, you know what, I don't want to do this. This takes me the most time of any of the videos that I have, like in terms of length of time of me on camera, it's the most time of any of my episodes. and it's probably the least viewed. If I compare it to my Top 10 series or Espresso series, it's, it's among the least viewed. So why keep doing it? What's the point? Because I like doing it, right? And comments like that from you that you're finding value in it. And so don't be afraid to experiment. I'll do other series that I try and test and they don't get results. I don't really like doing them, so I drop them. And so don't be afraid to keep experimenting and trying new things in your business because you may fall in love with something. It may build insane momentum for you. It doesn't have to be this big thing that you start with, just some small project as a test and see if it makes you come alive. Next up, Uri Iri. Hey dude, I'm an upcoming filmmaker vlogger from New York City. You're not upcoming, bro. You already are. I am a filmmaker and a vlogger from New York City, period. Would love the opportunity to work with you. Keep up the good work, by the way. I don't know what you have in mind, man. Let me know. Leave in the comments. Pitch me something. I come to New York. Yeah, every now and then my agent is in New York. I was there earlier this year. If you're on my newsletter list, and for anybody, if you're on my newsletter list, when I travel to a city, I leave it in my newsletter just for people from that city to say, hey, I'm coming to your city, do you want to meet up? I just came back from Chicago and met with some entrepreneurs that were on my list. Super fun. Uh, one of them picked me up from the airport, another one drove me back to the airport. So they get some one-on-one time for 45 minutes to talk about their business, which is also super fun instead of just hopping a cab or taking an Uber. So for all of you guys, yeah, if you get on the newsletter list and I come to your city, I'd love to meet up. Next up, Ricardo: "I would love the Italian version anyway. I pre-ordered." Mille grazie, Ricardo! Really appreciate it. And yeah, the pre-order sales will help justify where we go with Multilingual. So if we get a lot from Italy— I don't— did you send in your receipt? I don't recognize the name, and I don't remember anybody from Italy ordering. For those of you guys ordering, make sure to send in your receipt. One, you get bonuses. You get a bunch of free downloads that will help you that come instantly that you don't have to wait until, you know, December 6th to come. Two, you get a random shout-out, so you get entered into a draw where every video I'm making, I give a shout-out to people who have bought the book. And so you get a, you know, quick hit on the channel. But also it helps us identify where the numbers are coming from. So when I say I sold 39, maybe I've sold way more, you guys haven't let me know. and then for multilingual, for buying books in a certain area. If we get a lot of orders from California, then the California bookstores will order more. Instead of just ordering 1 copy, they may order 10 or 20 or 30, so it makes a difference for me to show them, hey, we're getting a lot of orders here. So if you bought the book, make sure to send in a receipt too. Next up, Natalie. Evan, have you thought about having your teammates provide some comments from behind the scenes? We find that helpful and inspiring as well. Glad I can bring your heart joy. You make me want to be a YouTuber for value, not money. Really appreciate that, Natalie. I'm open to ideas you have. Like this whole video series is the behind the scenes of me explaining what happened. I don't know if you guys want me to have my agent come on with me and talk about the process or my publisher come on and talk about the process. Maybe, maybe as part of like a launch video, I have them come on and give some feedback and advice. I'm open. Like, let me know what you wanna see. If it's doable and fun, then I'll try it out. Next up, Gemma Doyle Official. Hey Evan, I heard you mention what's your one word at the end of your recent videos and honestly never made me think about the book. I didn't even know you had a book, yet I watch your videos almost every day, probably at least once a day. I love your channel and your family are such good people, but I wanted to share with you and let you know this in response to what you're saying about marketing/selling from this video. So perhaps you can consider marketing/making people even more aware of your products. Love and best wishes, Gemma. Really appreciate that. I did talk about that in advance of Everything else is happening with the book, so the first thing that I did was just mention believe or whatever your one word is as a test. Like, I like it. It kind of sticks with me. I like doing it. I could have done a couple of times like, eh, I'm not sure about that. There's more coming with the book. I'm doing the random shoutouts at the end of the book. It's in the description. So I random shoutouts at the end of the videos. There'll be more. Again, it's not— I don't want it to be too heavy-handed. There'll be some specific videos just on the book and some of the concepts in the book. So if you're a regular fan, you will know about the book and the opportunities, but you won't feel like it's over the top and just a commercial every time. Because, because my main goal is impact. It doesn't help me to just pound the book and then you guys all leave, because then I'm not having an impact. Sure, maybe I sell some extra books, but I'm in it for the long term, and I want to be able to provide value forever. It's great feedback. I super appreciate it. I know it's coming from a massive place of love, and you want me to have more success in, in, um, in selling the book. So keep watching, let me know what you think over the next couple weeks, see if it feels okay. And again, if you guys have feedback, suggestions for how to improve, I'm always open. Leave in the comments of any video and, um, we'll check it out. Next up, Tamara. I love Tamara because she ordered 10 copies of the book pre-order. I love Tamara for a lot of reasons, but that's an extra reason to love Tamara. Thank you so much, really appreciate that, and you got a random shout out coming up in one of the videos too. So Tamara wrote, why aren't you making money from the book sales, and how many do you have to sell before you start making money? When you work with a major publisher, it's not for the money. So I got a, I got a sizable advance for a regular author, let alone a first-time author, which was great. A lot of that already went into making the book, right? Bringing on the team and doing the travel and making sure that it's a, you know, something that I'm extremely proud of. Because much more important than earning the paycheck is creating something that will last forever, that I want to give to Hayden to read through, and I want my wife to read through, and what my parents and my grandkids to read through. And so a lot of that money gets burnt up pretty quickly. From there you get royalty deals, and I don't know what it is. I honestly don't— like, it's, it's a percent if it's 1% or 2% or whatever it is, I don't know what it is. So it's more so though that it allows me to, for a future book, if you're just talking money, if you do well with one book, you can sell a second book way more easily at a much higher advance and way better deals. It allows me to have a bit greater reach, which fuels my goal of impacting a billion entrepreneurs. But then that also opens up more speaking gigs and more YouTube subscribers and more people finding out about the message. People who may not, you know, love YouTube now find out about me and hire me to come speak at their event, or whatever it is, right? It doesn't pan out in that the work that I'm doing to promote the book generates book sales that then gives me a huge financial gain. It's much more about the impact. Like, if money— making money is your only goal, self-publish. You keep most of the revenue yourself. It's not my goal. And selling 100,000 books is not going to make a massive financial difference in my life, at least in the short term. But in terms of enriching me and knowing that I'm hitting so many people and the message is spreading, that is worth tons. You know, that's worth billions to me. So yeah, hopefully that answers the question. Evan looks like Manu Ginobili. This is from— who's this from? Rafael Garcia. I don't really know Manu Ginobili. I know he's a basketball player. The Spurs, I think. I maybe should know more. I'm not a huge basketball fan, although the Raptors are, you know, pretty solid now. Maybe. People say I look like Nicolas Cage, but you know, everybody looks like Nicolas Cage. So I haven't heard Manu Ginobili before. I've gotten Nicolas Cage, I got the guy from Friends. David Schwimmer. Is that the guy from Friends? I think his name is David Schwimmer. And now Manu Ginobili. So Kathleen, hi Evan, congrats. I preordered your book. Kathleen, really appreciate that. Again, I don't remember seeing the receipt from you guys. Make sure you're sending the receipt. It helps for the numbers, but it also— I want to give you guys the shoutouts and the bonuses because there's a lot of value in there. That you get even just for ordering one book, you get a ton of value. Um, so yeah, maybe I'm just missing the name, but Kathleen, I know you and I feel like I haven't seen your name in the order list, so maybe I'm wrong. But just to double-check for you guys, make sure you're sending in the receipt after you order. Next up, A Taste of Honey. You're so open with the process. Many hide the secrets and wouldn't share as well. You are not jealous but encouraging others to write, to dream, to do. PS, what mic is that? Thanks and congrats. Thank you. You know, my goal is to help inspire entrepreneurs to go do their thing. I gave advice to a guy today on YouTube who was trying to do my channel. You know, he's like, I'm trying to do the same thing you're doing. Do you have any advice for me? I gave him some advice. Like, you can't just do what I do. It's not going to work. Like, you can't write my book. It's my book, right? You can't out Evan Evan. It's just not going to happen. You just got to be the best version of you. And that's why I'm not concerned about competition, because nobody can do what I do the way I do it. And if you embrace— I mean, that's part of the one-word concept too, it's part of what's covered in the book. But if you embrace who you are, then that's your competitive advantage. Nobody can reach you, where most businesses are boring and just the same as everybody else. And so that's why competition becomes hard. I want to see you guys succeed. If writing a book is your thing, I hope that the video series helps you have more success and more luck and, you know, get you the deal that you want and the impact you want to have. In terms of the microphone, I've used a few over the years. The one I have now— let me load it up— H1 Zoom. That's what it looks like. I've been recording for 30 minutes. Okay, see how long it takes to do one of these videos? I'm not even done yet. We should wrap this up soon. H1 Zoom, handy recorder. You can use it like this and it Captures the microphone. If you're outside, you can put a foam thing on it to block the air. Right now I'm using it as a clip. I usually use it as a clip that's on my— it's bent in. It's on my shirt here. It's on my shirt here that captures the audio. I love it. It was recommended by my videographer Jason, and he uses it. And then I said, I love that, I gotta buy one. Where do I buy it? Picked it up on Amazon. I want to say it's under $100. I'm not 100% sure. It's under $200 for sure, but I want to say it's under $100. So go check it out. And last question, again from A Taste of Honey: Do you think self-publishing is better than traditional publishing in your personal experience? How do you persuade your publisher to allow you to do it your way? Uh, so two questions there. First off, it depends on your goal. If making money is your goal, traditional publishing is not the way to do it. If just having a book on your bucket list you want to check off, then having Traditional publisher is not the way to do it. You could just self-publish and boom, you have it. If you want to have impact though, which was my goal, then that was the only reason to go with a publisher. How do I get them to convince them to do it my way? There were battles. I documented them. If you go back on the series, it shows some of the battles that I had and a compromise between both of us to get, to get a final product that we're, that we love. You know, am I 100% satisfied with Am I happy with every decision that was made? No, but it's a fantastic book. I love the book. And that, that's honestly what gets me through is like, this book is going to have an impact on a lot of people. And this little tiny change that I want to make, or they don't want to make, or whatever, is not worth holding up the book because it's pretty minor. At the same time, if this book does well, it gives me a lot more power for the next book to say, this is exactly what I want. Also, I'll have gone through it. Like, the first time you go through a process, I'm just— I'm a newbie, right? I'm learning everything for the first time in this field. I feel like I can write really well, but everything around creating and marketing a book, it's my first time doing it. So I'm making mistakes, I'm trying to learn, I'm trying to model success. If I do it again, I'll have known the process, right? I've been through it before. I can get there faster. I can know where to push on some things where I can't push on others. So I guess it just really depends on your goal. If you just want to book and you want to make money, then, then self-publish. Way easier, way more lucrative. If you want to have an impact and reach more people and get your message out there, then I would go and try to find a traditional publisher. So there's still more questions. We're over half an hour. I want to wrap this video up. My voice is starting to hurt and I have more videos to record. Thank you guys so much for watching. I'd love to know what you think about the topic. Don't be perfect, right? It doesn't have to be perfect. What do you think about that? How do you apply that in your business? And if you have a question about my book or the book writing process, leave it in the comments below and I'll do my best to include you in next week's video. Thank you guys so much for watching. Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you soon.