642: Why Everyone Should Consider Writing a Book with Chandler Bolt

Hello and welcome to the Achieve Your Goals Podcast, the show that empowers you to wake up to your full potential and achieve your biggest goals and dreams. I am your host, Hal Elrod, and I invite you to join us each week as we share actionable strategies to take your life to the next level, as well as interview world-class experts and entrepreneurs who have achieved extraordinary goals themselves, and we ask them to give you a peek behind the curtain and teach you exactly what you need to do to do the same. Ready? Here we go. What if making Making one decision could change your entire life in ways that you could never imagine. That's what today's episode is about. The decision that changed my life more than any other. Now, of course, marrying my wife is probably at the very tip top, but right below that is writing and self-publishing a book. This book you see right behind me, The Miracle Morning, and the dozen books around it. And now if you're watching this, of course you can see it. If you're listening, you don't see what I'm pointing at, but you get the point. Writing and self-publishing The Miracle Morning created financial freedom for me and my family. It created an impact for millions of people that gave my life purpose and meaning in terms of the work that I was able to do in the world. It enabled me to support my family financially while I was fighting cancer. So during my cancer journey, The Miracle Morning books earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for our family to pay all of our medical bills. And all of our mortgage, everything, so that my wife could focus on taking care of our kids and supporting me, and I could focus all of my energy on healing and being alive for my family. Chandler Bolt is the founder of selfpublishing.com. He has helped thousands of people become not just authors, but best-selling authors. And for me personally, I've known Chandler for over 10 years. I've watched him grow selfpublishing.com into a $75 million business. So not only is Chandler making a huge impact for other people, of course, he has become a leader as an entrepreneur. And today we're talking about a little bit of both, mostly about why writing a book, even if you're not a writer, even if you never thought you could write a book, how you can leverage AI to help you write a book, how you can do it in a way where you will create an impact and an income that will last long beyond you writing that book. And then also I, uh, asked Chandler for a little bit of tips on how How do you grow a $75 million business as well, whether that's with your book or whatever your business is? And Chandler, one of his big focuses for authors is if you are an entrepreneur, how do you leverage that book as the biggest business card and brochure and marketing tool to grow your income? So whether you want to grow your impact, your income, or leave a legacy that lasts long beyond you, this episode can change your life in the same way that that decision to write and self-publish a book, even though I wasn't a writer. I didn't know if I could do it. I didn't have an audience. That one decision changed my life, and I highly encourage you to listen to today's episode and it can change yours. Chandler, so good to be with you, buddy.

Great to be here. Home turf.

The lighting, I was just commenting, it's very dramatic. I feel like we're in a movie or something.

You're a dramatic guy.

We're both really dramatic. So there's two things I want to talk to you about today. We've known each other for 10 years-ish. More.

At least. More.

No, more. Because yeah, over 10 years. I've watched your meteoric rise, if you will. And the two things I want to talk to you about is number one is books, because that is what you're known for. You're the founder of selfpublishing.com. Writing a book changed my life. Writing a book, this book, one of your books, changed your life. And I, from the rooftops, right? I'm like, I've shared you because I'm like, hey, If you are a human being, you have a story, you have life lessons that can either leave a legacy for your kids, for your family, or can amplify your business, right? So it's like whether it's a personal ambition or it's a business ambition, either way, I think everybody should write a book, right? So that's the first thing I wanna talk to you about. The second is scaling a business and selfishly, it's like, I want to actually ask you to help. You've scaled your business, multiple businesses so well that how do I How actually can I do that? So I'm actually gonna need a little coaching from you.

Love it.

Sound good?

Let's do it.

And then our audience can learn as I learn as well. For those that don't know, share your story. Share why you wrote your first book, the tragedy that occurred in your life that led to that.

Mm-hmm. My first book was born out of probably a lot of people watching or listening to your show. You feel like you have something inside or life experience that you have that you can share with other people and you wanna find a way to share it. And Maybe that's video, maybe that's a book, maybe that's something else. But it started not as a book, but just as almost like an experiment and a PDF. And so we wrote this PDF and the goal was just to distribute it to some friends who were trying to start businesses. And then eventually it kept evolving into something where we said, hey, we should just publish this, see what happens. And we published it. We took all of the things that we learned and self-published it.

So, yeah, yeah.

And I mean, we screwed a ton of stuff up. I'll never forget when It was 3 days before our pub date and we were— went to upload the PDF and realized that you can't upload a PDF. It's got to be an EPUB file or Mobi file or whatever else. So we were scrambling. I mean, we're going on Fiverr trying to hire someone to convert it. And so we screwed everything up, but we still said, hey, let's publish it. We use the guerrilla marketing tactics that we learned from running businesses, selling paint jobs door to door. We applied that to books. Then the book blew up. I mean, it started making thousands of dollars a month and it paid the bills when I dropped outta school.

You were, 'cause yeah, you were young, Hal Elrod.

Yeah, I was 19 years old.

Wow.

19, no audience, no anything. I just had a lot of grit and some basic marketing chops. And so we did that.

And then what was the title of that book?

So that was called "The Productive Person." Okay. And then it basically immediately following published a book with my brother called "Breaking Out of a Broken System." That was a nonprofit kind of charity project. So those two things back to back, then people said, hey, how are you doing this? Then we started teaching it, had 44 people in our first cohort. 60% of those wrote and published a book in less than 6 months.

60%.

60%. Wow. And then I almost gave up because I was— I mean, it just wasn't making any money. I made so little money that first year in business that the IRS basically said, don't file your taxes, you're below the poverty line. But then kind of what you're alluding to is a buddy of mine, Kendall, passed away right in front of me. Crazy, tragic accident. That's this—

on a cruise.

Yeah, on a cruise. I've worn this bracelet ever since then. And I talked about this in my TEDx talk. I mean, it was a major pivotal moment where I really— I just kind of took inventory. I'm sure not dissimilar to— you've had multiple kind of crazy life-changing moments where it just forces you to take stock of what's important.

Yeah.

What's not important. What are the things that you're chasing that don't matter? And what, what are the handful of things that you're doing that's actually making a difference? And that's when I realized this book stuff, that was pretty much the only thing in my life that I was doing that was making a positive impact on people. So then that's when I decided to go all in.

Put your energy into it.

Yeah.

And it started as self-publishing.com— or no, school. Sorry, self-publishingschool.com, right?

So it's self—

hyphen— three exclamations. So yeah, you and I— but just real quick, our story, right? So you and I met at the Mastermind Talks event in Toronto.

Yeah.

You were a volunteer. And you were 20, right? And you're running mics, and I just loved just you. I just loved your energy. We connected. We were laughing. And then you reached out, and you're like, hey, can I take you out to lunch? One of those, right? Can I take you out to dinner?

Can I pick your brain? Yeah, can I pick your brain? Worst reach out ever.

Yeah, but I'm the kind of— I'm like, of course, dude.

You're so nice. You said yes.

Yeah, I haven't yet learned that, wait, you should say no when people ask to pick your brain. No, so we went out to the Yard House in San Diego, and then I had my first live event ever. This was 2013. So yeah, we've known each other, dude, for 13 years. I had my first live event coming up and I was like, hey, I think I asked you, I don't know if you volunteered or I asked you to volunteer, but I'm like, hey, what you did at Jason's event, mastermind talks, would you do that for our event? You're like, yeah. And so you did it. And we've got, I've got pictures of you sleeping at like 2 in the morning. Like you're just, you busted your butt. But one of the funniest, like I just, I always love this part of the story, which is you're like, hey, I've always had a dream. We had gotten hundreds of 5-minute journals to give out from UJ Ramdas. And you're like, I've always wanted to do that Oprah thing where you go, everybody gets a 5-minute journal. So we had you do it and it was like one of the highlights of the event for me, dude.

I wish we had better video footage because we've tried to clip this up for stuff. Oh, I look back at my phone and it's so grainy, but it was such a moment where I just remember, I think there's a couple of lessons in here. One, get in the room, right? And so for people watching or listening, get in the room. Yeah, you got to get around people who are way smarter than you, way more successful than you by any means necessary. And I come from a small town in the middle of nowhere. I had to get out of that environment and get into a room, but I couldn't. There was only one problem: I couldn't afford to get in that room. And so I just started—

yeah, it was like $5,000 to go to Mastermind Talks. Yeah.

So I just volunteered and then volunteered at your event. And so I kept volunteering. But not just that, because I watched when I showed up to those events, there were multiple other volunteers doing the bare minimum, and they were really just there for the free ticket. And So they were sitting in sessions, they were not trying to help, they were not really doing much. And people noticed that.

So you busted your butt.

Oh, 100%. My parents always said, bloom where you're planted. No matter what you're doing, do it to the fullest extent of your abilities, and eventually someone will notice. And so I just remember being in those rooms, literally, when they say run the mics, I was running the mics, sweating.

Yeah.

You know, I'm just doing the most because I want to stand out. And then that association with the person leading the event, they almost looked at me as your sidekick or whoever else. So opened a ton of doors. But because I bloomed where I was planted. But then the second thing is I love— it's not T.D. Jakes, it's— oh man, you got to be hungry.

That guy, not Joel Osteen. Oh, oh, oh, you got to be hungry. You got to be hungry. I can't remember his name.

So he basically says it's better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared. And so I remember when we were backstage at the event and we were just kind of goofing off and saying, everyone gets a humpback whale, you know, doing the Oprah thing. And then I think it was John Bergoff said, hey, you want to do that on stage? I said, absolutely. And so then went out there, I mean, brought the house down. And then the next year you said, hey, why don't you come speak? And that was one of the first speaking opportunities that I ever got. But that would not happen if I wasn't ready for that opportunity. So it's better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be prepared.

And the mindset that you took, which is like, how you do anything is how you do everything. I'm going to show up, go over and above, be excellent at volunteering and running mics and grabbing coffees and whatever it is, right? And then, yeah, I mean, that led to relationships. That led to opportunities. You speaking on my stage.

Right.

Selfpublishingschool.com. I have to tell you, I've always been a little jealous. I'm like, man, I should have— like, you know, selfpublishing.com. That's what a brilliant idea. Why didn't I think of that? And so you went selfpublishingschool.com. Now it's selfpublishing.com. What?

Forgot the dash. You forgot the dash.

The dash. Yeah. Self-publishingschool.com. The best domain ever. All right, everybody, go to self-publishing.com. Dot net. At least it wasn't dot net, dude. I mean, come on. Let's go. Focus on what matters. So then you start Self Publishing School. You now, I love your videos now. You literally almost every, it is every single day. Don't you help somebody publish a book now? Yeah. So, what's your philosophy if somebody's watching this and they're like, "I don't know if I want to write a book." Whether it's, "I don't know if I have a book in me. I don't know if it's worth my time." And I can give my take on this. Writing a book, self-publishing Miracle Morning changed my entire life in every way. Impact, income, freedom, you name it, fulfillment, every way. So, what's your pitch or your thoughts on why everybody watching should consider pursue writing a book?

I'd say if you're not sure about it, you probably shouldn't do it.

Okay.

I mean, if you want to be— if you don't want to be successful, if you hate making an impact, if you're selfish with the knowledge and information that you've learned. No, I mean, I think it's just one of those things that 81% of people want to write a book, less than 1% actually do it.

Yeah.

You are automatically differentiated. The root word of authority is author. You can't spell the word authority without the word author. So when you become an author, you become an authority and the mind of everyone around you, and especially your prospects and customers if you have a business. So it's just one of the highest leverage things that you can do. Yes, it takes work. Yes, it's, you know, it's not easy, but it is a massive differentiator. And if nothing else, it's a thing that you leave for your kids and grandkids. Yeah. And so even if it's not some massive business thing, it's— I think everyone should do it as a rite of passage. I've been thinking about this for a while. Where, you know, people— the retirement age, 65, 70. Well, what happens? People retire, they lose purpose, they die because they don't have purpose and meaning in their life. And so I think what we should do is when people retire, you take 2 years or a year or whatever else, and you write a book on all the lessons you learn in your life. And it's almost like turning a page into this next phase of life. But also, if nothing else, that book can be passed down to your kids and grandkids. Right. And so I just think it's such an amazing and powerful process, not only for the impact that it makes, but selfishly. I mean, you become a better person, you crystallize the frameworks that you have. I mean, it's just, it's a pretty incredible thing.

I love that. I love that whole new, like, that new demographic, right? That of writing a book. It's like, yeah, retire and then write a book. I love that. I'd love for my dad and my mom to write a book. In terms of leaving a legacy and writing a book for the kids, your grandkids, et cetera. That was one thing when I got cancer and I was on death's doorway, it was like, all right, you got a 30% chance of surviving. The one thing I told her, so I'm like, please have the kids read my books. Like, if I'm not here, have them read the distilled wisdom, the greatest wisdom that I thought was worth putting on a page, right? Like, I mean, that became big. We were— I was joking with you, my first book, Taking Life Head On, which I tell everyone, don't read that book unless you're at a third grade reading level, because that's what it was written at. But even that, I'm like, that was like, it was my first book, my, you know, and it was my story and like the lessons that at that age, I was 26 when I wrote that. And then so on and so forth. So I love that. What about for anyone watching that's a business owner, an entrepreneur, even a career professional that wants to stand out, that wants to increase their income, increase their impact through a book? What's that?

Well, that's easy. That's the sweet spot in the pocket. I want to take a step back just a second. I want to come back to that. Yeah. And just so you mentioned about your dad writing a book. So my dad's in the ICU as we speak. And on Saturday, he had this crazy event happen where he tore his esophagus, which basically just means that anything that comes into your lungs or comes into your esophagus goes into your body. And so my mom took him to the ER, and then they're rushing him to surgery. And I was looking on, you know, Gemini or something, just looking at this, what's set up, what do we need to do, whatever. And it said, hey, 90% of people that this happens to die. And now luckily there's some advancements in, in medicine. And so if you catch it within the first 12 to 24 hours, they've got a shot. And so luckily he's on the road to recovery now. But I was just thinking about this as you said that. I hadn't really thought about this before, but if he would have passed away on Saturday, my future kids would never got to meet my dad. Yeah. Which is heartbreaking to think about. And that is the power of book, right? If you— because it wouldn't bring my dad back, but it would— at least I would have something to give my kids to say, hey, this guy was a legend. Yeah, he taught me everything I know, with him and my mom. Yeah. And here's a piece of him and his best lesson. So I just think it, it is the thing that memorializes you, makes an impact to your kids and your grandkids. I think everyone in that situation should write a book. Now, the closest thing I've gotten to that— this isn't quite the same thing But just in case something like this happened, I basically gifted my parents for Christmas one year. We brought videographers in and we asked them a ton of questions. So we've got kind of like, that's the, you know, hey, I can't convince them to write a book, so we're going to do that. So we at least have that. But I just think it's a really, really powerful thing.

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For high, high net worth clients.

Yeah.

So, but you asked about writing a book that grows you as a professional or as a business. Yeah. It is the single thing that you can do to exponentially increase your impact, your income, and your business. And so, but I think really, really important caveat, the book that you write has to be directly connected to the business that you have or the business that you want to create.

And the, and it needs the target audience for the book needs to be the target audience for the business.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's got to align. And so with this book, this book has brought in roughly $7 million in sales.

For those listening, this book published.

Yeah, this book published has brought in roughly $7 million in sales over the last 12 months. But that's because we're strategic and intentional about how we do it.

Yeah.

And so that's when it really stuck out to me at that author mastermind that we were at, where there was probably 6 of us at the Well here in Austin. Yeah. And I just remember Ryan Deiss saying, Hey, at this mastermind, other one that shall not be named, where all these people have sold a million or millions of books, the dirty little secret is that none of those people have made any money on those books.

Yeah.

And I remember Ryan saying, Chandler, I think you've made more money off your book than all those people.

Yeah.

And I'm not saying that, right? I'm just saying it because it speaks to, hey, just the book alone for most people is not enough.

Yeah.

Unless you're Hal Elrod, you know, then you're just freaking printing royalty checks and that sucker's, you know, you're selling millions and millions of copies. But even then, it makes sense to have a—

And I've left millions of dollars on the table by not approaching it the way that you did. Like by not actually thinking, how can I serve people beyond the book? And I did, I did, you know, we've done it a bit, but, but yeah, but to your point, like beginning with the end in mind and making sure the book serves the business, the greater purpose. I had it. Presented to me once by my coach when I was writing Miracle Morning is he said, the book is the greatest brochure that you have for your business.

Yeah.

So whether you're a financial advisor or you, right, or a speaker for me, right? It's like all of my speaking engagements have come from people reading the Miracle Morning that are a CEO or a C-suite level executive. And then they're like, oh my gosh, we gotta bring this to our people. That's how every speech I've gotten has come from the, you know, the book, right? So, Yeah, keep going with, this is your expertise. I want to hear more.

Oh, I just think, I mean, we got all the frameworks and stuff. So I mean, go to our YouTube channel. We've got, we call it $7 Million Business.

You do killer YouTube. Your YouTube channel's great. Shout out to the team. Is it SelfPublishing or is it Chandler Bolt? I don't remember.

Well, there's two of them. So selfpublishing.com is all about writing and publishing books, especially if you want a book that grows your business. And then Chandler Bolt content is all about scaling to 8 figures as a business owner. Funny enough, kind of like the two parts of our conversation today. But so we've got stuff on the selfpublishing.com channel. We call it a $7 Million Business Card. It lays everything out. People want to go deeper, go through that. Or there's another series called the Millionaire Author Series where we just basically walk people through, hey, how do you figure out a million-dollar idea? How do you write a book in a way that converts into customers? How do you do a six-figure launch, turn it into a seven-figure business card? And then we do a bunch of eight-figure case studies from the Alex Hormozi and Dan Martell and Cody Sanchez of the world. Like, hey, here's how they turn their book into eight-figure empires kind of thing.

Amazing.

But I would just say, hey, a lot of the frameworks are there.

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Hal, thank you so much. Right?

So yeah, let's actually transition into, you mentioned your two YouTube channels, one selfpublishing.com, Chandler Baltimore on scaling a business. When did you, because I've been watching you like kind of subtly, not so subtly make that pivot from being like, okay, this is the thing that I teach, which is how to write, publish, and market and promote a book and grow your business. But I've actually become an expert at scaling the business that was that thing, selfpublishing.com. And now I'm going to teach that. And like, I think about for me, when I was done with, I hit Hall of Fame with Cutco 2005.. And I was like, what am I qualified to do next? I was like, well, all I've done is sell a bunch of knives. So I'm going to become a coach for other Cutco reps and tell them how to go from where they are to the highest level. Right. And that's, so that's kind of what you're doing for business owners. You've scaled selfpublishing.com to what, $75 million in the last—

Yeah. Yeah. Probably more like $80 million cumulative.

Yeah.

8-figure a year business.

Yeah. Yeah. Which is amazing. And so when did you decide to make that pivot? Yeah. And what does that look like?

Yeah, it's funny. So, years ago, I just started creating these videos and it was just a fun side project. And it's actually an interesting lesson looking back because I would do these video shoots 2 or 3 times a year and I would have this note on my phone. And as I would just, I'll be on a one-on-one or I'd have friends like you or entrepreneur buddies text me about the stuff I was doing in the business or message me, call me, whatever. And they just knew me as the operational guy, the scaling guy. And so they would ask me questions, hey, how are you running an offsite? How do you do your hiring? How do you blah, blah, blah? Something would come up on a one-on-one. Hey, what happens when you have a top performer unexpectedly put in notice and quit? And so it's just all these things and poach employees.

Anyway, keep going.

That is an episode for another day. 3 people will get that joke and they will deeply understand what's going on there. But so I just started saying, all right, I'm going to write all these topics. And then 2 or 3 times a year I would batch film 50 videos. I mean, it would be insane. It'd be 2 and a half days and I would just go back to back to back to back. And I would, I mean, really challenge my video crew to just let's batch it. And then we just started putting them out and we did that for a long time and they just started getting traction because it was just no BS, super practical. Here's how to scale your business. And really for me, and I think this is maybe a lesson within a lesson, I remember James Schramko years ago said, I never do anything once. I said, what are you talking about? He said, I never do anything once. If I'm going to do something, there needs to be leverage on that time and activity so that it yields fruit for me and my business forever.

Yeah.

And so that the way I think about that is, oh, well, you create assets. You don't just do one-off stuff. And so the book, an asset. The video an asset. So to me, I wanted to say, instead of me having, you know, 50 one-off conversations about how we run offsites, what if I just recorded the definitive guide on how to run an offsite in your company? And then I just— anytime someone texts me about it, I just, I just text them the link and say, hey, watch this, hit me up if you have any questions.

That's great.

And so it brings leverage there. It brings leverage to— I can scale or I can train my team at scale. We've got 50-something people now, so I can't one-on-one teach.

You send them the video. I could see you've got this whole content library. Yeah.

And so it just was leverage. But then the funny thing is, somewhere along the way it was below the line where I said, oh man, you know, this kind of a distraction. And so we stopped doing it and that was a really stupid decision.

Okay.

I should have kept doing it. That was really, really dumb.

Why you stop? Just overwhelmed?

Because it didn't bring in revenue. So it's like, okay, this is, you know, I'm a big fan of nice to do, but focus. Follow one course until successful. So I think you should always be pruning so that you keep the main thing the main thing, which is obviously what I've done with SelfPublishingNow.com.

Wait, say the FOCUS acronym again. I don't know if I've heard that and I love that.

Follow One Course Until Successful.

So good.

So it's one course, not two courses, not three. So I've obviously with SelfPublishingNow.com, I've kept that the main thing for over a decade. People ask me, what's new? What's next? What are you working on? Yeah, I'm just doing this, but better and more.

Better.

And yeah, right. And so at the time I said, this is a total distraction. From that because there's no revenue over here. This is just kind of a fun side thing. And so I just pruned it. And then years later, you know, you see the proliferation of a bunch of content creators. I just said, man, I looked around and there were so many people, even to this day, this is pretty frustrating for me, who are out there talking. They're on the stages, they're on— they're blowing up on social media, they're blowing up on YouTube, whatever else. They have not done the thing. Yeah, they're just bullshitting about stuff that they know nothing about. Yeah, but they're good at communicating themselves, right? And so they get the opportunities. And so I, at a certain point, had to look myself in the mirror and say, Chandler, you can be bitter, you can get better.

Yeah.

And so you can be— you can begrudgingly say, oh, oh, I know more than them, I've built a bigger business, why are they getting these opportunities? Or you could just change it. And so I realized for years I was just like, I was silently grumbling.

You're bitter.

I was bitter 100%. And so then I said, well, hold up, this is totally my fault. I just need to change it. So then we went all in, we started the media company and we're now we're building up basically a 7-figure startup inside of an 8-figure company. And that, that media company will feed all the SelfPublishing.com stuff. Obviously Chandler Bolt stuff still doesn't make any money, but long term it will.

Yeah.

And that'll be another kind of brand asset for what we're doing.

All right. Let me ask you a question. How many apps are you using for your personal development? Maybe a meditation app like Calm or Headspace, an affirmation app like I Am or ThinkUp, a book summary app like Blinkist, a journaling app like 5 Minute Journal, a visualization app like Envision, an exercise app like 7 Minute Workout, and maybe even a habit tracking app to keep it all together. That is a lot to manage and a lot to pay for. What if you could replace all of them with just one app? App. Yes, it is called the Miracle Morning app, and it is essentially 7 apps in 1. Hundreds of guided meditations and breathwork tracks, a full library of affirmations, plus tools to create your own visualization prompts for 10 key areas of your life, guided workouts from 2 to 10 minutes long, book and audiobook summaries of top personal and professional development books, and a journaling tool with guided prompts, the Wheel of Life, or a blank page to write freely. It simplifies your morning, saves you money, and helps you start every day with clarity, purpose, and energy. And it's one of the only apps in this space with a 4.9 out of 5-star rating. Try it free for 7 days. Just search Miracle Morning in your app store or go to miraclemorningapp.com to get started. All right, back to the show. Yeah. And so big picture is potentially having, you'll have two businesses that potentially both grow to 8 figures and beyond. Yeah.

Yeah, I could see that.

Yeah, why not? And you've actually, you've done it, you communicate it well, et cetera. For anybody watching or listening that scaling a business, like they're not even clear on exactly what that means. What does that mean? I'm asking for a friend.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think it comes down to 2 things. First is what we call the 4 Ps of a high converting offer. So it's person, pain, promise, price. Now, the beautiful thing about this is I talk about it in my book, Published. You have to define this for your book. You need to define this for your business. If you do the work once, well then, and you connect the two, well then it's even more powerful. But who's the person that you're serving with this business? What's the pain that they have?

Or with the book.

What's that?

Or with the book. Or with the book. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

What's the pain that they have that they know that they have? What's the promise that you're making with your product or service or whatever else? And then what would be a fair price for that that they would feel like they got a great deal on. And so I think you got to nail that because if you don't have customers, you don't have a business. You have a business idea. And this is where I think so many people are stuck in wantrepreneur mode, trying to get started but not really knowing how. But then let's assume you've done that and you've got a little bit of traction. Well, then you've got to learn the art of scaling, which is part science, part art, which is we've got this series on the Chandler Bolt channel, which is all about basically we call it the 5 P's of the Profit Bridge. And so it's—

You got a lot of P's.

Yeah, there's a lot of P's. We're peeing a lot. We're peeing a lot. It's basically there's a profit bridge and we say, all right, well, you need paying customers first because again, if you don't have paying customers, you don't have business. Then you need product market fit. So this is where a lot of people get stuck, which product market fit is basically, is there demand and can you sell what you're selling at scale? Which means you're not just arm wrestling people into buying, but they actually want the thing that you're selling. Then, okay, are you doing that profitable or profitably? So then that's a big, big thing because if you're doing it profitably, well then you can reinvest back in the business. Then there's people. So obviously as you grow, you got to have good people to drive the growth of the business. And then there's process. So if you got great people but there's no process, well then there's just kind of flailing in the wind. So I mean, depending on where you are revenue-wise is where I would diagnose kind of what is the focus next. It's funny, we're— I just created this thing called the One Page Profit Plan. We're kind of like in early stages of working this out because I just realized, like, we need to have a diagnostic tool. Like, I would love to be able to get under the hood of your business and kind of fill this thing out and say, okay, focus here, right? Because I think that's what most people are really struggling with is, okay, but how does this apply to me? And what can I focus on next? And so we're just kind of working through some of that stuff in the content that we're creating over there.

Yeah, I can take you up on that. And that, like, for me, it's been where I've learned trying to grow a business that I actually don't have your skill sets, right? Like, I'm a speaker, I'm an author, I'm a communicator, right? So I'm communicating ideas in a way that inspire, that serve, that help other people. But it's like organizing a team and, and, and managing a bunch of people. I, I realized during my cancer journey, I was like, I have a journal entry that like I keep printed out. It's like, dude, you don't wanna manage people.

Yeah.

You don't wanna manage, like you just want a simple life.

Yes. You know?

So it's like for me, I've realized that 100%, I actually what I want and what I don't want, you know? And so I've scaled, I've scaled back, which is smart.

Yeah. That's what we're kind of creating with this One Page Profit Plan is I think the very first thing is figuring out what do you want?

Yeah.

And do you want to actually scale or do you value freedom the most or do you value having a bunch of time off? Do you want a lifestyle business or do you want more of a big scale like crazy, you know, and not that those things have to be mutually exclusive, but what is most important to you? Yeah, because that's going to guide all of your decisions, which maybe you say, hey, I want to pull home a half million a year and I want to work 20 hours a week. Okay, cool. Well, let's reverse engineer that. That is what's important to you. So that's totally doable. Let's just reverse engineer it. But I think where a lot of people get stuck is, is in the comparison trap. You just look to other people and you think, oh man, I want that business or I want that thing. And you really don't. Yeah, yeah. You want the fruit. You don't want the tree.

Better than the reality.

100%.

Which I find to be true in so many aspects of life. Yeah, right. You say yes to something and then, or you pursue something like, what? I didn't even want that. I thought I wanted that because they had, like you said, comparison.

They had that.

I'm like, that looks really good, or I should do what they do, or they're helping people, or they're making money, or whatever. And then we bypass our own intuition.

Yeah.

And we just follow somebody else's path.

You want the fruit, but you don't want to be a farmer.

Yeah, there you go.

And so you see the fruit of what they're doing. Yeah. But then if you look under the hood, you would say, oh, I don't want to do any of those things. So there's nothing wrong with that. That's what I think is so beautiful about your skills and gifts and abilities is you're right, they're totally different from mine. Yeah, but they're way more powerful in a lot of different ways. You just got to find people who are different from you to be around. Yeah, 100%. And so that's where I think if there's one thing I've done well, it's hire really, really, really, really great people. Yeah, I think it's one— actually one of my biggest superpowers. Our team is incredible. Yeah, it's like a Navy SEALs, just I mean, you get the interactions even just with my team over the years or over more than a decade. But then just being here filming this, I mean, it's really, really talented people. We have fun and we win. And that's always been really important to me is like, hey, we're going to win anything we're doing because if you're not winning, well, I mean, why are we here if we're not?

How do you define winning? That's a broad word.

That's a great question. Growing. Yeah, I think if you're not growing, you're dying.

Yeah, succeeding.

Yeah, reaching your goals, setting goals and achieving those goals. So I think that comes back to maybe what you were saying, which is, well, winning isn't someone else's scoreboard, it's your own personal scoreboard. And so often, whether it's our parents or where we are running somebody else's scoreboard, and so it's, it's not, oh, am I winning on how am I getting $50,000, $100,000 keynotes? Because if not, well, then I'm not winning because I'm not Hal Elrod. Yeah, well, no, that's Don't get me wrong, I would love that. But it's like, well, that's not my scoreboard though. That's not my goals. And so are we as a team winning on the goals that we have and are we having fun? And so I would say hire great people. But then I think the thing that I've done well within that is I hire people who are very different from me. And I think that's where a lot of people get stuck.

I like this person. They're just like me.

Come on. 100%. Yeah. Which if people make this mistake in all facets of life. They make the mistake in who they choose as their business partner, who they choose as their employees, and who they choose as their spouse.

Yeah.

And if you were choosing someone in any of these three categories who's the same as you, you have no value and they have no value, and it is not going to work. Yeah. Because you're just the same person.

Yeah.

So whether it's— if it's a business partner, I partner with someone who's got the same skills as me, well then one of us is not needed, right? Same with a spouse, same with employees. Now here's the problem though, is that creates a lot of friction because you're different. Yeah. So you want to choose the easy route and just get a bunch of guest people around you or just get a bunch of people who are like you. But I think it makes you better as a person and it makes whatever the organism is like the marriage better. It makes the business better. It makes all the things better if you find people who are very different than you. So that's where I think it comes back to you to just say, all right, great. You hire for your weaknesses totally more than your strengths. So hire for your weakness.

And I've experienced that recently in hiring Jeremy Rising. Yeah, right. As Chief Growth Officer, he's incredible. And we have a nice overlap of complementary strengths. But for the most part, he's detail-oriented, doesn't miss, you know, and I'm no detail at all. In fact, when I was trying to find your office, I'm like, wait, where is the office? What's this? There's buildings and there's like, it's not just one building. There's so many buildings in this city. And me and my daughter are driving around and your phone's on focus. I'm like, Chandler, dude, I'm trying to find your outright. But if it were Jeremy, right, he would have had the whole thing mapped out. And same thing with my spouse, like Ursula, you know, we're so different. And I thought when I was dating that I want someone just like me. I want someone that's ambitious and entrepreneurial. And like, well, who would have taken care of the kids? Who would have made sure all the details were hand— you know what I mean? So yeah, I love that perspective is not those that are like you, those that complement your strengths. What's next for you? What are you most excited about right now and where are you heading? In the near future?

Yeah, I mean, we've got two big goals. One is to publish 100,000 books over the next decade or get to that.

What do you guys have so far?

You're in the 7,000 or so. 7,000 books. So we publish about 2 to 5 books a day. That's insane. So, I mean, every day we're getting closer to that.

And where does somebody go? Selfpublishing.com, right? So if they want to—

yeah, well, we made a link for you guys. Selfpublishing.com/HalElrod. Selfpublishing.com/HalElrod. If people want to speak with the team, get started on their book, so that maybe be a part of that 100,000, we're probably in the hundreds of people from the Miracle Morning community that have published at this point.

But so you're the first person I've ever brought to our community, right? And like done an online webinar workshop, whatever, because I'm like, I know you, I love you, I trust you. And writing and self-publishing a book is the best decision I have ever made in my life next to my wife and all the, you know, things that you have to say. Uh, but in all seriousness, like, it, my, my sweetheart, I love you. But no, but my, like, my whole life revolved around, that is my life's work. I'm driving to Dallas after this message to go speak at a big conference on The Miracle Morning, and then I'm flying to Tampa to do a, another podcast on JJ Virgin to talk about The Miracle Morning After 50 book. Then I'm, you know what I mean? Like, it all revolves around. Writing and self-publishing a book. It's the most important decision I've ever made.

Yeah, I agree. It's fun seeing that, that grow. And obviously we're going to talk on, on our channel about the secrets behind all the book sales. But I mean, that's the goal, is publish a bunch more books and grow the business. I'm really excited. I think we can get this thing to $100 million a year over the next, let's call it, 3 to 5 years. I'm excited about building out the media company. I'm excited about growing in person. You know, we started this office probably gosh, a year and a half, 2 years ago, and have grown from 0 to 20 people in person. And we're building out a lot of this office, by the way.

It's huge. It feels huge.

Yeah. You know, we're, we're, we're outgrowing it a little bit.

Are you really?

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

But I mean, it's, I don't know, maybe 4,000 square foot, 5,000, something like that. But so I'm excited about that because I think a lot of business is phase of life. And so I think I'm just rolling into a phase of life where I moved to Austin because I wanted to set roots and grow roots. I wanted to buy my dream home. I wanted to get married and I wanted to start a family. And, you know, 2 of those 3 things have happened so far.

When are Chandler and Aubrey's kids coming?

Oh, I hadn't heard that question yet. You sound like my mom.

Yeah, yeah. When am I going to get some grandkids? Are you pregnant? I'm bloated, dude.

But so I'm excited about that next phase. Not only in my personal life, but in the business of building deep community and going deep and growing this thing.

There's one more topic I want to talk about, which I completely spaced until now, which is AI. I want to take a few minutes to talk about this from your perspective. And really, you can address this any way that you want. For me, I'm thinking about AI when it comes to writing a book and publishing a book, like what that looks like. Because— and I have my own experience and I'm doing it right now and there's the wrong way to do it, which is the AI slop, right? You're just like, hey, write me about this. And Oh cool, right? Versus you write it and then you're like, hey, analyze it and am I missing anything? And this, whatever. So AI and writing a book. And then I'm just curious how you use AI as a business owner scaling a business, if either of those fit.

Yeah, both of them fit.

Yeah.

I think when it comes to AI and book writing, people make two big mistakes. One is they bury their head in the sand and pretend that it doesn't exist. And it's the worst thing to happen to creators since, you know, I don't know, the printing press or something. And then I think the second thing is they just think that they can press a couple of buttons and ship a book. And it is AI slop. And I think what actually people should do instead is use AI to write a better book and to better market that book and to raise the quality bar of the thing that you create. How do you do that though? Your AI is only as good as you train it on several things. I mean, what you know and how you talk. And so I think those two things are really important. So then you got to spend the time upfront to do that training. We've always taught kind of the Moore Writing Method, which is mind map, outline, rough draft, editing. We're about to do a video on the Moore AI Method, just mostly just because I know it's going to piss a lot of people off. It's the Moore AI Writing Method, which everyone who hates AI is just going to attack that. But we look at AI as author intelligence. And so how do we use it to make authors smarter and to make their writing better. Yeah. And so that's what we're focused on is using it to create better books.

Yeah. Yeah. For me, um, and I actually, uh, my TEDx talk was where I spent 2 months with where I, I wrote the rough draft of the talk, added AI, what, hey, what am I missing? What can be better? Right. Got it back. To me, it's using it as a thinking partner and having, I, you know, I did one book with a ghostwriter, The Miracle Equation, and it was after I had cancer and I just, I, my brain just wasn't working, still not working great, but wasn't working. And so, and having done that, I go, oh, working with AI is exactly how I'd work with my ghostwriter, where I would explain to it everything that—

or her—

everything that I wanted in the book, in the chapter. And then she would write the rough draft of that and send it to me. And then I would spend hours editing it, making it so— no, I would never say any— like, that's not— this is how it happened, or this I would say. And so now I just— I'm using Claude in that same way. Do you use ChatGPT, Claude? I'm curious which AI tool you prefer.

I mean, Chat kind of sucks. I love Gemini.

Oh really?

I love Claude.

Okay.

Now Chat's making a comeback. I think it'll continue being like this where it's a race, right? But especially, I mean, that's more so for coding. I love Gemini because everything we do is in G Suite, so it can access all of that. Now obviously now with connectors, you can just do the same thing with Claude or wherever else. But that's where I think really interestingly, as you tie it to your writing is I think AI is better than a good ghostwriter if you have a good process. And so this is actually what we're helping with people on, on the— our ghostwriting arm is let— we have a good process, we have great writers, but then the process is really what carries the day. And so because you said, oh, here's what I want to say, you tell that to your ghostwriter. Well, now you, you could say that, but you could also say, go find all of my interviews, go find all of my videos, Now go integrate, find me 10 stories that I've told, or actually just pull this story from how I've told it previously on podcasts or in videos. And so you're able to pull all of this information that no ghostwriter could ever do. I mean, even the best research ghostwriter could spend hundreds of hours watching your content and still not hold a candle to—

Totally. And the instantaneous, like with the ghostwriter, it was like, you know, we'd have a call once a week And I'd have to wait for a week to tell them what I want it. Right now, it's instant iteration. Oh, actually, you know what I just said? I changed my mind. Like, go back to this and tell that story and access what I told you 7 weeks ago about the bus ride to the, you know, the instant iteration, which allows, especially with ADHD, like my brain to be like, I'm thinking quick and then I'm inputting and then I'm getting feedback and then I'm, you know. And then what about scaling? How do you use it in your business?

Oh gosh, yeah. So much. I could go for a really long time on this.

This is a whole nother topic.

Yeah. We're spinning off a bunch of videos right now on the Chandler Bolt channel about how we're using AI in the business.

I mean, I think YouTube channel all your time.

Yeah, YouTube channel. Yeah. And so, I mean, we first off, we're replacing all of our managers with AI, and I think managers will cease to exist. And when the age of AI— and so we are using that to build better managers than we've ever had in the company. So we better serve our people, we better serve our authors, and better serve the business. And then we repurpose those folks for their highest best use. Now, that could— leadership, which is different from management, that's great. You're a good leader, do that. Don't— all the management stuff is just repeated sameness. It's, hey, we have the standard, we need you to follow that standard. I've repeated myself on this standard hundreds of times over the last 5 years, and guess what? We're gonna hire someone new a month from now, and I'm gonna have to repeat all the same team things 15 more times. Yeah, well, let's just stop doing that. That's really dumb. That's a really bad use of human time, energy, and attention. And because we can just automate that now. And so that's one of the big things that we're doing. I mean, we're using it as a sales manager. We're using it to—

I could get videos up on the Chandler Bolt channel yet about it.

Yeah. And then I just did one on Andrew Warner's channel that was cool, walking through the sales manager that we built. I mean, it's already brought in hundreds, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars for us.

Wow.

And I mean, we're using it for texting. We're going to start using it for accountability with our authors. Um, we're going to use it to somebody slips through the cracks and they're not booked for their next coaching call, well, then the AI will reach out and check in on them with their book and then get them rebooked with their coach. And so it's just kind of just saying, hey, how do we take all of our humans who are really talented and just get them the highest—

best—

yeah, get them doing the thing that they do that only they can do that is the highest best use for our authors and for the business. And then everything else, let's eliminate or automate through AI.

How many people do you employ?

55.

Wow, that's cool. That's actually— that's something that to me, being like, I provide meaningful work for people doing something that matters, that helps others, and they can create a living for their family. Like, that to me is also very— really, that's where an entrepreneur— like, the purpose of being an entrepreneur is not just about your goals and your dreams, but then that you have the blessing to pay it forward and help other people do the same, man. Awesome. Well, so best places to get a hold of you, follow up, etc.?

Yeah. So if you want to check out the content, you can subscribe to selfpublishing.com or the Chandler Bolt channel. You can find us on Instagram on both of those. As you know, I just created my first Instagram a few months ago, so we're putting out a bunch of content over there. And then if you want to talk with our team, selfpublishing.com/hal-elrod, we'll sit down with you and map out your book, your goals, see if we can help. And maybe we'll get some more Miracle Morning books.

Let's go. Appreciate you, brother. Until we play pickleball next time. Goal achievers, I love you. I will see you next week.

Thanks for listening. To learn more about the Achieve Your Goals podcast and to get access to today's show notes, transcript, and exclusive content from Hal Elrod, visit hal-elrod.com/podcast. Thanks again for joining us. Be sure to tune in next week for another episode of the Achieve Your Goals podcast.