Make Your Mess Your Memoir: How To Transform Your Own Mess Into A Message and Memoir Featuring Anna David, Joe Polish and Dean Jackson - I Love Marketing Episode #375

I think that's really interesting because I wrote six books thinking what would be successful and instead of asking that, I should have thought, what does the reader want? I never thought about that until the last couple years because that's a marketing lesson. That's not a writing lesson. They don't teach you that. I majored in creative writing. They don't teach you that.

I'm Dean Jackson, he's Joe Polish, and this is the I Love Marketing Podcast.

Life is messy, but what if you could turn your story into something beautiful and profitable? Find out how a memoir can help you grow your business in today's episode of the I Love Marketing Podcast. In this episode, Anna David, Joe Polish and Dean Jackson share how to spread your message to the world and grow your business. In the process, Anna will unveil a book genre that will turn your mess into a captivating message and you'll hear book title tips, a seven step publishing process, and get inspired to get started now, even if you're not a writer.

Hey everybody, it's Dean Jackson and it's Joe Polish.

And welcome to I Love Marketing. All right, here we go. Anna David is the New York Times bestselling author of two novels and six nonfiction books. She's been published in the New York Times, Time, the LA Times, Vanity Fair, Playboy, Vice, Cosmo People, Marie Claire, Red Book, Esquire, Self, Women's Health, the Huffington Post, buzzfeed, and Salon, among many others. She's been written about in numerous publications including Forbes, Martha Stewart Living, Entrepreneur, Allure, and Women's Health, and has appeared repeatedly on the Today Show, Hannity, Attack of the show, Dr. Drew, Red Eye, the Talk, the CBS Morning show, the Insider, and numerous other programs on Fox News, VH1, and E. She's been a featured speaker at three different TEDx events and has shared the stage with Tony Robbins, which I believe was probably at my event. Yeah, Genius Network. Of course. Through her company, Launchpad Publishing, she helps those with stories to share and write and publish their books. Launchpad also offers individual coaching, online courses, a podcast, and a storytelling show. Her newest book, make youe Mess yous Memoir, is a combination memoir and business book. Is this available now? Anna?

It's available for pre order, but it will be shipped on July 15th. So coming up. Yeah, watch out.

Do you want to say anything that I didn't say about you before we officially kind of launch into it?

That you've changed my life. And I mean, I don't mean this in some sycophantic way. Here's what's important. What's important is that I pretty randomly met you. I mean, I strategically yet randomly met you because my sister in law knew you, but I had no idea, you know, before I met you, I was. I was a writer of six books and I couldn't really rub two nickels together. And then I've learned, you know, I guess, what was that three years ago?

Maybe something like that.

Yeah, something like that. You're unlike anyone I've ever met. And you've just opened doors for me and doors with people, but also doors that are mentalities. And so this is relevant because before I met you, I was just like a writer who couldn't figure out how to make a living because you can't make a living as a writer. And so I built a business and I started reading business books. I switched from reading memoirs to reading business books. And now I thought, well, what if I combined a memoir with a business book? My two great loves when it comes to books. And that's what this book is. And I do talk about you in it. And it's really about transitioning from being a writer to being a business person. But it also talks about addiction and trauma and all, you know, all the stuff.

Let me say this because obviously one of the main areas, although there's many things that we have in common that we like about each other. I mean, you've got a wacky ass sense of humor, you're very driven, you're sort of neurotic like me. And a bunch of other things, is you've been in recovery for many years and you've helped a lot of people that struggle with addiction recovery. And, you know, even though I smuggle it into our business podcasts and things like that, and the dean, of course, has to hear about it all the time. One of the things that we're in the middle of right now with the pandemic, with protests, with riots, with just so much tension all over the world, is the greatest mental health crisis in human history in terms of numbers of people. Spousal abuse, child abuse, people feeling lonely, depressed, addictions and vices of all kinds, drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, Internet gaming, eating, you name it, is through the roof. And a lot of people are struggling. And that's sort of where me and you join forces. On the only book that I have done on addiction recovery. And I always say that Anna David's the one that did all the heavy lifting on this. I mean, I was interviewed, but Anna's the one that wordsmithed it, because Anna is a great Writer. You know, me and Dean have done numerous subjects on books. And you are a New York Times best selling author. You've written many books. You are very prolific. Dean is actually quite prolific also. So I'm really, you know, I really want to talk to you and have Dean kind of mirror, you know, his perspective of writing and books as it relates to this. And I want people out there to know that, you know, the name of her book, make youe Mess yous Memoir is something that everyone has the ability to do. And I'd like to have like an interesting conversation about books and marketing and how Dean thinks about it also because, you know, Dean, you've done that whole rant on, you know, the purpose of a book. It's a door opener. It's.

It's a way to conversation starter. It's a gateway to a relationship. Right? I mean, that's really the thing. Books can transform people's lives.

Well, my experience, I learned this accidentally because I wrote party girl in 2004 when I was four years sober. And suddenly I was being asked to go on the Today show and they're putting on my chyron addiction expert. And I'm like, expert, expert at chopping up lines and putting them in nose. Like, I'm no expert. And I had to get a TV agent for this stuff. And he's like, you wrote a book, you're an expert on it. And that's when my eyes really opened to what a book can do.

How many years you've been sober now?

It'll be 20 on November 19th.

20 on November 19th.

Wow.

Yeah, that's. Well, congratulations. That's a big deal. A lot of people that have overcome addictions. If you've never had an addiction that has absolutely debilitated your life, it would be really hard to understand the craving brain that causes you to seek not harmony, but self destruction is what your taste buds are looking for. And I'm sure everyone can relate with self sabotage and making bad decisions and procrastinating and having bad habits. You know, addiction has taken it to a whole nother level of human suffering. And I really admire people that have, you know, gone through not only those struggles, but have just dealt with the war, which is an ongoing war. I mean, you don't conquer it and then, boom, you're done. I mean, it is a way of living. Being in recovery, which is to be new is to make whole again. You know, the word recovery gets used in a lot of different ways, but I really admire people that do that. And then I Think when you're able to share with others what you've done to, as they say in 12 step groups, share experience, strength and hope. That's when you have the ability to really impact people. And I think doing that with a book is a very valuable thing. You can share experience, strength and hope. You can write a love story, you can write a tragedy, you can write a comedy. I mean I think people get up every day and they write a story even if they don't physically write it and turn it into a book. So the purpose today is to talk to Anna about that concept, share with you what she has learned about this stuff. And then Dean, of course, who's one of the greatest marketing geniuses on the planet, you single handedly, Dean. I always say this since we're doing this live. Many people don't realize this. Dean invented the squeeze page back in 1997 where you enter your name or you enter an email and it'll take you to the next page. It was a positioning way to say, well, if you want to get past the door where there's some really good stuff inside, you need to give me something. Yeah, you need to, you need to give me your email. Remember the whole back in 20 years ago when Internet marketing was first being talked about push, pull and dangle, where you dangle something for free or something they want. You pull them in with an email and then you push out to them a communication once you have your emails. Because the website by itself is not going to just do all of, you know, all of the selling for you. Now of course we got social media, we've got all of the different electronic bizarre ways to do this. We're on zoom right now because you know, we're doing this still in the midst of many people that are in quarantine and on lockdown and things like that. So there's a lot of messes, there's a lot of messes that we can talk about. And so Dean, going to the squeeze page, explain the psychology behind that and then I'm going to ask Anna a bunch of questions about her book and about things that I think will be.

I realize now, looking back now like I think it's, I was looking through my journals, I journal and I've been doing it since 1996. Right. Like, so I have all these pages, the books and books and journals and I was looking back at a journal from the summer of 1998. So a lot of times when I'm journaling, the things that I'm doing are like Keith Cunningham's idea of thinking, right, so I'll ask a question and then I'll start doing the thing. But the question at the top of the page on that particular day was, what are you going to do about the Internet? And I was saying the thing I went on to say, I think it's really becoming a thing now. It's time to really take advantage of it. Because I was already having early success with stop your divorce and starting to see that things were gathering in there and that this was going to be a thing. And so I started laying out how to stop your divorce. The first was, I may have been one of the first books that was sold exclusively as an ebook online about something other than selling ebooks online. Right There was when something new comes along, the first people to get on there are the marketers, the money makers, how to make money with the Internet kind of thing. But I had a book that had a real purpose. And anyway, we started then taking that online and I was working on livinginwinterhaven.com the real estate website was starting to be the thing. And both of those went on to be millions of dollars in business and sales online just from that sort of beginning. But now looking back at that, the squeeze page, the nine word email, the 90 minute book, the things, what I look at, I realize that the pattern that I have created for myself is making something the simplest that it could possibly be to be the most effective thing. I really cheat and focus on the outcome. And it's something that I'm starting to see now. I saw this guy on impact theory just the other day that was talking about the simulation and consciousness and they're running all these simulations on the conscious societies kind of thing and they see that the things that win. And if you could say that if you apply game theory to society, to what society's got going on, the current game that we're playing is this social cooperation game, right? As a race of humans, we've gotten ourselves to the top of the food chain, we've escaped the food chain, we're the most successful species kind of thing. And the ones, when they do all these simulations, the ones that have the greatest chance of surviving and moving on, because what's driven it is the natural selection through evolution that the ones that win are, the ones that are, are 100% focused on what they call fitness payoffs. Because if it's survival of the fittest, it's the things that get you the best outcome. And so I start to see now, when you look back And I overlay that on the things that if I look at it that the reason that I got to the conclusion of the squeeze page is by thinking about what is the outcome that we want. What's the thing that I want is as many email addresses as I could possibly get. And that was the solution that got that. As opposed to having all kinds of options for people to click on or explore on the website by stripping it down to one single thing on one single page with one option for them, that it gets more of the outcome that we're looking for than anything else. And so you take that same thing with the nine word email. The thing that I want is I want the engagement and the response. And sending a personal email to one person that compels them to reply to you is the thing that gets more of the outcome that you want. And so I took that same approach with books that what you want to in combination, a book with a squeeze page is the thing that gets the lowest cost, you know, highest amount of leads that I can get. But then when I reverse engineer the book purpose, the thing that we come to is the title of the book, the COVID of the book. The purpose of the book is the primary thing. It's the thing that matters more than anything. So it's nice to look back now and see the collection of how it all kind of comes to be. But the common theme is simplifying, you know, simplification.

That's a really good point. And by the way, you've talked way too much. We got a special, way more important than you called Anna David here that we're going to talk, we're going to ask some questions, you wind me up.

You know what? It felt like I kind of forgot I was being interviewed and I kind of felt like I was just at a genius network meeting.

Yeah, exactly.

Special night. Yeah. Enough about me, let's talk about you.

I too believe that where I excel is simplifying pretty complex ideas and even writing, writing a memoir. In this book I break down, here's a 10 chapter format. You don't have to follow it, but if you want your life to be easy, this is how you follow it. And then with this book, I just took my 10 chapter format which is like inciting incident, childhood, turning point, all of these things. And I added four more chapters to make it a bisoir. But yeah, I think the simplification of complex ideas is always the key.

You just said biz war. You're calling it that. What does that mean?

It means it's A combination memoir and business book.

Because, boy, Jo, there you go. See, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups sure had a good long run. But now the day has come. Nothing better combined than a business book and a memoir.

Watch out, Reese's. That's gonna be my new motto. Because my thinking was I used to only read memoirs and I would come away with these amazing stories, be very entertained, but there was nothing I could apply to my life. And so then I meet Joe, my life changes. I start only reading business books. And a lot of them are wonderful. Like, I love J. Abraham's book. I love the Robert Cialdini books. Like, I love a lot of them. But I want more story. Those ones actually have story, but most of them don't. And so I thought, what if I could do something that told a story? Because story is how you engage people and story is how people remember things. So say, like, here's my messy life, and here's how you can take your messy life and make it into a memoir and then a business, you know?

Well, first off, everything that you write that I've ever read is quite engaging, very entertaining, helpful, useful. I'm just gonna presume and recommend that everyone just go pre order a copy of make youe Mess yous Memoir by Anna David. And we'll just. And I'll say a couple more times.

Okay, that being said, when you're saying that, can we also add that. You can go do that at the URL makeyourmessyourmemoir.com Pretty easy.

We could say that. We actually could. Let me think. Can we say that? Could that be said? It was just said on Facebook Live, which means it's now etched in stone forever before we take the recording of this. So, yeah, it's been out there. So makeyourmessyourmemoir.com alright, so get a copy of the book. So here's what I want to do for our. I love marketing listeners, people watching. Do you believe that everyone should write a book?

I believe that everybody has a story to tell. I don't believe that everybody should be writing their own books. Because the first question most people ask me, especially if they're talking about memoir, is I don't know if my story is interesting enough. And I often say my life's not that interesting. As you know, Jo, it's not that interesting. And I've made it into eight books because everything is execution. It doesn't matter how interesting it is. And most people are pretty like, can I swear?

Of course.

Pretty fucked up, you know, Anyone who's being honest has a messy, messy life. But I do think, you know, there is this misconception about writing, and it kind of drives me crazy where people will say, everybody tells me I'm a great writer. Everybody tells me I should write a book. And they have never written before. And I don't walk into a hospital and say, like, everyone tells me I'd be a great doctor, so where's the scalpel? Like, there's this idea that you shouldn't have to. You know, we professional writers have been in the trenches for 20 years doing this. And it's like the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours thing. Like, you get great at something by doing it a lot.

You have a whole business that helps people write books. I've actually quite a few genius network members have utilized you for that sort of stuff. And you have. You teach writing. So let's go through some of the things that would be helpful to people. So what are the steps to take if someone listening to this, watching this, wants to write a book?

Well, if you want to write a book, the one thing I think people really need to understand is they'll say, I want to be a New York Times bestseller. I want to go on book tour. I want a publisher to buy my book. It is really, really hard. It's changed a lot. The rough statistic is two in every 10,000 book proposals sell to the big five publishers. And those are book proposals that have agents representing them. So the chances of selling it are very slim. And sadly, today, all they care about is Instagram. All publishers seem to value is Instagram. Followers and email lists, squeeze pages. All goes back to Dean Jackson, doesn't it? So that is who's selling books to publishers. And it's not. Publishers are evil, but it's just because they want to know if they're shelling out $50,000, $100,000, that they're going to make that back. No matter how brilliant your idea is, if no one knows who you are and you don't have an audience to reach, no one's going to buy the book. And another thing people don't seem to understand is for nonfiction, you don't write a book and submit it to publishers. For nonfiction, you write a book proposal, which is like a 25 to 60 page document that has two sample chapters as well as a marketing plan as well as like an analysis of the marketplace and all of. So that is why I'm a big proponent of write your own book, publish it yourself. Today you can produce a Book that is indistinguishable from a book being published by HarperCollins. But you gotta strive for excellence at every stage if you're gonna get that quality.

I jotted down some questions there I was gonna ask you. And one of them was, should people try to sell a book to a publisher or to self publish? Cause there's a lot of resistance to putting anything down. Not because they don't want it. They just don't know how to do it or why to do it. If everyone here said, if you had an amazing or really good book written about stories of your life, the things you've learned, trials, tribulations, advice, inspiration, encouragement, motivation, craziness, I mean, whatever. Pick all of the bazillion different aspects of human life and it could be documented about you and put out there, everyone would be like, yeah, I would love that. Right? The obstacles that stand in the way of getting us there, you know, this goal, in this case, have a book. It's the setup. How do you set it up? Do I publish? Do I self publish? How do you do that? All that? So that's what I'm trying to dig into a little bit here. And of course you're talking because that's, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, we call. I love marketing. I love marketing because people misunderstand what marketing is. Marketing is really storytelling. Marketing is getting what it is that you have to offer the world into the hands of people that want it, need it, can benefit from it, et cetera. And we've been doing it for over a decade now. And so Jason Fladlin, who we all know, right, he's a genius network member, he has this really simple but great line that I have been saying a lot for the last year. He says, anything you have to sell, you want to put information in front of it. So if you're selling carpet cleaning, I had a consumer's guide to carpet cleaning. Read this guide and discover seven questions to ask a carpet cleaner before you invite them into your home. 8 mistakes to avoid when choosing a carpet cleaner. Crawling Critters and crud. A guide to the slime, grime and livestock that seeping, creeping and galloping through your carpet. How to avoid four carpet cleaning rip offs. You know, eight mistakes to avoid when choosing a carpet cleaner. The difference between value and price. You know how to get your carpet cleaner to 100% guarantee. That works. You have all this memorized. It says, dear homeowner, choosing a carpet cleaner isn't easy. Why? Because you're Bombarded with confusing claims, simply bad information, near worthless methods, unqualified technicians. How do you ever find a qualified, competent carpet cleaner? You start by reading this guide. Now, with this information, you can make an informed, intelligent decision. And then it would go on to explain all of these things that people did not know that they did not know. If they didn't know. There were eight mistakes to avoid, how to avoid floor carpet cleaning rip offs, you know, the difference between value and price. They would just look for price, right? And then people call you up and say how much you charge. But when I put that information in front of people, and this was before the Internet, this was sending things out via direct mail. Now with email and social media and video and all of the different bazillion ways that we can put. See, we're putting information out in front of people right now by doing this live, by recording it, putting in our podcast, you know, that sort of stuff. But a book is an incredibly simple way to put information in front of something that you're selling. So my question to you is, can a book help launch or build a business? Now, of course I know the answer to that, but I wanted to have you explain it.

Yes, it can do both. And I learned that by really watching my clients. My very first book that I published was two years ago. He's a sports agent and he really wanted to be sober. He wanted to be a recovery advocate. He'd never done any media at all. We did this book for him. And then what he started to do was he started to nurture these relationships, these long standing relationships he'd had as an agent. And suddenly the people he had been doing business with saw him in a new light, saw him as an expert. So he got a six figure spokesperson deal from a rehab. He started getting flown around the world to do speaking. And what he said, the most important thing was his business interactions became more personal because he had shared this very personal story. So they weren't business meetings, they were sort of meetings between friends because people knew all the disgusting alcoholic things he had done. There's that way of doing things. And then I have a client who sells to the government, polar opposite kind of book. And he said within three months he had added half a million dollars to his bottom line. And he said, I can't attribute solely to the book, but every single new client who signed on had read the book. But also I have a client who was building a coaching business. She had been certified as a recovery coach, but she was needing clients. And we did the book and then she got on the show the Doctors and she got a TEDx talk. And so she was able to build. So I think whatever stage you're at, the thing is, you've got to be so clear about it. I was talking to a potential client this morning, and I said, I won't work with anyone who doesn't know what they want their book to do for them. And if I say, why do you want to do a book? And they say, to inspire people, I say, don't do it then, because you're about to invest a lot of money. And it's wonderful that you want to inspire people, but there are cheaper ways, so have a goal, Dean.

Talk about that.

Well, I think you're absolutely right. So when I met Homer MacDonald, who we wrote Stop youp Divorce in 1998, when I met him, he was 76 years old, had spent his entire adult life doing marriage counseling in San Antonio, Texas, had retired from his traditional practice and was doing telephone counseling at the time, running ads in USA Today. That's how I found him. And I started just helping him with his marketing stuff. He didn't have any books or CDs or anything like that, but he had 45 years at the time worth of experience doing nothing but saving marriages. And he had some. I mean, this guy was like one of the true geniuses of the world in this area. And I asked him, you know, do you have a book? He was a little bit concerned that if he wrote a book and gave away his secrets sort of thing, that people wouldn't need him for the counseling.

Right.

So he felt like it would maybe hurt his counseling business. But if a publisher would give him an advance so he could take time off from his practice, 90 days to write the book kind of thing, he might do that. But I started helping him with his marketing and helping him get more clients for his counseling. And then one day I just said, homer, while we're waiting for that publisher, why don't we go ahead and get started with the book? And I just interviewed him for about 13 or 14 hours over the next several weeks. And I would, you know, as a marketer, I would give him. We'd write the headline, the chapter headlines, and the context of what the things are. And we'd come up with what the idea was. And then he'd go off and think about, you know, write notes about what are the eight things that never work but people always try. We started writing the Bullets, the Fascinations for the book first. When we started, we did the book and in that time then we sold $5 million worth of a self published 100 page book. That was, you know, if four years into it he called me because he was, you know, felt like that it would hurt his counseling. I said, here's I think he's going to do nothing but increase your counseling. And so we went out and started promoting the book, selling the book online. Four years into it, he called me after coming from his accountant at the year end thing saying I can't believe this. He said, I've made more money in these four years than I made my entire career in counseling traditional ways. And that was like just this most amazing thing, you know. And he went on to do that well into his 90s. And then he passed away about five years ago.

How old was he when he passed away?

He was 94, I think. So he was 76 when I met him. So yeah, so he went on for almost 20 more years after I met him and we wrote the book, but it was still doing counseling right up to the end and high dollar counseling. And the book was, we sold the book for $79 for 100 page book. But it's super valuable, super targeted, had a title that if that's what you.

Want, you'll pay any amount.

Your divorce says what it says on the tin. Are you going to do anything? You put it in the context of what it is.

You know what, let's talk about titles. So you know, make youe Mess. Your memoir is I think a pretty damn good title. And Stop youp Divorce clearly speaks to, you know what it is we're doing.

So the people that misunderstand titles the most are the major publishers. I'll tell you when we first sold party girl to HarperCollins. At the time they said, my agent said we can't sell a book called Party Girl because a book called Party Girl just sold. And then that book, book bombed. So then we could sell it. Spoiler alert. That book was written by Rachel Hollis, who's like now the biggest writer of all time. She wrote Girl, wash your Face and everything she writes is like sells millions of copies. But I would always sort of argue with the publishers about the titles and assume they knew best and they really, really don't. I think the Dean is absolutely right. It has to say, I think publishers err on the side of being too clever and too subtle. And I think people just want to hear what the book is about. With Make Memoir, I originally was going to call it make youe Mess yous Message, which is like the cliche. And then. And then I thought I did really struggle with make your mess your memoir or make youe Mess into your memoir. I'm that obsessive. That. That seemed like a huge decision.

Make your mess. It's got that. That rhythmic lyrical element to it. Right. Make your mess your memoir is very much different than make your messmate into your memoir. Which is a.

Why don't we make it into a song then? I mean, I think we should do a contest. Whoever could write a song called make youe Mess yous Memoir. That is. All right. That would be.

Look at a hundred signed copies.

I really think. I mean, I'm being silly in some way, but I actually think it'd be kind of funny. I mean, it would. I could see something really clever happen in there. So.

Dean Craig Handley.

Okay, here's a quick thing. Yeah, Craig Handley. That's what we did. But it would turn into something completely different.

We made it.

So here's the thing. I'm going to give really quickly five types of book titles that you can use this formula to create a book title. The first one is what I call Name it and claim it. Financial peace, the four hour work week. These things where people see it. It tells you what you want and you say, yes, I want that, and you gather it in. The second one is just do it. Titles which would be stop your divorce, make your mess your memoir. That's what I'm going to do. It's like moving people into action, right? Yes, that's what I'm going to do. Think and grow rich. That's a thing where you're there moving into action. Just do it. You're inspiring people to that. They're going to take this manual and with this, this is what they're going to do. The third is how to. You can't go wrong with a how to because in order to finish whatever comes after, how to has to be some practical, usable outcome that you're going to have. How to win friends and influence people. How crystal clear is that? If that's what you want to do, that's going to be a great thing. And often when you start combining these, if you have a name it and claim it or a just do it coupled with a how to as the subtitle, that's like going into the stratosphere now. You know exactly what you're going to do. That's genius information, Gold mines, things that people would, you know, 99 places to this, the 101 ways to this that it's like this is a treasure chest of ideas for what I'm looking for. Right. I'm researching something 99 Ways to Save money on your taxes or all these things that are information or directory things or travel things that are promising. They've done all the research for you and here it all is. And then the final formula that we use is something that I call tapping into people's. I was just thinking that like if you can enter into the conversation that they're having, like I would put what to expect when you're expecting into that category where that's such a perennial bestseller because it taps into exactly what a newly expectant mother wants to know.

Right, right.

And that's. So you look at any of the best selling books in history, all come into can fit into one of those kind of categories. You know that if you've got one of those, you're on the path. That's the thing. Because the book ultimately has to be directed at your audience. You're not writing your book, you're writing the book for the audience. It's not the story I want to tell you, it's what they want to hear. That's the thing that's the most important.

I think that's really interesting because I wrote six books thinking what would be successful and instead of asking that, I should have thought, what does the reader want? I never thought about that until the last couple years. Because that's a marketing lesson. That's not a writing lesson. They don't teach you that. I majored in creative writing. They don't teach you that.

Well, you look at even talking like Brendon Burchard, a friend of all. Do you know Brendan? He's a good friend of Joe and.

I. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know him personally.

But here's the thing that you look at, you know, the arc of Brendan's like book career, right? Like the one that really got him going was the Millionaire messenger was like, oh, that's what I want to be like. They were just like, eat that up. I want to be a messenger and I want to be a millionaire and I can be both. Of course I want this. Right? And then when you get into the success manifesto, wasn't really as hot a success as the Millionaire messenger, but now back on track with the high performance habits. High performance habits is like great language. This is like the promise of something great. The four hour work week. Look at those, like all of that stuff. That's really how it goes, you know.

Do you know what The Four Hour Work week was originally called Drug Dealing.

For Fun and Profit.

Yeah, yeah, yes. Don't think it would have done as well.

No, but that's the thing, right? Like when you get that, then you know that that's the whole purpose. And I look at it that the reason that the title is so important is because we're going to depend on it to attract the right audience. Right. So you have to use it as a way to call your audience to you, the people that you want to be in a conversation with with.

And by the way, you take once you have established a particular following or a niche or a genre or a brand or whatever you want to look at it, there's all kinds of other things that you can attach to it and byproducts of doing that. So, you know, one thing I've been talking to Dean about, we can't seem to find the unedited recordings of the first podcast interviews. Oh, man. Yeah, Tim Ferriss, because we were talking to him about doing a podcast podcast on I Love Marketing. Right. And so people can listen to our early interviews with Tim on I Love Marketing because, you know, I was quite involved in helping Tim with his first three books in the marketing of them, the Four Hour Workweek, Four Hour Body and then Four Hour Chef. You know, he's like, nah, I don't want to do a podcast. I don't think I'd want to do that thing. And now of course, he has one of the largest podcasts in the world. But those podcasts have become platforms for his latest books because everyone he interviews, everyone he wants to interview you. It's now become a way to do that. So to go back to the original question I asked, you can help launch or build a business. That's exactly how many of these books that you mentioned, that's where these businesses came from. That's where, you know, this, this whole thing, this is where these movements actually started. You know, I can't tell you how many multi level companies probably never would have had a way to recruit people if they weren't latching them onto other people's books like Think and Grow Rich.

Think and Grow Rich. Yeah, exact.

Exactly. How to win friends and influence people. I mean, they would literally, these businesses would use other people's books if they didn't have their own books in order to do it. So the point is there'd be no religions without books. You know, the Bible is one of the most effective sales letters that's ever been written for Christianity. You know, I don't know, if Jesus was to see what was done in his name, if he would be, you know, how excited he'd be about some of the ways that people have attempted to monetize, you know, Jesus as a brand. You know, it's very interesting, but all of this is wrapped up around the books. I mean, even, you know, one of the, you know, one of the movements and things that we don't even know what to call it because it's not really an organization, but 12 step groups. Yeah, well, yeah, if it wasn't for the big book, you know, it documents how to do, you know, 12 step recovery. Right. And. And 12 steps is not the only way to do recovery, but I'll tell you, it's the most effective thing that's ever existed. And helping, you know, having helped literally millions of people with 12 steps. Now, a lot of the latest research has actually shown it is way more effective than. Because for years people were bashing 12 steps and saying it doesn't work. That sort of. And they've done like the latest research, which people can look up and read that it's actually quite effective if people do the program.

Yeah.

The bashing was done by people who had never been to AA meetings and just had or tried or had agendas. It was really unfortunate. I mean, it's still going on. People are still bashing it. But it's really silly.

Yeah. And it always will, you know. Well, I just will that. But the point is, like, if you got something to say and everybody does, it's just getting themselves to that. So let me ask you about the quality of the book. Like, does the quality of the book matter? You used the term excellent earlier. And that may scare some people off. Like, I'm not a writer. I don't know how to, you know, so talk about that.

Well, and it's interesting because that's. Dean and I discussed this the last time we saw each other in person. I believe excellence matters so much, but I am a snob when it comes to writing. I think if you can't write an excellent book, you need to hire someone else to write it. Because there are a lot of people can't tell the difference between an excellent book and a book that's just sort of like slapped together. But a lot of us can. But okay, the thing is, like, okay, this book that I happen to have handy that I did for you. Life gives to the giver. Here's an example. So it doesn't need to take a lot of time. Here's an example where we just took a book of pre existing material, emails you had already been put out, organized them, made into a book. This book is really high quality and you didn't have to go rewrite anything. And so many people are sitting there on all this content and it's excellent because they churned it out. It's what they know about. They've had their team work on it. So it doesn't necessarily have to mean starting from scratch being excellent.

Yeah. And by the way, and you did that, that's one of the things that your company can do for people is they can take a lot of existing content that people wouldn't even know to do something with it and you turn that into a book. So it's called Life Get Gives to the Giver. Anna put that together. You can actually get a copy of that book@joe's freebook.com Just go to joe's freebook.com youm can download the free. You download the, you know, the electronic version of that book. You don't have to buy anything. It doesn't put people into some sales funnel that's gonna, I mean one day I, maybe I could because you know, I could probably be better at monetizing some of these things. But I, some, some, some marketers out there, they just put out a lot of crap up front in order to grab people and you know, then try to put them into these sales funnels, which I have no issue with putting anyone into a sales funnel. If value is being created, I wanted to give that one away for free in the midst of everything going on right now because I think it's really helpful to people. So there is not even any real upsell funnel in that thing. Unless my team has sneakily built something that I'm not aware of.

I don't think so.

People can get the physical copy if they pay for shipping and hand. And again, you don't buy anything. But that's an example of assembly. So if people want to self publish, what are the steps?

Steps are write a book, rewrite a book, hire an editor. It doesn't matter. Everyone needs an editor. I need editors. So you get a developmental editor to sort of make sure it makes sense. And you need to flesh things out or cut things down. Then you need a copy editor to find the commas and periods that are missing. And then you usually need a proofreader to figure out to get the stuff that the copy editor missed. You need a professional layout. You don't have to hire a layout designer. We do. But you can Use a software called Vellum, which is V E L L U M. I think it's $300 for a lifetime license. You can publish. If you're gonna do a bunch of books, buy the software, lay it out. It's for Mac only. You need a cover. You can go for freebie. Canva.com has free covers. You can actually create a cover on KDP, the Amazon website. There's 99 designs. I recommend hiring a cover designer. It doesn't, you know, I've paid $2,000 for a cover and I paid 500. And my cover designer, who does them for 500, he's my favorite. And then you launch it. And the best way to launch it is now, I've learned, is to put it on IngramSpark. IngramSpark will get it on Amazon. They'll also get it on Barnes and Noble onto the Walmart site. And you coordinate a launch. You get an advanced reader team. I've got 100 people reading this book right now and writing their reviews, which they will copy and paste once the book is available. I'm gonna have them put it on Amazon and Goodreads and Barnes and Noble and everywhere to get the excitement going on that day and have sort of immediate social proof. And then there's all sorts of other things you can do. I did an audiobook, which I recorded in this very studio. I recommend doing an audiobook and I recommend doing paperback and Kindle. Skipping hardcover. People are not buying hardcovers, and they're very expensive. And you can hire a publicist. I am working with a publicist on this book. But all the biggest media hits I'm getting, I'm getting myself a publicist, will only help you so much.

The thing is that you really want to focus on the things that matter.

Right?

And we talked about your intention on it. There's one way we put so much reverence and that reverence, the flip side of reverence, when you're writing a book is angst. And so much like slaving over it and sweating over it and really, like, you know, deliberating. Should I use the Oxford comma in the second paragraph of chapter two? And all of these things that cause, you know, that you're suffering for your art kind of thing on this. And I don't know that that level of stuff is necessary in terms of. I'm saying if that's your thing to. Absolutely. And you get joy out of doing that. But I'm saying, if you're looking, if your purpose is to build your business with A book like this, don't let all of that be a delay. We're at a stage right now where I look at a book as a constantly evolving thing. And the way I look at it is that. But the things that matter to test your idea, to know that it's something that works is the things you need are in order to get that done, you need a book, you need a title that as soon as your person that you want to be in conversation with reads it, they say, that's the book for me. And you got to have a way for them to get it. Those are the only three things that matter for testing whether the book is a good idea. Because all of those things happen before anybody even opens the COVID of your book. Which, let's face it, less than half of the people that even get it are going to crack open the COVID in the first place. That's not me saying that. That's the real data on book readership. So unless you get those first three things right, it doesn't matter what you say beyond that, because nobody's going to see it if you don't get the first three right. Right. An approach that I look at now is we're not in this self publishing. It's easy to create a book. It's easy to get all of those components done. And we're not chiseling them in stone. We're not handwriting them by monks in monasteries. It takes a year to create one of them. We're not having to commit to a print run of 5,000 to get a price on them. You can print one book for $2.20 at Amazon.

Right.

So it's not that. The way I look at it is to think about your book as getting it into conversation, getting it into the marketplace. The book is going to be version 2 of the book. Could be even better than version 1. I look at it that if you treat it like a pilot for a new series that you're going to run, let's say you want to sell a show to Netflix or you want to sell a show to a network, what they would say, they'll put money in and say, okay, let's do a pilot so we can see whether people like this or see what it is before we commit to the whole 12 episode series. Right. I think it feels like taking what so many people do, their perception of a book is that they're going to take all this time and they end up, you know, creating all 12 episodes of a series before they ever know whether anybody wants it. Or not.

Right.

And so if you look at it that a great model is to think about getting your book out into the world, getting opt ins for it, getting people involved in the conversation, then jump in and help people who you're engaging with get the result that the book is promising, document everything that you're doing and with the first 10 people that you help get that result at the end of a year, the book with the documentation of the proof that it actually creates the result. The second version of the book is this amazing proven thing, you know, that's so interesting.

So a second edition that just includes kind of case studies.

You know, I look at the first version as the, you know, like how long Joe's had his. The average Joe's marketing book out in before. So you're not even published. But it's so widespread that everybody has it.

It's so widespread it's in Thailand or wherever Joe found it.

I know, Yeah. I don't even know how that happened. Someone like literally got my booking and someone says, I didn't know your book was published. And it was. Where was it?

It wasn't Thailand.

No, it was Singapore, I think. And I'm like, it's actually not published in Singapore.

This just happened to me on Audible. I saw Party Girl was up there twice. And the second time it had one. One star review. And I'm like, wait, what happened to my reviews? And I contacted Audible and somebody pirated and put it up. And so that just happens. People just steal stuff. And Audible seems mildly indifferent to this problem.

Well, that's the thing too. If you put ideas out there, people are going to steal them. I have obviously been the recipient of several massive scumbags that have stolen my stuff and repurposed it. But it is what it is. Well, I'll tell you though, you never get your messages out into the world if you don't do anything, though. So let me ask you, Anna, like, so do you have to have a messy life to write a memoir?

I don't think you do necessarily. But I don't know anybody interesting who hasn't had a sort of messy life. Because a messy life, it doesn't have to be riddled with cocaine addiction and all of these things. A messy life can be somebody. I give examples in the book. You know, you could be struggling with a crooked business partner. That could be your messy life. And you come out on the other side of grappling with that. And that's something that could really help people who have worked with narcissistic or dysfunctional business partners. So it doesn't have to be that dramatic. But we've, you know, to be alive is to have survived some messes.

So let's give a trailer of what will people get out of your book? Why does everyone watching or listening to this need to head on down to their phone that's holding, they're holding in their hand right now and just pre order this book?

Well, I think what it demonstrates is how to tell a story of a life in a very, very simple, step by step way and then how they can do it and what it can do for them. I've had people in my advanced reader team who, who had no interest in writing a book and are now, oh, the guy who mastered my audiobook is like, wait, I wanna write a book now. So that's my goal, is somebody who's like, I don't know, writing a book and then they finish it and they are immediately getting started, which you can do because I give an outline on how to do it.

Is the audiobook read by you?

Of course it is.

I like it when authors read their own stuff. And now of course on our book, the Miracle Morning for Addiction Recovery, we had to actually have a reader for that because there's three different authors for it. And I mean, well done on the audio. The book was awesome because Anna frickin wrote it and Anna is a rock star writer and that's why everyone needs to get her book, because it's you really, you know, how do you go from being a total drug addict to being a good writer?

Well, I will tell you, I was always a good writer. I majored in creative writing. I did major in creative writing because it was really easy and there were no technical. But I think that once I got sober, I realized that all that energy that had been put obsessively towards drugs and cocaine, I just needed an outlet for it. And then that outlet became work. And you could argue that I do it too much almost alcoholically. It's just all about getting out of the self destructive path and being able to sort of channel that energy to a place that's more useful and productive.

Yeah, well, you had Dr. Drew write the COVID or forward for our book? Not the COVID write the forward for our book. You've dealt with a lot of people, a lot of famous people that are dealing with addiction recovery, as have I. And a lot of just, you know, all kinds of people. What, what would you say to people that are out there right now? And it's got a little bit Change of subject. That's going through some really hard times because the world has absolutely, massively changed and everyone's had different versions of the rug pulled out from under them over the last few months. So what would you, what sort of, of things have you found to be helpful for people that are struggling?

Well, right now there are hundreds of thousands of meetings online and there are people who are jumping on one day sober. You know, unfortunately a lot of treatment centers are closed right now because they can't take new people. So if you are bottoming out right now, you don't have to do aa, but I sure is a good place to start right now. AA central offices have all the lists of the zoom meetings. They are fantastic. Fantastic. Anybody can email me. I get emails from strangers all the time. Who I. Back when we could go to meetings, I would meet them at meetings. These days I just give them the link and they sign on. But it's a brutal time right now and I think for all of us, those of us who are long term sober, those of us who are affected by the crisis and so just take care of yourself. Try not to use this as an opportunity to self destruct.

Yeah, yeah. And on geniusrecovery.org, geniusrecovery.com, we've actually listed for every type of addiction. There's virtual meetings, there's a link there, there's an open letter that I've written. Ann has been very helpful with Genius Recovery with what we're doing. It's a educational platform, links to meetings. Anna compiled a whole bunch of different recovery podcasts that we link people to that need stuff on recovery. So that's my, that's my little nudging on anyone that is struggling with addiction or just having a hard time. I mean, I've been telling a lot of people that are isolated just go to meetings. Even if you don't identify as a addict or it's hard to wrap your head around that. Go to an open meeting and just see what it's like for community. And I've had quite a few people that have Never attended a 12 step group that have never even identified as an addict over the last several weeks that have attended a meeting. I tell them to do this and they're like, yeah, that was really helpful. Oh yeah, yeah, I do that.

Are they meeting in person in Arizona again?

No, no, these are all virtual. Yeah, they're all virtual. And you know, yeah, I've not been to a live meeting in, you know, a few months since it started. Back in March. But, yeah, so that's what's going on. But there's a lot of help out there. And just like, we are doing this podcast to just hopefully help people. And in this particular area about books, there's. There's helps and all help in all areas. And, you know, that's. That's the way you make it work. So, Dean, anything else you want to say about Anna that would further encourage people to go get her book and to take what we talked about today and do something with it?

I love Anna. She's great.

I can't wait.

I didn't even know Dean liked me. Now he loves me.

You know, I love you now.

I do.

Now you do?

Yes.

Well, I love. You know, we've had great conversations, and that's. You're feisty. I love that about you. But you're open. You're openly feisty, and that's good. You're not married to your ideas in a rigid way. And that's. So. I think that's the good thing about having dialogue. I love having conversations like that here. Animated.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. If you ever have a chance to come to one of our genius network meetings and see Anna either live or virtually, she's very entertaining, and she's very funny. You did a great talk on labels. Why? You know, because that's been a big argument. Like, you shouldn't call yourself an addict or powerless or all these sort of things. And I'll tell you, the people that have learned powerlessness are handling the struggles going on right now better than people that do not. Because when you, you know, you are powerless over many things that are going on in the world right now. And a lot of people are, like, when you say you're powerless, that's not very empowering. And it's just like, you know, the mind of an addict is very tricky. And if you give it any out, it's going to figure out a way to think you can intellectualize yourself out of this. And addiction is not a intelligence disorder. Some of the people I know that have the hardest time with recovery are some of the smartest people I know, because they think they can fucking think way out of it. The issues are in the tissues. This is a biochemical disorder. It is a connection disorder. It is trauma. It's unresolved trauma. Addiction is a solution to scratch the itch. It's not a very good solution because it could cause you to, you know, hurt yourself, kill yourself, hurt others, kill others. It's very destructive. But I'll tell you when you're able to tell the truth, you know, know, which is one of the premises, you know, rigorous honesty. And you gave a great talk that I think is, you know, we shared that publicly about, you know, labels and stuff. And that was, I think that was a real paradigm shift for many people to hear that. And yeah, and that's, that's, see, that's what happens when you start writing books is you realize that you can actually teach people because you're not just an author, you're a teacher and you're teaching people writing. You're teaching people all kinds of stuff. We will put the links to Anna's book, you know, make youe Mess yous Memoir. You could also go right now and pre order it at makeyourmessyourmemoir.com Anna David a n n a David she's a rock star. Anna, as always, wonderful speaking with you.

Thank you so much, you guys. I really appreciate you.

And we will talk to you guys on the next episode of I Love Marketing. Have a great day. Thank you.

Thank you.

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