Part 3 - Why Every Author Should Embrace YouTube

Welcome to this edition of the million dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

As you got into your second book, tell us about that.

Oh man, second book was much, much easier than the first book was. I had already done a lot of studying. I was already out of my job by then and I knew it precisely what I, what I needed to do. I think I was very fortunate in that I had a great mentor in self publishing business that he was able to kind of guide me in the right direction. Like, hey, I saw what you did with this first book. It's great. But you probably should focus a little bit more right here. And so I was able to do a lot of that research and such. And that was actually the 90 day home workout plan was my first real big hit. Did it bring in me hundreds of thousands of dollars? No, but it definitely was a better proof of concept than the initial one that got me to leave my job because I mean, I probably pulled in like $21 and some odd cents to like determine I was ready to leave my job. Whereas with the 90 day home workout plan, I was pulling in I a substantial amount of revenue that I go, oh, now I'm headed in the right direction. The writing was more crisp because I had a great editor, I had a lot more direction. I knew exactly who my ideal audience was. I didn't realize back when I wrote that first book it's a good idea to identify your audience that you're writing for. I thought initially that I was writing it for everybody. Everybody could benefit from this. But one of my good friends, Mark said to me, he goes, there's no way you wrote a fitness book that's good for a teenager in the same instance, that's good for a senior citizen.

Yeah.

And I was just like, it's a good, that's a good point. And he did, he brought up a great point. I can't write a book for everyone. So when you write a book for everyone, you write for no one.

Yeah.

So that's going to be the thing, is know who your audience is. And so for me, when I finally figure out who my audience was, that's where I had my first real big success. I think the biggest success didn't come until about a year after that is when I actually was really able to refine that down. And that's when I started hitting the best sellers lists. And I Mean, to hit the best sellers lists in fitness. I mean, that's a very hyper competitive industry. And back at that time I was like literally almost to tears. Like I'm looking at my book going, oh my gosh, how am I selling this many? I'm nobody. I don't, I'm not anybody compared to this other big author. But for whatever reason, it was pushing me up to the top. And that taste of success was huge. And that precursor of that was that second book. Putting that one out, it made a huge difference in my life. It was the turning point. And I believe now these books, what.

Have you found out about. Are these, these are nonfiction books, correct? Yeah, these are nonfiction. And you may have it in your future to write fiction. I don't, I've never thought about writing fiction. I tell stories, but I don't. I wish to write a novel. Just seems, I just don't aspire to that. But have you thought about getting into fiction?

I have actually. And right now I'm in the midst of launching a 12 book series that's non fiction and I need to wrap that up. And by July I'm going to be fully pivoting over into fiction. I'll be writing science fiction, horror.

Okay. Science fiction. Former. Oh, I hope too much.

Stephen King growing up.

It sounds like an interesting world to dive into. So now these books, what have you found out about the length of nonfiction books to be self. All of these are self published. Right. And what have you found? I'm enamored of the idea I haven't written any of these, but I'm enamored of short books. And because my mark, you know, like this podcast, I spent my life talking to people with attention deficit and entrepreneurs are all to some extent manic depressive, getting super excited about this and super mad about this. And so attention span doesn't usually flow. There's so many things happening, usually attention. Spanish is hard to maintain during those things. For example, my son is like that, my oldest son, he works with me in the business. My book went out in 2015. He just was happy to tell me. He finally finished reading it this fall.

And you're like, thanks, did you read a word a day?

But obviously I don't know what he, you know, focusing on reading. Some people are just not readers. But the thing is with entrepreneurs, what I found, Dale, like we write for impact. You write for Impact, I write for impact. Especially if you're the non fiction thing. And what I found from doing thousands of meetings with high level managers is like you can have a room of 100 or 200 to 300, doesn't matter. But somehow if you're up in front of them, you can read their. Read all of their eyes. You read the eyes. And what happens is that when you connect over here, over here, over here, somebody like, they get it. It's just like they almost like elevate eyes get bigger like that. And it doesn't matter if this is the first hour of a three day conference, they're ready to go home because they got what they were looking for. Because the people who do things, Dale, like you, here's. Let me tell you who you are. You're the kind of guy, you get one idea that you need from your mentor and you're going to do it a thousand or a hundred thousand times. Most people who want to write a book, you will tell them 100,000 times to get them to do it once. You know what I'm saying?

So true.

So when you're. I write, I don't write for the people who are not need to be told a hundred thousand times because they're not going to read the book 100,000 times.

So true.

I write for the people who, when they hear an idea, you know, boom, connect, boom. Because those are people who move the world. And so I've been enamored of the idea of the shorter books. The idea of. I think Don Miller, who's the coach builder guy said that his idea of a great book is one, there's 100 pages, you can buy it as you get on the plane and you're finished by the time you get off. And what's your attitude about length of nonfiction books?

Length should only. Well, there's. First of all, there's two things you need to study. The very first thing is going to be study the market. Make sure that there is demand for something like that within that specific genre. Because nonfiction obviously is a broadly encompassing identifier. There are so many things that break out into self help, health and fitness, writing, education, things like that. So it does break out. You got to make sure, first of all there is that proof of concept, that there is that ability. But in the same instance, though, you bring up a really good point that a hundred pages or even less sometimes might be more than sufficient for some people because maybe they're reading it on a commute to work, or maybe they're listening to it inside the gym during a workout, things like that to kind of think about. So what I would say is anytime that someone goes to you like you should write a book. Don't just think automatically that you have to Write this like 500 page to think about delivering value. What is the value you can do and try to get it to where you can condense that down. Especially if you're an indie author and self published, you don't need to worry about traditional publishing standards because yes, they do have requirements. Yes, literary agents expect a certain number of pages.

But.

But if you're going the indie publishing route and you're doing it on your own, this is your game, this is how you determine it. You can go ahead and say I'm going to write a 50 page book or I'm going to write a 30 page book. It's up to you. Just deliver that value and make sure that you condense it down the best you can. Because a lot of people, they don't want you wasting their time with a bunch of fluff and a bunch of garbage. They want you to get to the point and give them the goods.

Yeah. In fact, I think in a lot of different genres there are books that are incredibly short, that have been classics for 50 years or something like that. But like I think Harvey Pennock in Golf is like the Little Red Book of Golf or something like that. It's like a little tiny thing like that. But people go to it, go back, buy it, it's still selling and making the impact. They're spiritual growth books. Principles of Spiritual growth. Miles Stanford, 72 pages. I mean, it's just. I've been reading that one since I was 27 years old. And so the thing is that. And there's one on English where there was written on grammar or something like that. You probably know which one it is. William Somebody. That is like a textbook on being grammatically correct. This is what you need to know right here. And so you don't have to have a 600 page dictionary or encyclopedia, be able to be literate. You know what I find is that what I've always challenged people to do, like if you go to a meeting, we do a lot of meetings, you go to conferences and this, that and the other. If we retain one main thing from every big event we went to in our lives, I mean we'd have encyclopedia of main points, you know what I'm saying? But I always like to look for when I go to an event, an idea that is so big that if I think about this meeting five years from now, I'll think about that idea that I got because I would have gotten that idea and I would have Been using it ever since. And I would have been talking about it ever since. And I know that I got some small books when I was starting in business and sales at something like Joe Gandolfo. Ideas are a dime a dozen. The theory, the central thing was ideas are a dime a dozen, but the punchline is, but the people who use them are priceless. That was the sentence. He wrote a little book on it, but that was the sentence. I've used it over and over ever since. And, oh, there is an advantage of being succinct. And what have you found in your books? How long do they wind up turning into after? Because you got to have some kind of pattern, as many as you've written.

I do, yeah. About 20 to 40,000 words, typically. And it's so funny, my editor now knows me so well, she doesn't even ask me anymore how long a manuscript's going to be because she knows it's always going to land somewhere between a 20 to 40,000 range. There are some exceptions to the rule, but it's rare these days because I've done so many that it's. I don't want to say I've got a formula in my head, but it's kind of like that where I have a specific, like, pattern of, okay, I'm going to cover this and this. I always know that I'm a bookend, my content with a story that I try to relate to. Whatever the main, like, crux of what the book is going to be about. I always try to figure it out because I feel like stories tell. I think you and I, we've been in the sales business before. Like, you hear facts tell, stories sell. And to me, that's one of the biggest, like, things I try to embody within my latest nonfiction publications is getting that story leading in with that. But all in all, about 20 to 40,000 words. I, I've gone a little north of that. I think I got close to 50,000 words. But my, My editor was like, and we're going to clip this out, this out, clip this out, clip this out. And I'm like, okay, we're back down to 40,000.

Now. How are you using dictation to. I remember I started writing during. I had a cycling accident and the middle of Palm beach, and it incapacitated me. I've been 17 years in recovery and I've been fairly functional most of the time. But I did gain a hundred pounds and then have to lose a hundred pounds. And so I was relegated to the couch for many Years. And it's like, what am I going to do now? You can't. If it wasn't for commercials, I would have probably never done anything. I would just sat there and watched television. But the fact of commercials, where they repeat them over and over, I think that's what they should do in supermax prisons or with Terrace and Guantanamo, you take commercials and you play them over and over and over and over and over and just drive them into your head. And then when they say you torture these guys, we just played them commercials. What are you talking about? Why is that? Just.

I think it's a good game plan. We need to run this up the ladder here.

So. So the thing is that that's where I started. Well, I gotta do something. So let's get into Twitter. What would. How would that work? And then Facebook. And then before, I kinda like you. You have ideas. Before I knew it, I had. Then you do blog posts. And then before I knew it, I had like 40 or 50 potential book titles out there. And then it was like, well, we did one. And so. But you get to where you're doing a lot of typing, but you can save a lot of time if you can get the dictation down. How do you move fastest through your. Getting your content down? Get the, your. Your 30,000 words down as fast as possible in your outline and all of that. How do you get it out, out of your head?

I'm a very fast typist. I wouldn't say very fast. I'd say I'm proficient. That's the best way. Because I've heard some other people that type way faster than me. I'm probably pumping out right about 50 to 60 words per minute. I have done voice dictation before, and it was good. My biggest issue was the whole idea of having to punctuate and going through like. Oh, you'll say some people may not understand this. When you do, like, voice dictation, you're typically having to say, like, today I walked out and saw the sun was beautiful. Period. Next line. And you're having it. It slows down that flow of thought. So I found that I wasn't very proficient. A good friend of mine, Nick Thacker, he's an ace at doing voice dictation. He could literally just rattle it off, but came from years of experience of him actually doing it a lot. Now, as far as voice dictation goes, though, now it's getting even better. And I'm gonna just kind of share with you. They're not paying me to Say this or anything else like that. There's software out there, it's called Proserite. It will do voice dictation for you and it will automatically insert all the punctuation for you. And then you can even have an AI model that goes and it will edit as you are going along really. But pros write. That is just amazing. I just found out about them about a month or so ago and I have loved what I've seen so far. It's definitely changing the game because, you know, as you know, probably there's Dragon Naturally speaking, which comes at a very high premium. And you've got to train your Dragon quote unquote, train your dragon to understand your dialect and your delivery and things like that and it becomes a little bit of a hassle. See, I did voice dictation through my little phone, my Android back, gosh, let's see here, 2016 and I did it with Google Docs. All I did was just turn on my Talk to text speech or my speech to text feature and it put it on in there. But again you're having to say all the punctuation. So I'm very excited with what the future holds right now for voice dictation because I'm a pretty proficient talker. I think I'm a better talker than I am a typer. But I think the real challenge is going to be is taking that same part of my brain that actively edits as I type and try to do that while I'm doing voice dictation. Because there's many things that will go through my head, some of the lessons that my editors will kind of share with me, some of the issues and hang ups that I have in my own writing that I try to stifle as I'm typing, whereas when I'm talking with my voice, forget about it. It's, it's unfiltered, it's going to come out, it's going to have a lot of your nose and ums and all that type of stuff that I'm going to probably have to end up cleaning up in some capacity.

Yeah.

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And I probably AI could do a lot, you know what I'm saying? Hey, you know, get trained. It just. But tell me this, what you've screwed up and told me that you've reached a couple of points in your life to where are when you've run into those points where it's just like I'm thinking of tossing the whole thing and just turning the whole thing in and forget the whole whole deal. What kinds of things cause that to happen? What have you been through that's reached that point? Why is it not an automatic thing that where you just keep putting out books and that money comes in and then expanded other countries and then you write another book and then more money comes in and then what in the world could go so wrong that probably youtubes and the videos and the podcast or something.

It has, it does have a lot to do with being very public. I think the biggest issue that I have is I get thin skinned on some things and it varies from one thing to the next. So for instance, I'll get one trolling comment on a video and I realize I'll get like 50,000 different great comments. But for whatever reason, this one negative comment cuts through the mess. And for whatever reason it just validates that monkey mind I got in the back there going, you aren't good enough. You aren't that person that you think you are. You are. It's that imposter syndrome, if you will. And it kind of validates that. But I think sometimes when I have to take a step back and reanalyze it, the first things I need to look at is how many people would disagree with this person. Okay, how many people would disagree with that monkey mind of mine. And the next thing is what are my goals and am I working my way towards those goals and am I feeling fulfilled? That's the most important thing.

The feedback, the negative, the troll, the negative feedback. Stuff like that. Rather than it's just like I'm not sure that you're going to be a great politician here. I don't know if that skin is.

I'm not going to be cut out for it. I don't lie very well.

I don't know if you're going to pass the thick skin test to move on to the political phase of your career. I'M going to have to go over, tell Donald Trump not to nominate you for any cabinet position.

Yep. No cabinet positions for you today, boy. I'll quit the first day in. They're like, oh, this guy.

Well, may I make a suggestion on that point?

Yes, please.

Because we all, we all deal with it. But I think he might have the wrong approach because you're trying to unravel a negative, irrational comment from a son of a bitch who just does not like you. So the first thing you gotta realize is that certain people aren't gonna like you, don't like you. And I don't care if you bought them ice cream and hundred dollar bills on the hour, they would still hate your guts.

There'd still be something wrong with the ice cream and the money that was bought. Yeah.

What flavor? I've told you, never bring me vanilla. And the thing is, I learned that early in my career because I recruited this guy, I thought he had great potential. Unbelievable. He just hated my guts. I don't know why. He did well in the business, this, that and the other, but it's just like I never could figure it out. I liked him. He just, you know. And then it dawned on me, oh, okay. I've learned something. Some people you just don't click with, move on. Because like you say, there are other people in the world, but you just gotta be able to say, and you know, it's all right. And I'm an artist too. I do painting and I love the attitude. Painting, I love the idea of painting that I show people a painting, if they like it, they're right. If they hate it, they're right. Whatever their reaction is, they're right. And so what I would suggest. So not everybody's going to like it. And so I think the thing that would concern us when, like the bulk of the comments are nasty.

Yeah. And it's a fraction at this point. And you know, I think you're catching me on a, on a pretty good day. Like this is a rare occasion that I get very much down on my luck. I think I'm very fortunate that I've got a beautiful wife. She's wonderful to me. And sometimes when I bring up those things, she's like, who cares about that person?

I'm like, there you go. Yeah, yeah.

Like, she's like, we don't know them. Like, do they pay our bills? I don't care about them well.

So here's my suggestion that consider taking this approach, the comedy angle. Think about evaluating their comment from a comedy perspective. Because here's where I learned that one I was checking through, coming back from many years ago. We were tried to build a sales organization over in the UK and financial services and Enron blew up and then every country in the world put in all kind of regulations. So that was the end of that party after I'd spent a quarter of a million dollars in six months of my life. But anyway, I'm going through security on the way home out of Gatwick and I've got. I guess I'm not moving fast enough for this proper English lady, early 40s, all dressed, high heels, this, that, the other coming. You know, her stuff was on the belt behind, on the conveyor belt behind mine. And I'm getting my stuff and she's up there, she's furious at me for not moving faster. And she rattled off something so with that vicious, cutting, wicked English sense of humor. But she wasn't trying to be funny. It was just. I almost fell down on the floor laughing, it was so good. And to this day I'm pissed that I didn't have anything to write it down because it would still be funny saying it today, whatever she said. And so. But the thing is, I realized there's no way to respond to this thing except that was hilariously funny what you just said. You know what I'm saying? And what I did say to her was this. I said, you know what? I said, oh, you know what I'm happy about? Because she just insulted me. I said, you know what I'm happy about? You're going to walk away from here and have to live with yourself and whatever's going on in that poisoned mind of yours the rest of your life. But me, I'll never see you again. Goodbye.

Well said. But I said, well said.

But what you just said to Bay was hysterically funny. And so the thing is that we don't have to take it on face value. Logical thing. And you know, and I'll tell you this, the things that our critics see, that where they criticize, they're probably right on some of it. It's just like they probably did us a favor to point out a little bit. Of course they're going to take it to the nth degree, but the way they do it a lot of times is hysterically funny if you give yourself permission to look at it from that standpoint. But you certainly don't have to unravel it logically. It's just like it doesn't merit that kind of consideration. And so when you go in your Start. Did you. You do things different. How long do you allow yourself to write a book now? When did you become, like, super productive putting these books out?

I typically give myself about a month to two months just to sit and just actually write the first draft. I have done it in as short as 24 hours before, really? And as short as a week. But I find that I get a better manuscript when I give myself about a month or two months to really get it all dialed in, because then it makes the editing process so much easier. So that's. That's typically what I'm shooting for now. Can I do it in a day? Sure would. Do I want to do that all the time? No, it's tough.

Yeah. And so the thing is, there's a thing called life that you have to do, too. You can't always put things on hold. And so when you do that first, you get that first draft out. Let's just say it's 25,000 words. That's. That's the first draft. Now, when you go through, do you turn it over to an editor or do you go through it again?

Oh, I give it three passes before I even get it over to my editor. Because I obviously, editors, they value their time, and I try to value their time as well. And they're obviously charging. So if you send in that manuscript just raw, unfiltered, without going through and cleaning it up somewhat, they're going to charge you more, they're going to take more time. It's going to be a whole laborious process. Whereas if you just go through a few passes, it helps out. My three passes typically consist of Microsoft editor, really fast. I go through with ProWritingAid, you can use any grammar checker that you want to. And then I do text to speech. The reason why I do text to speech is I sit back and I listen to my text and I make sure it sounds right. Don't read along with it. You want to hear it, because your brain is going to tune out all the typos and mistakes and grammatical errors. But those three passes really help it out to where I get a more polished manuscript. So then I send it over to my editor for the developmental and structural editing before they send it back to me. I refine that. We go back for a line editing and copy editing, probably a couple rounds until we get to proofreading.

And so the first was Microsoft Word. The second one was what prowritingaid.

And you can do anything like Grammarly or Ginger or Hemingway is a good one as well. Any one of those tools. The whole reason why I want to do something different than Microsoft Editor is I need something that's going to have more of a granular approach and it's different from that software. So that way it identifies different issues and then the text to speech is just getting it to where I can intervene without any of the extra tools and things like that.

Have you had a demand for you to actually read, make an audible version of your read it or the the author reads the book?

I have actually. I did my first four books in the self publishing series where I did those ones right now. And since I'm in the midst of doing the 12 books, I will be doing all 12 of those books. There is a really good local studio that comes really cheap, like $50 per hour, and I can rent it out for the day and get at least one book or two books done within a week.

Yeah, pretty cool. And so how did you. How has the video? When did you make the step? Why did you feel like, I just can't sit here and write books and put them out. I've got to make now and go and torment myself by making videos and podcasts? Somehow you got talked into that, so you nailed it.

Exactly. I actually never had the intention of doing YouTube. I seen YouTube. I've been a big fan of it. I've been a consumer of it for the longest time. It wasn't until I had a couple of interviews on a couple of YouTube channels that were devoted to self publishing that I started getting attention that I wasn't expecting. There were other indie authors wanting to know the whole process. They're wanting to know the ins and outs. What do I need to do here? What do you do there? Where should I go? How should I publish this? And the problem was is it was taking me away from my writing and publishing schedule.

So.

And I'm not. I'm not the type of guy that's just gonna ignore people. I typically always just try to answer at least one question via email and dm and after that I send people over to different areas. But back then I didn't have a YouTube. So I thought instead of answering the same question time and again, let me just publish a video about it. So that way somebody comes back and asks again, I just send them over to that video. Little did I know though, Larry, I would become hooked within a year. I fell in love with the process because initially it was kind of like my venture into self publishing books that I was just kind of doing it just as a means to an End. It wasn't something I was considering as a career. But after a year of it, I started tasting that success and I started drawing the parallels between being an indie author and being a video creator that I was like, oh my gosh. I was like, this is almost the same. I might as well just go ahead and do this. Little did I know that it would really blow up big within a couple of years. And I'm just so thankful for all that I've done. But yeah, all just because I wanted to answer a few questions. And here I am answering more questions than ever now.

Has it your volume of sales in your existing catalog?

Oh, absolutely, absolutely. Initially when I did it though, it was minor because the books were all fitness. If I was doing a fitness channel. Be a different story here. When I actually pulled the trigger, I think it was in 2020 when I finally launched books about self publishing. That's when I started to reap the rewards. That's when I started to see, oh wow, this YouTube thing can be beneficial to selling more books and not just like an ancillary part of things. It's very much embedded in what I'm doing with YouTube.

Yeah, this, the ripple effect or the cascade that can come from. However you can get your material out there for getting people excited, even aware that you have a catalog. You know, like the Rolling Stones when Microsoft paid them for Start me up that little using that song for promotional thing. There was a lot of people didn't know. The kids who didn't know about the Rolling Stones. I know Tom Petty, they used a Tom Petty song. Running down a dream or something like. No, the Long Long Road in this Grand Theft Auto. That came out. Well, as soon as that came out, boom, the whole Petty catalog blew up. Because all these kids, they didn't, they had never even heard Tom Petty, never heard the name. But now they're all in there and listening and screaming. And so it can have an effect because what's happening is it's important for you and I to realize that there's new generations coming up all the time that might be as interested or more interested. And there's other people growing up in other countries that can get excited about what we put out. I know now I put out a hundred. I used to do these three day full timer and financial services, full timer training schools. And I would do all the speaking for three days. And then it came. You get yourself psyched up and you do it and there'd be about 200 people there. But then, then it went like 15 years and I hadn't done it. I said, we got a whole new generation. I need to go do it. Well, all of a sudden, well, you need to do it here. You need to do. I was going to have to do it in nine different places around the United States. It's like, no. So I got on YouTube and I copied the Khan Academy's approach. I saw Khan Academy and I. You know, where you just. All I did was draw. You get a chalk and you draw out a blackboard or something, or marker board, whiteboard. And I said, that's what they do. I can do that because I don't have to be on camera. You don't have to do a lot of editing. You just video the board and you just go. Just like, if I'm at a meeting, I'm up at the board, they're seeing my back and I'm talking and we're going like this. So I said, that works. I did 180 of them. And I think more people watch those now. I haven't done a new one in probably 20, 15, 20 years. And so these things can have. But you know, the podcast, I think this podcast lets people know that I'm somebody who they might want to look up and follow. And so it's interesting now. Wonder what you think would happen if you were not doing the podcast, what that would do for your business. I mean, this is a big. This has become a driver for everything you do. Is that right? It's true.

It's true. What would I do without it? I would probably be even more prolific. I would probably write 500 books by now. Yeah, yeah. No exaggeration. It probably would be at that point. I think YouTube had slowed me down with that because a great majority of the publications that I did of those 50 that I had mentioned came between 2014 and 2017. Like, that was a huge chunk because that's all I did day and night, 16 to 18 hours per day, sitting down, churning out manuscript after manuscript, sending them to editors, getting that feedback, putting it out there, doing the promotion. It was a lot to take in. But, yeah, I. If I didn't have YouTube, I'm sure I'd be more prolific, but I love it. It's actually. It's fun and it's very creative. It's crazy to think here and say this out loud, but I've already published over 1600 videos between two channels.

Good Lord. Goodness gracious.

Yeah, you're a machine. No rest for the wicked, right?

Wow, 1600. Now, what's the average Length of those things?

Oh, since some of them are live, some of the live ones are about an hour long. But if I were to say to average it out 15 to 20 minutes apiece.

And how many do you aim for during a week?

For the podcast channel, there's typically two, and for the main channel, there is one to three that I'll typically.

So you're still running all the channels? You're still running two channels?

Yeah, but the podcast is easier, though, because I do it live. And what I do is I record the live podcast and I have live viewers tuning in, and then I stop when I'm recording, but I continue to go live and I'll chat with the live viewers and then I'll record another segment that I take and I clip and I repurpose it for the very next day as a separate video. And that works really well. So, yeah, you got to work smarter, not harder. And that's one of those things that I did with the podcast. Now, the main channel, that's the one that has everybody trips over me. That's nearly a hundred thousand subscribers. Actually, I'll probably be hitting a hundred thousand this Saturday.

Congratulations.

That. Right. Thank you so much. That is the one that typically 10 to 15 minutes long here. Lately I've been getting some longer ones because a lot of people been enjoying the deep dive videos. Those take a long time. Right now I'm working on a sponsored video. It's raw content. Right now is about 40 to 50 minutes of content. It's going to probably take me about three to six hours to edit that down and. And get it to between 20 to 30 minutes. I really try not to stretch it out too long. As I had shared earlier, I like to get to the point, I like to be succinct. So that way when people go to my videos, they know there's no bs, there's no fluff. They just get the whole meat of it.

The time you spend on that editing, video editing is substantial.

Oh, it used to be worse. It used to be worse. I would spend any. Upwards of about 12 hours, sometimes longer on some of the videos because there was this crazy.

I would have written three books by that time.

Yeah, that's no exaggeration. Exactly. I really could. The biggest issue, and this was one of my setbacks and my failures, if you will, was not understanding what my audience wanted. I was following a lot of advice from YouTube experts, and I'm gonna put quotes around YouTube experts that would say retention editing was the thing. Retention editing, you gotta change your Clips every five to eight minutes or five to eight seconds. So that way it keeps people kind of going, no, no, no, I'm in a space. I'm not Mr. Beast, I'm not trying to entertain people, I'm trying to educate. And if they get entertained in the meantime, all the better. So when I realized that retention editing wasn't for me, that freed me up so, so much more. Now the three to six hours that it takes for the editing and such sometimes comes down to just the software and of course different bells and whistles that really help illustrate specific points.

What have you learned that you would say to entrepreneurs that are on their way up or already successful in terms of what place, what kind of value should they put on getting their own book or books out there? Boy, we have people listening to this. Like these two dumb dumbs are up there talking about putting out a book. I'm not going to put out a book. Maybe I can pick up something I can apply to my business from in between the cracks. But this is something that is a priority, should be a priority for a certain segment out there, maybe bigger than most people think.

What do you think this authors, believe it or not, we're in this whole bubble here. Not many people realize within the bubble that being an author is a very special thing. I can't tell you how many times I've been into business mixers and meetups and things like that. I say I'm an author and people lose their minds. They think that's absolutely amazing. And so just to have something that you can present to somebody that you have spent any amount of time on and your heart poured your soul into that, people are going to sense that and they will resonate with that and they also will be inspired by that. Because I'll tell you, the next thing typically people will say to me is they'll ask me, what do you do for a living? I'll tell them, I'm an award winning author as well as a video creator that have done tons of videos about self publishing on YouTube. And that is usually people go, I've always wanted to write a book. How did you do it? And that really opens up such an amazing conversation that you just, it's, it does wonders. Now that is just on a networking perspective. Think about this on a global perspective. Yeah, there are millions of authors out there, but guess what? There are billions of other people that have unrealized dreams of actually putting their thoughts into words and their words into a publication that the rest of the world can consume.

I Think a real reason holds a lot of people back is the ignorance of the possibilities of the self publishing world because you're thinking, go to a New York publisher and will deal. And then James so true. It's funny that James Patterson got rejected 32 publishing houses on his first book and then he found some little dinky publishing house that would publish it and then he got book of the year, New writer of the year. So don't take the rejection just because you got a bunch of rejection. Don't let that hold you back. But are you a second class citizen when you go out there and self publish your own book?

Oh heavens no. Heavens no. I think there are some people that would buy into that and I see some people in the trad pub world, traditional publishing, if you will, that do look down upon self publishing. But here's the thing is modern day self publishing isn't what it used to be. It's no longer like this taboo thing. It's not this thing like your creepy uncle goes and writes a bunch of erotica books and publishes it and he has a pallet full of books inside the garage. No, it's no longer that. This is a different game. In fact, you even see some traditionally published authors that actually segue over to self publishing. Why is that? Well, there's more control, there is better earnings overall. You have a lot that you can manage on your own, believe it or not. And there are so many resources that you can literally function as your own traditional publishing house if you wanted to. So don't let the rejection of traditional publishing ever turn you off to thinking that you're less than or not a good author. Because self publishing now proves that you can get out there, that most anyone can be able to break in this business and give it a good go.

What's the biggest payoff? What's the most exciting thing that's happened to change your life from the publishing and the podcasting and this whole journey you've been on that just really gives you energy and excitement.

Oh man. I think looking back at my life prior to this always puts a good perspective on things and the lifestyle that I've been able to place myself into. I'm not a Lamborghini guy. I'm not a type of mansions. Get out of here. That's too much room. That means I got to clean those damn rooms. No, give me a good two bedroom place. I'm a happy man. But I think that the lifestyle that I live is one of the things that make me super grateful for all of the work that I've put in and the position that I'm in and for all the people that continue to follow and support me, I'm forever grateful.

Yeah. Unbelievable. I always. Thanks so much, Dan. We've got a. We've had a nice long run today, but it's gone fast and I really enjoyed it. I always like to give my guests the last word. And so do you have a last word for entrepreneurs and future writers out there that have stayed with us through the whole podcast?

I think Winston Churchill once said it, and I'm just going to paraphrase this. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up.

Yeah. Fantastic. Thanks so much. I'll look forward to seeing how, you know, we'll have to check in when you go over, like 250,000 on your podcast on your channel. And so.

Yeah, you got it. We'll consider that a date.

All right, fantastic. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Larry.

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