Chandler Bolt: The Book Strategy That Grows Your Business Faster Than Social Media

The pressure, it's the one thing that makes everything else easier, unnecessary, because you don't have time or energy to think about anything else. And it just immediately raises the bar on the BS that you're willing to deal with. And it's, if it ain't making the cash register ring, I'm not thinking about it.

We get so caught up, especially in the beginning, or if you don't have pressure, oh, I need this to look a certain way, I want this to be a certain way, I need to study more on this, I need to figure this out more. When I look back at all the things that really, when we were accelerating in our careers, like quantum leaping, it was that question. What brings money in right now? And I think the best entrepreneurs actually ask themselves that question every day.

All right guys. Well, welcome Chandler, my buddy. Welcome. Love having you on the show and you get two for one today. You are on the Chris Harder Show and the The Earn Your Happy podcast.

I almost said the Lori Harder show.

Yeah. Are you renaming your podcast or something that we don't know about?

You guys, anything could happen at this point. That's all I'm saying.

Ain't that the truth?

Expect anything from me.

Actually, that's a great segue into what we're going to talk about because we're going to talk about building business. We're going to talk about publishing. We're going to talk about why people would want to write a book in order to build their business and all of the ups and downs that goes into all of that stuff. Because you've had a journey. We've had a journey.

Wild.

We're all really high performers. And I think people sometimes outside looking in say, oh, that looked easy to build such a big publishing company. Oh, that looked easy to build a supplement company. Oh, that looked easy to build fintech. And it's anything but that. And the bulk majority of our listeners are really ambitious entrepreneurs, whether it's a solopreneur, which is probably more than 50% of the audience, or whether it's somebody with a pretty good-sized company. They are encountering the things that we once had to figure out. So let's start right there. Give us the scope of your publishing company, where it came from, and kind of the size of it today.

Yeah, so we've published about 7,000 books over the last decade.

7,000?

Yeah, a lot of books.

Wow. A lot of books. So we publish about 2 to 5 books a day. Nice. We've done $75 million, probably closer to $80 million in that time period.

In revenue.

In revenue. Incredible. So 8 figures a year, a few years in a row. And so we've just been scaling. But like you said, lot of ups and downs.

Yeah.

It's not a highlight reel. There's always challenges.

People hear the $70, $80 million and they're like, highlight reel? So give us a high-level roller coaster. I'd be like, here was a win, here was a challenge, here was a win, here was a challenge.

Yeah. Oh my gosh, there's so many. So I would say if you look back, dropped out of school, went in debt, started the business, had no runway.

What year was that?

That was 2012.

Okay.

Okay. 2014, maybe. So go in massive debt. Start the business, eventually hit 7 figures. My partner tries to kick me out of the business, go multiple 6 figures in debt. Oh, buy it. Borrow money from my parents' retirement, buy out my business partner. Now I'm finally making money. Then, I mean, there's just— there's so many. Then, okay, now we're moving a bunch of stuff in person. So there's a bunch of challenges with that. Now I know it's what we need to do, kind of like we were talking about before. Then talk to me 6 months from now. Talk to me a year from now. I know it's what we need to do, but it doesn't make it any easier in the interim. So we went from not having an office for 10 years to 18 months ago we started the office, and now we've got 20 people in the office. That has caused chaos and people saying, that's not for me, and quitting and all that. But then you start to see it come together, and we're there. We're not out of the woods yet, but we're, we're getting there, and it's been a, it's been a wild ride.

We have this in common, we borrowed money from my parents' retirement when we were in a low spot in 2008, 2009.

Yeah. Thanks God they had retirement.

Right?

The faith that parents must have to be like, I know. Hey kids, here you go. Good luck. I mean, this is their retirement. It's crazy. There's no getting that back at that age.

We weren't showing signs of delivering it back either. Yeah. It was just like, I don't know, wanna bet on it?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. What was that like for you? How'd you feel during that time? Pressure?

Stressed. Oh my gosh. You can't lose your parents' retirement. No.

There's actually, there's no motivation like knowing your parents' retirement is on the line.

Yeah.

We literally, I remember, you probably felt this way too, like every dime I spent, I started to feel like, number one, they were watching, which they had every right. Number two, I was just like, oh, I can't— like, I literally can't live this way.

Yeah.

Feeling like I owe somebody this much money. And that was— I think that was one of the biggest motivations that I've ever had and needed. And so often in life, we can be in those moments that just feel like absolute hell and look at them and realize that they were the catalyst that maybe you wouldn't have done the thing without them. Was that a moment for you, or do you have moments where you're like, no, if it wasn't for this insanely low point, I actually don't know if I would have been motivated enough to do what I'm doing?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to burn the boats.

Yeah.

And go all in, but then you don't want to live there forever. No, exactly to your point. So there were multiple times, like when I dropped out of school and I moved across the country, and so there was no going back. Or when I borrowed money from my parents' retirement, there was no going back. And it I love it in some ways, and I think I had to do it. And in some ways I would recommend it for most people, but a lot of people can't handle it. And so I'd say, hey, yeah, burn the boats to where failure is not an option. And it would be so embarrassing to fail that you succeed. Yes. And to your point, you can't live there. No, because it's so— it's clarifying in a lot of ways. Like, okay, we got to make the cash register ring today.

Yep.

Yes, yes. Because that loan is due. Yep. And I paid them back with interest, and that was really important to me because I don't want handouts. But it clarified like, we got to bank sales today. And I think in that it was the biggest kind of almost like jumpstart to the car of the business. But I don't want to live there and I don't— I try not to live there.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Well, how did you handle when you were under, whether it was that time or a different time, that much pressure? And I love what you said, like you have to go so big that you're either embarrassed or you win. Otherwise these people are kind of playing the middle and they're like, gosh, why isn't it taking off? It's because they're playing in the middle. So There's some privilege in that pressure, but also you have to know how to handle that pressure. Were you, you were doing anything special to handle that? Were you talking to anybody? Were you taking anything? How do you get through that?

Yeah, it's a great question. I love that.

Were you taking anything? Yeah. Crack cocaine.

Yeah. Yeah.

Adderall.

Wow. And then I realized this is not good for me long term, so I got off of that even though I still have ADHD to this day. But I love the, I think it's a Billie Jean King quote, maybe. The pressure is a privilege. Yes. It's on the, at the US Open when they walk out. I mean, it is a privilege, and it's still a lot of pressure. So for me, I think just my morning routine, meditation, visualization, affirmations, all that stuff, praying, being centered in my faith. I mean, all those things really help me in that. But then in a way, the pressure almost— it's the one thing that makes everything else easier, unnecessary, because you don't have time or energy to think about anything, right? And it just immediately raises the bar on the BS that you're willing to deal with. And it's, if it ain't making the cash register ring, I'm not thinking that this is— yeah, in that phase, I'm not thinking about it. So it was just so clarifying saying, all right, I don't— we don't need a business plan, we don't need a website, we don't need a logo, we need sales, and let's focus on that. And then it started kind of compounding.

Wait, I love that saying, if it's not making cash register ring, we're not doing it.

No. And, and, you know, for everybody listening, I think there's— we get so caught up in, especially in the beginning, or if you don't have pressure, and, oh, I need this to look I want this to be a certain way. I need to study more on this. I need to figure this out more. When I look back at all the things that really, when we were accelerating in our careers, like quantum leaping, it was that question. It was like, no, no, what brings money in right now? And I think the best entrepreneurs actually ask themselves that question every day. Like, am I in the thing that brings money in right now? And it's really easy to get out of that.

So easy to get out of that.

And that is going to just like, like you said, bring such massive clarity. So for your business, I would love a little breakdown because you know that we were going to talk all about um, if you want to publish your book, which I think that you are just one of the best to go with. So we're going to talk about that in the second half here. But the first half, I would really love to know, like, how is your business set up to kind of make money? And how did you, how did you crack that code? How'd you figure that out?

So I think there's— I talk, I talk about this on kind of like, I think when it comes to scaling to 8 figures, there's 5 pillars.

Okay.

And I, we call it the 8-figure profit bridge. So there's these 5 Ps or 5 kind of core components. First, you need paying customers, which that's where I think a lot of people go, go wrong. They start with a business plan or they start with a website or a logo and they don't have customers. And if you don't have customers, you don't have a business. You have a business idea.

Yeah.

And so starts with paying customers, then it moves to product market fit. And I think for us that was the key to get to— you can get to 6 figures, maybe even 7 figures without product market fit, which is good marketing or good sales or kind of muscling in.

Lots of hype.

Yeah. But then how do you sustainably do that? You got to have product-market fit. I think a lot of people get confused around that because it's kind of a very ethereal concept. But the way I like to simplify it is when you explain people in 30 seconds what you do, the person that you help, the pain that you solve, and the promise— person, pain, promise, price— like when you talk through those 4 things, do they say, yes, I want— hold on, where's my credit card? Can I pay you for that? Or do they say, huh, that sounds really interesting. Yeah. And they don't want to be a customer. And so product-market fit, then it's profit. So if you're, you're doing those things, and then we reached 7 figures early on, and I realized I'm broke and I'm running a 7-figure business.

Interesting.

How's this work? And because we had no profit, we had no margin. And that's where I think a lot of people don't realize. They think, oh, if I can just run a 7-figure business, I'm going to be a millionaire.

Yep.

A lot of 7-figure businesses, you're lucky if it even makes 6 figures. So you're lucky if you make— yeah, you could make in a high-paying job, right? So then it's, we got to get real serious about getting profitable. Then it's people and process. So how do we hire and develop the best team possible? And then how do we create process so that it's scalable and so that it doesn't depend on me? So I don't know if that's a direct answer to your question as much as that's kind of the core elements that, that I like to think about to say, how do we build this machine that runs without me? Because I feel like in some ways we've come from maybe slightly different angles on this where I suck at a lot of the things that you guys are great at— social media, personal brand, all of that stuff. And so I just kind of built the business and now I'm adding on the personal brand, whereas I feel like a lot of people in our space start with a personal brand and then build on the business.

But I remember being in Kelowna with you when we were visiting Dan and Renee Martel.

Yeah.

And you had no social media platform at the time. There was a guy impersonating you, remember? We were messing with him, but you actually didn't have any. So you've done real well since then.

Your impersonator had better social media.

Yeah, yeah. You should have just given him the job.

Yeah, like, you know what, could actually hire you.

It was so great. I wish people could— like, we're messing with this guy who's pretending to be you and texting back and forth with him as he's trying to sell us a book But you're sitting right there. It was wild. It was wild.

That was the trip that sparked me to get an Instagram, by the way. So thank you guys.

Okay, great. Glad we could help.

I want to go back to the third P, the profit. How did you realize, other than checking the bank account, seeing no money, how did you systemically realize, wait, we are not profitable? And how did you fix that? Because the number of people that brag about top line and, and their, their goals, they have a 7, 8-figure business, but they don't have a pot to piss in is more than half the listeners.

Yeah, I mean, they're all lying about their numbers. I think that's important that people realize.

Oh yeah, thank you for saying that, because then people feel bad, like, why can't I hit it? Oh yeah, the majority of people that I know that people look up to and brag about their business actually know their business and it sucks, you know.

Yeah, we've had straight up things that we have done that we have vocally said, hey, you, that, you know, that big event we did that looks so fancy and people loved it, like, was not making us money. It cost us money and now we closed it down.

So yes, yeah, it's very real.

I mean, and so I I think it's—

that's a good starting point, right, for people watching or listening to this, to just realize everyone's lying about their numbers. They're— it's— or it's fake or exaggerated numbers. So they do one, one $83,000 sales month and call themselves a 7-figure business. By the way, it's sales, not cash collected. And they might not ever collect any of that cash. So I think you guys know that, we know that, being behind the scenes of the industry. But just knowing that So we've from the start have said we always talk about the most conservative number— numbers possible, and everything that I speak in is net. So if I talk about revenue, it's net revenue. Yeah, it's revenue after returns, because if they returned, they might as well not exist. Even worse than not existing, they're a negative drag because you're paying the merchant fees and all that stuff. And so, and so anyways, that's just kind of maybe more philosophy on, or, or maybe more of a bone to pick with the industry. But how do we know if we are profitable? So getting a good bookkeeper and accountant and actually starting to look at the numbers, and then you realize, whoa, this business is broken. I'll never forget having a conversation with my financial person, and we were a very launch-based business at the time, so we'd have massive spikes and then huge troughs. And I remember looking at the books over the last 6 months and there was one big launch and then all these months of nothing. And we lost money for 5 or 6 months in a row. And it was when I was buying out my business partner. And so I just remember looking at the finance person and saying, you mean to tell me if I would have done anything besides try to run this business for the last 5 months, I would have more money? Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. If you did nothing, you would be better off than running this business for the last 5 months.

I'm like, oh, I've had those businesses.

Yeah.

Well, I'm like, you realize if I shut this down, I'd have more personal money, right?

Yeah.

But that's the financial reality, right? And then there's— to answer your question, what do you do about it? So I'll never forget going to Keith Cunningham's 4-day MBA, and he just starts the conference. He says, let's pretend we're running an egg business and let's run the books. How much money are we making? And he, for 4 days, goes through this whole thing. And at the end of that 4 days, he says, all right, here's this whole event summarized on one page. Go implement this page in your Wow. And it was crazy. And we literally took that one page and we just went after it. And that page added probably— I want to say it was like $750,000 in profit over the next year. Wow. Because we just started attacking it. And it's all the non-sexy stuff that no one wants to hear, no one wants to talk about. We looked at our expenses and we said, let's go renegotiate every vendor because we have scaled and they keep charging us the same price.

Same price as the low—

accounts payable, accounts receivable. Let's push out all our payables. Let's pull in all our receivables. Hold up. Now we got $250,000 extra in cash every month just by doing that. So it was all the non-sexy stuff to just kind of chop away at that. And then the business started getting way more profitable.

It's funny, people don't realize like you have to manage cash flow as much as you have to manage profitability. Totally. I've got an assistant and for one of my companies he pays the bills and he's always paying them early and rushing to pay. And I said, I go, why? Why are you doing that? He's like, well, I want to get it out of the way. I want to get— I go, That's not how you run a business.

Yeah.

I've started so many different businesses and I have to tell you that every single time I've started one, I have been terrified. It didn't get easier because each business was so different. You're always wondering, is anyone gonna buy this? Are these events gonna fill? Is anybody even gonna like this product? And now I know that it was absolutely the right thing to believe in myself and launch my businesses, launch my podcast, despite all of the fears and hesitations that I had. It also helps when you have a partner like Shopify on your side, like I did. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US, from household names like Glossier to brands just getting started. Get started with your own design studio with hundreds of ready-to-use templates. Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store and matches your brand style. Accelerate your efficiency, whether you're uploading new products or trying to improve existing ones. Shopify is packed with helpful AI tools that write product descriptions, page headlines, and even enhance your product photography. It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/happy. Go to shopify.com/happy. That's shopify.com/happy.

When you run a business, you keep as much cash as possible on hand so you can reinvest it in other things. You pay the minimum, you negotiate minimums, you do all those things.

Yes.

You don't rush to give away your capital, and most people don't realize that until they have that very It's not how we're raised. Yeah, because you're raised personally, like, oh, you pay your bills early and you're a good boy. You know what I mean? And it's totally different in business.

And that's interesting, right? It's because I'm thinking about the same thing in my business. How do I retrain my staff to realize accounts receivable and people paying us is the number one, number two, and number three thing we should be focusing on? And accounts payable. Yeah, of course we pay our stuff. We pay it on time. But you don't wake up and show up to work saying, What else can I pay? Yeah, that's the most important thing. No, and I think that's interesting. It's only that type of mentality is only born when your back's against the wall.

Yeah.

When you borrow from your parents' retirement and when you have to face that daily and say, okay, hold up, how do we make sure that there's cash in this business? And that's where I love the Keith Cunningham quote. He says, revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is king.

Love that.

And just breaking down that all three of those things are very different. And you could be profitable but not have cash. If you don't have cash, you're out of business.

Yeah.

The bank don't care about your accounts receivable. No, no, they care.

Predatory lender will. Yeah, they'll lend you on that all day long. 40% for 3 months.

Yeah. Yeah.

MCAs or whatever the hell they are.

Yeah, exactly.

I want to talk about— you said you went from a launch-based business, which is you know, thrive or die, thrive or die. And you switched into a more, let's call it, evergreen model to acquire your customers. I know one of the really cool ways that you acquire your customers through events. Could you talk to us? How did you shift from launch model to more consistent evergreen? And what are you doing right now to pull customers through the door? Because traditional marketing is tough right now.

Yeah, it's very tough. Cost to acquire customers way up. So then you got to get real creative with it. So I think we went from all affiliates, all launches, to, okay, we can still do affiliates because that's our sweet spot, and let— but let's just do that all year round and let's do webinars all the time. And then we started stacking on other channels, and that's where I think the most dangerous— the most dangerous number in any business is one. One customer acquisition channel, one launch, one event, one anything. And I'll never forget when There was a time where I— there were 2 people in my business. We were probably 20 people at the time, and there was 2 or 3 people that were thinking about quitting or moving to another company. And I remember looking up and realizing those 2 people are 60% of my revenue.

Yeah.

And if they leave, I am totally screwed.

Yeah.

And I said, I will never let this happen ever again. And so then I just started reverse engineering everything to how do we have multiple customer acquisition channels at all time so that if Zuck changes the algorithm or whatever else, we're not screwed. And then, and then how do I make sure that I'm not key man dependent in the business? And so we started building out other channels. We built organic SEO content, which became a multimillion dollar a year kind of digital real estate play for us where I looked at the real estate market and I said, well, everybody's talking about having cash flow from their real estate. Meanwhile, there's digital real estate, which is ranking on search engines. And if I could just acquire sites that are ranking for the key terms that were anything about writing a book, well then that's going to pay me rent every month as long as it ranks.

Yeah.

And so then we started going out and acquiring sites and building up our own content. So we did that. We, we, to your point on the events, we'll do maybe 60 to 80 events this year and that'll be, you know, roughly $6 to $8 million of our revenue. And so we built out a speaking team and So a lot of just, I don't know, for better or worse, I think the way that I think is how do I make this sucker not dependent on me and how do I create process for everything so that I don't have to be the one, the dancing monkey doing the thing?

Yeah.

So then we— I started speaking and then the first year we did $1 million from speaking and I said, all right, well, this is fun, but I spoke 24 times this year. Yeah, I don't want to keep doing that. How do I then build out a speaking team? So then we did that. And so it's just kind of me being almost the proof of concept, then building the process, then training the team on it, and then going on to the next.

To the extent that you're comfortable, I want to clarify what you mean by building a speaking team and speaking events. People that hear that probably think, oh, he has an arm where he gets paid to speak. That's not what you mean at all. You're actually paying a lot to sponsor an event. Yeah. To get on stage and driving them to a booth that you have in the back. Do I kind of have that right?

Yeah.

Exactly.

Explain that model a little bit, why it's working so well.

Yeah. So there's a video on our, um, my Chandler Bolt YouTube channel that people can watch if they want to. It's called the $30 Million Business Development Blueprint. We break down this whole model. High level, it is me and 5 to 7 speakers. We go speak a lot. A lot of times they're either free gigs or they're— we're paying to be there. Most of the time it's the team. For the big events, it's me. And then, I mean, I would put our speakers up against anybody. We come in, we rock it, and they speak. It's not just this, this, you know, sales pitch or this, you know, just robots.

No, you're giving value.

We give a ton of value. And that's where I think people misunderstand this model. They think that we're pitching from stage. So they think like old school, run to the back of the room with your credit card. Yeah, it's not that at all. Event organizers love us because we deliver value at the end of the event or at the end of the talk. In 2 to 5 minutes, we'll just say, hey, how many of you writing a book is on the next year or someday list? Perfect. We brought, you know, I spoke 2 days ago in Arkansas. There was 500 or 600 people in the room. And I said, hey, we brought 200 copies of this book. So not for everybody. But if you're serious about this, grab a book. I'll sign it for free right after this. And so then you get this massive rush to the booth and for $1,000 or $2,000 worth of books, we just got hundreds of leads. So good. And then which is you think about this is where people get so weird about this. They're like, well, I don't want to do that. I'm like, well, how much are you paying on Facebook every month? How much? How much? What's your cost per lead? Those leads are way worse than what I'm getting over here. But then we'll split the room and we'll say, hey, how many of you, you're writing a book this year? And this is the priority for you. Okay, perfect. Scan this QR code, meet with us for 30 minutes while we're here, and then we book out the team and we'll just on the spot meet for 30 minutes. And I think, you know, as we're recording this podcast, the event I did 2 days ago, uh, as of this morning we were at $85 grand in sales.

So good.

So I mean, it just— and, and so that'll— there will be a long tail on that. And then we just do that a lot.

I love that.

What made you discover that model, and who— what other types of businesses do you think that model would apply to?

Hmm, I don't know. I'm not very smart or strategic. Well, I don't know. We just do. We see someone else doing it and then, yeah, I mean, all my best ideas come from other people way smarter than me, and I just look at what's working for them and I say, hey, that looks interesting. So it started way back when my buddy Pete Vargas, he said, Chandler, you're doing all these webinars. You need to speak in person. I'm like, I don't want to. Why would I do that? Yeah, I'm like, I can just do it from my home and you're telling me I need to go travel? He said, trust me. Try it. And so that's where I think a lot of people overcomplicate things. We just ship and we just go. So that was where that first year I said, all right, well, we're going to get in more reps than anybody else and either it'll work or it won't. And so I spoke at 24 events. We did $1 million in sales literally on the last day of the year. Crossed the million. We crossed the million right at the end. And then we said, okay, that's proof of concept. We got away from it for a little while and then I, and then I saw Pete building a speaking team, and I think maybe even, you know, some other— like, you look at Dave Ramsey, or you look at John Maxwell, or you look at Grant Cardone, or you look at kind of other people in the space, and you say, okay, that's interesting how they're doing that, maybe we could replicate that. And so then we started building that out, and I don't know, we just execute and operationalize stuff, I think, a lot better than most people. But it's never this big thought-out thing. It's just, let's implement. And so then I said, all right, well, who in our team is— would be good for this? Oh, our coaches and our sales reps, because they're already doing this stuff just one-on-one. So then we built out this whole internal kind of speaking training program where we said, all right, well, if you're a good sales rep, well, then we'll give you a small webinar. And if you do that well, we'll give you a small local event and maybe an affiliate webinar. And then we'll put you on stage with 100 people. And then before we knew it my team was speaking at bigger events than I was. Yeah, they didn't really— I'm, I'm like, hold up, you're speaking to 1,500 people? I've never done that.

Yeah, that's awesome.

And that was, uh, it was several years ago, but so we just started building it out. And I think it can work for a lot of people, but you got to have a high-ticket offer in my experience, or because it's, it's just like everything else, it's CAC to LTV, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Or like Maybe your CAC to average order value, if you're, if you're, if your average order value is similar to your lifetime value. So it's got to be substantial enough to where it makes sense because it's expensive. I mean, you're flying people around, putting them up in a hotel, the booth, all that's paying the booth.

You guys got to tell people what CAC to LTV means. So they're going to—

customer acquisition cost to LTV, lifetime value, or AOV, acquisition, average order value, average order value, or ACV. Annual customer value. So you always have to compare your CAC, how much it costs you to acquire the customer, to either your AOV, your ACV, or your LTV. So you can say, would I trade $50 to make $200? And if the answer is yes, then, then it's a green light. If it's, would I pay $50 CAC to make $40? The answer is probably no, unless it's $40 every single month.

Right.

Then maybe it's yes. So knowing those metrics will change everything about your business.

When I would just even go a step further and I would say they're the most important metrics in any business and it's the fundamentals of business. It's the most important math. And so I think maybe just for, for people watching or listening to this, let's do an exercise. Let's say that you've got $100,000 this month just to acquire customers for your business. That's your marketing budget. So then this is what I tell my head of marketing and my team as well, is that, okay, that $100,000, that's not a marketing expense, that's a marketing investment. Now you can spend that however you want. To acquire the most customers at the cheapest cost to acquire a customer possible. And you always, in my opinion, you always got to be looking at that spend and say almost like you're an investor on Wall Street, okay, the market's shifting. How do I better allocate that budget? And so for a while it was organic SEO and still is to some extent because that was basically zero CAC. And I mean, it just— that was just printing money. Now AI is starting to eat some of those SERPs. So we say, okay, or search engine results. So we say, okay, maybe we need to invest a little bit different. But we look at kind of the two most important metrics under there are what is the lowest CAC and the highest scale? Because, you know, okay, let's say this thing over here is zero CAC, but there's no scale. Like I can't spend money and get and make it grow. It's more earned media instead of paid media. Well, then Okay, well, I probably need to lean into more of the paid media. So I think we're at a crossroads a little bit now where we know that we can cut the checks and we know that we can get 4 to 1 or 5 to 1 or whatever. But it is a little bit of hamster wheel revenue. And so we're saying, okay, some of that, even that is like a portfolio where we're going to go to 60 to 80 events, 10 to 20 of them are totally going to bomb. We're going to lose money. 10 to 20 of them are going to be 10xers, 20xers. I mean, just massive wins. And then you got somewhere in the middle So how do you constantly reevaluate, prune the losers, double down on the winners, but then also look at that into comparison to what I think you guys have done really well, which is all the social media stuff where at low scale it's really high CAC. Yeah, but at the scale that you guys are at, it's very low CAC and it's— I mean, it's very scalable. You can build a media team around it. You can— so that's what—

that's what Fake Chandler Bolt was doing. Yeah, that guy had zero fulfillment cost.

Yeah, exactly.

Sell, sell a customer as you and not deliver.

Actually deliver.

That was the best. I want to— you said something I hope people grabbed on to. You speak up there and you say, how many people, you know, want to write a book over the next year? I've got only a couple hundred copies of these at the back. If you're interested, you can scan this QR code, go back and claim your book, right? So the book is a tool in many ways. And this is how we're going to segue into why people should write. A book is a tool in many ways to be able to help your business. One, it's a tangible opt-in.

Yeah.

Come back to the booth and get a book or free plus shipping or when you go speak somewhere, you get to hand them out so that now this is on their, their nightstand for the next year. Right. And they think of you whenever they need you. But also it's a way to edify yourself. I remember when the blue checkmark was a big thing. Well, shit, now people can buy their damn blue checkmark. So what's the next edification? I think books and a good book is the blue checkmark. Like, have you been good enough to publish a book? Even if you self-publish it, is it good enough to sell a decent number of copies?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the root word of authority is author.

Yeah.

You want to become an authority in the mind of your prospects and customers. Well, you do when they find out you're an author. And so that's where I think in an age of AI, in an age of just mass content that's very thin and wide, books are still standing out. And you just, you can go deep with your prospects or with your people in your audience. And, um, we did this whole case study the other day on 8-figure book launches, and you start looking around and you see Dan Martell, Alex Hormozi, Cody Sanchez, Amy Porterfield. So, I mean, you could keep going. Myself, 8-figure book launches. Well, how'd they do it? And so we just kind of broke down all this. But I say that because I think a lot of times people think, oh, I'm doing this social media thing, that's new media, this is an old medium. Well, the old medium has become the mechanism for all of the biggest creators to go a level deeper with trust and in a way that grows the business. So that's where we're, we're always thinking, hey, how do we reverse engineer this to bring in customers? Because if it doesn't bring in customers, well, then it's just a side quest.

Yeah.

Why do you think people should write a book now? And who, like, really, let's talk about if we're going to do this, if somebody is listening and they're like, oh, I think I have a book in me, like, how should we really maximize it? Who should be writing?

And I'm going to add to that, who should and who shouldn't?

Yeah, there's a lot of people that shouldn't.

I agree.

I agree. You give me a category, I'll tell you who shouldn't be in that category. But I think the people who should are one, we have a bunch of folks who say, hey, I have this life experience, I want to write this book. It has nothing to do with my business, but if my kids and my grandkids read it and it's part of my legacy, it's on this earth, that'll be worth it to me. That's great. We help a ton of people do that. But then there's the other bucket, which is people who want to grow their business. And I think it's the way I think about it is what other thing could you spend a few, a few, let's call it a couple hundred or a few hundred hours on, which is a big time commitment. Right. But then you have a marketing asset that exists forever.

Yeah.

Like there's a lot of things I've spent hundreds of hours on that are just fleeting and that it happened 3 years ago and I'm not making any money from that. It just, it's done. But a book, you do that once and if you leverage it correctly, it can explode the business. And so I think if you're a knowledge-based business, you've got a coaching information business, social media presence, or some sort of business where you're paid for expertise and that expertise is what makes you money, well then package that expertise into a book and then use that book on the front end of the business. But you got to be very strategic about it, otherwise it probably won't do much. But if you do it strategically, it can be one of the best things you ever do to grow your business.

So how would somebody who has a business right now who's like, okay, I feel like I'm a fit, how would they start to decide which topic they should really hone in on for their business so it's a match. Have you ever left a meeting thinking, oh my gosh, that was so productive, and then 10 minutes later you're pinging someone like, wait, what am I supposed to do? Or worse, you've been heads down the entire meeting, furiously typing notes instead of actually listening, and now your camera's off and your brain is fried. Meetings are a mess, and you guys, Granola fixes that. Granola is an AI-powered notepad built for the way real people actually meet, and here's how it works. You take rough notes like like you normally would, and in the background, Granola securely transcribes the meeting. Then it turns everything into clean, structured, actually useful notes when the meeting ends. And the best part is that Granola works through your device's audio, which means it integrates seamlessly into the video conferencing tools you already use. So there's no setup and there's no awkward bots. It's just your normal meeting with superpowers. You get to actually listen instead of frantically typing every single word and still walk away knowing exactly what was decided, who's doing what, and what comes next. So no balls are dropped. You guys, I love this because so many times I get off of a ton of meetings all day long and I feel like I didn't do anything because I don't even know what to do next. And I feel so overwhelmed, like I wasted the whole day not really being clear on anything. It saved so much time. I can just look back, know exactly what my tasks are, and it helps me feel so good about my day. So if meetings are eating up your day, Granola is a no-brainer. You can try it totally free for 3 months. Just head to granola.ai/earn. That's granola.ai/earn to get your time back. Get 3 months free at granola.ai/earn.

A lot of times we find they're in— people are in one of 3 buckets. They're— they don't know what they would write about, they have an idea, or they have too many ideas. So if they're not sure what they want to write about, I always say, what are the broken record conversations that you keep having that you're tired of talking about? You feel more like a parrot than a CEO because you're just talking about the same thing over and over again. Well, that's typically where the good ideas are. Or maybe it's the thing that people— when you talk about that topic or when people experience that thing, they pick up the phone and they say, I got to do business with you. And so that's a really great place to start. But then if you got too many ideas, the way I like to narrow it down is which one can you finish the fastest and are you most likely to finish? And it's probably the thing that you're tired of talking about and you're on to some new thing. That's a lot of times what we see is like, oh yeah, yeah, I could write that, but I'm really excited about this new thing. And so I just tell people, well, before you move on to the new thing, just take a little bit longer, crystallize all that, because you could write it in your sleep and then put it into your business, and then it'll be an on-ramp, uh, for for the business. So when I talked about those 4 Ps earlier of person, pain, promise, price, I think you need to get really clear on that for your book. You clearly need to get clear on that in your business, but then you need to make sure that those two match. Because if you just write a book that you're passionate about that has nothing to do with your business, well, then the book could do really well and it's not going to make the cash register ring. So the better that that gets aligned, the more revenue actually comes in from the book. Book itself.

So how do we start to write the book, like you said, in a short amount of time? So many people, like, if we do want to use it for this, like someone like me who is actually considering this right now in self-publishing— I'd done traditional publisher in 2017, so went through the whole thing. Uh, I think we did like an 8-city tour throughout the year.

Yeah.

And I have so many lessons from that, let me just tell you, that could literally just sell your company and get everybody to go, because it was, it was a great quantum leap for my life and my like evolution. But I do think that self-publishing is truly like— it just cuts off, it cuts out the middleman and it really— you can get your message faster. You can say what you want. There's not a whole lot of people like weighing in on— well, there's nobody weighing in on your idea for the most part unless you want that coaching. But how can people do this in a way that isn't this really long drawn out, like traditional publishing can be, you know, 18 months to 2 years from getting this book out, which feels insane to me. But how do we get it so that it's a shorter amount of time? Because if it is used for a tool in your business, a lot of business people are like, how am I gonna carve this out of what I'm already doing?

Yeah, yeah, great question. If you're open to it, I'd love to use that as a case study.

Use it.

All right.

So what, like, for your next one, what would you— said you're thinking about it. Where are you at in the process?

Um, the closer, like, it's actually— I told him today and we switched the topic, but I feel like it's very close because now I've heard so much about how I can get help to make it a lot faster.

Yeah.

So I I do feel like it's something I would like to start in the next literally month or two.

Are you open to talking about the topic? We can totally edit this out.

Yeah, I'm not going to say the name, but I'm so open to the topic.

So, so what's, what's the topic and does that align to your business?

So everybody asks me over and over, how did you get from, you know, high school dropout? Yeah. And like the stories of us being in debt and using our parents' retirement and all the things to where you are now. And it was like mentors and masterminds and we sell a mastermind. So I want to talk about these big leaps in your life. Essentially, books that resonate with me are like The Big Leap, like massive leaps that you take. What are the things required that you need to do in order to do that? And I want it to be a sales tool into what we're doing.

Yeah, great. And then you're already coaching on that, that like that's already integrated into the coaching that you're doing.

Essentially, yes.

We—

it meant, uh, the two masterminds that we do are all, um, like business coaching.

Yeah, I love it. So that's great. So I think you're in a very similar spot to a lot of people, which would be you've already written the book, you just, you just don't know it. You still know it's in the one-on-one conversations, it's in the group coaching, it's in the event I did for 2 years.

It's literally a keynote I did. Yeah.

So then that's there, right? And so, so I think this is a perfect way to think about this. You already did the most important part, which is you've reverse engineered it to the main thing that, that will make the cash register ring and make money in your business. So now we can back into that. There's some common themes of major leaps in your life and stuff like that. And then, well, how do you write it? We, we call it the Moore Writing Method, which is mind map, outline, rough draft, editing. So, but I like to play to your strengths. So what I would do is I would mind map all the ideas around this major leaps and masterminds and there's stories that you maybe— and this— so then you got a story bank. Okay, so there's the— which I saw your carousel, I think it was yesterday.

Um, that's my story. Yes, by the way.

So good, so good. I'm over here thinking, I'm like, because part of mine is college dropout to 8 figures.

Yes, totally.

She just stole your story. She's a high school dropout. She's got me beat. Yep, yep.

I'm an elementary school dropout, so fuck both of you.

I'm a daycare dropout. That's your—

she showed up, sucked her hand, said, fuck this shit, I'm out of here. Went and built a business.

So I mean, that's just such a great hook and that's a story, right? So I would have my, my concept bank and my story bank. Hey, here's this story, here's this story, here's this story, which there, there are some really cool stories. I don't know that if you talk about them publicly that much, so I won't mention them. But even just Aubrey was talking about from our trip in Cologne, she's like, oh, I love— like Lori was sharing this and this and that really resonated with me. And so you've got that story bank that you already are probably talking about teaching. That's there. You've got your key concepts. Then you turn that into an outline, and then you rough draft it. But the most important thing is you rough draft it in the way that you do best. And so that's where, if you know, I was talking— I want to say it was Pace last week— where I'm like, all right, dude, you're recording YouTube videos and running live events. So we're going to map out this real estate book and then just go do a video series on it and you're used to doing that, that's great. That's how you write the rough draft. Maybe it's for you, you say, all right, well, we're going to do our next mastermind event and I'm going to teach the core keynotes and that's going to force me to crystallize the concepts. And then now that is the core concepts that we teach in the book. But it's kind of playing to your strengths to get the rough draft done. And then we can talk about all the launch stuff, but honestly, once you get there, okay, cool, now Now we can align it to the business and make sure that it's a, it's a major revenue needle mover.

Love it. Great. Let's document it. I'll become an affiliate and we'll just go the whole process. It's great.

You just said something that was really interesting to me. You use Pace as an example. Hey man, you're used to speaking on video. Do a video series. We'll turn it into a book. How has AI changed book writing for the better and for the worse? Because what I imagine there is Great. Do a video series, load it into Claude. Say, Claude, turn this into a book. Now you got your rough draft, tweak it, publish. So that might be one example of how it's improved it. But also everything's a double-edged sword. Yeah, I'm sure it's kind of messing everything up as well.

Yeah, I think there's two radically different approaches that a lot of people are taking. There's the AI slop. So the bar has been lowered where people just say, oh yeah, boop boop, two buttons, ChatGPT. Which sucks. Yeah, these days.

Yeah, it's terrible.

And then they got a book. Or the total opposite in the spectrum is AI is the devil. It's ruining the creative process. It's robbing from creatives. So bury your head in the sand. We're not using it. We've decided to take the total opposite approach to basically everyone else. And we just say, hey, how do we zig when other people are zagging? Which is combining the best of both worlds. So we've got New York Times bestselling ghostwriters on staff. We've got We've got really incredible coaches and our, our thing is we're really good at the human component and the strategy component. So how do we combine that with AI to write better books faster, to market them better and use it to level up the quality of the book versus just shipping something crappy quickly? Yeah. And then even just tying this back into your book, I would say, okay, there's probably a lot of things as part of that that are 70% baked concepts. That you can use AI to then crystallize into memorable frameworks.

Totally. That is exactly where I struggled. It's like I, I have the story and the lesson, right? And for me, frameworks has always been like my arch nemesis. My brain just does not work that way. I'm content, not the frame.

Like, yeah.

So it is definitely with AI has been life-changing because if you feed it enough, it can actually give you something really good. If you don't feed it enough, it's going to suck, you know? So For me now, doing frameworks, if I feed it enough and the concepts and the stories and exactly what I want, then I get a framework to then hang all the content on, which is 100% amazing. So I like using both. But you are so right on the slop. Like I can actually from the first sentence, like see exactly what AI— exactly who used it and you just feel that and it doesn't— it doesn't feel authentic.

Yeah.

So anyway, but I love— I actually love both because you're so right. You can get a great framework which helps the reader follow a lot more. And every single successful entrepreneur that I see, author that I see, they have both. They have like story and a framework that people can follow because our brains love that. Yeah, it loves to feel very organized while also feeling creative and expanded.

So, so I love that you said that because that, that is, in my opinion, what the book is so great at is it forces you to do that. So even this book is an example. I wrote this book when we had already been teaching this stuff for 5 to 7 years or something like that. And there was a bunch of things that were 80% there, but they were not memorable.

Totally.

The Moore Writing Method, the— all that stuff. And so it forces you to create the frameworks. And then now we use the book in onboarding employees, onboarding customers, teaching at the top of the funnel, helping with sales.

You're all speaking the same language.

SOPs.

Yeah, they became all the SOPs. And then that's where I think can make it even more powerful because you map out all that stuff and then you say, okay, create a framework on this. I mean, just kind of riffing as, as, as you were saying that, I got me thinking, I'm like, okay, let's say you have these core stories and things that you teach and you can prompt it to either create a framework around this or you might say, all right, well, this is the Harder way to scale a business. And Harder is an acronym and it's you hate feedback, you blah, blah, blah, or whatever. And this is the Lori method. I'm just totally making that up. Yeah, but something like that is like, oh, the Lori Harder method is you learn from, you learn from people, you get around others in the form of a mastermind, you whatever. And I like this L now all of a sudden, like, now, now all of a sudden, like, I am like you, I don't naturally think that way. No, but if I'm prompting with AI, I'm saying, okay, this is the stuff I already teach.

Yeah.

Just make it into a memorable acronym. Well then now all of a sudden it becomes a way more powerful teaching framework. That your customers repeat, that you can use for content clusters, all that stuff.

I have noticed like recently because I've really been using AI, but I have noticed people being more interested in things converting a little bit better on social, actually quite a bit better since taking these concepts that I used to just throw out there, stories that I would tell over and over, same story, but I'd tell it 7 different ways every single time because you don't, you don't have a framework. And so when I'm looking at the Amy Porterfields, the Jenna Kutchers, like, they create frameworks from the start. So whatever they're going to talk about, it's like always a system and a framework. And so, you know, they're so successful because people can regurgitate it back, tell you exactly what it is. Goes back to exactly what you were saying in the beginning of, do I know, do I know what it is? Is it something that I need? Is it at a good price point? And then hand over the wallet.

Yeah.

When you, you might have great stories, great concepts, you know, this has truly been me for years. Like, I can great things, get inside of our masterminds and it's going to literally rock your world, blow your mind. I think we're some of the best at it. But if I can't get the message in frameworks for people from the beginning, they're never going to experience what's going to happen on the other end. So I love a book and this idea for anyone who's even feeling like they don't have their business wrapped up into a nice package yet, because it is the one thing that forces you to do it. If you're like, okay, I'm going to create this whole book around all of the systems that I do in the business, it makes you name it. It makes you realize if it's like easy for people to understand and puts it all in one place. Now when you go to a keynote, you're done. Like you're good, you're done. You already have it in the book. When you go and teach on a webinar, you're good, you're done. You have it in a book. Like, I don't think people realize how much easier it makes your life when you put in the 100 hours.

Yeah.

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I, I agree. And I think even when you look at, like, if you look at my table of contents, which this is what gonna, what's gonna happen for your book, right? These are all blog posts, YouTube videos, carousels. I mean, it's, you've done all the hard work for your next year of content. Or you can reverse engineer that and you might say, oh, okay, well, I'm doing this Big Leap book. Well, over the next 6 months, let me just carve out my outline and do the social media post, do the YouTube videos, and reverse engineer it that way. But it forces you to crystallize it like we talked about. And then I think kind of altruistically, it helps you help people at scale. We always talk about leveraged impact, which is what I call it, which is basically you do, you do work once, you create the book, the book goes on to impact thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even millions of people. And it's the people who can't even afford to work with you because to your point— and now it would— and a lot of people who can, but to your point, you've got all these great things but they're behind a paywall.

Yeah.

Where people don't experience it until they pay you and join your mastermind. And this is the bridge to that. And it's the thing that you can confidently say, hey, if you can pay $15 for my book, I can help you. And I don't feel bad telling you to do that because even if you can't afford to work with me, that's all my best stuff. And then your best people read that and they say, oh shoot, that's what's behind this paywall. Is it even better than this? Well, then I'm in.

That's great. The thing I want to start to wrap on is this. Everyone understands you have to write the book, right? Couple hundred hours goes into that, whatever. Most people don't think, how am I going to launch the book?

Exactly.

And I want to connect the dots to in the beginning we were joking that you didn't have any social media and you just started it, yet you just had an 8-figure book launch of your book. Book, which is massive.

That's insane.

How did you do that? What are the key components to having a good book launch, even if you're not a big social media influencer? How can you make that launch successful?

Great question. So for me, it's not about the launch week, it's about the launch year and beyond. And so we, we talk about kind of the, uh, uh, the, the difference between a Toyota Camry launch and the Lamborghini launch. So it's funny, you guys got to experience my first time ever in driving.

Yeah, that was some of my favorite parts. Like, you're like, what is going on?

They're like, which, which one you want, Chandler?

I'm like, oh, it's like you're in a McLaren to begin with.

Yeah.

And not just any old McLaren.

Can I drive? How does this work?

Yeah, yeah. McLaren 760. And you're just like, what do I do?

Yeah, yeah. And I didn't even know what these cars are. So the My buddies are texting me like, dude. And Dan's like, which one do you want? Like the blue one? Like, you mean the McLaren? But that's the way I think a lot of people think about their books is they think about it like a supercar. It's fast, it's sexy, but it's gone in a flash. Yeah, like it's shoo. And then they stop talking about it. But then where I want to do instead is I want to create a Toyota Camry that just keeps going and going and going and going. So that's when I thought about this book, is I said, all right, well, the launch week, the launch month, that's cool. How do we do 6 figures, maybe 7 figures from the launch? Which, let's say, uh, what's the price point of the mastermind?

Uh, $7,500.

Yeah, about $7,500.

$7,500. So let's say, okay, if we want to do 6 figures, well then we need to do— let's round up to $10K just for easy math— we need to bring in 10 clients for the mastermind from book launch. So then let's reverse engineer that. Then how do we get to 7 figures? But then more importantly, how do we make it a core pillar in the business? And so with this book, I just said let's integrate it into every funnel that we have, into all the speaking gigs that we do, so that it just keeps bringing in revenue. And specifically what we teach people is how do you use it to get more leads, more sales, more referrals. So more leads, this So this brings in a few hundred to a couple thousand leads a month. A bunch of those turn into customers. More sales. We integrate it into every sales process that we have. So webinars— hey, if you, if you register and show up and stay to the end, we'll give you a copy of the book. Now all of our costs go down on the front end. Our pull-through goes up. Referrals— you got people in your mastermind already. Here's two copies of this book. Here's one for you and one for someone you know who needs to be in this mastermind. And so you're adding value by giving the book And so it's just a bunch of stuff like that to say, let's integrate it in there. But then I think if we were smarter and had a bigger platform, we would have probably done it differently, which is what I did when kind of I was breaking down in that video of all the stuff of Dan and Alex and, and Cody Sanchez. And that's some of what we're doing with Pace, with Carlton Dennis, if you know him. Yeah, that's right. And so with their books is we're saying, okay, well, let's use the book to feed into a virtual event. And you use that virtual event to make it rain mastermind sales.

Great.

And so they buy the event bundle or they buy the book bundle for $50, and that comes with a free ticket to the virtual event. And at the virtual event, we sell the mastermind. And so that's what Cody did. And I think she did $3 million from that virtual event. That's what Amy did. And she did $1 million or $2 million from that virtual event. So it's like almost like using a book as a front end instead of saying, pay $19 for my virtual event.

It's buy my book, you get to come.

Exactly.

And you're pre-qualifying people. By the way, this is why I love you. I've never heard anybody stand here or sit here and say, I want to do the Toyota Camry of book launches. Like, that's why I love you, buddy. That's why I love you.

All right.

Well, listen, let's put a bow on this thing. If somebody is like, okay, I want to write a book with you, how can they get a hold of you? Where should they start?

Yeah. So two, two routes. They can get this book for free. Publishedbook.com/audio. You can get the book and that's a really great starting point.

Publishedbook.com/audio.

Or we created a link for you guys, selfpublishing.com/Harder, and they can book a call with my team.

Awesome.

Chat. We'll map out a plan.

Selfpublishing.com/Harder. Yes, I love it.

With me.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, right alongside Lori. Maybe you should do a whole write your book with me.

I should.

Seriously, that'd be a cool campaign.

Inspired me.

We'll sell a bunch of Books. You can kind of do a how much did you write?

Like, how much should I write? How much should I make? That'd be great.

That'd be actually awesome.

All right.

Well, listen, I love that you took the time to come here and not just talk about books, but talk about business because you built a spectacular business. I mean, a really great fucking business. And I've got so much respect for what you've built and the way that you've built it. You're not one of these shiny people out there with a bunch of followers saying, look at me, and then having to be bullshit behind the scenes. You've built a great business, serve people really well. And then somebody thought it was cool enough to fake your social media. I love you and I appreciate you coming by to talk about business.

We're so grateful for you. Thank you so much. And you guys, if you are interested in this, you can just scroll down to the show notes and you can click on it and so easy, take you right to all of his stuff and you can start writing your book.

Thank you guys.

Until next time, earn your happy. Bye everyone.

Great to have you.