0436 | Dave Chesson

Hi, I'm Dave Chessen, the founder of Kimmelpreneur. And you're listening to EA interviews.

EA interviews episode 436, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week, join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority Effect interview. You hear me talk about books all the time because they're fantastic and I believe every business should have a book, including yours. And I am super excited to have the founder of Kindlepreneur. Today's episode, Dave Chessen, who I believe is a wealth of wisdom. There's no doubt in my mind he's gonna give you a lot of wisdom and notes you should be taking. And I was gonna say notepad, but honestly, grab a notebook because, you know, we're about books here on the show and there's so many things I'm gonna be asking him about selling books and what's the best thing to do about your book and his company. But I just learned some new information and we're gonna throw that in here too. So I'm going to bring up Dave Chessen right after we thank our sponsor and expert authority world. I only have one question for you. Are you ready? Player 1. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you regardless of where you think your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Dave Chessen. Dave, how are you feeling today?

Not too bad. Glad to be here. And thanks for having me.

Oh, I'm excited you could make it. Like I said, you're such a wealth of wisdom with books and publishing and all this stuff.

Tell us a little bit about your background and how you even got into it, because I'm not even sure I know the full story.

Yeah, no problem. In truth, I never thought I would be here when I grew up. You know, at some point we realized that I had dyslexia. And you know, as a kid with dyslexia, you never think that you're going to be some kind of writer. So throughout school I always thought, no English writing, that's not for me. And so I went into things like physics and science and did engineering just to get as kind of far away from writing. But it doesn't mean that your desire to write goes away and so there was at one point in my. And I was in the military, and I was stationed in Korea, and my wife and I had this really important conversation. We at. She asked me, she was like, hey, Dave, are you in the military for the long run? Are you trying to become like, an admiral or something? I'm like, no, no. She's like, well, then can we find a way to get you home, you know, to be with your family? And I'm like, let's do this. And so when you're on the other side of the world, your options for doing something that either, you know, brings in a new income or starting a new business, they're pretty limited. You know, like when I'm in Korea, right, and I'm awake, Americans are sleeping and vice versa. So if I'm starting something, it had to be something that didn't need me to manage support. Another thing that was incredibly important, too, was that I was always going out to sea on, like, the South Korean warships or traveling to other countries. So it couldn't be a business that needed me to be there to keep it alive, right? And so it was through this that I started learning about building websites and search engine optimization. Because then I could build something that was constantly bringing in traffic, even when I'm sleeping or even when I'm out to sea. Now, I built out these websites, these niche websites, and I wasn't making a lot of money from them. So I said to myself, I either need to scale up my operations so I can make hundreds of these websites, or maybe I need to figure out a better way to, shall we say, increase the revenue from the existing ones that I've done.

What were the initial ones you had?

Well, one was on language, like learning language. Another one was on aviation, on history, like, you know, and so I was. I was finding these little niches where there was a. There was a lot of people going to Google searching for something, and they weren't finding what they wanted. And so when I'd done that, I then discovered about Amazon and Kindle Direct Publishing, right? It was somewhat kind of new at the time, but there were still more and more people coming in.

Probably even CreateSpace at that point, huh?

Yeah, yeah, it was CreateSpace for sure. And for those who don't know, Amazon for ebooks was KDP. And CreateSpace was how you did print books back in the day. And then finally Amazon was like, yeah, that's kind of dumb. We need to put them together into one, right? So, so. But here's the thing, though. I was Never. I would never credit myself as this amazing writer. I can't just sit down and write about tying my shoes or whatever I feel like. And people be like, oh, my goodness, this guy's incredible. So what I needed to do was exactly what I did with the websites, which was analyze Amazon, look at Amazon, and try to figure out like, hey, what is it that people want, right? They're going to Amazon, they're searching for things, and there's no book that exists for them. And so when I started to treat Amazon like I did Google, right, Which is knowing what people wanted and where there's opportunities, I then started to write books that centered around that. And what allowed this to happen was I didn't have to be the best writer. I was presenting information in a clear, concise way for people to read. And then Amazon was getting that in front of the market that already existed there. And they were selling my book for me while I was out to sea or sleeping. And that was a really big boon for myself was that realization. Wow.

And how long ago was that? What year?

Oh.

2010, maybe 2009.

How did the first book go?

Really well. It was just kind of one of those things where the book itself was actually a good fit. It was about language learning, and it fit on my website as well. So I had it where Amazon was sending new people to it, and my website was sending people from Google to it. Because the funny thing is, is that people were coming and they want to learn about learning a language, right? But that's their biggest pain point. And they can either crawl through my entire website and kind of read things, maybe out of order and all over the place, but just to pay like $5 to have it all packaged perfectly in chronological order, absolutely worth it to people. And so it became this really big increase in the revenue. I went from making, you know, a hundred dollars a month just from Google Ads on the. On the website to making over a thousand dollars a month just because of the inclusion of the book, which was really just repackaging the niche website. So that's the first thing that really got me going. But then it was the next step was looking at Amazon and studying it more. Hey, what? Why is it that Amazon's showing this book over my book? What can I do to convince them to put me at number one? Because when you rank number one in Amazon, you get at least 35% of the people that search for it will absolutely click on your book. But when you rank number two, it's going to be less than 15% so I could double the number of people that come and read my book or look at my book if I could just get myself from number two to one. And so when I started to do that, I realized nobody was writing about it. And that was where I started kindlepreneur.com, my website, which is all about teaching people about Amazon, how to work with the digital age and market your book. And from there it's grown beyond that. I've been working as a consultant with publishing companies, like major companies. I've assisted New York Times bestselling authors. And that's just kind of grown out the entire platform as a whole.

So.

What branch were you in, by the way?

I was in the Navy.

Thank you for your service.

It was my pleasure.

When you made that jump, obviously it was all family centric. You left the Navy, you started doing this, and you launched Kindlepreneur. When was the point when you go, wow, this has really taken off and congrats on going from 100 to 1,000amonth. And, you know, that's a pretty big jump, you know, in and of itself. But when did you realize this can be something I can be doing full time?

Well, actually, I kind of started again. I'm probably more of the engineer mind, but I said to myself, look, my wife and kids are depending on me to bring in a salary, so I could not afford to jump out of an airplane and learn how to build a parachute on the way down, right? Instead, I said, you know what, what I need to do is I need to make $10,000 a month from this online thing, from my books, from, you know, consistently for three months. And if I can do that, if it can maintain that, then I know without a doubt that I can get out of the military and that I will be able to support my family. So I set to work. So while I was in Korea, I built a whole bunch of websites, I wrote a whole bunch of books, and that was really getting close. But you know, with the military, you can't just duck out whenever you're ready. So I had to take on one more tour. And so I chose a tour in Sri Lanka of all places. And while in Sri Lanka is where I really started Kindlepreneur, I started to build out. And right before I left Sri Lanka is when I started my first software, which is Publisher Rocket. But it was in the middle of my Sri Lanka tour that I was, I hit my mark financially and I was able to put in my papers and say, hey, hey, Navy. After This. I'm done. Done. Like I'm getting out. Give me my DD214, which is your honorable discharge from. From the military. So I finished up my time in Sri Lanka and flew right over to Franklin, Tennessee to start as a civilian. And since then I've been working from home, seeing my kids all the time. So it's been absolutely wonderful.

That's fantastic. And you were. I. I wanted everyone to know you weren't just in for a couple years and then made a. Made a switch. This was a big decision. How long were, were exactly were you in for?

By the time I got out of active duty, it was 11 years. And then I did two more years of reserves, so I did 13 years. Thirteen years.

Exactly.

And it's. And when did you officially kick off Kindlepreneur?

Kindlepreneur would have probably been, boy, it's got to be at least eight years ago.

Okay, 2015. Right?

Well, I guess it's got to be probably 2013, 2014. Okay.

So you've been at this for a while too. And how's that progressed from. You mentioned Kindlepreneur and then Publisher Rocket, which is awesome.

Not just, I want to be clear here to everyone listening, not just the progression he made, but also the software. You should check it out. What led you to the next stuff you did?

Well, yeah, you know, the idea of creating Publisher Rocket was sort of a springboard for so many other kind of components. So here I was writing Kindlepreneur, and a big thing that I would talk about is, you know, Amazon keywords and categories and all these important things that help new authors to be discovered on Amazon. But back then I was using these crazy Excel sheets, you know, and I was trying to get authors to follow the Excel sheets and look at all these crazy numbers and do all these things. And most people were like, dave, I just want to write. And I was like, yeah, I get that. And there were a couple of softwares out there that kind of did some of the things and they kind of helped. And I just kept saying to myself, man, I know that if I could just create a software that did the Excel sheet. But like, awesome, perfect and real quick, easy to understand.

I know it could do well because I could clearly see that readers wanted this on Kindlepreneur. So that got me to go search for a programmer. And I got incredibly lucky. I found this amazing, super talented programmer that, you know. And it's interesting when you get into those level of programmers, most of the time it's not so much the money that motivates them. It's the project or the idea. And I remember this particular programmer saying, hacking Amazon and unlocking their secret, that sounds cool to me. And so he took on the project. And to this day, I'll still have programmers look at that software and just be like, wow, this guy was amazing. Like, I never would have thought about that. And it just really opened up a lot. I. So I got very lucky. But at the same time, we launched Publisher Rocket, and it was called KDP Rocket way back in the day. And it was great. People were loving it. I kept needing more because I wanted to add more features. I want to make it even more robust. And I learned a valuable lesson when it comes to software. One above average software developer is worth a hundred average programmers. And that's not my quote. That actually came from Bill Gates, and I think he's absolutely right in that statement. And, and it's true, because my one advanced programmer, when he moved on, my average programmers fumbled and had problems. And constantly the software needed, you know, improvements. It felt like a game of whack a mole. You know, you'd have one problem pop up, you whack it, and then there's a problem, you'd whack that and then the same mole would pop up again. You're like, what? I just. I just whacked you? Come on. So it became very important that if I truly wanted to take the software and do what I want to do, I needed a better team. And so I invested in a software development company and that helped me to learn about the business of software. I started consulting and helping and working in. I started reading and studying like crazy to learn how to better work with a programming team, how to better create, you know, software architecture. That was a new phrase for me back in the day. And that was a turning point for me where all of a sudden I had an incredible talent pool. I fully understood the big picture of software and how to manage and improve. And so at that point I was like, wow, here I am.

You know, I have these websites, I have these markets, and now I have incredible software developers. And that's when I started building, like my other software, Atticus IO, which is a book writing and formatting software, which is just been absolutely incredible. We have so many plans that I think will really change the face of the publishing industry as a whole. And then there were other projects that kind of just kept popping up. And so from that point on.

Is that where Reader Scout came from?

Reader Scout? Yep. It was One of the, you know, I always, I always tell my team this, but it's like, it's so much fun being an author and having your own software team. Because the moment that I see a problem as a writer, I'm like, oh, man, wouldn't it be nice if. And that's always my statement, right? Wouldn't it be nice if. So Reader Scout is a free Chrome plugin. And the reason why this came about was a couple things. Number one is I saw this major scam that kept happening in our industry where printing presses would illegally OCR copy someone's book that is popular, right? Someone's book that is doing well. Any self, publisher, author, any. And they will make all these copies of the book and then they will send it into Amazon as an fba, which is Fulfillment by Amazon, right? That's where they send it in. Like, oh, we have all these copies, we're reselling the book. So all of a sudden, you, as an author, you'll want to wake up and you'll look at your print book sales and you get zero. You get nothing. You're making no money in your print books. But all the indications show that, no, you're still selling lots of copies. And what this is, is Amazon's choosing to sell the physical copies sent in by this fake printing press. And you're not getting any of that money. And so that was the first problem. This has been happening way too often. And by the time you finally get Amazon to admit this, because Amazon says people are allowed to resell a book. So if you go to Barnes and Noble and you buy a book and you read it, you can turn around and resell it on Amazon, and that's okay with them. So you have to prove to them it's a fake copy, not a repurchase copy. And that could take months of you losing all that money. So that was the first thing. The second thing is Amazon started changing price. They had glitches back in.

I think, July where all of a sudden they would glitch and change the price of your book. And when they did that, like, it would go from like, oh, Your book is 7.99, now it's $23. Well, all of a sudden your sales would just drop because nobody's gonna pay $23 for a fiction book or something like that, right? So this created this desire to say, boy, wouldn't it be nice if there was something that would alert me when the price changes on my book? And so I was like, all right, team, guess what? We're going to create something and I want to make this free. So let's figure out how to do this free. Because the more authors that use Reader Scout and immediately know when their price was changed on them, the faster they can act and the less profitable it will be for the pirates. And if we can make it less profitable on the pirates, it's less juicy for them to do it. And so we went on this kind of like crusade to create this free Chrome plugin that will monitor your books and will notify you either when you have a price change or when reviews come in.

And yeah, and again stems from that phrase of, wouldn't it be nice if.

Have you ever partnered with any organizations like IBPA or Ali, like what they're doing with the Audible in those situations to join forces and go, okay, you guys attack this front, we'll take this. And I mean I've seen a lot of people out there because Amazon's the big gun and if they say here's how it's going to go, I mean.

You probably have more poll than anyone I know, but can you go to Amazon and say, can you put that back for me by the end of the week?

Well, it is kind of funny. I have a lot of pool thanks to Atticus. Atticus IO so what's really cool about that software is that. So Amazon offers a free book formatting software called Kindle Create. And it's just a hot mess.

It's got a lot of problems. And clearly what it is was they, they built it years ago and they've never put a lot of effort into it to keep it up to date, keep it maintained, you know, and fix it.

Well, it's basically, basically an upgrade on the viewer, isn't it?

Yeah, pretty much. And so what happened was their head of Kindle actually found Atticus and was like, oh my God, we love this. And they contacted us and they were like, hey.

We love to work with you guys because we don't want to have to spend time on Kindle Create or fix it or well, in essence, they'd have to start all over, which means they're going to have to expend a lot of resources. So they came to us and said, hey, we'd love to give you information, you know, and APIs and things like that to make Atticus even better so that we, we don't have to worry about it. And I was like, sounds good to me. So it was actually through that software where I got a lot of access to Amazon and we've Been able to kind of have communications about some of their programming and look under the hood of Amazon as well. But before that, the only time Amazon's ever really acknowledged anything I did was they. I had written an article back in the day on Amazon Fiction keywords, like how do you choose keywords to get your fiction book in front of more authors? And Amazon immediately promoted that and said, learn from Kindlepreneur on how to optimize your book for more sales. I was like, wow, that's awesome. But the funniest thing was, was two weeks later Amazon literally changed their FAQ for keywords to reflect exactly what was in my article. I was like, well, I'll take that as, as a victory. So. But no, I really don't have much say with Amazon and truth be told is the more that I've worked with them, thanks to Atticus, the more that I understand that it is a thousand headed hydra and each head does not talk to the other. I've got crazy examples of people making decisions in that organization and not thinking about who it affects and it causing like pandemonium. Kindle shifting from Moby to Epub is absolutely one of those examples. That being said though, I've worked very closely with Barnes and Noble Press. I have a lot of, a lot of say. I've consulted them specifically. I've worked with Kobo in Depth, ingramspark, they're just north of me and I actually go out and have a drink with a bunch of their, their, their people as well.

So it's. Yeah, it's fun.

Yeah. I noticed on Atticus when you can pick the different sizes and different things, you have literally IngramSpark in there and it shows you which ones. It's pretty cool.

Exactly. As a matter of fact, we're actually in talks with them right now that if you use Atticus and this is going to happen here in the next month or so, but if you use Atticus to export a book, IngramSpark is going to greenlight the book automatically and fast track it to printing. And the reason for that is if you format any book and you submit it to Ingram, they will actually crawl the book and verify that it's not going to have a problem with any of their printers. This adds days beyond your submission. Whereas with our system there, we're allowing them to crawl through our code and verify the code will always be good. And then when it sees that it came from Atticus, they'll just like, okay, yeah, we're good. And then so it's going to Be neat because instead of days for publication, it will be hours. Wow, Atticus user, congrats.

That's a huge win.

Yeah, it's just been really fun. And like I said, I think what it is is that the entire industry just kind of looked at, you know, formatting and book writing as a whole. And I'd say it's one of the.

Areas that trips most people up. When a lot of our authors go, you know, whether they write it and we publish it or we help them with the writing and publishing, it always comes down to formatting.

Oh yeah.

You know, because some people, if they want to do it on their own, do it yourself. They may or may not want to edit it. When we do the professional program, we go through everything multiple, multiple times, but at the end of the day it's like, regardless of where the manuscript is, what's this thing going to look like you have, you can't just take a Google Doc or a Microsoft Word and throw it on Amazon or Ingram or wherever.

Right. And you know that. And again it comes back to the boy, wouldn't it be nice if. And so we created Atticus with the idea of man, wouldn't it be nice if you could write in a book writing software and then format within the same thing? Because a lot of people write in something, then they have to export, buy another program, learn that program, transfer it over.

I hope, hope it's still all in there.

Exactly. And then on top of that too, by the way, you have version control. Like crazy version control talked. I, I jokingly say that my goal with Atticus is to eradicate the. This is the final, final, final, all caps, final copy. This is the one I published. Stupid. Like, and you know what, you talk to authors and everyone's like, oh my goodness, I know, right? I still look at some of my previous books and I don't remember which one was actually the final. Right. You know, because I first off I listed them all the final, and second off, I kept them all because I'm pretty sure in the moment I didn't want to lose one or find out, ideally. So version control is just one of those things. And it comes from the process of writing a book. People are using lots of different software to finally get the book to the final version. And my goal is to make the one real true book writing software where an author can plan, they can write, they can collaborate and they can format without ever having to leave it. And so like I said, it was like, wouldn't it be nice if.

Yeah, print ready One, print ready. Two, print ready. Three, Boom.

No, I trusted you. And I already had Rocket when I saw the first stuff about Atticus. But when I, when I saw that it was like 2/3 down the page, it was like, let's eliminate final, final, final, final, final. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is hilarious.

Right? Exactly. And that's, that's just been it. So it's just been fun being an author and constantly adding just even little features or things that I've always wanted to see. I just love having that programming team and being in the market.

Yeah, you're giving me ideas. I didn't mention it before we got started, but I developed a Software to build WordPress websites automatically like a decade ago in under five minutes. And API access and all of that. What was it initially like? How the heck did you get access to Amazon's API years ago? I know they're more friendly about it now, but.

Well, I know what it was like going through just typical WordPress stuff and server configurations and getting those to talk with the databases. But what was Amazon like?

Oh, they're, they're terrible. I mean, they put it bluntly, you know, remember when I said that advanced programmer like, coming in, being like, oh, this is gonna be interesting. It's because it's ridiculously crazy. And a lot of when my, my advanced programmers now come into like, wow, that was neat. It was really cool because Amazon's really, really, really hard to work with. They don't make things easy. And so really, Rocket uses a lot of information from a lot of different places, not just, not just from an Amazon API or anything like that. We scrape information. We also use historical information we paid for forecasting as well as machine learning programmers to come in and look at the mass amounts of data to improve algorithms inside of the program. I know I'm throwing out a lot of crazy terms here, but needless to say, the thing learns and grows on its own. And one of my biggest goals to an extent is to not depend on Amazon as much as possible. Now, clearly to get Amazon book data, you need Amazon. But I think when we first started, we were dependent, like we were truly dependent on just the one thing. And we found to make a better program that fully understands the absolute industry as a whole, you can't just be a single point failure instead of it's something that learns and grows and improves with time, which is awesome.

Is it safe to say you're employing some of those same strategies with the sales calculator?

So the sales calculator actually it's kind of funny you bring that up. So for those who don't know on Kindlepreneur, one of the things that I love doing is creating a whole bunch of free tools. You know, like we talked about Reader Scout. Right. My goal is, is hey, let's make that thing free so that, you know, people can eradicate piracy faster. And I just think it's a really neat thing for authors to be able to do well when you have programmers. We also created a free Kindle calculator that helps figure out what the Amazon bestseller rank of any book is and tells you how many sales it made. And we have things like book description Generator that helps you make pretty book descriptions. So there's a whole slew of them. And what's funny is actually this month I've kind of brought my team back in and said, you know what, we need to redo all these free tools. I want them better. And by the way, one of my, if you ever like sit in on one of my software meetings or whatever, I have rule number one, they all know it, I call it the ABBA rule, which is always be adapting. If you're not adapting in software, you're going to die. And that comes from, you know, just not updating and improving. Like, think of software like a house. You know, first off, your architecture needs to be phenomenal. You need to think to the future. And that's like laying a foundation for one to two story house. Right. But second off, if a house goes unattended for a year or two, it's clearly going to have problems, it's going to be dilapidated pretty quickly. And also you need to upgrade things, you need to renovate, you need to keep on top of these things. And if you're not doing that, you're going to fall into exactly what just happened to Southwest, which if you don't know, Southwest canceled all those flights because they had an antiquated software system that was made in the 90s and they were not giving the attention. It finally just, just collapsed and everyone lost. They're not saying that, they're saying it's weather so they don't have to pay people. But you know, or you know, I think weather is like the, the clause that gets them to not have to reimburse or things like that.

From what is the standpoint?

Yeah, so, but that's the thing about software. And so if you're not always adapting, if you're not always improving and fixing and all those things, it's just going to collapse. Under itself. So I've always. I've always pushed for the whole abba. So we've decided that we're going to look at all the software. We found some more free tools that we can build for authors, kind of create it as the free author suite and new features and capabilities. And one of the things is, is adding more to that calculator to help give better information than just the number of sales. And thanks to the forecasting AI from Rocket, we can kind of put that in there too. So it'll be neat.

It sounds like you're using your software to piggyback on each other. It reminds me of the. The more you learn, the more you learn, the. The more, you know, the easier it is to learn.

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's also about thinking about why the person is there. Right? So what is it that they truly want? Well, with a book description generator, they're there because they want to make a really good book description, which is super important, by the way. If somebody comes to your Amazon sales page, they're going to read your book description, and that's where they make the decision on whether or not they're going to buy your book or not buy your book. And, well, there's a bunch of things that come to it. First off, the structure of how you create a book description. I've seen hundreds of books where the author thought it was a book report. It's not a book report. Do not give away the ending. Do not tell me the entire story. Like, do not give me the details.

In chapter one, we're going to cover A, B, C, D, E, F, G.

Well, like, there's cardinal rules. Like, never introduce more than three. And honestly, try to go for two characters. Why? I don't know these characters. I don't know their names. Don't throw in five, six, seven names in there. I'm going to forget and get confused and be like, what's going on? Instead, just give a really big, you know, kind of think of like a movie trailer. But kind of coming back to the point, on, on what I'm making here is the book description generator is there because you can actually use HTML coding to make your book description look even better. Right? And so that's the one thing. And we make it super easy for you to make it look the way you want it to look by just clicking buttons to make it that way, you don't have to be an HTML coder. Okay? But when you build that software, you are addressing that one thing. But what you really need to do is think about why is the person truly there. They're there because they want a good book description. So while we can help them with the coding, let's also help them with the other things. So, like, one of the things I built is a free PDF that gives you the blueprint on how an Amazon or online book book description should be structured.

Because ultimately they want to be selling more books and they're the writers. They. I found a lot of people when I'm speaking to them in the audience or whatever, it's like they want to get their message out. They might not want to market it, they might not want to sell it, and they sure as heck don't want to be tying together the 491 pieces. It takes.

Exactly. And, you know, we just had this conversation in today's meeting where I challenged my team to look at how we can incorporate chat GPT, you know, AI writing inside of the book description. And so one of the ideas that we have, and I'm always just trying to push the fold on this, is that you can put your book description into the book description generator, okay. And you can make it look as good as you want. And then to the right, we'll have a little box that says, hey, would you like AI writing to give a stab to see if it can improve your book description? And just click and it will. It will do it. You can look and you can change out how you want. And I think. I think what's crazy is that the AI writing is getting better and better and better. They have 3.5 out right now. When they come out with four, I think it's going to, like, blow people's minds. And so I'm like, hey, you know what, you write your book description, but what we as software or as we as tool developers want to do is I want to help you with what you want most. So you might have come here to make it look pretty, but how can I help you to make it better? And so that's why you might not.

Even be thinking about it. Yeah, you came there to go, let's make the COVID How do I make a cover? And you're not even thinking, should I have any authority building credibility on there? Like, if you have multiple other books, maybe put multiple bestselling author instead of just your name.

Yes, exactly. And so, like I said, I think that there are a lot of really cool things, and I'm constantly looking at what the true pain point is of the author. What do they need most? And how can we Best serve them. And it might start with something that just says, hey, we'll help make your book description look better. But now that there's more, and I look forward to adding to making it sound better, making it convert better, using key information that most authors would have to go study and read, and just implementing it inside, that's just what I love most about this. It's just that challenge of how can we always be adapting? How can we always make it better?

Yeah, and I think that's always going to be changing because when you were joking earlier about Amazon not updating the Kindle Viewer or combining KDP with CreateSpace, I mean, even that's been five years now. What are they going to do next in maybe a year or two or three or four? Because the industry's changing. Back when I did my first book, and it's surreal to even say this, it was 10 years ago, like today.

All it was was create space. I think you could do the KDP too, obviously, but there wasn't 58,000 other ancillary companies all going, here's how to do a book. There was like three, four, maybe. I remember your stuff from probably one of the longest, but I. Can you even name four other people that were out there a decade ago?

There's one that comes to mind that I think that was 13 or 14.

Joanna Penn was definitely one of the ones that was out there way back in the day. And because, you know, it's funny about Joanna, Joanna is a trendsetter. Like, she is always on the cusp of new technology, and it blows my mind how much she knows. She has been harping on blockchain technology and AI writing for years, and so she's been actually ahead of me on that. But we still have, have lots of conversations about it. She likes to geek out as well as I do on that kind of subject. And just what are the possibilities and what can we do in the industry and stuff like that? So she was definitely one of them. There were like some people, but they've kind of disappeared since. But I would say that she's probably the, the, the one that really comes to my mind. And if you haven't or any of the listeners haven't come across her stuff. She's an amazing writer and person. So very.

You know what's interesting?

Crushing it out.

Started finding some of her stuff about a month, month and a half ago, and then more and more started showing up. So it's surreal for you to go, you know what, she's one of the good ones I'm like, nice.

She really, you know, a funny story that I, I was on her podcast a couple years ago and I said the story was she hadn't remembered or heard, but I was in Sri Lanka at the time and I decided that I was just going to randomly email her and just say, hey, I'm Dave of, you know, Kindlepreneur. I just. And I think she had posted something about having gone to the Maldives. And I, sir, I represented Sri Lanka and the Maldives. So I thought, oh, this is my opportunity just to say hi, you know. So I said, hey, I do Kindlepreneur, etc, but hey, if you ever go back to the Maldives, let me know and I can give you recommendations on some of the silence and blah, blah, blah. And you know, it's funny, she, she responded nicely. She's like, thanks, you know, but probably not coming back. I was like, okay. But it was like, you know, that was that moment where like when I was first starting that I just wanted to reach out. Yeah, exactly. So. So I was like, yeah, I remember that. She's like, I don't. I'm like, I know.

Well, I want to ask you two questions similar sided. What would you say is the best way to sell more books?

Well.

I'm going to simplify an answer. Yeah, that's one of those answers where I liked. I would prefer to say it depends, but that never gives people true substance or, you know, kind of information they can turn and use.

Let me tell you the second one now then, because they're very similar and it might help you. The first one is what's the best way to sell more books. The second one is what's the most profitable way. Because there, I think there could be a difference.

Well, all right. So I say it depends because really it depends on if this is your first book or if you've written books before. Okay. It also depends on what your strengths are. Truth be told is that there are many things. Like, for example, I'll tell you this, my biggest weakness is social media. I've just never been a social media guy. I grew up with Facebook and I used Facebook just to keep my family up to date on what I'm doing. So I didn't have to call them from Korea to let them know, you know. And so what do you use most now? I just use Facebook. I'm old school, I guess. And. And that's just it too. You can find me on Facebook, but you ain't gonna find anything about my business. Like I'm constantly Posting just about family and what I'm doing, and I make it public. But, you know, that's the thing, though, is that I. One of the biggest recommendations I give to authors is, look, don't try to be everywhere, because when you try to be everywhere and you try to do everything, you just spin your wheels and you go in circles and you never gain traction and you burn yourself out. Really, People dabble in so many things. They dabble in TikTok because. Oh, that's big. Yeah, okay, it is. But, you know, if you dabble in TikTok and you dabble in Facebook and you dabble in Twitter and you dabble in ads and, you know, Facebook ads or Amazon ads, and you dabble people, and you. You get nothing done. You do nothing well, and you just spent all these calories, and then you start to blame yourself, saying to yourself, oh, well, I'm just not meant to succeed. No, what I tell people is, look, choose the thing that you truly understand or believe, and then really dig in and be really good at it. You'll get more out of it. Now, that being said, though, when you do it for the first book or so, great, you got one or two things that you really dug in hard and you understand. When you come out with a second book, maybe add a third, you know, and so what happens is that as you come out with books, you start to build up your skill set. You start to understand. You will start to gain this intuition on what to do, when to do it, because you have the experience and the knowledge that you've built up over time. And then at that point, you will start to hit this point where you have built a author platform, that you have created something where when you launch that next book, it's like an orchestrated event and you're on top of things at this point, you might have added some people to your team to make it more effective and efficient. But the point, though, is that I'm trying to tell, especially if you. Especially if you're a new author, is understand that marketing and writing a book is a skill. And as you do it more and more, you will gain more experience and knowledge and intuition, be able to do great things. Now to give people a real answer to the question you want instead of my. It depends that I've kind of.

I actually thought that was a great answer, and it was nowhere near what I thought it would be. So please continue.

All right. If I were to come down to the one thing that I think is probably the most important, and this is I'm going to caveat this statement with, if you intend to write more than one book, then this is the most important thing. And I believe it is collecting email. The reason for this is that collecting email from your readers makes it that your next book is that much easier to sell. And then as you collect more, the next book is. It is a stacking event. Also, it makes it that you don't have to depend on Amazon or one particular market. You own that email, okay? And that email could do great things for you. And so a lot of authors say, well, gee, Dave, how do you get somebody to sign up for your email list? And my favorite tactic, okay, is either the content upgrade or what I call the Kobayashi Maru, okay? And now the content upgrade is thinking of something that's truly valuable to the reader. This is specific to nonfiction. I think the greatest way to gain email from as a nonfiction writer is to create a companion course. Okay? You don't have to be crazy. You don't have to have this awesome, you know, giant camera rig or anything. Honestly, just screen record yourself, make slides, okay, on Microsoft, you know, PowerPoint or something like that. Record the slides, do three videos, and then make it that when they sign up for your core, you know, when they sign up for your email list, you send them the free companion course. Now, this does a couple things. Number one, you get to market your book as if it comes with a free course. Like if I'm looking at book A and it's just a book, or book B and it's a book plus a free video course, guess which one I'm picking? Like, because that's so much more value, I can mark it as such, put it on my cover, I can put in the book description, I can put it in the A plus content, whatever it be, people are going to want to do that. The other thing is, is that companion courses are things where people will want to participate. They will sign up, they will listen, they will watch. They also like you more. Well, I wouldn't say like you. They get to know you better because they get a video, they hear your voice, you're teaching them. And if you're too afraid of putting your face on it or whatever, then just do the slide recording and record your voice. If you hate the voice thing, you pay somebody on Fiverr to read your script, whatever.

At least do a welcome video, though. It is good to connect with people, even if it's not the whole thing.

I agree. So. And plus, besides, because it's a free companion course, people are not going to Be like, they didn't put on enough makeup or any of that kind of stuff. No, what you did was you nailed a sale and you got a good email. And it's an invested person. They were enough to want to learn more on the subject. That is a good email subscriber. Okay? So that's what I say for nonfiction. I'm like, man, if you're doing nonfiction, just create a third three video course, put it on there. And you were going to get a lot of conversions from purchase to email subscription. All right, now go to the Kobayashi Maru. So I like to call it the Kobayashi Maru because I'm a bit of a Star Trek fan. I'm more of Star wars, but I acknowledge the goodness of Star Trek, okay? And the Kobayashi Maru was this infamous test where everyone was supposed to fail this test when they were in. In Starfleet school, Right? Right. And the whole purpose of it was to teach you humility and understanding that there's sometimes no win situations. Well, Captain Kirk, you know, coolest of the captains, right? He rigs it and he beats the test. Okay? And it was always this thing of contention, right? We always heard about the Kobayashi Maru, but we never saw the Kobayashi Maru until later. They did it in the. The new movies, but when this was a thing, we Star Trek fans heard about it, and it built the lore of the. Of the character, but we never got to see it. Right. Again, caveating the new movies. Now, imagine you're a fiction writer, okay? And you wrote this space epic thing and you kept mentioning the Kobayashi Maru or this test or this one thing that happened. Now, at the end of your book offer, that if they sign up for your email, you'll send them the Kobayashi Maru, right? Now, I'm really invested. You see, a lot of fiction writers, they make the mistake of thinking that just because you read one of my books, you'll read anything I give you. So a lot of authors will say, hey, if you sign up for my email list, I'll send you this short story, this random short story that I wrote. Well, okay, I don't care. Yeah, I'm not a fan of you yet. Like, if you're Brandon Sanderson and you're like, hey, you want a short story? I'm like, yes, Brandon, please send it to me. Anything you write, I will read. But that. I mean, the list of people that I do that with is very short. But if I read a story that I like and there's inside information, there's, you know, find out why this Marine is called Stooge you know, like, everybody keeps laughing at them. They keep talking about this. Like, of course, I. I would love to read the book on how stooge became stooge. Like, I love to get the inside.

Everyone wants to know the inside joke.

Exactly. Or if you're in romance, like say, for example, your main character, you know, she almost swore off and then because the date from he double hockey sticks, you know, Mr. X and the friends keep bringing up Mr. X and like, oh, yeah, you know, Mr. X was just a he. That was a situation that will never happen. No, no, no, no. Well, well, inside the book itself, you don't need to know about what happened in the date. It's building. Like, you see what I'm saying? Like, don't make it a cliffhanger. Don't make it a key part to the book that they're missing. Make it be something that makes them curious to know, oh, what happened in that date. Right. And then would you like to read about the date from H E Double Hockey Sticks? Sign up and I'll send it to you. So these two things will build up your email list fast. You will have high conversions and people will actually engage with it. They will read it. They will be more likely to get closer to wanting to buy your next thing because they keep reading your stuff. I think that those two tactics are things that authors should absolutely do, especially if they are going to be writing more books. Because that email list is an incredible way to directly reach out to people who enjoyed your stuff to buy the next thing. Or even more importantly, or, well, depending on who or another benefit is getting them to leave a review on the book that they just read. Hey, if that person got to the end of your romance book and they signed up to read about Mr. X, they clearly like the story. It would be really good to be able to email them with a link that points them right to the review so they can leave that five star and say why they loved it so much and why they downloaded the extra book. And that will grow your email, your reviews, which improves your sales and your authority on Amazon.

I've told our author clients that something similar for years. When they're speaking on stage to the room, when everyone's standing up clapping and they walk up to you and say, hey, I loved your presentation and everything I learned. So much. Like you're saying they read the book and loved it so much, they're at the end. It's not that hard to say thanks for the kind words. Would you mind saying that on video?

Yeah, Absolutely.

And now you have video testimonials the same way you get the reviews online.

Exactly. And so that's one of my absolute favorites. Now, you had asked about profitability, and I, I think that. I think that email definitely plays into it. But I am going to address one other area, too, that I have a lot of people ask about, which is, please, if I want to do advertisements for books, which one should I do? And I'll. I'll say it first and foremost. Whichever one you want to truly sit down and master is probably the best answer. But most people don't like that answer. So then I go and say, well, I would say Amazon ads. And here's why. When it comes to advertising books, whether it's on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, whatever it is.

When you are advertising off of a platform, okay, so your book is on Amazon, but you're doing it on, say, Facebook, your advertisement has to be so good that it convinces somebody who's scrolling on Facebook looking at cat videos or what their friend ate at dinner, that, okay. And you got to convince them in that moment right there to stop looking at the funny cat videos. Okay, come on over to Amazon. And then you've got to convince them also to buy right now, and more importantly, not to just buy anything, but to buy your book. That's a lot of marketing. That's a lot of marketing magic. Okay? There are a lot of times where, man, I really want that book, but I'm not in the position. I don't really want to purchase it right now. I'm not. I'm not ready for this. I'm.

Will you just add it to your cart for later?

Then maybe, you know, but it's like. But I tell myself, oh, I'll come back and look at it. I know. God only knows how many books I've said, oh, yeah, I'll remember that. I'll come back to it. I'm like, no, I don't remember it. I don't. Didn't get them.

So the thing about it is that it does. You have to really be on top of yourself. You really have to know what you're doing to get the conversion rate on that. So if you're not. Or you don't really want to dig in and truly understand, because Facebook can be powerful. Okay, I'm not knocking. Okay, now I'm just saying there's extra sauce on that. But on Amazon ads, on the other hand, you don't have to convince them to stop looking at the cat videos. You don't have to Convince them to buy something. The reason why they're seeing your Amazon ad is because they've already decided they need a book to read and they're ready to buy something. All you're trying to do with that ad is get your book in front of them and get them to buy your book right then and there. That's it. So if anybody ever has that question, that's where I lie on the advertisement component because that to me is a bit easier. Now Amazon has shown that they're really trying to improve their Amazon ads and it gets better every year. When they first came out, it was easy because not many people were doing it, but it was so limiting. Now many people have jumped into it. But luckily Amazon's been improving what you can do and how far you can go. And I think they've been tweaking their system so I think it's balanced out and it's back to being really cool.

I want to ask you something about what you just said, but I have to go back and unpack this a little bit more with the AMS ads. So now that you're saying that's a way you should be doing most profitable and I get all the points and agree with you that they're already on there. People have been saying for years Amazon's the second largest search engine. I don't think people realize that enough. I think I said in my first book because it's not just they're searching for something, they're buying it. Amazon is a buying site. Google is a let's look up information site. Is there a better way of doing the AMS ad with a certain type, the picture, what do you find most people are doing wrong and what's the better way of doing it?

Well, it really depends on where that.

That author is in their, their quest. So like for example, if you're Brandon.

Let me also throw this caveat on non fiction business books.

Okay?

So one of the things I've learned with like new authors and ads is that they don't do enough targeted keywords. So they, they get in their mind, hey, I, it's a business book so I should put business book learn how.

They don't put the niche they're in.

No. Or, or but they, they maybe put in like learn how to make money and they put in like 10 or 10 words and they're like, I just want to rank, I just want these 10 words. Well, they're going to learn through experience that you know, you need to give Amazon a lot more or else you're going to get no traction on it whatsoever. So that's the first mistake that I see a lot of people run into. Now we go to the more advanced. And my number one recommendation. My advanced recommendation, okay. Is think.

Adjacently. Don't think directly. Okay? So everybody goes after how to make money. Make money online. Great. You're all fishing in the same tiny, tiny pool. Well, that's not tiny. That's a pretty good pool. But you're still all fishing right there. Where I found the most success with Amazon ads is when I find a tertiary way or an adjacent way to present the book. So an example of this is that I was working with a hard science fiction writer, okay? And the person really did. They were an engineer. They were a nuclear engineer. They wrote this book. It's sound science. I said instead of doing hard science or, you know, targeting the Martian or those kind of specific books, instead target astrophysics or nuclear engineering textbooks, you know, and because couple of things. Number one, with those books.

Clearly we're talking about nerds like myself. I'm a nerd. I say that affectionately, okay?

They have to pro. They're probably getting it because they have schooling. They're probably getting it because they're, you know, or they have this craving to learn more. Those are your kind of readers, too. They're the kind that would love a good science fiction book that is true to science, right? And, well, guess what? Not many people are advertising on, you know, quantum mechanics textbooks. Like, so you get major traction and you're getting the right people. The only issue on that one is that you're trying to get in front of people who they've got in their mind, they need to get this textbook. But at least you're getting that good exposure to the right people. So that's like an adjacent kind of marketing strategy. Another one is a woman wrote a book about pet loss, right? As in, you know, what to do when your dog dies or how to deal with pet loss and things like that. Well, the absolute best strategy was to target movies like A Dog's Life, because that's a movie about the dog that reincarnates, you know, over time or whatever. And. And you know, how it goes through progression. Well, clearly people want to be entertained by this because some of them, it hits home. And so to have a book right there next to that movie when they're going to look for it was an incredible opportunity because, well, it fits, right? And that's again, an adjacent strategy. Those, I think, are really good. And so if you're really. If you understand Amazon ads and you've been doing this, you understand how to operate it. I then tell people, all right, sit back, maybe have yourself a sip of whiskey and think on a tertiary connection. And that could be a really good thread to unravel and create something really good with regards to something in the middle. The other thing is, is that I would tell people, is don't set and forget these Amazon ads. Matter of fact, I tell people, if you're really doing this, and you're doing this seriously, schedule one hour Monday, Wednesday, Friday to go in to look at your report, call out the bad stuff kind of work to improve it, and also open up your mind to potentially seeing one of those adjacent opportunities. I love, love, love to look at my reports and ask myself, wait a second.

How did that happen? Like, why is it that that word is making so many sales like that? I'm not gonna lie. I didn't think about the astrophysics, but I noticed that astrophysics was somehow really doing well for this hard science book. And I was like, oh, yeah, because people who have to read astrophysics clearly love hard science, huh? And then I made an entire campaign structured on that one area, and it was like gangbusters. It was great. So really.

So don't just leave them. Scale, bail and tweak them.

Yep. Thank you.

Get rid of the lowest performers and do more with the highest.

Exactly. Ask why. I've done a lot of, like, back in the day, I've done a lot of consulting with. With publishing companies. And. And I don't know the answer because I don't know, like, you know, in romance or some. I was. I don't remember the exact specifics. I was working with this romance authority, and I was like, wait, why is this term doing well? Like, I don't get it. Like, I don't speak romance. You know, my wife would probably confer that. But what I mean by that is like, like, when it comes to.

Like, science fiction, I know all the tiny terms. I know the difference. The, you know, like, for example, or in fantasy, I know all the differences between a mage, a wizard, a necromancer, you know, a magician. Like, I could break that down. I go to, like, my daughter. I'm like, hey, do you know what the difference between a mage and a wizard is? She'd be like, dad, you're such a nerd. No. So I don't know the nuances or I don't know what's going on in the industry, except, like, in fantasy. Oh, I know all about the witcher. I know about Lycans. I know about these. These things. Well, when I was working with the romance author, I didn't understand the nuances of certain phrases. And so I asked. I'm like, hey, why is this phrase doing so well? And I'm like. And I challenged her to really think about what's going on in the industry. And she goes, oh. She's like, I know why. Because of this, you know, like, this is what it means. And this just happened on the news. And I'm like, ah, there it is.

So the relevancy.

Relevancy plays big. Look at new movies that are coming out that people are talking about. Avatar, you know, Avatar 2 came out. Got it. But people were talking about it for years. Months. Well, months. When the trailer came out, it was hot. But yeah, years too. People want to get back into that kind of thing. Uh, it's funny, but, you know, Dances with Wolves increased in viewership, you know, after the announcement of Avatar 2. And for those of you who don't know, Avatar 1 was basically dances with Wolves on. On in Space, you know, but it. It just fostered that. That desire of people to go back to that story. And that's. That's what happens on these things. Something triggers people to want to dive into something. And so think about what's trending. Think about what's out there. Think about that tertiary connection. And that could be a really good opportunity for you to. In an area where nobody's thinking and it's the right market.

And would you say that's why most people don't do it? Because it involves work and it's not just, oh, go on LinkedIn and post 17 times a day or Facebook or social or.

Well, and that's honestly why I call it a skill. It's not a hack, it's not a trick, it's not a ploy. It's a skill. And I think the difference between the authors that truly succeed and the authors that don't. And when I say truly succeed, I mean, they want to build their author career. They want to grow things. It's the ones that treat things like a skill. You know, I would say that I.

Want to master it.

Yeah, they want to master it. They want it. And you know what? It's spending one hour, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, looking at the reports, making tweaks, thinking about why. Right? These are the things that build intuition. These are the things that make you faster, you know, to pick up on something or to see a positive roi, faster or better. ROI faster because they are exploring it to learn it. It's kind of like, what are your.

Thoughts about having an ads manager who specializes in it? If someone really doesn't have either the time or they don't want to invest a year trying to figure it out.

I think that can help. Like I said earlier, like when you're, when you start off with your first book, maybe you analyze one or two things, right. Or you get really good at one or two things and the third book comes out and you do a third. And. And then I said later, I was like, maybe you could build out your team to make things more effective and efficient. I think that that can definitely be something. I do recommend to authors, though, that if you are going to hire somebody to work your ads, at least learn it. You know, I have that free Amazon ads course, so like amscourse.com go there. Learn how ads are super beneficial, by the way. Yeah, well. And that way you're more comfortable with when you talk to the person. Right. When you're talking to the ads. Yeah.

You at least know the lingo and some of the stuff. And to your keyword point, when you were saying, I was laughing because I think most people just do the five or seven keywords, maybe 10 or whatever, because I think they finally get past the hump of, okay, I'm going to do something I don't really want to, but I'm going to jump in. And then, then I think their brain switches back to how do I get this done the quickest way possible? So they just load it up. But if I do recall, didn't you say 3 to 500 keywords a book in the course?

Yeah, I mean, by the time that I'm, by the time that I'm done, like truly done with a camp like campaigns, plural. I mean, I'm personally in the thousands. And that's because, yeah, like, but that's the key is I put that in the course just to make sure people do not make that mistake of doing five or 10. Or more importantly, when you're working, or.

Even just 20 or 30.

Right. Or when you're working with the campaign manager or an ads manager that you don't like, flip out when the person does the right thing and you're thinking that's the wrong thing because just sadly, that's just how Amazon ads work. And so taking a course and understanding it before you employ somebody on it I think is incredibly important for the healthy relationship between the two. And I think that there are people that can do positive roi, there's a lot of things that depend on it. Like if you put together a crappy book cover or your book description really stinks, like, the ads manager might get more people to see it. Right. But it's your book that leads to the conversion. Okay. And so having those things in sync, I do like ads managers who like either take the client or not take the client based off of the book itself. I think that's usually a pretty good sign.

But I still think too to authors that they should really kind of understand.

The system, the whole process, the funnel, the sales, your email list. I'm glad you brought that up earlier because this is really more marketing 101 than anything applied to books. And I've noticed that there's a lot of authors who are just like, they're excellent writers. But I can relate to you. I failed English seven times. I never thought I'd write a book. But I love the marketing side of it, so that's always been easier for me.

Exactly. You know, and the other thing too is that if you have an email system set up like we talked about before, it increases your ROI on these ads. Because the fact of the matter is, is if you have that email and then you do advertisement, you're not only getting a reader, so you're getting a sale, but then you're get, you're getting a percentage of that to become an email subscriber, which helps to build your list for the next launch, which helps to build your Amazon reviews, which helps, helps increase your conversions. And so these things, it kind of adds to it. For the non fiction writer, you might have that companion, free companion course and maybe you sell a master course after that and a master course could be like a 200 course. Now you can actually calculate and your, you know, your book might be like 299, but you can calculate that for each sale you're averaging $8, you know, based off of the percentage of people that bought, then the percentage of people that subscribe, the percentage of people that end up buying the master course, and then at that point you're like, done, hey, so long as it only cost me, you know, less than $8 to get somebody signed up for a book in the end. I'm making money now.

Yeah. And when you, when you look at that return on ad spend, it could even be in person, consulting services or financial services or attorney or whatever the case is. You might not even care if they get the book necessarily as much as you're talking thousands and tens of thousands of dollars for A service.

Exactly.

So I want to ask you about.

Something you mentioned earlier with the book platform. Do you believe you have a platform with the first book or would you say you have a book when you do the first one and you really start building out the platform on books two, three and beyond?

I think it really depends. And I know I keep saying that, but that's probably the best, it's probably the best consulting response. But I also know, like I've said before, is that I'm going to try to distill that. So.

If the person already has something, like if you have a podcast or you have a blog or, or you have, you know, something you pre established a following on Facebook, group or so you know, the first book can really be a part of the platform from that point on. If you don't have any of those things and you're just jumping right in on your first book, there's a chance that it can be a platform, as in it really can start to gain traction. But what I'm going to tell people is, is that again, treat it like a skill. There's a good chance you're not going to get right the first time. Okay. You know, when I first started online, the first ever website I built made nothing. No, it made $1. I made $1. I spent an entire month building this website and writing thousands of words. I was every weekend, Saturday and Sunday. Every night I'd wake up 4 in the morning. I worked on it. When I got to the end of that month and I made $1 proof of concept. Well, see, that's what I saw. That's what I thought. I was like, huh? I made a dollar out of nothing. That okay, you can actually make money online. Interesting. Most people would look down and be like, wow, I wasted a hundred plus hours of my life and I got a dollar. This is stupid. This isn't for me. You know, nobody can do this. And they walk off, they go off and do something else or they just quit.

Now there are authors that they launch their first book and it's great and they see a lot more than a dollar. But there are a lot of authors that will launch their first book and maybe they make back the money they spend on working on it. Do you see that as an huh? I can do better the next time. I can improve my skills. I can grow, I have experience and now I have intuit, intuition, a bit of intuition. If you can look at this process like that, then you will truly grow your skills. And with each book it gets better.

One Last thing that I will say too, on this is refrain from comparison. Itis. It's the worst thing ever in this whole thing. Some people, you know, they. They hit their inflection point on the second book, and some people, it's the seventh book. It really depends on a lot of things. And just because somebody hit their inflection point on the second book does not mean they're better than you. Okay. It doesn't mean that you're below average or anything like that. It just sometimes happens. But the clear difference between the ones I succeed and the ones that don't is how they looked at each book and how they applied themselves and how devoted they were to it.

It's. I'm gonna draw a correlation with movies because there's a lot of people. You go, wow, did you see the such and such movie with so and so they're really taken off, you know, the overnight success. But I always have loved for decades going to IMDb oh y. Looking. And you go, oh, they were in 13 movies. 7, 12, 22 over the course of 8, 12, 14 years.

Exactly. My other favorite thing too is like, if you have a favorite podcast or a favorite YouTuber or so. Go back to their first ever video. Go back to their first ever podcast. It's. It's cringy. It's like, wow, you know.

John Lee Dumas of Entrepreneur on Fire, like, he leaves his first ever one up there because it is so, like, crushingly cringy, you know, because it's like he. He broke all of the rules. He didn't do anything, right? He. He fumbled through things, you know, but it's really. It's a really good reminder. When I was working with Ted Decker, who's a multi New York Times bestselling author of the Circle series, Adam whole bunch of these books, right? He said that when he wrote his first ever book, he spent years working on this thing because it had to be perfect. Had to be perfect. He, you know, there's. And he constantly. And he. He sent it to an agent who is a friend, and the agent looked at him and goes, you want to be truthful or you want me to kind of cushion this? And he goes, well, truthful. She's like, this is terrible. You need to just throw it in the trash and start all over. Wow. And he goes, well, I can revise it. She's like, nope, nope, you're better off. Just. She's like, but I love the stories.

Like, no clean sheet in it. It's not even.

Try it again. And he Said he got this like just gut punch from it. Like, I mean, he went clear, like near depression on it. And then he said, so he asked himself, well, what am I in this for? Was I in it for this story or was I in it to be a writer? And he went back in and he kept working on it like a skill. He treated it like a skill. And he says that that was the, the moment, his moment in life. You know, I said brandon Sanderson before Brandon Sanderson as probably the biggest money making author right now in the world. He's broken records on Kickstarter, his books are just insane. I mean, he's crushing it financially. But what's interesting was I haven't talked to Brandon directly, but I've talked to a lot of authors that trained him back in the day, like Orson Scott Card, Kevin G. Anderson, you know, Larry Nivens. And they tell me that back then they knew that Brandon was going to be incredibly successful, not because they read his particular writing, but because when he would go to these events, these parties, the Christmas, the, the conference, the, the anything, he was there with a notebook at all times and he was scribbling and writing and asking questions. He wanted to know. He was. And they all knew without reading a thing that this guy was going to be successful. I think that that's one of the most important thing for an author to, is to understand, is that if you truly treat it like that, if you truly approach it like this, this art, this, this skill.

You will hit it at some point, but just don't compare yourself to somebody else. And like you said, you know, there are all these successful authors that were, you know, overnight success, 20 years in the making, you know, or two years in the making, one year in the making. But the point is, it wasn't overnight.

Yeah. What I'm hearing is don't just look at what they're doing, look at where they came from and, you know, take a holistic approach on all aspects of their attitude, mentality and everything. Because it's great to, you know, I'm. When you made the comment about the show, even before mentioning, I'm sure, our mutual friend John Lee Dumas, I almost said I left up my number. First episode. I was sitting there crying for 15 minutes straight. And I remember vividly, like, I just came back from the salon, I was going to go to the grocery store and I was like, oh, it's a normal day. It's a. And something came over me that was like, you need to drive straight home. You can eat next week. Don't worry about anything and get it out there. And it was just like.

I mean, I was a wreck on it. And now I think we're 400 plus now. And needless to say, I got a little nervous in the beginning, but I'm a little bit more comfortable on it, so.

Exactly. I left my first ever YouTube video up, and my daughter will bring it up to get a good laugh because I made the mistake of trying to be somebody I wasn't. You know, I was trying to be funny. I was trying to be like. Like another YouTuber that I liked, you know, and it's. It's horrible and it provides nothing. And I, you know, I look back and I'm like, what was I thinking? But I want people to know, hey.

I gotta add in there. What are some of them thinking? Because I could. I've watched a lot of your stuff. It's great, great talking with you now. And I'm enjoying this more than some of the stuff I was looking up last week. I'm just like, why are they so. Just like, okay, so we're going to be talking about all of that. And I'm just like, okay, I get the whole energy thing, but it's just when you're trying to watch three or four videos in a row, can you. Can you handle that? Or am I just being.

You know, I like to make my videos like, I like to watch them. I don't want fluff. Get to the point, recap, you know, get to the meat and potatoes recap and then call it. And. And it's actually a lot of work to do that because you have to be succinct. You have to. I have to write scripts multiple times. I have to edit. And then, by the way, I also learned, too, again, we make our mistakes, but I can't read the scripts. I. And I also can't memorize them because when I'm memorizing them, then I start going robotic. This is the way that it was. Nope. So I write the script and then I read over it multiple times and I break it up into chunks. And then I just. Off the top of my head, like, I'm talking, and that's it. And then I move on to the next section, and it takes a long time. The point, though, is, is that I'm so much more comfortable because it's me. It's the way that I want to learn. It's the way that I feel. I feel. And you know what? The other thing, too, this is what I love most, is when you get a haterade or a Negrobot, you know, in the comments or so, I don't feel any shame because I did my best. I did who I am. I did what I like. Like, if I did something that I felt like, oh, man, yeah, I kind of cut the corner there. You know, he's got some truth in there. I'd feel terrible. I'm just, okay, you know, it's YouTube.

Yeah. They some of the funniest comments in the world, but some of them, I'm like, wow, these people still exist. I thought this was just grade school school. This is. This is deep cuts.

Deep one. One thing that I'll say to any online marketer, especially with, if you have children, I actually will take some of the really negative comments and I'll let my children know about it. And I do that and I'll read it to them, so long as it's. It's clean. Okay? But I do that because I also want my kids to understand that the Internet is not exactly the nicest of places. And so, you know, there are a lot of kids out there that think that, you know, they get value by the number of likes or, you know, shares or followers and that, you know, they're going to get fame and everything's hunky dory. I want them to know that even though dad is, like, here trying to teach and do something, and there's no ulterior motive, there's no, you know, sales pitch or anything, I'm teaching you how to do this thing. You're still going to get people that just call you names. And I tell my kids, look, it's not about you. At that point, if you feel good about the work you do, it's actually not about you. It's about them. It's about what's going on in their life. We don't know what's going on in their life. They could have just lost their job. They could have lost their, you know, they could have been scammed by somebody on YouTube. And they just see YouTube as an evil place. And I tell them, hey, you know, send them good vibes, pray for them or so, but move on. Don't let it eat you. And so it's important for me to actually read those. Sorry, I know that's a side, but it's like one.

No, I really appreciate parenting tips 101.

Especially for online marketers.

I appreciate you saying it because I think there's a lot of adults that don't really realize it. And, you know, I get in Business. It's like, well, you. You see reviews. Well, it's generally, you overcharged. I can get what I was promised. And maybe they didn't read the description, that's fair. But it always puzzled me when it's something for free, like a podcast, like, hey, you got your money's worth. You didn't pay anything. How are you going to be this mean to someone? How are you going to be this negative? Like, they have lights, cameras, they put their time, they did all these things, and you're just going to go, I'm not even gonna. You know what I mean? It's like, you didn't pay anything. And I was just like, how can they be so. But then when you realize you never. You don't know what they're going through, they're just projecting.

Exactly, exactly. You know, they're. You don't know where they're going through. You don't know what's happened to them. And so the best thing that you can do, especially in today's Internet, where it can just turn brutal and people can get hateful or emotionalized. I know that's not a right word, per se, but I like to say, because when you get emotional about something, then you just get agitated and you got to feel. The best thing I like to do is just say, like, look, I don't know what happened to them. I don't know what caused them to go to rage. And I'm not going to feel this because I understand that they're going through something and I'm, you know, I'm going to give grace in that, you know, and hopefully through grace, maybe, you know, if it's worthy of a response or something through grace. I've had a lot of people where they might shoot a response to an email I sent. You know, it's like. Like flame spraying and then in grace and saying like, hey, I appreciate you. I don't know what you're going through. I apologize if that triggered something for you. You know, I. That being said, you know, this little thing, it really serves well, but there's going to be some people that you just can't reach. So to recap on that, if you have kids and you're doing these kind of things and it's a clean, really negative thing, it's actually good for your kids to understand that what's worse is their kid. Your kids are on social media or something, and they get those things, but they don't tell you that. And that's where they get eaten up on the inside. And become hollow. And that's why we have so much depression in young, young children. If you look at the stats, it's actually pretty, pretty scary. They're going through stuff that, like, when I was in college, thank God I didn't have a. Have a smartphone with a camera, you know, and Facebook was only for college students, you know, which I just dated myself.

But I was going to say, it's surreal that that's been around.

Nearly 20 years now.

Yeah.

So I remember my first account and, well, it's the same one I have, but I remember setting up the account and it was like, oh, this is new, it's trendy, it's cutting edge. And now it's like, it's kind of been around a minute.

Right. So I know that was off the topic, but it's.

No, I appreciate you saying it because honestly, I think those last few things are some of the most. All of it was valuable, but those.

I appreciate you for sharing it. I got a couple questions for you. One of them is.

Yeah, here it is. I get this debate all the time. This is my new book and I'm looking at the back of it. What do you suggest goes on the back of books? Because there's. I have what I suggest and I have other people. I've seen stuff on the YouTubes that.

People say, would everyone just stop with the bump? A bump, A bump.

Do you think it depends. Doing the frame of nonfiction business book again.

But what have you found works best for the back of a book?

Well, truth be told is the back of the book exists only because of physical bookshops. Right. Okay. Just kind of give context on my response here. When I go into a bookshop, what do I do? I look at the spine. Because most of the time the book is not facing cover forward. I'm in the section of where I want to be. I'm very interested in the thing. I will look through the spines to see the title. Which, by the way, I tell people, don't know if you're. If you're selling in bookshops, like physical places, don't neglect the spine. The spine is what's going to get me to potentially pull. And if you put your title too small, like, I'm not going to work hard to try to. Yep, that looks good. But like, I'm not going to try to work hard to read that. I'm just gonna. I'm scanning through stuff. Right. So get that spine. And then when I pull it out, what I'm looking for is an easy, like Hey, I, I want to understand what this book is about. Right?

So with that said though, on the digital component, if you're only selling an Amazon, Barnes and Noble, you know, and Kobo, like the online markets, honestly, the back of the book is, is just eye candy at that point because I already made the decision, I already bought it, right? I, I made that, that, that point. So I say to people like, look, if you're only in the online market, you're just making it so that I already made the purchase. You know, I already decided I was going to buy this book. I read your book description on the online market. Now I get it. Like, just don't make me regret it by having something of like misspellings or something that's like, what the, what is this? See what I'm saying? So that's one of the things I like to bring about on the back book blurb is that if you're only selling digital, the only people that will see it is the people who already decide to buy it. So it's not doing any marketing purpose if you're. But if you are selling in bookshops, then nail that spine. That helps me to get to the back book blurb. And then, you know, I think the da da da da da actually works. Well, think of it like sales copy.

Yeah, I agree and thank you for saying that because I wasn't even really thinking about the spine. Most of the questions are what should the COVID look like? You know, all of that. That's, everyone needs that. And then the back. I was getting at the description. Or should you have like social proof?

Oh, I think, I think both because like it's, it's all it is is sales proof or social proof. Right. What I need to know to buy books. So again, we're assuming this is in a bookstore. What I need to know is is this the right book for me? And yes, the book description is going to help me to know. And how you write that is going to convince me either. A, this covers what I need to know. This is the bright book for me and this is going to solve the problem that I want. The social proof makes me feel more confident that this is the best of the other ones that also tackle the same thing. So if you have any social proof, put that big and you know, big and large. The reason why I think though that the book description and how you write it is really important is in online world, people are super lazy. That's, that's just the way we are. We're ready to click back Okay. I click on a book that I think I'm interested in. I look at it, I'm like, click back, click back. Like I'm. Sometimes I just scroll. I don't read the entire full book description when I'm in a bookstore. On the other hand, if you've convinced me to pull your book off the shelf and I flip it to turn it, it's actually a little harder to put it back on the shelf. I'm actually more invested to read the book description. So the book description carries a lot, but you have to remember the back of the book cover is to make the sale. It's like a landing page. Okay. And in a landing page, it's not just what is the product. It's about convincing the person. It's about, you know, addressing their concerns, you know, or, you know, using their own language. So honestly, if we're talking about sales in a bookstore, think of the back book cover, kind of like a rectangular landing page. The things you would do to sell an online product on a landing page is kind of the thing that you do. I love social proof. I love things that prove this is. This is great. You know, if you have any quotes from famous people or anybody connected in the industry that carries weight with me, which, by the way, quote the qualifier, not the name. And what I mean by that, if you do get somebody to give a quote, is most people don't really read the quote. What they want to do is just recognize what makes this person so big. So if you find other authors in the industry, instead of just saying their name and hoping the person knows who they are, make sure that you say three times, new York NYT best selling author on making money online or whatever. Like something where if I don't recognize a person, I can recognize that qualifier that makes it like, wow, that person's big. And they said this about this book. Okay. Which, by the way, I didn't read what they said. I just saw it. People look at the qualifiers.

I like that. So even if you've done your own authority positioning, don't overlook theirs.

Yes, exactly. Or find. Or if it's somebody, it could also be like. I also say this to, like, fiction writers as well. Like, hey, I'm not famous. I can't get Stephen King. And I'm like, okay, yeah, you're right. You probably can't get Stephen King to read your book and then write a blurb that you can put on the back. However, though, you know, other authority, other horror authors. Right? Yeah. Okay, well, you get the other Horror authors and the qualifier isn't their name. You say, you know, a New York Times bestselling or just multi best selling horror author because clearly this person who writes a lot of horror and is a bestseller, they said something nice about the book. They probably are qualified to talk about another horror book. And so that has worth in the reader's mind. So if you do quotes really work, the qualifier, you know, and you don't have to be connected with the most famous people in your industry in order to get that, put something that to any Joe Joe or you know, schmo or you know, Jane Doe can say, ah, there's weight here, there's value here. So I definitely think that quotes are a good spot for that section as a qualifier if there's awards, if there are famous reviews. By the way, I love finding book review sites that have a name that is a qualifier. So for example.

If I get like johnblanchard.com to write a review on my sci fi military book, well unless you know John Blanchard, like that means nothing to you. But I could also get topscifi books.com to write a review on my book and now I can take that blurb and say, you know, main editor of top sci fi books.

That even though that that website doesn't look super professional if you actually go to it. But when I'm sitting in the store and I see that some site that.

Says it's got that recognition, most people are going to recognize.

Bingo. Exactly. And I think that that carries a lot and you know, so think about those. I think those are really good qualifiers to be able to use. Give your summary, write it like a, a sales pitch if you will really qualify that, you know, and use weight, call to actions, etc. Whatever social proof you can. Awesome. You know, put those, those quotes from people with a recognizable qualifier and I think that's a really good one, two, three punch. Wow.

Incredible.

I could ask you 20 more questions, but I'm gonna start wrapping it up here. This is the wheel of whatever.

You get to pick. Yellow or black?

Yellow.

Oh, you got a good question. You see that? Ah.

There'S nothing on there.

I was gonna say. Wait a second.

So my question for you is if you weren't doing this, what would it be?

I'd probably. Well if I weren't doing this, I'd probably still be in the military. Not saying that's a bad thing or so, but I would still. I would have probably just stayed in doing the job that I was doing. Coming up on my 20 years, which would allow me to do retirement, you know, and get a certain amount of money for the rest of my life to an extent. Might have taken on a contracting job.

But, you know, would. It would have, would have, would have supplied, you know, money and backing for my family, which would be cool, but I clearly would not be enjoying what I do today as much as, as so forth. Now if the question goes from the different of like all of a sudden I woke up and everything was like, poof, gone. You know, like everything I've done, all my books, everything is gone. Honestly, I would sit down and start writing books. You know. The good news is, is that we talked about these skills, right? The skills are there. Like, you can't just make the skills go away, right? If you made the business or everything just poof, go away. I still have the knowledge, experience and intuition that we talked about. I still have the ability to, you know, figure it out. I just have to crack the knuckles, get to work and get writing, you know, and building that out. So it really comes back to everything we said, which is if you treat that like a skill, nobody can take that away from you. You're just going to get better and better with each book, with each part of experience, with each effort, with each failing forward. And that is just awesome.

Wow. Incredible.

So what have you been able to parlay in your business from starting Kindlepreneur and the softwares and everything?

What do you mean?

Shouldn't have said parlay.

You mentioned something before we got started about how you think about stuff. The opposite of Silicon Valley.

Yeah. So what have you done?

What have you done beyond Kindlepreneur and the softwares for writing that I'd say most people don't know in full detail about. And you're doing a lot of it in a big way.

So I like to build a lot of software companies for a lot of different areas. But getting to the heart of it, one of my favorite marketing tactics, or tactics in general is that I personally like to have the market before I make the product. Okay. So a lot of times like, and so we're kind of moving into other industries here. But like, for example, I. There's a lot of people who are like, oh man, I have this really good idea. And then they go off and they either spend a lot of money to turn that idea into a product, you know, whether it's programming, they go and program something and then when they finally start to build this product, they have to do what's called product market fit, which means that they built something that the market actually wants. Then after they've built that, then they've got to roll up the sleeves and go find the market. Market, okay, and convince them to now buy it. Right? And some in the industry, they call that crossing the chasm. Because the chasm is like, it's a really hard thing to get to the other side, which is where people know about it, accept it, and love it. Now, that, to me, feels like a really hard gamble, okay. Because you just come up with an idea and you kind of hope that you figure it out, and then you hope that you can find the market like that. Just. That's scary. And Silicon Valley kind of does it that way. They find really talented people, they get them to come up with an idea, they kind of help them come up with an idea, and then they send them off into a closet to, you know, to pound out as much code as possible. And then they start to try to convince people to beef them with money. They try to. Then they try to figure out, okay, what I created. Does the market want it? Okay? And then if it does, now I've got to do all this marketing and all this advertisement and whole fully in the end, that it catches on. That's. That's really risky. Instead, what I like to do is kind of like what we talked about with, you know, like, Kindlepreneur and Publisher Rocket. I had spent all these years building Kindlepreneur, and because I worked with authors and I heard their complaints, and I, as an author, was in the industry, I knew what the product needed to be. I knew what Publisher Rocket needed to be in order to be a tool that authors could really use and benefit from. And I also knew because of my email list, because of, you know, my articles, that if I created said product, I can market it already instead of paying a whole bunch of money in ads, hoping that it somehow finds the right people. And so that gave me more strength and confidence in putting as much effort into that product as possible, because I knew that there was a market, they wanted it, and that I could get it to them. And so it's one of those strategies that I love to employ over and over again. Sometimes I don't have the market, but somebody else does. So they have the market and they need the software. And so I'll partner with them to help build said software for them, and they will market it. And so that's just a strategy that I really love.

And how many times have you done, how many companies have you done this.

With now 11 and probably in the next couple of months, 13 total. So we have a couple, we have actually a couple that are in the works that are about to finish up.

That's awesome.

Yeah, it's, it's a lot of fun. It keeps me on my toes.

For sure, it sounds like it. And I mean I could ask you stuff for hours and hours, but I'm going to cue the sponsor and got a couple quick questions about simple stuff. But thank you for going into that detail because I think so many people in business get caught in. Here's what I need to do. Like I said, when I came up with my Software to build WordPress sites, it was like we were doing tons, hundreds of sites for different companies. And same as you going, I just feel like there's got to be a better way to do this. I wonder if, I wonder what it would be like if we could. And it's just like, let's give it a shout, you know, But I don't think so many people venture out all the time because they're so caught up in what they're doing themselves. Maybe, maybe they meet someone at an event and that person asks them to partner or something. But I think the strategic partnerships and like you're saying the investing in different things, I think more people could be doing it. What do you think?

Yeah, honestly, I could spend hours talking about what partnerships should look like and the good do's and don'ts, the go's, no go's, how to. But just to quickly summarize it, number one, make sure that if you ever partner with somebody, it's somebody you absolutely respect for what they bring to the table. If it's somebody where, if you ever get into a partnership and you think to yourself, oh man, I could have done that on my own. That's like a death nail. That's where things will start to really break apart. Number two, finding partners. Think of it like dating and marriage because you don't just like go to a first date or a blind date, next thing you know you're married.

Right.

Those usually don't work out well. Well, same thing with partners, you know, Instead it's a long term to build that relationship to understand whether or not that person truly is a good fit. Those are just two of multiple, but those are two biggest ones if you're ever looking to partner.

Wow, thank you for that. And that would be interesting to discuss the rest, but we'll save that for another time. We're going to thank our sponsor and come back with the Imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book including yours and it's true. And that's why I'm launching my new book and@eapublishingmethodbook.com so you can learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went from having.

An idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published. Or Catherine, thank you for making my mom number one best selling author.

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For me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable.

John Cody I've worked with Mario over.

The phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books. Rocio there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficini or Bill Benner. I can't make a higher recommendation for than to work with Mario Ficini. He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get your copy and and I look forward to hearing your transformation as our next video success story. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Dave, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Let's do it.

All right, three questions for you. Rapid fire, 60 second or less answers. First off, what is the fastest path to the cache.

Fastest path to the cash? Service. Making a service where you actually do something that's all somebody needs. Whether that's consulting, coaching or building something. Making something. But service is the fastest path to cash.

Number two, what's the biggest problem you see your prospects making in the fastest way for them to fix it.

I'm going to piggyback off my first answer and say, well, a lot of times when people really start to build out a skill, sometimes they use service and it eats up time and your trading time for money and that never allows you to actually build out the platform or the long term, you know, passive components to it. So don't fall into the trap of that fastest path to money. But instead think about what the longest, the most important kind of component you need. Do you want that freedom? Then build the business for that.

I like that. I like that so much I might just change one of these questions for the, for the entire show. No one has ever given an answer like that because. Oh, that's good. Thank you. What's the third one? What's the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

By constantly giving. Sometimes like for example, I made that free Amazon ads course. You know, people take it thinking that it's and then they get there and it's two and a half hours of like amazing video that helps them. You do that for people and people, you know, you gain that trust and value in their mind and that is a long term path for success.

I will also add in one, it's an awesome course, I've gone through it myself. And two, I've also seen a lot of other people promoting it and I think that's very telling because it's one thing to go I'm doing this for myself. And you know, it's like of course everyone expects us to say good things about our products and services, but when you see other people doing it and I see pop up all over the place, I'm like, good for you. Because those other people who have huge lists and are well known, they're trusting you with these areas of their business because they don't want to focus on it.

Yeah, it's same thing with software development. We constantly come out with new features and updates and upgrades and they're free for previous owners and all they see is what they bought is just constantly getting better, doing that goodwill and constantly working to make something better and improve on it. People notice and it means a lot to them. It brings a lot of value knowing that you're not just going to like disappear or that your information is out of date or you know, that things fall apart.

More great advice. A couple last questions. One of them being a publisher, talking about books. It's kind of surreal because I ask everyone this, but what books would you recommend to expert authority world.

Specifically in the book publishing or just marketing in general?

What books have helped you the most in business?

The One thing is definitely an incredible one, especially for those starting the One thing helps you to focus on the one thing. Too many times we get into dabbling all over the place or we multitask so much to the point that we never do anything really well. That's an incredible book to help you get aligned because when you do the one thing and you do the one thing well, you see a better return on your investment of time. Another one that I really like is the 8020 rule that also is kind of in the same out, which helps you to understand that, hey, 80% of what you do or you know, there's a certain, there are certain things you do which bring in the most, you know. And don't neglect that. Keep it in mind because you know, you sometimes run away from something and it causes problems. I think those two books right there are really good balancing for especially new to medium entrepreneurs.

Excellent. Thank you for those. We've mentioned a lot. But where would you like to, where would you like people to learn more?

Well, you can go to kindlepreneur.com that's kindle entrepreneur kindlepreneur.com I've got a contact form there in case there's any questions or anything we said in this podcast where you're like, wait a second, I don't fully understand that. Go ahead and hit me up there, pop the question. I'll respond.

Excellent. Well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for everything you've shared and I truly wish you the best moving forward.

Thank you. And again, thanks for having me.

All right, Expert Authority World, we have another great episode here today. I'll see you on the next one. Have a great day and God bless. You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 247 and if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get started. Now once again, that's EA publishingmethodbook.com Thanks for listening to today's episode. I would love to know what you enjoyed most from it if you haven't done so already. I invite you to connect with me on my new LinkedIn. You can go to it directly at eainterviews.com LinkedIn Once again, that's eainterviews.com LinkedIn. Lastly, check out the full eainterviews.com site for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you on the next one.