Beyond the Book Podcast: Turning Her Book into a Multi-Million Dollar Cocktail Brand

Welcome to the beyond the Book podcast where we help authors make money beyond just selling books. Can include products such as letters in the mail, can include card games, board games, video games. Can include pretty much anything beyond the books. And today we have Maggie. Maggie, a very special guest who are going to be talking all about going beyond her books to make something very special. Something that no author has done before. Actually, I don't want to say that. And then someone's gonna come out of the woodwork and be like, actually, I've done this. No author that I've ever known has done before, which is turn her books and create cocktail mixes based off her books. Essentially starting somewhat of an alcohol brand for readers, which is super fun and I think will help bring a lot of people together. But before we talk about how to build this brand, how to go about this, because this is going to be like a live kind of workshop and going beyond the books together. Tell us how you got started in all this. What are your books?

Yeah, I have been in the writing world since 2016 or 17 and I have been working on books since I was 12. I have published seven books and I'm working on my eighth in a number of different genres. Young adult fantasy, middle grade comics, coloring books. And what we're talking about today is my cocktail book series. Series, which is a literary themed cocktail book based on popular themes and tropes in genres across fiction.

I love it. And tell us, like, how did you come up with a cocktail book for readers that doesn't seem like just. Oh yeah, that's a. That's the most obvious thing.

Yeah, I mean, I just combined my two. Two of my favorite things. Not that drinking is one of my favorite things, but it's something I enjoy trying different cocktails and recipes. I think it's interesting how much you can do with mixology. And I love reading.

Oh, I love that. Mixology.

Yeah. So I figured I might as well try and combine these two things. I love reading and I like creating cool drink recipes. I have a lot of four hour drives back to my hometown in Indiana. So I was thinking a lot in the car and just came up with this idea and ran with it and. And it became a pretty decent book. It's actually right there.

Yes. Now tell us about. You made this book.

Yes.

Maybe tell us about what actually went into it. If I open it up, you can see the pages here. Right. It's. This isn't like your typical fiction novel yet. It's clearly something that would interest fiction readers. So tell me what went into the process of making this?

I'm a big fan of fun coffee table book. So I was like, I want it to be something that you can. It's practical in the sense that it's a recipe book, but it's also an art piece in a way. The design was really important to me to make it stand out. If you walk past a coffee table and you see this thing called Trope Tales, you're like, wait, what is that? And then you flip through it and it's all this cool art and fun recipes, and every page has a little blurb that I wrote about the trope. It's funny in first person tone. And then I have a little quote from the genre that it's in. And then the recipe and the picture, which my illustrator did a fabulous job designing these.

I would say I adore it. No, this is great. First question, I can see your format here in terms of recipe, little like quip or funny thing about it. A quote that's from like a writer or authorly figure illustrator. How did you, like, find an illustrator? Because I feel like the toughest thing about going beyond the book is that you have to oftentimes have help going beyond the book. So how did you have. Where did you find help? And making a trip down.

So the interior art. I actually found my illustrator on Instagram and I do a lot of, like, hashtag searches on Instagram. So I first started by figuring out nailing down which kind of style I wanted. So I would compile a list of illustrators that had a very specific style, and then I would go through and see if they were even looking for work. And yeah, I just did a lot of hashtag work. It took a really long time to find it. But I do lots of hashtag searching and compiling lists of names that I'm going to reach out to. And then the COVID it was the same thing. A lot of the groundwork on Instagram is great for finding illustrators. I use Instagram mostly for all of my Illustrator searches, just because there's a lot of, you know, it's a visual platform so you can see their, like, portfolio of work and stuff. So hashtags are great for finding illustrators. It's how I find all of mine.

I love it. Okay. And then you find the illustrators, you have this great idea and you launch it. How do you launch it? And what kind of money does it make?

Yeah, I actually. So this project specifically, I felt that it had to go on Kickstarter because it's not A traditional. It's a book, but it's not like a traditional style book. It's more of an art book and a recipe book, like I said. And I know one off projects like that do really well on Kickstarter, where it's. You like Amazon isn't really like the best place to launch something like this. At least in my case. Kickstarter people are looking for unique projects like this that they can't find anywhere else. I went to Kickstarter, launched a Kickstarter for this, did a lot of cross promo on Kickstarter. Kickstarter is great for cross promo. And this book put me into five figures for the first time as an author. It did very well on Kickstarter. I was very happy. And yeah, that's huge.

That shows because you think about it, you wrote all these awesome YA fantasy middle grade fiction books and there's obviously huge markets for those books and you didn't do bad those books, but you like really hit a market here and it showed like you were able to reach a new height, not just because you had some better marketing strategy, although I'm sure you got better at it, but also just because it was a better product for the market. It was pretty cool.

And it reached multiple different audiences as well. So not only was I reaching readers, but I was also reaching people who like cocktail recipe books. So I was expanding my audience in that regard too.

Also, like a great gift. I can imagine myself getting something like this for a gift, being like, it's like low risk is buying someone a book is okay if I know they love that genre or I know they love that author, I guess easy. But if not, like, what kind of gift do you get? A bookworm, right?

Yeah.

So this is super cool. Now where we're at now is interesting because you released this back in May of 2024.

Yeah.

Now at least when we're recording this, it's February of 2025. So let's call it, give or take.

It, a year later. Yes.

You're in a position now where you have one of those things that a lot of us don't often talk about but we all know about. It's our day job. I just quit mine like 48 hours ago. So I know very well what those are like. So you've had your day job and obviously like many of us, I should say obviously, but Maggie, like many of us, myself included, very obviously want to break free from that and to do your own thing. And you know, with the amount of money you made from that it's obviously not bad, but it's not going to be enough in the States to make a full time living. And certainly it'd be great to make more than just a living, but to actually build an empire here. Going beyond the books. Me and Maggie for the last couple days have been doing this thing called story suppers, which if you don't know what story suppers are, you can join us at a future one.

They're pretty great.

They're amazing. We actually just finished.

A little biased, but pretty great.

A little biased, but they're a lot of fun. And they're basically dinners that we do supper club for authors in different cities. You can sign up for the wait list. They're completely free. When we do them, you just pay for your own dinner. And we go to a great spot, we bring some awesome writers together and we learn a lot. It's so much fun. And you get to make new writer friends. We've been doing that for the last four or five days. Again, you can join the link in the description and actually sign up for the waitlist. When one happens in your city, you'll know about it. But me and Maggie have gone to three cities. We've gone to Chicago, Milwaukee, and now we're in good old Cincinnati, Cincy. It's. It's a great place here. I've loved it. Yeah.

Since it's pretty great.

We've had a lot of time to be jamming back and forth on things and one of the core things was trying to get Maggie to escape her day job. But then one of the other core things has been thinking really strategically around what you want to do. And I guess I'll first start with there because we obviously tease people with where this conversation is going. We're going to be talking about cocktail mixes and how to turn this into not just a book, but a huge brand that can sell a lot more books too. It's gonna be amazing. But what do you want? Let's just start with that very broad question. When I say, Maggie, what's your dream gonna look like in a couple years? Where does your mind go?

I want to be a full time creator.

You wanna be a full time creator. And what do you want to be working on?

Building my brand, My empire. Cocktail brand, empire.

Now, what do you view as your strengths? If I had to tell you, like, what is your superpower? A lot of people who follow me on the author sidekick might know. I love that word superpower because I think it's so important to grow a business with Your superpower, clearly like this, right? Combines to your superpowers. You love books, you love cocktails. That's awesome. But as a business owner, as an operator, what do you view as your superpowers?

My superpowers specifically are probably connecting with people, building relationships, building community, and also sales. I'm very skilled in getting people excited about things that they otherwise wouldn't have looked at or been excited about.

I love it. Now, let's think about your dream that you have and show tales. What's keeping you back from quitting your job tomorrow? Like, why are you not quitting right now?

Money. Not much. I have income coming in for my books, but not enough to supplement the bills that I would need.

And now you're gonna hit me because you're coming here to start to learn about this. But why are you not making more money from your books?

Because they're not selling. Okay. Yeah, because I'm not reaching. I'm not reaching audience. I need to be reaching.

Yeah, okay, that's a good question. Yeah, that's. We're getting there now. So you're not reaching the audience you want to be reaching. I say there's two things we can do here. And this is why I love going beyond the books. What this podcast is all about. It's helping you do three things as an author. When you go beyond the books, you're able to. One, make more money because you're providing different products and services to your readers that make it so that a reader that normally would have spent $5 on a book spends a hundred dollars in this awesome experience. And more money lets you quit your day job faster. But more money also is a second thing. It allows you to market yourself more. When you get to market yourself more, you get to make even more money, which means you don't get to just quit your day job. You get to build an empire. But there's also a third really interesting thing that happens here, which is that by going beyond the books, paradoxically, you sell more of the books. And it's because how you're building a brand is creating something that truly differentiates you in the market, where you become known as this storyteller. Not just an author, but this storyteller who's created this world. That's one of one, because you have these experiences that no one else has. And again, it sets you apart in the marketplace, so you're able to sell more because you become one of one. So what we're really trying to do today is help Maggie find what her one of One looks like. Help her build it. And hopefully by listening, you all can do the same thing now.

Implement strategies.

Yeah, precisely. I understand you have these strengths for sales community building. And I can feel your passion for Trope Tales excitement. Now, I know I started with this question with you, and we've been throwing ideas back for a while because. How much does this book sell for if I was to buy it right now?

$35 plus $4 shipping.

Okay, so $35 here. How much does it cost to print?

It's about. Oh, man. I did the math. It was like 2,500 divided by 400. What is that?

So six do. Yeah, $6 and 25 cents, I think.

Yeah. So a little bit less than that.

We'll call it $6. Ish. You're making $29 in profit.

Every book.

On every book. But that's not the full equation because you have another really important piece of it, which is, how are you shipping this out? So you said you bought like a huge pack of 400. You're paying for the shipping, but you're packing it. So you're doing that.

Yeah, yeah.

How long does it take you to pack one?

Less than five minutes.

Okay, less than five minutes.

But just put it in a sleeve.

Okay, so cardboard.

And you're printing the label safe when it shipped.

So let's give you a different question.

It's a $5 media mail. I bought less than $5.

I'm not even talking about the price. I bought 10 books from you at different addresses. How long does it take you to fulfill that shipment? Time. What your time is going into it. Ten?

Yeah, maybe. It depends if there's any add ons. If there's no add ons, maybe like 30 minutes.

Okay, so for those doing map get math to fill 10, she's making $290 in profit before her time spent. But it's going to take her a half hour. And I don't know, let's say you want to make six figures a year working 40 hours a week. Your time now is worth $50 an hour at that rate. So you're basically taking $25 in your time value and plopping that in to this. So really, you're making closer to if we want to get really real $25 of profit per book. Right. So that's great, by the way. And notice how she created an experience already. Right. She almost went beyond the book in terms of Trope Tales in and of itself is an experience that is could be a coffee table book. Could Be shared with friends. It goes beyond just. Hey, I'm reading this on my Kindle. Which is. Nothing wrong with that, by the way.

Book clubs, too. I'm going to. I was invited to go to a book club this weekend where they're making drinks from the book.

I love it.

I forgot to say that you got.

Paid for the party, didn't you?

No, it's my friends, but they're hosting their book club.

There is a party you're getting paid to show up to.

They will be buying the book for sure.

But wait, you told me you're getting paid to show up to a party this weekend.

Paid?

Yes.

No. Paid to show up to a party. Oh, that's the Kickstarter. Yes. That's a different thing.

That's great.

Yes. Yes.

Well, that's connected to this. Yes.

I'm getting paid to show up to a party this weekend. Yes. But that is different from the book. But I was confused for a second.

But it's for, like, Trope Tales, correct? Yeah. So she's making now paid appearances based off. Which is hilarious and amazing. And it's virtual, by the way, too. So she's virtually showing up to a party as the author of Trope Tales, to have a virtual cocktail party, which is brilliant. Ingenious. So you've already gone well beyond the book. But again, this podcast. We're not small thinkers here. Yeah, big thinkers. Big dreams. Why not? Because that's what life's about. As storytellers. We can change the world, and we might as well see. Start right now. So we had this thought experiment, right, where we were trying to think about, what can you do beyond the book to make more money and run me through the cycle of some of the ideas both me and you had on.

This front a lot. Card games.

Yeah. Talked about that.

Like hosting parties in local bars in the city with people and their books that they bring.

We're gonna touch on that because I like it a lot.

I'm.

Yeah, we have to touch on that.

I already. Yeah. And powder, drink mixes.

Okay. This is where we start to have fun. The biggest challenge I gave Maggie was how can you imagine a world where you can get over $100 upfront from your customer upfront? Day one, mind you. Knife. What's going to be your customer? For the people who choose to be your customer, they're on average paying above $100. I love that world because you get to market yourself through so many interesting things. All of a sudden. Affiliates. An affiliate sells one and you give them 25 30% of the sale, 25 or 30 bucks to sell one is not a bad gig. All of a sudden you could spe $30 to acquire someone through a Facebook ad. And beforehand on this book, if you spend $30, you're probably losing money, if not just breaking even. Now, if you're getting them to pay over a hundred dollars, life's good, you're able to make a decent chunk of change there. I was obviously thinking about, we already have this experience, right? And when we create products and go beyond the book, we don't want to try and reinvent anything. We don't want to think about creating a different product for a different audience. Like that's not going beyond the book. That's just building something else to go beyond the book. We want to think about what journey is this story taking our readers on and how can we enhance that journey through some kind of product, digital or physical, that we can charge more for or maybe the same or less for, but at least people will want it. And my mind immediately went to, I'm literally looking at this. It is drink recipes that I'm going to want to start to go make. Why can't I have cocktail drink mixes that are reader inspired trotails, Drink mixes that allow me to actually, instead of just reading this, I can just put it in, make the drink lights, it'll.

Be done with it and it can be na. Or you can add alcohol, which is.

Awesome too because then you can also market this to your middle grade readers. I'm joking there.

No, we're not marketing, Joe. Don't come for us.

You started as a middle grade author, so, so, you know, tying it back anyways, theoretically, I love the arc here from middle grade to like cocktail books. Like, it's awesome. Like truly love the arc. So now we want to think about what that journey looks like. And again, I think that we were throwing around a lot of ideas and I felt that doing these cocktail drink mixes was the most obvious path. And here's why. I wanted people to be able to pay for a year up front where they could get 12, like a mystery subscription where each month they're getting a new trope tale cocktail mix. And you're able to then get a year of cash flow upfront, which for a bootstrap business is huge. Like such a hack. But you can do that because people are buying this stuff all the time. I had a friend who ran this huge meat subscription company that scaled to 200 million in annual revenue and that was a lot of their growth. Hacking was literally just selling these upfront year subscriptions through this. I like this product for that reason. I also liked it because you don't have to sell through subscription if you bundle it. You could bundle a pack of. Here's a pack of 12. But there's like, this one gets 12 drink mixes, but you're gonna get five different packs together in a bundle, discount it, and it's 70 or 80 bucks, right? And then like when you add that with the book, there you go at 100, whatever that pricing looks like, it starts to get pretty interesting. There's a lot of different ways you can imagine bundling drink mixes to this audience, driving them to a landing page through any type of marketing and ultimately making a lot of money. But that doesn't confront the biggest question we all have. How are we making drink mixes?

We're reaching out to manufacturers.

Yeah. This is the hard part. This is the hard part. Walk me through Maggie, because I remember when we settled on this, you were excited. What were you feeling when we settled on this idea?

I was excited. I woke up at six in the morning and started reaching out to manufacturers. I never wake up at six in the morning. In the morning.

She started working trash for me, and if anyone knows me, I work like a madman. So she was pumped about this.

I was really pumped.

I'm so happy for it.

I have three calls with manufacturers tomorrow.

Literally, walk me through, like, why did you go to manufacturers? Like, how are you thinking through that?

I work in manufacturing. This is the way to go.

Almost like. Almost like we brought her on for a reason. There's a little bit. There's a little bit. Okay, what does it look like to reach out to manufacturer? How do you even find manufacturers? You're just Googling it. Are you Googling?

I actually Googled. At first I was googling, just different. I was looking at. I first started with actually just looking on Amazon other companies that were doing powdered drink mixes. And there were a couple. And then I just looked at what they were doing and they were using pouches. So then I just searched on the Internet, drink powder pouches manufacturer. And I just started clicking on all the links and going to the contact forms. And then I would type out a message like, hey, I am in the beginning stages of a new product development. I have a cocktail recipe book and I'm looking into getting some custom or already made formula powder drink mixes for my brand. Is there a time we can call and talk about this opportunity? And then I reached out to 20 different companies and most of them have responded to me. I haven't even had a chance to go through all their emails back to me yet. And I have some calls set up with some powder manufacturing companies that I will be asking. I have a list of a bunch of questions about production and sustainability and package design and what other things they can offer me and obviously pricing. So I will be going through all of that with them on the call.

And it's my knowledge that you generated these questions by asking ChatGPT. So what prompt did you enter into prepare yourself for these manufacturers?

I asked ChatGpt if you were getting on a call with a potential manufacturer to potentially have a collaboration for a product that you're developing for drink powder mixes, what questions would you ask to ensure that this company is a good fit for a collaboration? And then I put in, I had a couple questions in specific that I knew I wanted to ask. So I said these are the questions I have. What other questions could I ask to build this list and make me sure that this is the right company? And I think the one, the questions that I had was like Moq.

What'S Moq?

Oh, minimum order quantity. If I want to order 100 pouches versus a thousand pouches, what can I order lower than 100 or higher than whatever and like how much the pricing is for the minimum amount versus a higher amount just at a price range. I asked if they do the packaging in house or if it needs to be provided beforehand. Because sometimes manufacturers are like all in one stops or there's different manufacturers in that process. Like someone else will manufacture the bag and then you have to supply the bag and they'll fill the pouch. So just all this random manufacturing stuff.

Yeah. Okay. Okay, I'm with you. Literally, you found these manufacturers just by Googling?

Yes. And then just going on the contact.

Form and how did you know, like, how did you know it was like good enough to reach out to? You don't want to reach out to every manufacturer in the world, right?

Yeah, there were some, some of them, their websites just looked like it was developed by maybe a 20, like an 18 year old or someone who maybe had no experience. Not 18 year old. That's a bad example because you were doing this stuff at 18, but someone who had no experience. They were like sketchy looking websites. I also look at the testimonial section as well. If they actually had products to display, like final products to display, that's really important. Just seeing what they've done and how well they've done it. And then I Like looked up the brands that they were displaying and saw how well they were received. Some of them I just reached out to. Just. Because. Because sometimes it's good to have multiple quotes when you're reaching out to these types of companies so you can leverage things a little bit. But I will definitely be settling on one of the ones that has a reputation for quality.

Yeah, okay. I am. I love it Makes so much sense. You get on these calls. You have three tomorrow.

Yes.

How are you going to decide what manufacturer to go with? I know you have these questions, but. And I know you might have the answers. Let's talk about this together. Like, how are we gonna decide which one to go with?

Honestly, I think I'm gonna get prototypes with a couple from a couple of them so they can compare. Yeah, I'll probably. I'll talk to all the ones. Like, I'm gonna give all these companies a week to get back to me.

Okay.

And then I'll probably settle on three that I really like and that can be based on like their communication and the pricing and the scalability. Because I want to go with a company that I can scale with. So if I start with a company that doesn't have the capacity to handle large scale orders, that's probably not a company you would want to work with. Because if your company grows fast, you have no way to predict if it's going to go fast or not. So if the company isn't able to handle the demand, it's probably not a good fit. But then also pricing is important too, because it's the first thing, it's a prototype. So I have to be able to like, have it be economical in a sense. But then of course, you have to look at the prototypes first. You could think a company's great and they get the prototype and it's oop.

Now that's a loaded question because it's not about what you think. Right. It's what your customers think. So I'm curious, with a prototype, how are you going to do that? Initial market testing. I'll offer an example. I worked for really big chocolate company, which anyone who knows my background could infer exactly what company that is. But it's owned by a very big YouTuber. And the first formulation that we came out with had a very low retention. It was based off of what the founder from founder prototype test thought tasted good. So it was like you taking these three or four in and being like, you know what, that one's obviously bad, that one's not that great. These are the two we're gonna do. Right? And we'll compete between these two, right?

Yeah.

And again, it wasn't terrible chocolate, but you could look at the retention and then compare it to like industry standard and be like, it's obvious that like customers are buying it, but they're not repurchasing it, which is what you want. It's what makes this product in particular magical because it's a consumer packaged good, it's not just about buying it. Once a consumer who loves a specific drink mix can buy it over and over and over again, it's what makes this magical. It's what honestly makes this such a big idea. And it's actually where I'm like most passionate about this podcast is we have so many podcasts that talk about making seven figure authors. I want to make eight figure authors in this podcast, I want to make nine figure authors in this podcast. I actually want to have the first billionaire author that isn't like J.K. rowling or James Patterson, although much respect to them both. We can do that. We can do that by going beyond the books. And frankly that's how a lot of them have done it too. And this product in particular has again a lot of those really great core fundamentals for not just a seven figure business, but for an eight figure business. Because once again we have that repurchasing rate. But that only matters if there's high retention. And I'll tell you what we did and how that can go. This company, when I'm saying we, I'm not with them anymore. But what they did was a very simple test which is I'm not sharing anything proprietary. This is very basic stuff that I'm sharing in terms of just a simple test between consumers to see. Blind taste test. You don't know what this is. We're going to compare it to other industry competitors, AKA your competitors products. Which one do you think tastes better? Which one do you like better on this thing? And actually did like a real survey and like true market research and ultimately the winning formula was picked out of that because there's multiple formula options and it was benchmarked against other options of like competitors. And you would test six or seven of these. Which one's ranking the best compared to the competitors. So if I was you, I would recommend getting in some initial prototypes to maybe decide the top three or four brands you're working with or maybe you narrow in on a brand but you really want to work with them in terms of the formulation. There's going to be a Testing, iteration, process there. And you're going to want to invite consumers into that. That's going to be like, really now, we think a little bit more scientifically here. You want it to be ideally randomized, or at least bringing in your target consumers. You want it to be actually a representative sample of those consumers. And maybe most importantly, you want to know that you're asking them the right questions, which is now where we get into the questions that you have to also ask yourself about the product. What do you think makes a good drink mix? Because now, if we're going beyond the books, what makes a good story? We can talk about characters, we can talk about plot, we can talk about certain tropes, we can talk about pacing. But what makes a good drink mix? If I had to say, what are the similar tropes that trope Tales needs? The drink mix. What do you think?

Those are a good drink mix.

Like, honestly, think of Pokemon. Like, we're rating it.

Yeah.

Because I know you love Pokemon.

Pokemon's awesome.

Yeah. What are these ratings? Let's build the card for Trope Tale.

It's gotta be. It's gotta be flavorful. It can't be like, something that's easily. There's some that just. You put in the water, and it just tastes so strong.

Like, flavor strength.

Flavor strength.

Yeah. That's a. Okay, let's write that down. Flavor strength is one. Okay, so we have flavor strength. What else do we think is, like, a factor here? That's gonna be really important. I would say so for people who are listening, in terms of how you think about your own products, I'd be going for around five. You're probably gonna have five key ones with one or two that make the most. If I'm thinking about, like, most products, like, candidly. Let's zoom out for a second. Packaging has to be part of this.

I was gonna say that next. Yeah.

And it's not just design. Right. It's also, like, ease of opening. Right. Like, you don't want. I hate packages that are hard to open. And I have a lot of trouble opening packages.

Oh, my God. Yeah.

I think I'm just challenged with it. It's so bad. I'm like, it's pathetic. I can't even open really simple things. Open up this, like, the steamed broccoli that you put in the microwave. I can't do it. There's some really bad things.

Or also, for example, the Dot's pretzels that I love. Sometimes if you leave them, if it's too hot, the zipper, like the glue will melt and then the zipper will like not attach to the plastic of the bag and you can't reseal it. So that's a problem.

That's a, that's a problem. Okay, so packaging is really important. Okay, now what do we think about like, I know we did strength of flavor, but what do we think about the flavor itself? Is that just going to vary depending on the different trope tale?

It would vary based on the different one. So I guess there would be different because different manufacturers have different like flavors that they already have formulated and you can mix those flavors together in a bag.

So I guess each one's going to have a flavor profile that you're going for. And you probably want to describe like this is ideally what we're going for in terms of the satisfaction. It'd be really cool to understand too what makes customers choose one drink mix brand over another. Because you're going to have killer branding. With trope Tales, you have a one of one brand where if readers want a cocktail mix, you're going to be the only place they can go. But to build a long lasting brand, you don't just want to rely on your brand, you want to have the best product. So I would try to understand out of other brands what's making consumers choose one product over another. And by the way, repurpose this same insight for your books. Literally it's the same thing. And I would literally go to reviews on sites like Amazon and see like, why are consumers choosing one thing or another? What are they liking that might go into that flavor profile section?

The reading the reviews is a good idea.

Yeah, the reading reviews is super important. I would honestly too, another like hack here is copy and paste a bunch of reviews into a spreadsheet. Copy and paste that thing in a chatgpt and see what it says. I know folks feel differently about using AI in like your creative process, but I hope a lot of us at least understand there's a lot of value in using it for business processes and stuff, because creatively we can all feel about it differently. I honestly like myself don't use chatgpt in my writing at all. But when it comes to how you want to use AI in terms of like market research and stuff, I do think it's pretty valuable and the tool is there, you might as well use it. So that's another hint in terms of making that faster. I also think there's the sort of balance between how many drinks you get out of the mix versus hey, like how it is the price. So I think that's like, an important thing.

Like the drink per serving size.

Yeah. And I also think, in addition to that, what I'd be really curious about. I don't even know if your competitors have it, but I'm just going to again, map about the customer journey. Think readers first. Right. Let's make every part of it magical. If I open up that drink mix, I'm already half drunk.

Maybe.

Maybe, Right.

Just from the smell.

I love always thinking, making things so simple that someone could do it half drunk. Like, I think that has to always be how simple things are. But that literally might be the case here.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's especially important here. So what I would be thinking about is you open it up, right? And I'm outside at the beach. I don't know why you'd be doing it outside of the beach, but maybe, who knows? I am at the grill, at the pool, right. At the beach. I just feel weird with the sand.

So I was like, yeah, powder and sand.

Yeah, the sand was weird. So throw that one out.

But you could.

Theoretically. But you could be at the pool, you could be down at the grill. You could be, like, in a loud party where you don't want to get to the kitchen. Or like, you're in the kitchen, but you're trying to look for the stuff. And you're at your friend's house because you brought this cocktail mix to your friend's house. And what I'm thinking about is the measuring. You're taking that mix, you're pouring in, you're measuring it. There could be that little plastic measuring cup that has the serving. I don't know if your competitors have that, but again, I'm just immediately thinking from a product first lens here. That would be a feature that I would love.

It wouldn't even have to be in the bag. It could just come with the subscription. Come with your first bag.

It depends. We're not even to the business model question yet, because I don't want you to get married to do not get married to business model. That's iteration. It could be bundles that you're selling it in. It could be inscription. I'd also be thinking from a customer lens. Are they losing and throwing out that old one first? These are all things you test over time, but potentially, depending on where that is. Cause imagine, like, you have this cheap plastic thing I'm throwing away at the drink mix, and it's like, next month. Oh, damn. That was the only one I was gonna get, right.

Yeah.

I don't know. That's something you could test and talk to customers about.

But I'm sure you could buy, like, a bulk order.

Oh, no, these things are cheap.

A tablespoon.

And it's those little touches when you.

Can just tape it in the bag when you ship it.

Yeah, I've seen people put it in.

The bag, but I'm saying if the manufacturer doesn't put it in the bag, you wouldn't want to be opening.

But you can talk to them too, because they can slot things in. I've seen with protein powder and spoon specific, which if maybe FNAF wants to start a protein powder brand. That'd be funny. Not funny. It'd be great. Like, it'd be awesome. But I've. I. This is like, my protein powder does that. And I love it.

Okay. Yeah, mine do, too.

Yeah. So I'm thinking about that, like, from that perspective as well. Okay. So these are, like, the factors that, like, make it good. Do we think there's any factors we're missing right now?

That was something I didn't think about for sure.

I always.

It's a good point.

You always need, like, a surprise and delight feature in there because it's like when they see something that then makes them think differently about it, it's like, huge win.

Yeah.

Okay. Okay, let's now take a step back. What do you view as the timeline here? How are you going to launch this? We dove into how you can test some things and how you can determine if it's a good product. Mind you, there's still a lot of work to be done there, but I think a good start. How are you thinking about launching this?

Launching it.

More specific timeline process. Once you create this thing, you now have this valuable product. But just like Trope Tales, you've got to get it out in the world.

Yeah.

Not even thinking long term. What's that initial launch look like?

Initial launch. I would probably run into their Kickstarter for it.

Okay, this makes sense. Now we can get really fun with it. I'm so excited for you. Kickstarter is the perfect thing. When we think about business model and then product development, they should be the same thing. And I'm thinking about Kickstarter right now. And we just talk about how you need to do all these testing. Right. Kickstarter funds you before you even have to go and do the test. Right. It can be coming out in six months.

Yeah.

Put a realistic timeline on it. And then who is going to test. Who are you going to run these tests on?

The Kickstarter backers.

Exactly.

So you would do this before you even market it to your newsletter. You would obviously be marketing.

The Kickstarter is going to be your newsletter.

You would be marketed to. Yes.

You're going to launch the Kickstarter.

This is taking the place of getting random people in the public to taste your thing. The Kickstarter is going to be the test of whatever.

Yeah. Because I would let them early in Part of why you're backing this Kickstarter and instead of waiting 12 months for it to come out to the public, part of why you're backing it is you get to freaking be a part of the first formulation of this. You get to help decide. Here are the three manufacturers I'm shipping. Here's 100 test samples to everyone who backed it. And maybe if there's too many people to back it, it's like a specific tier that you do it for. You know what I mean? So you can have fun with that and play around with it so that meets your numbers for not ordering too much of a prototype or, or candidly they're paying you and you could always have that in the margin in terms of it. You can bake that into the business model. This is where I want everyone to think about in terms of when you pick a business model, it's not just for fun. I'm going to do a subscription, I'm going to do upfront payment, I'm going to do bundle. It's or a Kickstarter. It's thinking about, I'm doing this business model. How is this going to affect how I'm developing the product and my relationship with my customers and how can I use that business model to my advantage? And if you can't come with a reason why, then try and think of the best business model for you. And I think in your case, for launch, Kickstarter makes so much sense because you're going to have a product development cycle but you don't want to have to go out of pocket for all of that. So you're basically getting paid.

Yeah.

You're going to create a prototype which won't be that expensive just to first see if it's even possible. But after that you're going to be profitable this entire way through and you're going to start potentially an 8 figure plus drink mix company with almost no money out of pocket. When I say almost no pocket, I'm not talking like a thousand dollars. I'm talking like you're going to spend probably less than $100 doing this. Yeah.

Getting the prototype. That's the only. Yeah.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

So that's why Kickstarter is valuable. Because you can get the long term benefit of getting a high retentive product, a great product out and get that testing process done through the Kickstarter. I love it. I love it. And you can already again, through the Kickstarter test what bundles are going to work, what actual trope tales I want the most. There's going to be so many different mixes you could create.

Yeah.

You could do that all through surveys and invite them into this process with you. Backing the Kickstarter isn't just backing the Kickstarter and getting it three months. It's also getting behind the scenes of how you're going to be making this company, which is amazing. That's epic. And then you launch it and you now have like your profit banked. Plus you know what your first development run needs to look like. I'm going to make this back to the manufacturer. And that becomes part of. Even when you're finalizing contracting agreements and you should never sign an exclusive agreement, obviously. But when you're trying to figure out that first manufacturer, then that minimum order. Right. You know what that is? Okay. This is my minimum order amount. I can't work with this one. They can't work with me. This one has a higher one, but I really like them. So I'm going to ask them if they could come down for me. And guess what? It worked. You know, maybe I'm paying a little bit more for now, but I can get my minimum orders higher eventually. Yeah. I'm feeling it. Like, that's great. And then you would obviously, for this first one, order everything here.

Yeah.

And then just like fulfill it out of here.

Right.

Which is chill.

Yeah.

But now it's launched, it's out.

Yes.

You've done the Kickstarter. It's on your direct store. What happened?

That's where I'm stuck. Because Kickstarters are easy for me.

Yeah.

That's a no brainer.

You can probably make tens of thousands of dollars doing this in Kickstarter.

Hopefully like almost 15,000 with trope tales.

Yeah. So let's say you just do another 15k from this. Maybe do a lot better. How do you.

I think I can scale it because this is reaching an NA audience too.

I think it can.

That was a lot of the com. Not. I've never really received complaints on this book, but a lot of the. A lot of the comments were, I don't drink, but I love the idea of it. And Obviously there were 300 people who do drink and like it. So there is a market. But this is reaching more of an.

Audience, which is exciting. So exciting. I'm so happy for you. This is gonna be so great. But we have to then take it a step further and think about the next steps. Really like building this brand. So you're gonna put on your Shopify what happens next? Because let's say you make. I'm just throwing a number out there. Let's say you $15 to $20k in profit from this. The first run, the drink Lexus. That's great. You're good. You've got money to live for a couple months. When I say what happens next, I'm also saying what amount in a Kickstarter up front. Are you quitting your job at. That's something you need to think about. When do you decide to go all in? I don't know. How do you scale it all in? And again, we can do a follow up podcast, but I do want to, in the last episode, follow up when.

I'm like six figure author.

No follow up after the Kickstarter.

I think we're all going after the Kickstarter.

Yeah, I think we're at this stage now where I'm like, no, I want to hear this. I want to hear what you're thinking through because it's going to change between now and then. And I think it's good to think about the medium term play here because we have a really good short term play. But medium term is when we turn this from an amazing Kickstarter into an amazing business.

Yes.

There's a difference. Let's think about like how are we selling this after Kickstarter? Because Kickstarter is a one time thing.

Shopify.

Okay, Shopify, done. How are you marketing it? Because let's say you've already marketed to your list in Kickstarter. You need new leads at that point, Right. You'll have word mouth, right?

Yeah.

Besides word of mouth with me, which maybe is significant. Outside of that, how are you growing this?

The only ads when you say that.

I'm like already feeling it's not. Dude, I love Facebook ads we're gonna do now. But I'm thinking we've been doing these story supper things. You don't think there's a opportunity for you to use a similar model, an event driven model to scale this?

Like the parties at the bars. That's too local. Event driven.

Why would it be too local?

Because I only live In Cincinnati.

Why does it have to be you? So we're talking about her hosting meetups, basically cocktail meetups for readers, which I think is pretty epic. And posting it for free, getting readers to come for free, but then being like, hey, you could buy this book or you could buy like these drink mixes. Right. And just hosting at a bar, informal meetup, doesn't really cost anything out of pocket, just time. But you're saying very correctly, you could do that in Cincinnati. Yeah, but you can't do that out of Cincinnati. But then I have to ask you, why do you have to be there?

I guess I don't have to be.

So let's think about how you don't.

Have to be the virtual stuff.

No, talk to me. Let's imagine how you can scale a CUNY driven IRL event marketing strategy, because again, it's very easy just to say Facebook ads. And Facebook ads might work for you really well. And I wouldn't advise against not doing it. I think you should do it. But maybe there's a really creative way that leans into going back to your strengths. You love selling. You love building events and community. We know there's a community here. Can you create a community that can simultaneously grow your brand? That's the big question.

Yeah, I think it's doable. I just don't entirely know where that would start.

Oh. So the first thing I think about with this is that we need an incentive structure. I was talking before about affiliates reaching out.

Yeah.

You could have people in different cities run these cocktail parties for readers and they could get a cut of the sales here and a cut of the sales on whatever products they're offering for the upsell into the drink mixes, whether it's a bundle or a subscription. I think the Kickstarter is going to teach you a lot about what that should be. That's interesting to me because now all of a sudden, you're able to tap into a much wider audience and really incentivize people to get out there and go sell it. And for you, there's really no out of pocket cost because you can fulfill the books centrally. You can also fill the drinks centrally. You don't need to do this out of a single. Oh, you have to bring it with you. You could give them a copy of the book. You have to give them 10 copies. They can go online and order it through their affiliate code. They can go online and order the drink mix through your affiliate code. That's interesting to me. It would be pretty easy to test that and wouldn't cost any money out of pocket.

They would be getting money from the sale, though. The people.

Yeah, but out of pocket. Because you're getting money on the sale.

Yeah. Less money, though. But the affiliate.

I mean, but you're gonna be spending money on ads anyways, so wouldn't you spend the same amount of money that you'd spend on ads to acquire them? That's what you would do.

That's true.

If you're gonna spend $30 on an ad to acquire a customer, just give them $30.

Yeah.

That easy.

Whatever that amount is, they're only reaching a limited amount of people if they're hosting their own small event. And how do I even get them to host these small events?

If people want to have a cocktail party for readers, which this whole book is basically based around.

Yeah. So it could.

Then hopefully there's demand to come together around that.

Yeah.

So they should want to throw it. Because one, they can make money. And two, wouldn't readers want to come together and have a cocktail party about books? Yeah, I hope.

If not, like, how are you promoting that across the country, though, without ads?

No, they can promote it in Facebook groups.

But how do you reach those people to promote it then, is what I'm asking.

Let's think about who would like to most promote it. It would either be readers or authors. Authors whom could potentially sell their own books there, too.

Yeah.

Which is like a double dip for them, which is great. And they could sell their books, make the money there, do this, do that. It's interesting strategy I'd explore.

Yeah.

I think ads is still very natural here, But I'm a big believer in ads are really just a content game where you need good content to fuel the ads. That content has to come from somewhere. That content is either going to be you making trope tales, literally making the cocktails.

Yeah.

Or other people. And this event gives you endless content.

Yeah, effectively. Of the people. Yeah. So are you giving them the book for free, then, or are they buying it with a discount?

No, I think they're buying it. Yeah. I don't think you need to give it to them for free.

The people who would be hosting the parties.

Oh, the people who are hosting the party. You can give the book for free? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you're not. Yeah. This is just like an affiliate type of thing. And you can give that to them, But I don't think you need to give, like, you know, the people there, the product for free. They're the ones buying.

What if hundreds of people across the country want to host their own cocktail party though. You're not giving away hundreds of books.

What do you mean?

If you're giving away a book to someone to host a cocktail party in their city. What if hundreds of people in cities across the country want to do it?

If you're telling me the price to have hundreds of cocktail parties, $6 time. Hundreds of cocktail parties and they're all going to be based around your books. It's pretty freaking cool. That seems like a really good marketing decision. Yeah. If I could have. If a book costs $6 to print, $5 a ship, you're basically telling me for 1200 bucks you can have a hundred cocktail parties. Sign me up. Like I would do that.

Okay, I see.

Yeah. And also if that's a problem, then don't give them the book for free.

Yeah.

They don't even have to have the physical book. It can all be digital.

That's true.

Yeah. Just give them a flyer to print out.

Yeah.

If that's a problem. If. And it might not even be worthwhile to give them the book. Maybe it is just the flyer, but yeah. 100 cocktail parties is insane.

That's amazing.

Imagine think about that, if each cocktail party sold three books and then the subsequent drink mixes and it was on average $100. 100 cocktail parties is $30,000. It's not bad.

Yeah.

And revenue, obviously not profit. But that's a pretty interesting strategy. But I obviously do think ads will be like the way to actually grow and scale something like this. But I think you always need a long term marketing moat because the ads can go down and you also need something to fuel the ads. And again you were telling me your strengths like ads scare you, community excites you.

Yeah.

I know you, you do well at selling at in person events. And I think less of this is about you selling more so than you exciting other people to sell. Building a sales force which as in sales, is the only way to really scale in sales. If you were to stay at your day job, which is in sales, eventually you'd be managing a sales team effectively. It's following a similar arc. The content in the ads I think is great too. I would then run competitions though to help fuel that content where you create a competition where the people who submit the best videos of them making trip tales can win money. And then you're taking them, paying them money because they perform the best in social media. You post them in social media, you take the viral ones, you pay the money and say you won. And then also I'M gonna use your content and use it for ads.

Yeah.

That's part of the condition of them getting money. And you basically just paid them to create ads for you.

Yep.

Because that's like, a really organic way to do it.

I thought about doing a Trope Tales Like Compton. Like a media thing.

Yeah. Yeah. That's how I would do it. Because again, everything goes back to content. Even with these reader cocktail events, everything would be about them taking pictures and posting on social media. Them taking pictures, posting social media and amplifying the event. People feeling the FOMO being like, what is this? That's the whole benefit of everything, is doing everything in service of creating content that's posted online that gets readers attention. And it's about creating a machine that feeds you content that you can amplify through ads. But that's already performing well organically. Everything ultimately goes back to that. Yeah.

I like the idea of the Trope Tales competition, but this is all after the Kickstarter with the couches.

Yeah. But it's important to think through because you need to be able to capitalize on the success and you have a sustainable way to grow it. Because at some point, you've quit your job for this.

Yeah.

And probably after successful Kickstarter, you'd have to do it.

Yeah.

Let's say if you made from one Kickstarter six months that you earn at your day job, would you quit your day job?

Don't tell my parents, but maybe. Yeah, probably.

There you go.

I would heavily consider it.

Then. That's your goal? That's your goal for your Kickstarter.

Six months of income.

Yeah. Before I quit my day job, I saved up just over 12 to 18 months. Let's call it of, like, savings.

Yeah.

So I knew I had enough to be okay. So I wasn't even, like, it wasn't even making the money from the business for me. It was just, like, it'll work out. And, like, I have 12 to 18 months of Runway. So because this type of thing, you're definitely going to want to go and scale. Devote your attention to it. Because I firmly believe, like, there's a $10 million business here. And I also firmly believe. And it could be bigger than that. And I firmly believe that for those listening, there's hundreds of businesses that big that authors can create. Hundreds, maybe even thousands. And you could be the person. And when it comes to you, Maggie, I'm curious, when it actually comes to running the business, not growing it beyond this Kickstarter, how are you thinking about the actual Operations, the fulfillment. Because this is something that I'm still like new to with like physical products. Digital is a lot easier when you're thinking about beyond the books in digital context. But physically it can get. It can be challenging.

Yeah, I mean, I've done it out of my apartment previously. I shipped 300 books out of my apartment for a campaign. Just had a bunch of books in my apartment.

I would be mapping out a number where you're getting someone else to hire them in to start doing that for you, and then another number where you're having a set space for it. And I think that number actually is really easy to know and I'll give it to you. So that number is this when you, for two months, maybe even three or four if you want to be conservative, have been making an amount of money in that month, not just from a Kickstarter one time, but in that month. So consistently making income for two to four months. Where if, let's say you make $20,000 in profit in a month, but you're spending 20 hours a week fulfilling orders.

Yeah.

I would then be like, okay, let's do simple math here. Let's say you're spending 40 hours a week in the business. You're making, you know, $20,000 roughly. Your time's worth a hundred dollars an hour.

Yeah.

You can then afford at that point to pay someone one fourth of that. So for everyone listening, you can afford to pay someone to help you one fourth of whatever your time per hour is worth. And then ideally they take on lower value tasks. You do more important things that are fueling you and more your strengths. You make even more money. Your time's worth more. You can hire more people, give raises to existing people to just keep growing the engine. But you need it to be one fourth what your time's worth because you need to be making some money. Because if you're giving away what your time's worth for those hours, you won't be making any profit and have any breathing room for that person working for you. And they might be working slower, they might not do things as efficiently as you. That's okay, because if they do 80% of what you do, that's a huge win. What I'd be thinking about is monitoring closely what your dollar per hour is and when you can bring that off your plate. And when the fulfillment's off your plate, then I'd be thinking about how can you build operational systems to manage it. And then the last step, which is really fun, is how can you build a space, potentially, or get access to another space where you're not dealing with the shipment in your house because eventually the shipments coming into your house, the mental energy that takes up is not going to be worth you having your creative space and your freedom. And I see that as your pathway here to like how you're growing this. And eventually you're going to need customer support. Eventually you're going to need some form of person helping with marketing. This will all come with time, but I'd be thinking about it very principled in terms of I made this level of profit for a couple months. I know I need this role. This is how much this role is going to cost me to hire and I could afford this based on what my time per hour is. That way you're not growing too fast, you're not spending money too dumbly and you're able to grow this thing sustainably. And it's actually a pretty simple math equation.

I think it makes sense. It's a lot to think about.

I'm excited for you.

I'm excited too. It's gonna be a million dollar business.

Oh yeah. It'll be bigger than that.

I hope so.

I think you can get a million packets sold a year.

I hope I do.

I think you get a million sold a year.

That'd be insane.

Yeah, it would be amazing.

It could be the Six figure author.

It'll be more than just a six figure author. And I think that's part of the power in going beyond the books. And I'm so excited to have you as like the first official guest of the podcast.

Thank you for having me. This is exciting. I have a lot to think about. A lot. And my brain is spinning.

Yeah, in a good way. I'm so excited for. I think it's. Honestly, this is some of my favorite moments, like when I've been creating content in the community for last couple of years, has been helping authors on stuff like this and to have a space where I just do this is very fun. So I'm very grateful for you allowing me to have a great time.

I'm grateful for you giving me me your time.

Yeah, no, I hope I was helpful.

Very helpful.

And to everyone listening, thank you so much. You can find both Maggie's awesome trope tales in the description. You can find a link to my newsletter. You can also find a link to join the waitlist for Reader Meter, which has nothing to do with necessarily going beyond the books, but instead helping give you a strong foundation to create an amazing, engaging book for your readers. So you can go beyond the books and build an empire because you have amazing stories. And that's what readermere does. It really shows you when readers stop turning the page in your books. It's awesome. You can find it in the link in the description, and that is it. I hope you all have an amazing day. Please share this with friends. I think this is a super innovative podcast for this industry and I want to hear stories from you all. We're trying to covering stuff that hasn't really been covered on other podcasts. I need help in finding really cool people to talk to. I want to help them as well, and I want to help you all. So help me share this podcast. Throw people my way you think would be good guests. And with that said, I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. And don't forget, together we are boundless.