SPS 092: Using Books To Start Multiple 7-Figure Companies (Mike Michalowicz Interview)

Hey, Chandler Bolt here. And joining me today is Mike Michalowicz. Mike is the author of a bunch of books, a bunch of really successful books, including We've Got Profit First, Clockwork, the Pumpkin Plan, which I think was the first one that I heard a friend talk about. There's the Toilet paper entrepreneur, there's Serge, and then his most recent book, Fix this Next. He's also the founder of multiple companies. And we were talking about before this interview, masterful at using books to not only start companies, but then grow companies beyond six figures, continually bring in what we always talk about, lead sales and referrals for that business and then installing someone to run that business and going and doing it again and again and again. So just really, really talented at that. That's what we'll be diving into in this interview. Mike, great to have you here.

Chandler, it's good to be here. Thanks for doing this.

So I want to start why Books? And I guess I want to touch on this in a little bit, why books is part of your business and as a business strategy. But then even before that, why did you decide to write your first book?

So I've been an entrepreneur my entire life. I mean, my entire adult life. Ever since college, I've been running businesses. And I never aspired or dreamed of being an entrepreneur, let alone being an author. But I had some experiences in business, really had some great successes. I was able to sell a couple companies, but great failure. And I remember sitting down one day after this massive calamity I had and I had to restart my life effectively and just writing down everything I didn't know about business. And it went on for page after page after page. And I started saying, is there a better way? Does profitability, Is it really generated at the very end? Or couldn't profit be extracted First? I started asking these questions, and it became research, which then became articles. I wrote for the Wall Street Journal for a while, wrote these articles, and they became books. I realized I had this inner dream of being an author, but always saw it as one of the situations, like if I had enough money, that I didn't have to worry about money one day, if I had all the money in the world, I'd become an author. I realized there's a question in parallel that when you have no means of income, if the answer to supporting your life is the same answer as your dream, if you had all the money in the world, if it's the same thing, well, that's a calling. And so 13, 14 years ago, I said to Myself, I got nothing. I'm restarting. I really want to be an author and I think I can make revenue doing this. And I looked at some other authors that are wildly successful, you know the name, like J.K. rowling, Stephen King. But I looked at, you know, business authors. Tim Ferriss I actually ran into one day and I'll tell you one thing about writing books. Ask a lot of people about, you know, can you make money writing books? And people that say no, that's crazy, don't do it. Ask them about their experience. Most of them have never done it. When I asked Tim Ferriss like, can you make money writing books? He's like, are you kidding me? You can become a millionaire writing books. And so he had the lessons I wanted to learn. And so that's when I decided I'm going to go all in being an author. So I've been an author for 13 years now. It's my full time endeavor. I have spawned many businesses from it. I'm a shareholder in those businesses, but I'm an author. That's my primary vocation.

I see. And so where did you come up with this idea to use these books to start companies? Because I think that's even if we're using Tim Ferriss as the example, right. He's had mega hit books and he makes a lot of money off those books, but he has never, I mean, maybe in small ways, but I feel like hasn't bridged like oh, super successful book and now here's an exact business that helps you implement this book. And maybe in some ways, but I feel like you've done that just masterfully and intentionally.

Again, I have a new business we're rolling out, we're just months away. So I think what I'm doing, which is a little bit unique, is I'm building an encyclopedia of books. And the question I asked myself, and I think we all need to ask ourselves, is whatever our primary vocation is, is there ways to build a ecosystem around it that becomes kind of an upward spiral where one thing supports the other. So when I wrote these books, I wasn't thinking that far ahead. I just wrote a book and someone would call me and say, oh, I read your book. I now need to know if I'm doing it right. So who's the company that supports this? And I'm giving a little more of your thoughts here. And they said, well, I want a consultant or something. I was like, oh, I could start a consulting business, but I want to be a full time author. How do you Run a consulting business without doing the consulting. And that's when I came up with the licensing model. So what I do is I write a book. I will partner with a company that already has a capability in that space, but doesn't necessarily have a presence or have a good marketing arm. So they may be the experts in the deliverable, but not effectively marketing. Well, the best way to market is a great book. And so I'll say, listen, I'm going to do everything I can to write a great book. You do everything you can to deliver great service and you can embrace the brand name and differentiate yourself from any other competitors because you have the definitive book. As long as I do that. So those licensees are really desirous of me selling more books. That's what I want to do. And the more books I sell, the more service business they get. So I have now four licensees and we're rolling out our fifth. And one of them I have a lot of equity in. The other ones are just a pure licensing agreement.

Interesting. And what's the difference between the bigger equity and the licensing agreement? Are you just mostly working on the book side of things and you just send business and you get a, I'm guessing a rev share of all the business that goes there or what does that look like?

Yeah. So the structure is a licensing fee. So it's a one time fee. And the more successful my books have and the more recognized that the licensing fee, at least my definition, is pretty substantial. But also it also means the company that's investing or the person that's investing. This is a lifetime commitment. It's not like, oh, overall the dice here, it's like we're all in. This is there's real skin and flesh and bones in, you know, then there's a override on revenue. I require that all the licensees use my model of profit first to drive profitability and we share in the revenue. So I'm very motivated for books to bring business to them. In the equity case, I also am a spokesperson for that brand. So that's Profit First Professionals. I own that company too. Not all of it. I have a partner in it, but I own it with this partner. And so they licensed profirst professionals. The organization has licensed the model. But I'm also the active spokesperson for the brand. The other ones, I'm the spokesperson for my books. I promote my books. But once someone reads say Clockwork, they will be invited if they want to be supported in this, to work with run like Clockwork, the organization behind It. And the licensee, her name is Adrian Dorris. And it's. It's Adrian's brand. It's Adrian's face. So I just generate the leads through the books, and she runs with the service. Deliverable.

I see. That makes sense. And then how. How do you incentivize those licensees to help you sell more books, to kind of feed. Feed that circle?

Yeah. So. Well, it's interesting. So it's funny, like, I was at one of these info marketer events, and I don't know what the term is, if they use info marketer anymore. But what was interesting is they were saying, what is your cost per lead? And someone say, well, we spend about $10 per lead through Facebook ads. And I say, I make $6 a lead. They're like, or $4 lead. Like, what you make. You mean you're spent? No, no, no. When someone buys a book, the net is $3.50 in royalties, plus there's some other little mini upsells. So I'm netting 4. $4 per lead coming in. Well, now, once we had that lead coming in, I turn them over to my licensees, and the licensees introduces them to the full service suite. Every single book has a prospect of varying degrees. Not everyone's going to want to hire services. The majority don't. But they are all engaged. You see, the old prospecting. Old prospecting, but the traditional prospecting is put a Facebook ad out. No one knows who you are, and you're just trying to evoke curiosity. You know, can you come down the road a little further? But with a book, you have people that already invested. So people read the book and like, I get this. I love this. I want to do this. It's a very different kind of prospect. They already are speaking the language. So when you're talking with them, you already have a common starting point. My licensees want as many books out there as possible because it is the most effective form of marketing, I believe, in the world, is a book. It trumps any other paid advertising. And if you do it right, make money, you make money in marketing.

Yeah, I love that you said that. You're the only person I've ever heard say, besides myself, say that of like, instead of paying for leads, you're getting paid to get leads. And they're really qualified leads because they just spent hours either reading your book or listening to the audiobook. And now they're just saying, hey, this is great. I believe in the methodology. Can you help me implement the methodology? And that's exactly where you dovetail.

That's exactly what it is. You know, I think the mistake that some authors make when they. When they write books, that they are focusing only on the leads without delivering content. I think that's the great divide. When I write my books, everything I put in there is everything I know. I mean, I put my soul into it. To the point where anyone reads a book, they don't need to go further. Like every. The whole solution is there. The thing is, there's two types of consumers of books. There's the DIY ERs. And honestly, in most cases, I'm a DIYer. I buy a book, I want to do it myself. But if you give everything you know in the book, the DIYers become your marketing arm for the book. They read the book and say, oh, my gosh, this changed my life. I'm not going to hire anyone, but I'm going to tell all my friends about this. This book is amazing. The other community is. Is the ones who are looking for the trusted knowledge source. These people read the book and say, holy crap, this is the answer. But I don't want to do this. But I trust this guy because he gave me everything he knows. Those are consumers. So if. If you put every ounce of your knowledge, if you make it so simple to consume the two consumers, DIYers and looking for the master, those people will present themselves, and one will become your marketers, others will become your consumers. The mistake I see authors do is they say, I just want to kind of hook the fish. You know, I'm going to put a little taser in there. But then I'm going to say, buy my stuff. Buy my stuff. And try to upsell them. The DIYers don't trust you because they can't do it themselves. So they don't promote your book, so it crushes your marketing. The people who want to know that you're a knowledge source say, this person seems almost like a charlatan. They're not sharing the knowledge. I don't know if I trust them. So you have to give it away. And it's funny. I yelled this from the mountaintops. And yet so few authors believe me. They're like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm just gonna give away just enough because it's a glorified marketing piece that I'm gonna hook them in and it fails over and over.

I agree. Give away all your best stuff for free and people will pay you to tell it to them again.

Exactly.

They'll read it and they need More help.

Right. They just want to know they're doing it right. And you don't need to trick them. You don't need to overwhelm. Give them everything. And they'll say, I just want to make sure I'm doing it right. I want your personal guidance. Cool.

Hey, how do you. How do you motivate individual licensees to. Or kind of with all these different. How do you tie all together all these businesses on the back end, even though they're ran by individuals? And so you know where. It really sounds like people could work with multiple people? Like, how do you kind of navigate that?

Yeah. So we have, you know, we have licensee meetings once a quarter. We get together and say, here's kind of the state of affairs of our biosphere. And there is an exchange of opportunities. There are some people, some consumers who say they're the fanboys. They're like, whatever Mike does, I love his stuff. I'm just going to consume it. And I'm honored. I mean, I love that community. I think they're not considering what their business necessarily needs. They're just fanboying, which is awesome because I feel that our licensees are at an excellent standard. So they will be served no matter what. So there's people that's ping pong between each one. So one of our licensees will say, Joanne Smith just called me up. And in the other licensee, oh, we had her last week. So there's a transfer of knowledge about how to give this client an exceptional experience. Then you have people that are very strategic. They come in one, they say, listen, I have a problem with business efficiency. I read Mike's book on clockwork. I'm now working with someone like Clockwork. Now that we've mastered this, we want to master profitability or organic growth. So if it's organic growth, Adrian, the licensee of Clockwork, will call Donna, the licensee of the Pumpkin Plan, and say, we have someone that wants organic growth. Why don't you throw her in? So they start referring opportunities to each other. The interesting thing we don't do is there's no monetary exchange of licensees. It's not like, hey, if you throw me someone, I'm an affiliate to you. It kind of muckies the water, I feel. And maybe in the future we'll bring it out. Maybe we'll get some more clarity. But for now, it's just these referrals. And each licensee is very motivated to provide excellent service and expects excellent service from someone else because it kind of keeps Elevating or lifting up everybody, you know, that's smart.

I like that. You know, the natural question, I'm sure you get asked as I'm curious, you know, people ask, why license? Why do the licensee model versus just spinning off and running all these businesses yourself on the back end?

And you could. And that felt tempting to me until I said, I really just want to be the world's best at one thing. I just want to be a great author. I want to do everything every hour I can to be an extraordinary author. I was writing today, actually, I was just writing a few minutes ago. I'll be writing again tonight. And I believe excellence is in extraordinary effort. I think if I ran all these businesses or was involved in some capacity, I. I'd actually start diluting their ability to be excellent. Adrian and Donna and Justin, Ron, they're all the ones running the different divisions, all of Kelsey. They are extraordinary at running what they run, and they've elevated the business quality. I just know, even though my ego's like, I should own all these things, it feels good for my ego. I know I would dilute their ability.

That's great. I love that. And I love that you give people permission to stick to one thing. Cause I think it's a mistake that so many people make is they try, you know, jack of all trades, master of none. You try to do a bunch of things, and you end up doing a lot of things not well. But your commitment to being best in the world at one thing, that thing is being an author. And that thing feeds the entire ecosystem. That helps the ecosystem grow, which is the highest, best use of your time.

Being an author is freaking hard. I'll tell you, being in anything is freaking hard when you really dig into it. So, you know, in our industry of authors, there's, I don't know, 10,000 new manuscripts released every day in the nonfiction space or something. It's ridiculous, but I think of all the. Because it's so easy to put text into a PDF, but to really be in the Olympic level of authorship, and I'm not even saying I'm there, that's why I'm aspiring. I'm trying to compete to get that level. Those authors have put extraordinary effort into their talent. And it's that last 1 or 2% of authorship where mastery is achieved. I know if I don't give myself the shot of spending that much time every day in getting there, I'll never get there. And that's a dream I have for myself, to be the Olympic level You.

Got to focus to be world class at the thing that you're trying to be world class at. Love that. So I want to transition a little bit to book marketing. Obviously, this is what. What feeds the machine and this is what you spend a lot of time on. I want to unpack in just a little bit kind of the different marketing approaches and things like that. But I figured we start with profit first, which from an outsider's perspective, without knowing under the hood, the Numbers seems to be the most successful book that.

You have by far. Yeah.

How many copies of that book have you sold, roughly? Why do you think that book has been so much more successful than some of the other books?

Yeah.

And why the most successful?

So I'll give you the numbers, but I'm going to give you kind of the big number first. But break it down because I think a lot of people hear the number and they're like, wow. But they don't really understand it. And I suspect as an author, it's nice to say the big number first for my ego, but I gotta give you the reality behind it. So it's sold eight, I'm thinking real quick, 365, about 700,000 copies. Now here's. And that's true, but let me explain that. That includes print, electronic and audio. Right. So there's first of all, three formats. Secondly, it's been translated into 20 languages. Like, you know, the base, the common language is like Spanish and Chinese, at least in the business fiction space. And nonfiction, that's pretty common. But Estonian, Hungarian, like all these languages. So that's a lot of sales too. It's also in the second revision. So there's version one that's out there. Version two is out there now, but there's also a prior version. So cumulatively about 700,000. But so you can break it down. The most current version prop first revised, expanded, as of this morning, 184,000 print hardcover copies in English and about 190,000 audio copies. So this kind of gives you a sense. It is by far for me, my most successful book at this point. My other books are in the low 100,000. So clockwork and Pumpkin Plan. But those are what's called, you know, this. It's called backlist books. The interesting thing is I found ways in market and this is actually. We were just talking about this earlier. The importance of backlisting is so critical. I met with a guy named Ryan, you know, Ryan Holiday? You know him or know of him?

Yep.

So he actually you were talking about John Gordon. So John Gordon, Ryan Holiday, myself, James Clear, he wrote Atomic Habits. Don Miller, Chris Galabo. We flew in, down to Don's house in Nashville, the Nashville area. And we. Funny, I actually wrote about this in one of my books. It was just so funny. So we're sitting there talking about backlisting, selling books, and we're sharing strategies, and Ryan Holiday is no punches pulled kind of guy. Actually, when he throws a punch, he doesn't even look at you. And I was telling him about backless and stuff, and he was looking at this fire, and he goes, I told him about my idea of asking for an advance and how to position stuff. And he goes, I just pitch it to the group. I said, what do you guys think about doing this with my backless and pursuing an advanced? And Ryan Holiday looks at the fireplace. He goes, that's a fucking stupid idea. And that's it. And there's, like, science. So my face goes red and he's like, half my age. I'm like, son of a bitch. I'm like, what's wrong with my idea? And he starts explaining how advances work. And I know I'm going on a tangent here, but I think it's very important he starts explaining how advances work and how to negotiate them. I went back to my. I don't have an agent. I'm kind of a rarity when it comes to mainstream publishing. I don't have an agent. I went agent free, renegotiated, negotiated my next advance on my next book, got double what I anticipated would be my biggest dream, and it was simply because of Ryan Holiday. My point is, some of us have marquee books like I have Profit First. That's the big seller. I also have found methods to market and build my backlist. Once you have that momentum, thank you, Ryan Holiday, you can leverage that for another book. And if you're going mainstream publishing and it's not suited for many people, there's a lot of risk. Self publishing actually is a far more profitable model. I would say 90% of the time, you can leverage that to get a big advance or some other things that are in your favor.

That's great. And let's backtrack just a little bit. I got three kind of quick hit thing. And then what did you do to double your advance with that next book when you went back and renegotiated?

So for some reason, we cut up. I heard the double advance, so I can talk about that and then you can repeat what you asked. So the double advance. I called the publisher and Ryan, here's a little secret. Insider access. So a publisher will pay royalties of about $3.50 per book. And there's var. It's based upon your volume. So if you sell, like your first 5,000 books, you're making $2 a book. Your second, you're making. It ratchets up. But once you get surpassed, like 15,000 bucks, you'll make 350 a buck. And the truth is, publishers don't make so much money on printed books. And even the Kindle arrangements or the electronics, not so much. It's the Audible books, the audiobooks. Keep the lights on for these publishing houses. And if you self publish, audio is massive. It is massive. The opportunity. So that's what's keeping the lights on. He goes, the concept of 350 per book is based upon the old school print books. He's like, there's a lot of margin left over. So if you can point to your backlist and point the success of your audiobooks, and then here's how you leverage it. You just say, listen. And I was very candid with my publisher. I said, I can go with you or I can self publish. And I know the numbers intimately. If I self publish, I'll be achieving X number of dollars in the next two years. And if you match that number or if you're higher than that number, it makes sense to go with you. If you don't or you're less, it makes. I cannot find financial viable sense to stay here. As much as I love my publisher, they've been a dream come true for me in so many ways. And the publisher came back and says, we can't argue your math. You're right. And the biggest thing too is I have the backlist. I think one thing I was very lucky is I became an author 13, 14 years ago. I went with mainstream publishing a year later. Things were still, things were different back then. Back then, you didn't have to be a massively proven author. I had some success with my first book. It was called the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. I had it through BookScan. They were tracking the numbers. I could prove the book was moving. They were willing to take a risk. Today, it's much harder to get in. I mean, really hard to get in. The publisher. If you're an unknown and you don't have a book already out there, they don't want you. But how do you get a book out there if they don't want you? Self publishing is the route, and negotiating advances is becoming tougher and tougher. You got to prove you're going to make these numbers. And the only way to really prove it is to have a track record with them. So it's hard to get as an unknown to come in and get a big advance first go around. It happens. You may have a remarkable story. You may have a system that people love. You may have landed an airplane on the Hudson. You may have a following of a billion people on your podcast. And there's definitely still some leverage points. It's just much harder today.

That makes sense. So to follow up the two, I think where we cut out, why no agent. That's interesting. And then for those that aren't familiar with the term, what's a backlist?

Yeah, okay. So no agent. You know, agents take 15% of your income. I had an agent for one book and I did all the work. Ends up, it wasn't really a great agent. They didn't really know the industry. The idea of an agent is they bring you to auction and that's where the opportunity is. They will say, here's the idea, the concept. And they'll go to the main publishing houses and say, who's going to pay the most for this? The agent has the connections and the access to this. So they get you in very quickly. Well, I self published the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. My first book was a self published book. And so when I spoke with my current publisher, it's Penguin Books, by the way. Now it's Penguin Random House. They acquired Random House soon. I think they're acquiring Simon Schuster too. It's Juggernaut Penguin. But when I spoke with them, they said, hey, we saw your success with Toy Paper Entrepreneur. We'd like to do the next book with you. I was talking with the editor there who wanted to acquire the books and talk with the publisher themselves. The publisher. It gets a little confusing. There's a publishing company, but the publisher is the president of the division. So he, the editor was talking to the publisher, said, we'd like to buy your book. I went to an agent then because I'm like, I assume I have an agent. And the agent did basically nothing. She's like, well, you already got the deal, so we'll see what we can do. And then she started taking a 15% slice of everything. So it's like I got a better system. I terminated the agent, I prepared my next book. I called my publisher. But before I called him, I called every friend I have that has published books under an agent. I said, hey, I'll share my contract with you. Would you share your Contract with me. I had my lawyer for, you know, $300. Just look at each contract line by line. And I said, wherever their situation is, better put that in my contract. Wherever my situation is, better leave it as is and tell them they can get more. So I'm helping my friends here with their contracts. And I learned line by line what makes an excellent contract big part of the agent's role. The other parts of negotiations already had this relationship. And I know the leverage point is self publishing because I already self published. I know how that works. I'm comfortable with it. I will gladly self publish. So I had the leverage, I had the contract negotiations, and Now I have 15% more. And when you're making, I don't want to share the numbers, but say 10,000amonth in royalties, 1500 coming out for someone that's sitting on the sideline doesn't feel so good.

That's a big difference. And backlist, can you explain that concept?

A backlist is once your book is published and in the market for a period of time. It goes into what's called backlist. Backlist means it's no longer actively being promoted.

It's.

And honestly, publishers really don't do much promotion, but no longer actively being promoted by a publisher or a primary concern of theirs. My editor alone churns out 10, 15 books a year. I'm on his mind maybe for four weeks cumulatively of any year, and then it's off his plate. For me, while the books are always important, the publisher, the importance wanes very quickly. Then it goes into what's called backlist. Backlist means not important to them, but if a backlist sells, it means they are putting no active effort in but getting money. So backlist book means they're basically printing money. Most books in fiction and nonfiction don't achieve significant backlist status, meaning there's a launch, there's a push, the publisher pushing you, the author are pushing really hard on launch day, and then six months later, the book is never to be heard again. That's a book that's no longer successful backlisting, the backlisting book that continues to sell or amplifies that catches publisher's attention because all they do is sit back and money's coming in. That's what they want. I've been able to grow my backlist consistently, which is just not that typical. Therefore, my publisher notices and it gives me more leverage to negotiate more deals.

Yep, that's great. And that's why you, you know, you alluded to this a little Bit ago, the so and so. Buying this publisher. Buying this publisher. Buying this publisher, which I know, you know, this as they're always buying, they're acquiring these companies for the backlist and the publishers for the backlist. Right. That's where all the profit is. And it's a stable, predictable source of income in an acquisition. Mike, let's chat. Book launch and book sales a little bit more. You know, you talked about 700,000 copies of Profit at first in three different formats in 20 languages. What sold the most copies, would you say, of that book specifically?

And I just want to make a mental note. I want to share something about. I think Penguin's next move is not that I have any insider access, but I think there's a reason they're doing all these acquisitions. So what sold most copies has been audible. The audio edition. 51% of my sales are audio. 40. Let me take it back. 45% or so are audio. 41 to 42% are hardcover. And then the difference, which is, you know, say 7%, whatever, is Kindle. I think that's atypical. I talked to some other authors and it's usually the print version. Print's very still very successful. Beats the audio, but the audio is most profitable. So what I did was make an extra effort to move as much audio as possible.

Oh, interesting.

So I found some strategies to do that.

Yeah, what were those?

Well, first of all, when someone buys one version, they have a propensity to buy a second. So they buy audio. They have a propensity to buy a print version to run apparel. If they really like your book. So just encourage them in the print book, say, hey, if you're enjoying this book, why don't you hear me speak it with you or to you? The second thing is, if you're listening to audio, say you haven't read the book, you can follow along and highlight. So first of all, I encourage is multiple sales. The other thing is every author should read their own book for effing sake. Do not get a professional voice. And I hate to say this because I'm not trying to hurt the professional voice industry. In fact, you visit my website, the professional voice was very important for the pronunciation of my name. But when it comes to reading a book, they don't get the inflections. They don't understand why you wrote what you wrote. So that is a major problem. The other thing is, I don't do what's called a straight read. I instead read and I'll add stories and elements. I'll Break from the read and just introduce new elements. So I'll say, hey, since I wrote this book, here's a new thing I added that may serve you. So feel that people are getting bonus content. And the last thing is it's funny. The energy of how we read a book I think is very important. So notably, I like to joke around. I'm a goofy guy. I get it. I'm not everyone's cup of tea sometimes I'm not even my wife's cup of tea, to be honest. And I get it. But it's also genuinely who I am. So when I read my books, I want to emote it that way. So I read all my books standing. Actually, right now as we're talking, I'm standing. I think you're standing too. So I went to the studio to read one of my books. I go in there and out goes someone. I just recognize the corner of their face. And I go to the producer, I said, what author was that? She goes, oh, that was Michael J. Fox, the actor. I'm like, that's Michael J. First of all, I'm like, oh my God. I just, you know, I almost brushed with excellence. I said, what's it like working with Michael J. Fox? And I already started reading for a little bit. She goes, he like a thoroughbred. Like he just wants to be whipped to run faster. I said, what about me? What am I like? She's like, you're more like a Clydesdale. You kind of are clumping along. I read so poorly. I read so quickly that I stumble over words. A book in production form that's 8 hours truly takes about 16 hours of recording time. Michael J. Fox can read an eight hour book in eight hours. It takes me 16 hours, but it's my energy and it's all out. And some people will email me and say, I've never listened to a book like this. It feels like you're like jacked up at a gym with me, you know, bench pressing out entrepreneurial topics. I think that's been a big key to the success of the books.

That's great. And the stand up desk is a great hack because it keeps your energy consistent kind of throughout the. Throughout the entire rate throughout the entire read. What about outside of that mike? What do you do either during launch or post launch from like a marketing channels perspective or like what do you, what do you do that you've seen move the most copies of books, whether it's profit first, clockwork, fix this next.

So in the launch, what moves the most books clearly is having your own list. So I actively build my list. Anyone that reads any one of my books, I'm inviting to get resources, to give them free content, invite them to join my list. Constantly capture emails. And who knows, in the future, maybe it's not emails, maybe it's cell numbers, maybe some other form of communication that's coming about, but constantly capture the primary form of communication. Email, I know is saturated, but it's still the most effective way. If I send out an email blast right now about a new book I have coming out, I likely will move in the few hours, 500 to 1,000 copies a book, which in the nonfiction space, that's a pretty substantial amount of books. And I have some contemporaries, I'm friends with Don Miller, some other folks. They'll move 5,000 books just with one email blast. So your email list is significantly important. The second thing is the people that you network with, the influencers. The interesting thing I found out about authorship, I used to be in the tech space. That was my brilliant industry. I was in computer forensics, which is computer crime investigation, membership organizations. I'm in different businesses. Every business I've been in is competitive, meaning if I'm doing the work, that's better than my competitor doing the work. If my competitor does it, they're taking opportunity from me. So I want to beat my competitors. The interesting thing about authorship is the only industry I've ever experienced like this is I want my competitor to sell more books. Because if whatever small business expert, Seth Godin, if Seth Godin sells another marketing book, he may get more people engaged in reading marketing books, which means more people are reading the books, they'll be inspired to discover other books in the business genre. So the more successful Seth Godin is, for example, it drips over to me and I get a little bit more. So if I support all my contemporaries, I'll actually sell more books. So therefore, I am motivated to actively promote my contemporaries. And they too, the ones who, you know, get it, do the same. So building that network of people say, oh my gosh, we, we benefit by promoting each other is a big deal. Yeah, that's the two primary things that I do. There's, there's. It's funny, my last promotion, we figured out, no lie about a hundred ways to promote books. Ended up is really only three or four. That moved almost all the books. My own list, the influencers. There was a couple other techniques like bundling books together. Sell quantities of like, you know, buy three, get this, buy ten. That actually works. So A few of those things represent almost all the book sales.

That's great email list influence, influencers, bundling. And I love the. You talked about promoting other authors because you expand the category. And then also the added benefit is you're in the customers also bought on Amazon for books that are selling really well, which you get that flow through traffic. So if you can somehow link your book with other juggernaut books and that first row of the customers also bought, now you're just flowing through a bunch of sales that way too.

So, you know, I discovered that by happenstance, I promoted E Myth by Michael Gerber. I just think it's amazing book. So I'm like, my list, hey, this is an amazing book. And what happens is people buy that book, but they also buy your own book at the same time. So you get this frequently bought together. So sure enough, like, E Myth is selling and all of a sudden I see on his page it says, E Myth is often bought with Clockwork, which is my book. I'm like, holy cow. And that sustained for quite a few months from one email. So I've actually spent a lot of time. Hacking is not the right word, but exploring Amazon computer background. Yeah, but here's one. I'll tell you one hack that I've told quite a few people about now. And I believe in sharing these hacks because it just, it just facilitates more book sales on Amazon if you look at your contemporaries. So say Malcolm Gladwell. You can go to Malcolm Gladwell's books now. David Goliath is one of my favorite books that he wrote. You can go there. And on his page, if you scroll down through the page where it shows all the details, there's a section that says videos, like videos about this book, you'll see that every one of his books, there's a video of me talking about his books. Now when I do the videos, they're here. So you see my books behind me, but I'm like, my name's Mike Michalowicz. I'm not. I don't promote myself. I don't say like, hey, I'm author guy. I say, my name is Mike Michalowicz. I'm reviewing Malcolm Gladwell's David Goliath. And here's what I love about this book, and here's why I think you should use it. And here's what you're going to learn. But behind me, you see my promotion going the entire time. It's free space on an Amazon page of one of your contemporaries. I think whatever platform your Books are moving on, and Amazon's the big juggernaut. We have a responsibility to investigate and learn it constantly, every day. Spend time on there and see what are new ways that you can elevate your own books.

Video reviews. That's one way. Love it.

Get reviews. My God. Get reviews.

Get reviews. But then also the video review thing, like leaving video reviews on other people's books and how that just bubbles up and stands out in the review stack.

I'll tell you, if it doesn't sell a book, you know, it's amazing. No one scrolls down the Malcolm Gladwell page to look. I'll tell you, one person surely does. Malcolm Gladwell, like, he definitely checks how his books are doing every so often. I assume every author must. They're checking out their page in detail. And now I have Malcolm Gladwell saying, who's this guy Mike who says, my book is so great? What are those books behind him? Now I got potentially a connection. That's smart.

That's really smart. Hey, final couple questions. We'll wrap up. I want to ask what. What you did differently, if anything, to launch Fix this Next. And I know just from seeing this on Social and being connected with friends and stuff like that, I think this is maybe the overlap of what you were touching on with the influencer marketing. So was there either that or something else that you did that move copies?

So Fix this Next launched April of 2020. Covid happened in March. I got a call on March 15th. We're in the final stages of ramping up, of getting influencers. And we were going to do lots of live feeds for the first time. We were going to do kind of like a red carpet Runway. So we sent everyone these helmets, like hard hats. Like, if you're a construction worker says, Fix this Next on it. We sent these big wrenches, these mega wrenches to people that said, you're a master fixer. And we put their name on it. So these are the influencers. And the idea was to do this. But then Covid hits my publisher calls, and they say it was the publisher himself. His name's Adrian. He calls and says, do you want to delay your book launch for another six months? Because everyone's stopping. And I'm like, no, but I have to reinvent how I market in six weeks. So we canceled all that stuff. People just weren't ready. And I don't think the market was ready for live events. Right after Covid hit. There's so much confusion going on. So we did. We tried to leverage the moment. We Instead did a program called the Recession Response. We said, we're on the verge of going into a Main street recession and what we're going to do is provide daily content to you that tells you how to fix your business. And the crux of the methodology is from fix this next. So we kept on pointing to it. Influencers started to share that. And I dare say if you Google Recession Response, that was the title. It's still a popular active topic. So we had a. I don't like the word pivot, but it was a pivot for sure. We had a change pretty quickly how we approached that.

That's great. Super smart, Mike. This has been awesome, man. This has been really, really good. Couple final questions.

The Penguin secret.

Oh, yes. All right, tell me that and I'll ask two rapid fire questions.

Wrap. Yeah, so here it is. This is what I think was Penguin's doing. Penguin acquired Random House. They're now acquiring Simon Schuster. I think the big play is they're actually going to take on Amazon. I think the big publishing houses are beholden to Amazon because Amazon has all the books. But as Penguin starts rolling up this backlist, they own, I think now, over 50% of circulated books. If they can get the 80%, they open their own store and they can undercut Amazon itself.

Amazon, you think?

I think.

Was that like, you think they would do like people doing the music or the movie piece where they would actually pull all their catalog off of Amazon?

Exactly. They could pull their catalog off too. Yeah, they could do that. So I think, interesting. But no matter what, they can undercut prices. So I think that's the big play. I don't know. That's my suspicion.

Interesting. Love that. Knowing what you know now, what would you say to Mike from, gosh, seven, eight years ago, however long it was before you wrote your first book and the other Mike's that are out there that are about to go on the.

Journey of writing their first book, Use advanced readers. I wish I did that in my first couple books. Advanced Readers is where I have the first draft manuscript. Get 20 or 30 people to give critical feedback. What I think is a baby or gem, some people think really sucks. And so I got this critical feedback in my last three books of people saying, no, no, that makes no sense. That's not, that's not, you know, that's insensitive something you said there or whatever. I think it's funny because it's insensitive. So I've been able to improve the quality of the books based upon advanced reader Feedback that's been huge.

That's great. And that even shows with your reviews. I was looking at reviews on all your books and that shows. It's like how books have gotten better over time. That's great. Hey, where can people go to find out more about you, to buy your books, to do business with you, all those things.

So this maybe is another marketing hack. It's. Well, it's my name, but no one can spell it, so it's Mike McCallow. It's. Here's the hack. It's mikemotorbike.com so my nickname was Mike Motorbike. I've never driven a motorcycle. That's the irony, right? Mikemotorbike.com brings you to my site and I think when you go there too. I'm a big believer in different is better. I think you'll experience a website that's atypical for authors. But all my books, free chapters, of course, free content. I'm also a podcaster. It's all at Mike Mike. And sign up for the free resources. Get on the list. You'll see how I market and you can do the same.

Yeah, it's great. I'll definitely check it out. I was looking at the website right before this. We were talking about it. It's funny, there's something in the top left that's funny. You'll see when you go there. And also I think just a really great example of an author website. If you're looking for inspiration and just how specifically he prescribes the book to the thing that you need help with. So if you're looking for help in your business and you're running a business, then you can kind of see which of his books you should read first. So check it out. You said mikemotorbike.com that's it.

Mikemotorbike.com awesome.

Well, thank you, Mike. This has been amazing.

Thank you, Chandler. I appreciate it.