Before You Self Publish Your First Book WATCH THIS

People started asking, how hard is it to write a book and how did you do it? I'm like, well, it's really not that hard. You just need the right guidance and you need the right system and you need to put your effort into it. If you don't put your effort into it, then nothing really happens.

So you may have been wondering, how exactly do you go about self publishing a book? Why is everybody doing it and can I do it? More importantly, why would I want to do that? Well, I'm joined together with an amazing friend, colleague and an infinite banker, the amazing Feng shui. And he is here to talk to us a little bit about the power of writing your own book, what that can do, how you can grow your brand, build some authority and add a ton of value to a whole bunch of people. So thanks so much for being with us today. Fong, let's jump right in. I want to hear a little bit about your time and your story on starting with your first book that you guys wrote and then how that's progressed up to this point in time. You've got a number of books that are out there and available and you've also coached and helped and assisted so many other people become an author for the very first time. So I'd love to hear a little bit about that part of your journey and what led you down this path.

Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me. It's a joy. And I've known you for how much, how many years has it been? Over 10 years? Over a decade.

Yeah. I think we met at a real estate conference one day. Yeah, it's probably about 11 years, roughly 11, 12 years.

You've been a great friend and it's been a journey. Writing that first book has gone through lots of trials and tribulations and, and after lots of learnings, lots of coaching, lots of experiences, we finally got that out. Just a little bit about how that came about was that I grew up in a very traditional work hard, find a good job, be loyal to that company for years and years and retire off of that. And as you know, in Edmonton, Alberta, where I am, we're very based on oil and gas. It goes up and down, economy goes up and down. And that's when we started venturing into real estate businesses, investments and whatnot. And, and that was a big thing that was unknown to us. So much information about real estate, information about what you're doing about infinite banking, exempt markets and stocks and network marketing. We were absorbing all that stuff. And then when People come up to us and go, hey, what do you actually do? Well, I do real estate. I do this, I do this, I do this. And that conversation goes for three, four hours because I just wanted to share so much stuff. And at that time, I told my coach that what I'm doing at that time, connecting and adding value and building relationships with people. He goes, man, Fong, you're spending way too much time talking about stuff. Why didn't you write your first book? I'm like, whoa, that's something way beyond me. I did not think about doing that. And then that mindset about limiting beliefs came in. Who am I to write a book? That person over there is more successful than me.

Who?

Why am I writing a book and not them? And everything's already written. Who am I to write another book? And all that stuff kind of came into my mind. And like, yeah, there's no way. Like, I've never thought about doing that. And it was my coaches that basically told me that one, if that person doesn't read your book, don't worry about it. Don't focus on them. Focus on the people that wants to hear your voice. And anybody could write a book. You just have to put time into it. And the last thing is, over the last 100 years, nothing new has been written, but your voice hasn't been heard. And therefore, if you're not writing your book, you're depriving those people, your family, your friends, your followers, from the message that you want to deliver. And the thing is, somebody else can write the same content, but they cannot connect to the same people that you can. And that completely changed my mindset. I'm like, okay, I could probably write something. And that's how I started writing our first book, which is a introduction to all the stuff we were doing, from infinite banking to real estate to mindset to commodities and all that kind of stuff onto one book. So then now I can go, hey, why don't you read this book first? Let me know what you want to get to know more about, and I can connect you to the right people or I can help you out with that. And then after that, we were kind of preparing that first book, and within that period of time, we actually had three books in us. So we produced and published three books within the first one or two years.

Yeah, that's incredible. And as I recall, in that first book, there's actually a chart in there where you actually kind of did the. I call it the open kimono thing. And you put a chart of what Your own kind of first infinite banking style policy was right in there and spoke to it and talk about that as far as how that was part of your journey and the things that you were learning. And you know, I'm sure that that's made a tremendous amount of impact. I mean, the number of people that we've been able to help and serve that you and your wife have blessed to introduce us to has been a real true joy because you've been spreading Nelson's message and that sort of thing. And, and this, this journey that the mindset shift, I think is really important, is that through that conversation again we have this self talk that happens within us. Everyone's got it. But you had someone else in your life, another third party, an external person that was able to ask you the right question, able to frame things in such a way that it caused a shift. And that shift all of a sudden opened this, this, this wide doorway of what was possible. And, and it's like, yeah, you're right, there's people I can reach that maybe, maybe some of that content is out there, but it's out there in various different forms and you know, and it's, it's not reaching an audience. So you know, there's so many books and things that are out there in the world, I certainly couldn't list them all. I, I don't know, I've only read a very small fraction of what's possible out in the world. And so your ability to see that differential and then go ahead and take action I think is tremendously important. And so that leads me to this experience now of getting your first three books out. Well, after doing that, I'm going to take a guess, but all of a sudden your phone started to ring or people started knocking on the door and saying, hey Fong, I see what you did over here. Can you just kind of show me how to do that? Is that sort of the natural progression of what happened?

Yeah, pretty much. People started asking, well, how hard is it to write a book and how did you do it? I'm like, well, it's really not that hard. You just need the right guidance and you need the right system and you need to put your effort into it. If you don't put your effort into it, then nothing really happens. Lots of people started asking me how is it being done? And I started coaching people as to how to write their first books. How do they come up with ideas outlining it, coming up of ways of getting more recognition, getting more credibility with those books? And it's just been a great ride. I've had lots of clients who went from scratch, not one word written down to having their books done in three to four months. And all of a sudden been asked to speak on stages or interviewed on podcasts or becoming guest speakers at different events and whatnot. And they come back to me and they go, wow, I never experienced any of this. I never knew this would happen. Thank you so much. And it's one of those things that brings a lot of joy to me.

Oh, that's amazing. And so what year was that first book published? That would have been around 2013, 2014. That range. Yeah. At the time of this recording were eight. Stepping into nine years of really you being in that zone of being a published author, a multiple time published author, a best selling author. And since that time you've helped numerous other people write, get their book out, published and coach them not just on the, the writing process, the outlining and getting their ideas, you know, extracting the idea of what they're going to write about out of their brain, which I'm sure you've done a great deal of that as a coach yourself. But then through the kind of, I would call it the minutiae of actually the self publishing process and the different ways that you can do that, it's a whole like, it's kind of like when we think about real estate and there's, there's many different ways you can invest in real estate. Different places, different locations, different strategies. There's, there's just a whole host of different ways that you can go and do that. Well, there's a whole host of different ways that you can go about self publishing a book. And so, and there's, there's obviously lots of places where people can fall flat on their face and develop a big, ugly, nasty bruise from the experience. And you've helped coach people through that as well. And so, you know, and I want to do a big shout out because our first book that we recently launched here has been a major success for us. We're really happy about it. And if it wasn't for your good guidance, we would have definitely not been able to have the successful launch that we did with that book. So you provided a tremendous amount of value. Jason and myself, as far as, you know, launching wealth of Bay Street's first book and being able to have it hit a number one best selling status on Amazon, which was incredible, wonderful feat. Not something that we really were truly intending, but because of the strategic, you know, mindset and the actionable very clear, actionable steps that you provided. We were able to, using strategy, be able to make that a true reality. And you've done that for a number of other people. So how did you discover some of those tips and tricks along the way to really go and take a self published book and try to amplify it in such a method that a person could really hit a number one target on Amazon?

Well, first of all, I had my own coaches. The whole process I've been coached on to how to do it, how to do it effectively. I've been coached as to how to get more recognition and also get more exposure so that we could boost those book sales up to bestseller on Amazon. And of course, after doing three, four, five books myself, I found certain ways that worked very well for me that I could also pass on to my clients so that it helps them, them get their books done faster and more efficient and also get their ideas on the page. The more you do, the more people to help that you gain that experience so that you could kind of leverage off of those experiences, combined with the experiences and the recommendations from your coaches and kind of meld it all together and deliver a very strategic and very efficient way of getting things done and getting more and more exposure for those books. So that's basically how I got the information and that's why I like to share it because it allows other people to learn from my mistakes or learn from my, my experience, which is absolutely awesome. And hearing their results is even more enlightening and inspiring as well.

Yeah, that's fantastic. And so what would you say? So if someone is listening to this, this video and they're, they're thinking about it, maybe that maybe they're experiencing this and they thought, you know, I never really considered, they're in that stage that you were many years ago thinking, oh, I never even thought about writing a book, I never considered it. And something just happened. It just clicked for them that it was actually possible. But maybe they just don't know. They're now sitting there with that idea that they know they can do it, but they don't really know what they would do it on or about what would be one of the first pieces of advice you would provide them about how to begin the journey so that they could take an idea, they could, they could flesh out an idea that they can even begin to look at what an outline is, you know, before you even get to the outline, what is that first spark to help you get your idea onto the page.

Right. Okay. So basically my first question to people is, what do you want to be known for? What do you want to have the most credibility about? What's that topic? Whether it's infinite banking, whether it's real estate, whether it's speaking, what do you want to really focus on so that you can pass a certain message on that topic? And then when it comes to that topic and that credibility that you want to build on that certain thing, what is that message that you want to share with them? With infinite Banking, it might be, hey, this is the best way to build wealth. And with speaking, this is the best way to be effective on stage. What is that message? And I'm sure that everybody out there has some kind of message that you want to share. Everybody wants to talk. Everybody wants to share. When you're in a room, there's something to talk about usually. And when you want to talk about something, you want to share something. So what is that thing that you want to talk about? Then I go, hey, do you believe that you could talk about that topic for, let's say an hour, maybe even two hours, just speaking about it? And most people can, right? You could talk about a movie and your experience about that movie for an hour, hour and a half if you really were passionate about it. So if you had a message that you're strong about and you want to really want to share, you could speak about that topic a good an hour, an hour and a half, maybe even two hours. Now, if people go, no, I can't do that. Well, how about this? Take that topic and break it down into 10 mini topics. Can you do that? And then go, probably. So, for instance, let's say speaking, what do you need to do for speaking? Well, you need to have the right mindset. You have to take the action to go and speak. You need to have stage presence, you need to have vocal variety, you need to have X, Y, Z, whatever it is. So right off the bat, I started off about four or five topics about speaking. So then with those four or five topics, can you speak five to seven minutes of each topic? Well, if you can, then you basically have about a chapter's worth of content within those five to seven minutes. With regards to 10 chapters, that means 10 topics. You should have enough content for a whole book. So that's usually how I coach my clients. If they still have issues about coming up with that five to seven minute talk about each segment, then I go, okay, this segment, what are the three main points or five main points you, you really, really want to focus in on? They'll say, oh well, vocal variety. Why do you have to speak high? Why do you have to speak low? Why do you need to be soft? And at certain instances? Well, if you can speak one or two minutes on each of those, then you have seven minutes, basically. So once you keep on asking those questions about can you break it down, can you break it down, can you speak on those certain topics? Then you most likely have for a whole book. If you could speak an hour and a half to two hours, you have enough content, then it comes down to writing it personally. For me, I write it as if I'm speaking to somebody. So lots of people are concerned about writer's block. If I put people on the spot and ask them a question, they could usually answer that question right back to me. Which means you're not going to get writer's block if you keep on asking yourself questions. So every time you're stuck, ask yourself a question about that specific thing that you're stuck on and then see how you're going to answer it by speaking. Then type it out. Now you can sit down and type and write down all the chapters if you like. Usually it takes about, let's say four, maybe five hours to write down a chapter. For me it's about four hours. Another example of doing that content is to speak it. If you could speak, record it and then transcribe, usually takes me about two hours to modify that transcription. So anywhere between 20 to 40 hours I should be able to have a draft copy of my book. And that's usually what my clients do. They do one of the two things. Then after the 40 hours, they spend about a week to go through their own self editing, they go through a review process on their own and then we send it off to an editor. The editor will probably take about a week, two weeks to edit. The content comes back to you. You take another week, week and a half to modify and, and adjust it based on what the editor gives you. And then you're ready to put a cover on it, load it up onto kdp, which is the Amazon self publishing platform. And you already got your book out. So that's why most of my clients will have their books done within three to four months.

Yeah, amazing. That's, I mean, literally step by step, you just walk through pretty much the whole process there and you, I mean there's so much gold and everything you just said how to help prevent from the writer's block using the power of questions. And sometimes that blockage that may happen for people is we get Stuck and there's something in our own head that's, it's kind of getting in the way. And sometimes it's because we're, we're asking questions or we're doing all that stuff in our brain. I know for me doing, you know, I've done a variety of personality tests and assessments and all these kinds of things. And it's been indicated to me that I actually need to speak things out loud. And it's the best, one of the best uses for me as a, as how I action things and how I learn and do things. And so the act of being, you know, physically vocal about it versus just doing everything in my head, actually for some reason it triggers and that activates things a little bit more. So I know now after doing some self assessing that that is a more powerful way for me to get things moving forward. And so if I were in that same process that you just described, I would, rather than just asking the question in my head, I would legitimately ask the question out loud. I would even consider asking the questions or recording the questions that are coming up for me on a voice recorder or voice memo software in a, in a transcription service like say otter, which is one that I use and there's many that are out there. And then I could just hit the play button and literally have myself read it back out loud as though I'm almost in conversation with someone. So no different than you asking the question or having an external person ask the question. When you're in a conversation with a real human being and you receive a question, your brain goes in and you want to respond. Your desire is to respond because you want to engage in quality conversation. So I think that's a mind trick basically that allows you to get past some of those little barriers that can show up. So I love that suggestion. I think it's fantastic. Again, the modern technology that we have today, the transcription type softwares that are available are getting far, far superior. And there's lots of them that some of them you can get for free or certainly for a very low cost where you can be able to again speak these ideas, answer that question, speak out loud, shoot from the hip, as it were. It's not going to transcribe it perfectly. There's going to be a lot of things, spelling errors. If the word here. Well, there's two different ways to spell the word here. So you're going to be reading like, oh, that doesn't make sense. And so that sort of thing will happen. But that's that self editing process. Now you go through that transcript and you're able to tweak and adjust and tweak and adjust to get it to a point where it actually makes sense. And then it might read more like someone was speaking out loud. So you may want to modify that to the book, the book that you want at the end result, because that's maybe not the style you're looking for exactly. But, you know, you could go and look at an existing book that you do like that has a certain style. You say, okay, if this is what I'm looking for as a style, this. I really like the feel of this. That's what works for me. Can I take all this transcription stuff that I got over here and can I switch or convert it in some way? And again, it's just asking those good questions. So I love these tips. I think it's fantastic. And so again, for our listeners who are have ever considered or thought about the idea of writing a book, don't hold back. Go ahead and get your idea out, Flush that idea out and get started. And there's amazing people, people like Fong that can help coach you through that process. There's a ton of information online, but I think when you have someone who's done it, done it numerous times, and then successfully demonstrated how to help other people also do it repeatedly, that is the kind of person that you want to hit your wagon to and shortcut the success path that you can create to the outcome that you want, which is your book published and able for people to get it. So, again, that's fantastic, Vong, and thank you for everything that you've done for all these many authors. Again, thank you for what you've done for us at the wealth of Bay Street Team, helping us get our first book launched. And I'm curious as you think about where you've come in this journey now and you're looking forward out into the future was it relates to your own, your own writing, your own books, as it relates to people that you serve, the people that you coach and mentor. What do you see over the next three to five to 10 years as far as how you want to grow and develop that more, how you want to see helping more people with this process?

Well, I believe that most of the people who come to me about getting their books written are somewhat introverts. They're like, oh, I'm too scared to go out and do this, or who am I to do this? And I don't know the first thing about writing books. And what is this going to do for me all those questions because they're too sheltered, they don't want to jump out and showcase themselves. And the main thing I've seen is when they do that, this major confidence boost comes up. All of a sudden they're walking a little like straighter, their head's held up higher. They have this demeanor, this aura about them when they walk into a room that you know what? I've accomplished something that I've never accomplished before. I'm an author, I'm a best selling author. And all of a sudden people start gravitating to them. And I find that that is amazing. Like that confidence level is something that you can't just buy. You can't just buy confidence. You need to develop that. And when it comes to writing a book, it's one of the fastest ways that I found that boosts people's confidence up because they put so much effort into them and also is able to help other people with their message, which again adds to their confidence. So this is something I enjoy doing a lot. I tried to streamline the process as fast as I can so that people could get their books faster and faster out. Not quality of it, but increasing the efficiency of it so that it's easier for people to do. I give out templates to them so that they can finish it faster. I provide lots, lots of assistance and all kind of stuff. I know I'm focusing a lot on the people who might find this daunting about getting words on a page, but there's some people goes, what? I got so much content, I have so much stuff I want to share. How can I put this all together? Write a second book Edition two, version two, part two, whatever. The thing is, when it comes to book writing, we don't want to have books that's too thick that completely overwhelms people from actually wanting to read it. So therefore you want to make more books instead of having one big thick book. My main focus is helping people get their message out as fast as they can and as high quality as they can as well. So in the next three, four or five years, I'm gonna be focusing on this to make sure people get their message of them.

Wow, that's fantastic. And I can't wait to see just how many books are created, how many gifts are given to the world from the minds of the many people that you will be serving that will be available to the general public. It's so amazing just to think and consider the impact any one book can have. The ability to really dramatically change, shift or impact or improve someone's life in some way. You know, especially there's a lot of books around. Again, things like confidence, things like many biography type stories and the lessons, the hardships and the lessons that are learned in there have enough of an impact on people to help them make a positive change to something in their life. And financial books, real estate books, all these different categories can have such a tremendous impact on people when they get a chance to have that book in their hands. And so you just by the virtue of you being a coach and a servant driven leader to help people see their message come to light. It has such a potential to impact so many lives, an incalculable amount of lives on a cascading basis. So really, really fascinating stuff. I absolutely love this. And we're on this topic of books and we've had an amazing conversation with Fong here today. But what I really want to get into of course is talking more about mindset. And so let's go and learn about the fastest way to grow your mindset. All you got to do is go right here.